The 18M Golf Programme was Created By Derek Laird Macdonald
The Problem With Golf
The Practise Dichotomy
A good swing involves coordinating around 18 independent yet simultaneous movements to consistently hit a golf ball straight.
To achieve this, you need to teach your body the correct positions, swing path, and hand-eye coordination.
This is accomplished through repetitive practice, which takes a lot of time to commit to muscle memory.
The challenge is that most people don’t have the time for the necessary practice.
Even when they do practice, they often don’t know what specifically to work on. Simply swinging without a clear goal does not help develop good muscle memory. In fact, it can easily achieve the opposite and make their swing worse.
“Another difficulty experienced is memory loss. Longer intervals between lessons lead to greater forgetfulness, ultimately reducing the quality of their swing.”
The Golf Lesson Dichotomy
During a golf lesson, many learners tend to focus excessively on hitting the ball without truly considering their swing mechanics.
They often hit a shot and then immediately ask the instructor to explain the ball’s flight path, only to repeat the same question after the next shot.
This behaviour seems to stem from a belief that hitting more balls provides greater value in the lesson.
However, this approach detracts from the fundamental learning process.
By concentrating more on the swing mechanics rather than the ball flight, learners will develop a good swing quicker and have a better understanding of golf fundamentals.
Complex Movements
One of the most complex movement patterns we learn is how to walk and run.
This is achieved through a series of baby steps, where we essentially learn in incremental stages , each gradually increasing our stride length by building on the previous one.
Golf also involves a series of complex movements.
Traditional lessons with a golf professional often don’t align with our natural learning process. Instead of starting with baby steps in stages, many teach the entire swing all at once, akin to teaching someone to run before they learn to walk.
Since it doesn’t mimic our natural learning processes, learning and mastering a new swing can be significantly harder to comprehend, more challenging and time-consuming.
What’s wrong with traditional lesson with a PGA professional?
They are essentially time-consuming, costly, highly inconvenient, difficult to master, and not specifically designed to facilitate learning. Therefore, completely opposite to the 18M golf programme. Often there is no proper method or framework to work within. However, the biggest problem is either the lack of focused practise at the practise ground, or in most cases, the lack of any practise between lessons. You cannot develop a swing unless you practise. If you don’t have a swing, then how do you practise effectively. If you are having weekly lessons the information you have learnt will degrade…
How is the 18M golf programme different to other programmes
There are 2 learning stages before you hit a ball. Why? Because you, at most, can have 2 thoughts on your backswing, and 2 on your downswing. Most people though have just 1. High handicappers and beginners often concentrate on hitting the ball rather than on their swing and fundamentals. This misplaced focus makes learning a new swing more difficult, as their attention is on the wrong aspects.