Student Success Stories - Melanie

Melanie:
This story is about confidence. Melanie plays on the SMU golf team and was an extremely good junior golfer. She played golf for Baylor before coming to SMU. During her junior year, her play was not up to her standards, she was having trouble getting the ball off the tee and therefore trouble scoring well. When I first played with her she qualified her drives before ever hitting one by saying she has not had confidence in her driver for the past year, hitting drives that are either 180 yard slices or 50 yard smother duck hooks (literally). I didn't really believe her at first, and I laughed the comment off like it was a complete exaggeration. But it wasn't.

I met Melanie while she was working an internship for Century Golf. They manage our property, so she came to help out for a couple months. The first time I watched her swing I was amazed by how much power she created. She hits the ball farther then any woman I have worked with. But she had an obvious (to me) flaw in her swing. For a normal golfer the flaw she had would be manageable, but for a golfer with as much speed as Melanie has the flaw is compounded. For her junior year, her average score was somewhere in the mid-high 80's. She was down on her game and has basically written off her senior year of golf.

We had our first "official lesson" and she told me how many instructors she had gone to that couldn't help her, and most told her it was a mental issue. I didn't think that was true, because I could see the flaw that is causing the shots and knew that if she could fix it her driving would improve. Since her short game was already very good, fixing her driving would change her game completely.

After a few lessons, Melanie started to learn why the golf balls reacts the way it does off the club face, and she started to hit some amazing drives. She practiced very hard for about 6 weeks, working her way through the swing change. After a while, she started putting some great rounds together. Rounds that she said were more like what she used to do (what she expected to do). I could see her confidence rising with each drive that split the fairway.

About a month ago, Melanie qualified to travel for the SMU team. She played amazing golf for three rounds, shooting a combined total of 8-under par including a 65 (course record) in the second round! She won the tournament and beat the previous tournament low total score by 3 strokes. She's now basically guaranteed a travel spot for the rest of the year, and is excited to be competing and hopefully winning more in the rest of her senior year!

She is a prime example of committing to a change in her swing and that change bringing the confidence she needed to play golf like she knows she can. I teach each student the same way, analyzing their game/swing and making and adjustment the the most critical part of the swing that is causing poor performance. It was Melanie who took the change and made it her own. She now has a much better understanding of her golf swing and a lot more confidence when she steps to the tee!