It’s been almost thirty years since I played golf. I don’t have that kind of time or money.
So I got a little nervous last week when my friend Eric invited me to his country club in Los Angeles. I found myself looking for an out, even though there was every reason to say yes – he’s helping me network for business, he’s picking up the tab, and my parents live nearby so I can visit them on my way home.
But saying yes means I have to relearn the game. In two weeks.
Winston Churchill once said, “Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.” Bobby Jones added, “Golf is assuredly a mystifying game. It would seem that if a person has hit a golf ball correctly a thousand times, he should be able to duplicate the performance at will. But such is certainly not the case.”
You can’t learn golf by watching YouTube videos. So this is a perfect time to practice what I preach.
Open-Source Learning Step #1: Find an Expert Mentor
\Two weeks of practice is nothing for a sport as physically and psychologically tricky as golf. I needed expert guidance. Fortunately, I live in an area that is known as “the golf capital of the world.” A quick search led me to Bryan Lebedevitch, Director of Instruction at PGA West. Bryan was named one of America’s Top 100 Instructors by Golf Digest. I emailed Bryan with the subject header: “Can you teach an old dog new tricks?”
Bryan answered right away, but he was out of town, so he introduced me to PGA West instructor John Battaglia, a fellow pro instructor who has also been recognized as one of California’s best.
John scheduled a time for me and I drove out to meet him.



Open-Source Learning Step #2: Honest Self-Assessment
I told both Bryan and John the truth. It’s been a long time since I swung a golf club, and I wasn’t very good at it in the first place.
Open-Source Learning Step #3: Etch-A-Sketch Mind
Adults have different learning challenges than young people. Adults have more ego involved – we don’t like to look incompetent – and often we have to unlearn habits or forget inaccurate ideas that we picked up earlier in life. Unlearning is essential to retraining our minds and making room for better information. Just because we’ve been doing things a long time doesn’t mean we’ve been doing them right, or even that we know what we’ve been doing at all. I published this post, and you clicked around to find it, but I strongly suspect neither one of us knows exactly how the internet works.
The bottom line here is that the success of adult learning often depends on our ability to let go of preconceived notions. Relearning and mastering the basics is fundamental for even the most successful athletes. I once worked for Hall of Fame UCLA Men’s Basketball Coach John Wooden. Coach’s teams won 10 NCAA titles. TEN. The top high school players in the country came to play for him. And on the first day of practice, Coach taught them how to put on their shoes and socks. No one cares how good you are if you’re on the bench with a blister.
So I wasn’t entirely surprised that the first thing I did at my golf lesson needed correcting. John watched me pick up a club, frowned, and twisted my hands on the grip until they felt all wrong. I had to completely ignore the impulse to move my hands back to a comfortable place. Admittedly, the grip started feeling better when I hit a few balls where I wanted them to go.
Open-Source Learning Step #4: Focus
One of my favorite things about sports is the way they absorb you. If you stop paying attention while you’re skiing or boxing, you’re going to pay a price. I loved playing basketball at a competitive level because every moment required me to think, anticipate, react, and use everything I’d practiced.
Golf is a mental challenge for me because it’s so damn slow. My mind is a very busy place, and when I’m standing over a golf ball there is way too much time to think. The ball is still and my mind is a beehive of activity. I think about the time I’m wasting, the environmental impact of golf courses, all the other things I could/should be doing, whether Schopenhauer was right, how much I suck at this, how I still have love handles even though I’ve completed an Ironman Triathlon, the latest revisions of my book proposal, how so many people can support a racist rapist for president… I’d be better off if the ball caught fire.
At the same time, a ton of golf details also show up to compete for my attention: Where are my hands? Are my feet lined up? How far up/back is the ball? Is the club face aligned? Can I stop my back swing if I need to? Will my hips move on the follow-through? Am I going to keep snapping my wrists at the end of my swing even though I’m trying not to? What the hell did John just tell me and why can’t I remember? How about maybe hit the ball sometime today, sunshine?
Stop. Let all that go. Waggle the club. Breathe.
When I teach or coach, I often begin with a guided meditation. These processes are all about intentionally placing our attention. The more we’re able to do that, the better we’re able to do everything.
Open-Source Learning Step #5: Reflection
As William Shakespeare put it in Julius Caesar, “For the eye sees not itself, but by reflection, by some other things.” I haven’t yet met a skilled person who got where they are without a mentor. Every top athlete knows the benefit of having a coach at every stage of their career. Why? Because coaches observe our real-time performance and help fine-tune our technique by offering insight from a different perspective.
John had the perfect setup to help me see, understand, and apply what he saw. Next to where I was hitting golf balls John set up a tripod with a camera. A few feet away under a canopy, he had a laptop on a table where we could review the images together. He showed me my stance side by side with other students and pro players (all of whom have better posture than me). He analyzed video of my swing frame by frame and I could see the precise point where I went from “so far so good” to “oh boy that’s gonna suck.”

Open-Source Learning Step #6: Practice
Coach Wooden introduced me to a verse from Grantland Rice called “How to be a Champion”:
You wonder how they do it,
You look to see the knack.
You watch the foot in action,
Or the shoulder of the back.
But when you spot the answer,
Where the higher glamours lurk,
You’ll find in moving higher,
Up the laurel-covered spire,
That most of it is practice,
And the rest of it is work.
My lesson with John was a few days ago. This afternoon I ran a couple errands and stopped at a practice range on my way home. It’s August in the desert and the temperature was about 115 degrees in the shade. I took about 40 minutes to hit a bucket of 90 balls. I’m getting used to the uncomfortable grip. I’m more able to stop in the middle of my back swing. I only hit a few really bad balls, and I was nicer to myself when I did. My last shot was close to perfect, even though it sailed way farther than I expected, and I suddenly wondered how the hell I’m going to control for distance on the course next week.
I’m never going to be a golfer. I’m not even sure I like golf.
But I sure do love learning.
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If you have a good story about golf, or if you’d like to know more about how Open-Source Learning can help you or your organization, please Contact Me.