Are You A FOODIE?

GOLF’S AN EASY GAME…

Private Lessons

by Darrell Klassen

That is the title of my first book, a 160 page paperback, which was published in 2001. Here we are nine years later and I now have six books on the market. The last five are E-Books, and they are all topic specific. One is on hitting the golf ball farther. One deals with learning perfect shot control. There’s one on the art of putting, one on chipping, and one which teaches you how to build a solid, consistent golf swing in four easy steps.

By the time this issue is released I will have another paperback coming off the press and ready for the market place. There are plans and notes in place for at least six more publications. It’s a lot of fun to be able to sit at the computer and take a run at communicating your thoughts on paper, or at least some written form. It’s also exciting when people from nearly every golfing nation around the world want to read the things you have written.

God has been good to me. I’m just an old country boy. I grew up on a farm which was located between Terra Bella and Pixley. My dad raised cattle, cotton, alfalfa and sugar beets there for nearly thirty years. I did everything growing up on the farm except engine repairs on the tractors and other machinery.

Out of college I wanted to be a foreign language and mathematics teacher at the high school level. I had plans to coach basketball and golf. The only problem was high schools did not want me for a few years, because I was too young. They all suggested I teach middle school or elementary school for a few years and then move up to the high school level.

That frustrated me, so I drove to a golf course where I knew the head professional and asked for a job as an assistant golf professional. That was all the back in 1966, and though I only taught at a driving range part time on the side from 1980 through the first couple of months in 1988, I have never been out of the golf business since.

It has been a marvelous profession, and I have met some wonderful and interesting people. A man who came from Hong Kong for lessons stood on the little driving range in Woodlake several years ago and finalized his negotiations to become the owner of the Pringle Potato Chip Company.

One of my students from the east coast is a Secret Service Agent and has protected every US President, except Obama, since George Bush, Sr. Another man was the world marketing director for farm machinery for the John Deere Company.

The list goes on and on. I have learned so very much from these people. Each of them has shared how they were able to achieve their goals in life, and, although the names and faces are different, their stories are almost identical. For each of them, success was not their goal as much as was service, knowledge, hard work, and integrity. Those seem to be the most important things, other than God and family in each of their lives.

So what does all of this information have to do with golf instruction? Nothing. I simply had the desire to share some things with you which were different than the norm. I just wanted to take the opportunity to express my gratitude for the way God has blessed and prospered me in my career.

I’m pretty much retired now. I do not do a lot of teaching. I still have students who email and make the arrangements to come and see me from other states and other countries. I hope to continue with those students for several more years.

I’ve never had a golf lesson in my life, and I have played the game for over 55 years. I have been teaching golf for over 45 years. If there is one secret to the game, it has very little to do with the swing itself. The PGA seems to think it all has to do with the swing, but I tend to go against the normal flow.

I played a lot of ping pong when I was a youngster, and sitting in a physics class my senior year of high school the teacher made a point that a golf ball was nothing more than a heavy ping pong ball. I had sliced the ball since I started playing the game at ten years of age. I could shoot in the middle to lower 70′s, but I still sliced and faded everything.

When I heard my teacher say that, lights went on everywhere for me. I drove home to the ranch and dropped a half dozen balls or so out on the lawn in order to hit them out into the permanent pasture. I only had one goal. I was going to see whether or not the teacher knew what he was talking about. If a golf ball was nothing more than a heavy ping pong ball, I should  be able to easily curve it left.

Sure enough, the very first shot curved left. All I had to do was to imagine the club face was my ping pong paddle and then apply some left spin on the ball. There was nothing to it! My immediate thought was, “You have got to be kidding. I have struggled all this time, and the game is this simple?”

After intentionally hooking and slicing a few more balls into the pasture, I began practicing how to control the amount of curve I put on my shots. It didn’t take long at all to do that, so I suddenly had complete control of all of my golf shots. I didn’t say I hit all of my shots perfectly. I merely said I knew how to control every shot. I could be assured my ball would curve left when I wanted it to curve left, and I knew I could curve it to the right when I wanted it to do that.

With just a bit of studying, I soon learned no one can make a golf ball fly consistently straight. That takes absolute perfection. That’s why I quit trying to do it, and I do my best to persuade my students not to try it. It is impossible for anyone on the planet to do, so why frustrate yourself. If we know the ball is going to curve to the left, all we have to do is make certain we start our shot a bit to the right of the target. That is every bit as good as hitting it dead straight, and it’s way easier to do on a consistent basis.

Go out and give it a try. When you can curve the ball either way on command you will automatically have a nice golf swing. I guarantee it.