During a pitching session with Neo, a ten-year-old golfer with a handicap of 54, I noticed a movement that I had never taught him.
Neo was learning to deliver the club to the ball with a steeper angle of attack. As we worked on this, he developed an additional movement: his head began moving upwards around impact.
I had never explicitly demonstrated or explained this movement to him.
That was precisely what made his response so interesting. Through my own technical education, I was familiar with advanced pitching techniques in which golfers use the coordination of different body movements to influence their angle of attack and control how deeply the club travels into the ground. Similar movement characteristics can also be observed among tour professionals.
Neo had independently developed a movement in which I recognised a similar coordination principle. To me, this was not an obvious technical fault but a potentially functional solution to the task of delivering the club more steeply while maintaining control of ground contact.
In that moment, my own technical education did not help me make another correction. It helped me recognise why I could allow this movement to remain.
A technical task, but not a complete movement prescription
In our golf lessons, we frequently work with golfers who deliver the club too shallowly for certain shots. This does not mean that a shallow angle of attack is necessarily a bad thing. Quite the opposite: depending on the playing situation, it may be exactly what is required. However, many amateur golfers struggle to deliberately change their angle of attack when necessary. Developing the ability to produce a steeper angle of attack is therefore a regular part of our coaching.
During our pitching session, we had a specific technical objective: Neo needed to learn how to deliver the club to the ball with a steeper angle of attack.
When we develop a new skill in training, the changes often extend beyond the technical parameter we are working on. One adjustment can influence other parts of the movement, creating a kind of knock-on effect.
A steeper angle of attack also affects where the ball contacts the clubface and how the club interacts with the ground. The club needs to make effective contact with the ball without subsequently travelling uncontrollably deep into the turf.
Simply changing one technical parameter is therefore not enough. The different movement elements need to work together to produce the desired contact.
To approach this task and make it easier for Neo to understand and experience, we used a sloping lie, among other exercises. Changing the lie can help a golfer explore different ways of delivering the club and controlling the area in which contact occurs.
The technical information came from me. However, the way Neo organised his body to solve the task developed through his own attempts.
Neo develops his own movement concept
Things became particularly interesting when Neo described his movement in his own words:
“To the left, from above, up through the ball.”
His description revealed how he understood the task.
He had not simply copied a complete movement pattern that I had prescribed. Instead, he combined individual pieces of technical information with his own idea of how the shot might work. And in doing so, he had captured the essential idea remarkably well.
In the video, you can observe his head beginning to move upwards as his hands pass his right thigh.
Why my own technical education made the difference
What I found most interesting about Neo’s movement was not simply that he had developed it independently.
What mattered was that I recognised a movement principle I had studied during my own technical education.
In advanced pitching techniques, golfers can influence and, when necessary, shallow their angle of attack through the timing and coordination of different body movements. This can allow a golfer to combine a generally steeper club delivery with controlled club depth through impact.
A coordinated upward movement involving, among other things, the lead leg and upper body can play a role in this process. However, the important factor is not the isolated movement of the head, but how it works together with the other body segments and the movement of the club.
When Neo independently developed a comparable movement, I therefore did not automatically interpret it as a technical fault. I saw a potentially functional solution to the task we had been working on together.
For that reason, I saw no need to make further changes to his pitching movement.
Instead, we focused our subsequent work on another area that still needed improvement: his directional control. We incorporated this into our training during the rest of the week.
The following video shows an example from professional tour golf. Pay particular attention to the timing and coordination of body movement and club delivery around impact. The purpose is not to suggest that Neo’s movement is equivalent to that of a tour professional, but to recognise comparable movement characteristics.
Finding a movement is not the same as stabilising it
During the training session, we recorded a total of 23 pitch shots using our FlightScope Mevo+ launch monitor.
The measurements from 14 October 2026 showed an average angle of attack of -5.2 degrees and an average carry distance of 33.7 yards.
These measurements help us better understand the shots Neo actually produced. However, they do not yet tell us whether he has developed a stable movement.
That is why we distinguish between three stages of development: receiving technical information, discovering an individual movement solution, and then developing the ability to coordinate that solution with increasing reliability.
A movement may already work in individual attempts without being reliably available under different conditions.
Another example from our coaching shows how a technical adjustment can gradually develop into an adaptable skill through carefully designed learning tasks and practice.
Neo’s video also shows the difference between discovering a movement solution and learning to coordinate it reliably.
The image of a tour professional provides a visual reference for the relationship between body movement and club delivery during the downswing. A single frame cannot reveal the full timing and coordination of a movement. Neo’s movement is naturally not yet comparable to that of a tour professional, nor does it need to be.
Of course, his movement is not yet comparable to that of a tour professional. Nor does it need to be.
Neo still found it difficult to coordinate the timing of the different movement elements. The downward movement during the downswing and the subsequent upward movement needed to work together so that the club contacted the ball at the right moment and at the intended height.
He did not manage this on every attempt. Occasionally, he still struck the ball too low on the clubface or topped it.
This reveals another important lesson from this coaching example: a functional movement solution may already exist while the ability to coordinate it reliably is still developing.
The coordination demands of a golf swing are considerable. Even small differences in timing or movement can change the quality of contact. Such variations are part of the learning process and do not automatically justify rebuilding the entire movement.
Our objective was therefore not to make Neo produce perfect pitch shots immediately. We wanted to develop an emerging functional movement pattern and help him coordinate its different elements with increasing reliability.
In our Practice Lab, we therefore focus not only on creating technical changes. We also observe and assess how reliably an emerging skill develops over time.
What this example reveals about effective golf coaching
Neo’s experience illustrates an important part of our coaching philosophy.
A golf coach does not need to prescribe every individual movement for a useful solution to emerge.
However, the coach must design meaningful tasks, observe the movements that emerge, interpret the feedback and decide what kind of support is needed next.
Sometimes this means providing technical information. Sometimes we need to simplify a task or deliberately correct a movement.
And sometimes the right decision is to allow an emerging movement to continue and observe how it develops.
This combination of technical expertise, careful observation, individual learning tasks and adaptable coaching is an essential part of our Golf Learning System.
Our goal is not for every golfer to demonstrate the same movement. We want to help each golfer develop functional skills, coordinate them with increasing reliability and eventually apply them under different conditions on the golf course.
Monnard Widmer Coaching Insight
Technical expertise is not only the foundation for correcting movements. It also enables an experienced golf coach to recognise functional movement solutions that a golfer has discovered independently.
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