Some players prefer coaches, others don’t, in forming their golf swing.

By Rod Engblom
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Golf is a game of inches, and hitting a golf ball isn’t as easy as it looks. If the golfer hits the ball with the club face slightly open or closed, too steep of a swing or over the top, the shot will have a different result every time.

Golfers need to develop swings that are consistent and fluid, allowing them to hit in a predictable way and to be able to land the ball where they want it to land.

For many golfers, they go to swing coaches to get professional advice on their swings.

“High-school freshman year winter was when I got my swing coach,” junior Carson Schaake said. “I don’t really look at him as a swing coach but more as a role model, someone I look up to.”

Schaake has a close relationship with his first swing coach, with whom he stays in contact and collaborates from time to time. Schaake said the coach was in Iowa City a couple weeks ago and was able to work with him and tweak his swing.

Like an individual’s golf swing, learning how to hit a golf ball is different for everyone.

“I grew up hitting balls in the backyard with plastic clubs, and then I went to a professional from when I was 8 or 9 to sometime during high school,” junior Ray Knoll said. “Then I just stopped going, because I felt like it was too mechanical and not really fluid, and now I just work with my dad.”

Unlike Schaake, Knoll prefers to work on his swing by himself. He feels that while a swing coach could provide some good advice on the mechanics of his swing, it is up to him to hit the ball, because he can feel what he is doing wrong in his swing.

Freshman Aaron DeNucci went through a different process from both Schaake and Knoll in forming his swing.

“When I was really young, I started out being taught by my dad, and as I grew up, I started taking it more seriously, and I worked with a couple close friends from our country club,” Denucci said. “I had my first swing coach at around 13 or 14, and then I switched to one or two more, and I’ve had a consistent one for the last couple years.”

Also, he went through several coaches until he found a coach he stayed with consistently.

While some players learn their swing by basing it on a professional’s swing, Schaake’s coach had a different philosophy.

“My coach has a theory that we’re all built differently, our bones move differently and I truly believe that, too, and I think that everyone should have a different golf swing,” Schaake said. “If my coach were to have said to me in the beginning that we were going to try to do exactly what Tiger’s doing, it would kind of been insane to me, because he’s 6-2, weighs more than me, and he may have different flexibility than me.”

Even though Tiger Woods has a great swing that golfers can model theirs on, Schaake is built differently from Woods, so he believes that basing bits and pieces of a swing is the wiser decision.

But, most say, a golfer shouldn’t constantly think about the swing.

“If you’re thinking about your swing on the course during a tournament, you’re basically taking yourself out of it,” Knoll said. “You could get lucky one week and have a swing thought that’s really helping you, but if you consistently have swing thoughts all the time, it’s not going to help you.”