As golfers, we all have one objective in mind: to get better! There are numerous ways to help accomplish this, but I think the biggest hoax today for golfers are the hundreds of so-called training aids that will promise you everything from getting more distance to making every 3-foot putt you’re faced with and everything in between.
The folks who make all these training devises are smart. They know that golfers in general are all looking for the “magic bullet,” and will go to extremes to try and find it, be it a new miracle driver, a new set of irons, that newly designed putter or yes, my fellow golfers, training aids. What’s interesting is that when a new company puts out a new training devise, they usually find some no-name teaching professional to give his or her testimonial and endorsement as to how this devise will help do this and that. As you climb up the marketing ladder of training aids, that’s where you find some of the well-known golf instructors selling and endorsing their own training aid creation….but for much more money. It’s funny how that works, isn’t it?
I know for a fact that millions of dollars are spent every year buying these various training aids, but for some reason I rarely see anyone at the practice range using any of them. Golfers somewhere have to be using this stuff, but where? It surely can’t be in the privacy of their own home or office, can it? These gizmos are designed to be taken outdoors, to the practice range or to the practice putting green to be used…to be shown off, to be flaunted.
As a golf broadcaster, I have been sent dozens and dozens of training devises over the years. I have actually found a small percentage of them useful. As for the others, I only hoped that people were smart enough not to throw their money away on these gadgets. There’s one good thing that comes out of this and that is that training aids that don’t do what they promise usually don’t stick around for very long. The company quietly goes out of business… never to be heard of again.
The one thing that drives me up the wall about these companies that make these training aids are the people they use in their commercial spots. These folks will say anything the company wants just so they could get their 20 seconds of fame coupled with the fact, that when shown, they have the most awful golf swing on the planet….showing why they can’t hit it out of their shadow or even break a 100. Come on…show me a real player, a true to life single-digit handicap player getting some REAL value out of this devise. Be honest!
I don’t care if you offer free shipping, I don’t care if you reduce the price by ordering now, I don’t care if you’ll throw in a free DVD worth $30 to explain how to use this thing because it doesn’t mean a damn thing if your devise can’t deliver on what it promises and can’t keep from breaking apart after trying it a few times. The bottom line is this: the average weekend duffer can use a different training aid everyday of his or her life and it won’t make a noticeable difference on how they play the game. Save your money to pay to a good teaching professional. Of course you can’t fold them up and put them in your golf bag.
Got to run. Someone sent me a devise that I strap on to my legs to help my balance, so off to hit some balls.
Dennis Silvers
