I took my lesson with Mike Jacobs, GSED, a protoge of Ben Doyle. He was very patient and personable, and , as I found out that he will be teaching indoors, I will probably take a few more lessons with him.
At the start, I told him that I would like the lesson taped and that I was a beginner who wanted to build a G.O.L.F. machine. We started with the grip and set-up, both of which needed corrections. We then worked for about 30 minutes on chipping. Mike felt that my upper body was both way too active and way too stiff. In fact, this was his main criticism throughout the lesson. He prefers that most of the power come from the hips and the body center, even for chipping, although it obviously would be a slight motion for chips. As you might surmise, Mike advocates swinging, although he did show me both procedures when I asked him to. This was fine with me, as I see myself as fitting the profile of a swinger. The other main emphasis was on the flat left wrist. Mike demonstrated the tac-tic and I purchased one from him. As an aside, it is weird to me that I shank chips fairly freaquently and almost never shank on full swings. I thought that I was contacting the ball off the toe, but Mike said I was hitting the hosel.
After a while, we did move to slightly longer swings and I snuck in a few full swings. Again, the pro stated that my upper body was going all over the place and was too stiff. We worked on making my shoulders much, much looser.
At the end, we went back to chipping. My last chips were much better.
My only misgiving is that I noticed many more flaws when I watched the tape that were not mentioned during the lesson: very little wrist bend on the longer swings, arms lifting up almost over my head, and a very early release (meaning, of course, virtually no lag). It looks as if *both* of my wrists are flat at impact. At least I did not see outright flipping. At this point, I am assuming that the pro saw these flaws, but simply didn't want to give me too much at once. I hope so.
Thank you to those who responded to my earlier post about what I should look for in this first lesson.
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