15 Minutes of Game
By Mike Bailey : Published for AG November 2008
Lance McWilliams gives golf lessons. Every once in a while he even receives payment for them. But he’s a not golf pro at least not in the traditional sense.
And don’t look to book a package of lessons from McWilliams either. What he has to teach you literally takes about 15 minutes about the time it takes to read this article if he’s successful.
His charge for one of these short lessons?
I just tell people to give me what they think its worth, said the 42-year-old father of three, who makes a living flipping houses.
One student was so grateful for his help that he paid him $250 for a single session. That’s a pretty good fee by most any teaching pros standards. What’s even more impressive is that McWilliams has only broken 80 on a few occasions in his life.
And that, perhaps, is what makes him so insightful.
For a change of pace in this space, we’re going anti-tech here. About the most technical aspect of this story is the no-frills video McWilliams put together a couple of months ago to share his discovery about the golf swing. Yes, in case you’re wondering, McWilliams has the secret. Not to winning the U.S. Open, mind you. Not even winning the club championship. McWilliams, quite frankly, might have discovered the secret to help hackers enjoy the game a lot more and that’s why his lack of pedigree here is unimportant.
It’s called 15 Minute Golf, the result of an epiphany McWilliams had in the middle of the night. McWilliams is like many of us he has taken lessons from different pros with little to show from it. Once he received a series of lessons from a well-respected teacher and didn’t even bother to return for the last lesson. His pro promptly started each lesson on time and when time was up, cut it off immediately. Dismayed, confused and ultimately no better (perhaps worse); McWilliams didn’t see the point in wasting any more time.
So the former market trader decided to do some research. And he discovered what so many have been saying for years that no matter how the swing looks, all great players share certain traits. One, of course, is that all of them look similar at impact, which means they also look similar right before impact. So McWilliams started focusing on the release, and where and when it has to occur. The result of his findings is three basic drills that can be taught in about 15 minutes.
Now here’s where the real gutsy part comes: McWilliams took it a step further and decided to share his secret with the world. So he produced a video. He found a professional photographer and production guy through a chance meeting in a parking lot, and for $3,500 he produced a less-than-polished DVD that may not win any awards for production value, but it definitely gets the message across.
The video, as you might guess, is far longer than 15 minutes. After all, who would pay $59.95 for a DVD that was only 15 minutes long? He spends the first part of it telling you how handicaps haven’t changed in the past 30 years, despite the fact that equipment has improved dramatically. The reason, he surmises, is that traditional teaching is faulty.
It’s a point that’s difficult to argue. Who doesn’t know at least a half dozen people who have taken lessons and haven’t improved? They cant all be that stupid or devoid of talent, right?
McWilliams recalled a statement by David Leadbetter that dumbfounded him. Leadbetter told Dennis Silvers, aka the Golf Guru, based in Las Vegas, all the books and video and what-not that I’ve done through the years will only suit maybe 25 percent of the people who are watching or reading.
McWilliams thinks that’s unacceptable. His video, he says, will help just about everyone, and most importantly, the average golfer who has struggled with his or her swing for years.
McWilliams doesn’t necessarily indict teachers either. He says the problem with teaching is that too much is taught, making the analogy that you don’t have to know how electricity works to turn on a light switch. Why is it, he asks, do teachers try to piecemeal a myriad of positions and swing thoughts when the brain can only process one thought at a time? Could it be that if you get one crucial fundamental right that the other stuff will fall into place, much like turning on that light switch?
What McWilliams is teaching is something that most teachers don’t broach with their higher or even mid-handicap students, yet it’s a fundamental that all good players share. What were talking about here is the lag, the subsequent release and timing of that release. It’s a move that most youngsters learn naturally, perhaps because they lack the strength to attempt to square the club up any other way. Most teachers, McWilliams said, don’t believe they can focus on getting their students to emulate the professionals in that area, but McWilliams says he has been successful with every student. In fact, so far, McWilliams has guaranteed that anyone who purchases and watches the DVD will get it. If they don’t, he will give them a personal lesson. So far, through sales of 250 DVDs, no one has called for their free lesson, he said.
Of course, reaction from some area pros has been skeptical, at least at first, McWilliams said. One instructor told him it was impossible to help someone in a quarter of an hour. Then, after hearing him out, the instructor admitted McWilliams might be on to something.
McWilliams method doesn’t reveal anything really new about the golf swing; it just presents learning in a different way. He gives what’s important and nothing else. The first part of the video discusses the foundation of any good swing ball position, grip, stance, posture, balance and aiming the clubface but even that is presented in fairly simplistic, no-frills, easy to understand manner. Once you get past that, it’s on to the three drills. Along the way, he correctly explains that most people come out of their spine angles or lift their heads because they have to in order to avoid hitting the ball fat from their casting motions. Many come over the top for the very same reasons.
And don’t confuse this with any of the other new teaching methods that have come across the Golf Channel the last few years. This isn’t nearly as complicated and McWilliams wouldn’t be able to come up with something like those anyway. They’re far too complicated. 15 Minutes doesn’t require much thought. Do the drills and this stuff comes pretty quick. Even if you already have a swing that incorporates McWilliams fundamentals, his presentation of it tends to cut out the other clutter that often gets in the way.
Most everyone I’ve shown this to has gotten something out of it, McWilliams said.
McWilliams goal is to eventually reshoot the video, and perhaps, with the help of an investor or two, produce an infomercial, which seems to be the usual route to success in golf hawking. The odds are stacked against him that he could compete with the likes of Jim Hardy and the Perfect Club in that arena, but then again, who would have guessed that a guy who shoots in the 80s could get $250 for one lesson. McWilliams wouldn’t be the first or the last teacher who couldn’t break 80 regularly. Sometimes, those guys make the best teachers.
Mike Bailey is based in Houston and has covered the golf industry for several national golf publications over the past 12 years.
