Arccos Data Can Make Golf Lessons More Efficient

Sara Wiedenhaefer is the Senior Marketing Manager at Arccos Golf. While most people assume she’s a single digit HCP’r because she works in the golf industry, she will assure you that she is not (her Arccos data also backs that up).

I started golfing about 4 years ago. Pictured above, was my second year of golfing. This is a highly deceiving image, as I was not playing in Omega’s Moonlight Classic Tournament, but a lucky instagram winner to fly to Dubai and play a round of golf with Paige Spiranac.

Pictured above, was probably my peak in golf. I was consistently scoring in the mid-90s, which as a golfer of two years, I was pretty chuffed about. I could give a number of ‘classic’ excuses to my crumbling performance but it basically comes down to the fact that I really needed a proper tune up with a pro. 

A long story short: I scheduled a lesson with Arccos Ambassador, Erika Larkin. Here is how my Arccos data helps ensure I get the best long-term results from my lesson... 

Establishing A Baseline:

As a higher HCP golfer, my Arccos data really just tells me to get better at golf… in basically every facet. While I have been leveraging my Arccos data to high-level areas of improvement (*cough my ‘Approach’ cough*), I could just tell that there was something I was missing. After all, when the ‘Fairway’ is my weakest terrain...there is probably a fundamental change to my swing that a pro can help me address.

When I met with Erika, I handed her my phone with my Arccos Caddie app open, and (with desperation in my voice) asked her to evaluate my data and base our lesson on what would make the most positive impact in my game.

I didn’t want my ego and self-deprecating opinion to influence what the lesson would focus on. After all, I was seeing Erika because she quite obviously knows more about golf than me (and most others for that matter). As it was my first time ever meeting Erika face-to-face, or her seeing anything about my golf game, I wanted the cold hard facts to speak for themselves. 

Leveraging Arccos With A New Coach:

• Excellent way to brief a coach/teaching pro on the current status of your game
• Narratives and memory matter less, because the good, bad, and ugly are all there
• Helped narrow the focus of the initial lesson to the most impactful aspects of overall game

It’s All In The Hips:

Next it was time to warm up and have a top industry swing coach evaluate my swing—no pressure. After some baseline videos were taken, Erika started imparting some of her vast wisdom. 

Watching me warm up with some wedge and iron shots, my swing then corroborated my data in Arccos. Between my strong grip and lack of hip rotation, my misses made sense (...to her, I obviously had no clue what I was doing wrong until she pointed it out and explained it to me). 

It was helpful to go through drills so I could feel the new motion my body was expected to make. We worked our way up through my backswing staying focused on my hips through my release. She explained in detail how different aspects of my swing were leading to the results she read about in my Arccos data (and how I could start to spot these for myself). 

But, let’s be honest, you’re not here because you care about my swing—Here’s how it could apply to your game:

• Your Arccos data paints a detailed picture when you give it to the right interpreter (i.e. a teaching pro/coach)
• Coaches can explain ‘flags’ to look for in your data to help you prevent slipping back into your bad habits
• By working through a lesson or series of drills with a coach, you learn each others communication style which makes for more effective results moving forward

Post-Lesson Progress

Lessons definitely shakeup your golf game for a few rounds—it usually gets uglier before it gets prettier. Thankfully, Erika was using some handy coaching tools to keep me refreshed on what I need to focus on should I need to review. 

She invited me into a collaborative coaching app where she recapped the lesson with the videos she filmed and broke down the insights once again for me. Whenever I need to, I can rewatch and go through the lesson when I think my hip rotation is betraying me. 

What’s even better is that with an established baseline and communication in her coaching platform, I can upload new swing videos and updated Arccos data when it is time for the next lesson—which can easily be remote as well. 

RELATED: ONLINE COACHING CAN BE MORE EFFECTIVE WITH ARCCOS 

Even if I was made of money, I wouldn’t make any coach suffer through weekly lessons watching my amateur swing. Mostly because it takes time to implement real changes. What is helpful is establishing milestones with a coach for a responsible improvement plan based on the data in Arccos (i.e. “Come back and see me when X happens or you see Y results in your data”). Meaning, by utilising Arccos to track your performance you can ensure that you are achieving measurable improvement and balancing your time between practicing and learning. 

Golf is a tough sport, but even tougher for perfectionists. Practice doesn’t always make ‘perfect’, but at least we can measure our progress with Arccos [shameless marketing plug]. 😉