Are you ‘winter ready’? One of the best teachers in the country showed me how

JACKSON TOWNSHIP, NJ — My dad always talked about winterizing.

Winterizing was especially important in Wisconsin, where we were from, and where the numbers on the thermometer looked a lot like a league table: minus-10, minus-20, and so on. See, in January at home the thermometer played during a Woods 2000 clip. Either way, you had to winterize certain things so they were ready when spring finally arrived. And that meant, for example, checking your tires and your car’s fluids. And sealing your windows. And on and on. We can end there. This is not a home improvement site. But it’s a game improvement that made me wonder:

Was there a golf equivalent to covering your outdoor AC? And if so, could I write about it?

Yes, actually. And yes, hopefully.

To help with the latter, I spoke with Kelan McDonagh. He is the director of instruction at Scenic Metedeconk National Golf Club and a GOLF teacher to watch. And I believe players will be ready on the tee on the first day of the golf season, wherever and whenever that may be when the snow has melted and the sun has shined longer.

In short, he is a winter maker that my father would be proud of. So I asked a few questions:

Who is winterizing good for? Beginners? Average players? Low handicappers?

All of them, McDonagh said.

Why the beginners?

“They should be able to do this when they see the ball on the screen and see it flying through the air or whatever, that’s a positive for them. That’s usually what they want to get out of it,” McDonagh said. “Building the basics of grip, positioning, understanding ball position and distance to the ball – it’s very easy to work on that indoors in a short time. It’s not something that needs to be done on the court for hours.”

Why the average players?

“Maybe they’re looking for a breakdown in their swing,” McDonagh said. “Maybe they’ve hit a bit of a plateau with the way they’re playing. They started at a certain index, stayed there for a few months or a few years and need another set of eyes on their swing to take it to the next level. It could be a big change, it could be a grip change, it could be an understanding of where the club should be in the backswing. It could be something that’s working against them there.”

“So for that golfer who is already playing and understands how to play and has had success but has regressed a little bit, maybe it’s time for the everyday golfer to really take a look at how they move, how they swing. And in that same breath, that could come down to how they just naturally move physically. Their body limitations may be the reason their golf game has stabilized. So mobility work, flexibility work, yoga, whatever it is, you train a little bit more, lose a few pounds, generate some speed that way.

Why the more advanced players?

“So your top amateurs, your pros, are at a level where their play is already good enough to compete,” McDonagh said. “So maybe they’re working on generating more speed and understanding different ways to use the ground.”

The most important thing when preparing for winter

At this point, as we talked, McDonagh offered what he called the most important thing in winterizing.

The coach.

“Go to someone your friends recommend or you’ve heard of, someone you can trust,” he said. “Take what they tell you and don’t change it, because every swing change we make, as [Top 100 Hall of Fame Teacher] Mike Adams always says: we only rent it. So when I come in, someone comes in here for an hour and I change grips, they rent that for that hour. It won’t feel great. They have to go out and put the work in until they own it.

“And the difference they will see in their golf game when they make the changes they needed to make will make the process of having more fun on the golf course that much easier.”

Were there some steps an average player could use to get winterized?

There were. McDonagh had three.

Step one? Develop a plan.

“I think the most important thing for anyone trying to get better is to understand how they move and how they are designed to swing a golf club,” McDonagh said. “As we know in today’s world, you go on Instagram for hours, you go on YouTube for hours, you can find golf tips from all over the world. They’re not necessarily going to benefit you – they might benefit me, they might not benefit you, and vice versa. So I think if someone is really serious about taking advantage of the off-season, the winter months, to get out of the woodwork in March and April, you need to put a plan in place, whether it’s a three-month plan, four-month plan, five-month plan. Find an instructor who you will work with regularly. Ask them for their honest opinion, what they see, where the leaks are. Whatever it could be, it could be a lot of different things.

Step two? Find a coach you can identify with.

“Someone you enjoy visiting, that you can understand and communicate with,” McDonagh said. “Because we’ve all been there. I’ve been taking lessons for years where I’ve been driving for hours, I’ve been in the room for an hour or two hours, and I’ve left, I’ve gotten back in the car, and I’m like, I didn’t understand anything, I didn’t understand anything. And that can happen. You can look around.”

“I mean, I don’t know how many golf coaches there are within 15 to 20 miles of anyone on earth. Online lessons work too. So during the offseason I continue SeparatedI’m going to teach online classes, where I can teach people remotely, anywhere, to New York or Arizona or Ireland or Australia or wherever they are. And that can work in two ways: they send videos, I send videos back, or you can do a live video stream, where you actually watch them in an indoor setting while you’re working on what you’re doing.

Step three? Spend the time.

“And spending the time,” McDonagh said, “is equivalent to writing down your goals, like what I’m actually trying to accomplish here. Do I want to get a little bit faster? Do I want to improve my ball striking? Do I need to compress my irons a little bit better? And if you just go to a respected golf coach, you can immediately see the reasons why your golf game is stalling.

“And of course we would all like that, when the doors open on the driving ranges in March and April, we would all like to step onto the first tee with a sense of clarity and confidence in the changes we’ve made. But it takes time. I mean, if you look on social media, the tour events that happen every week, we constantly see videos of the best players in the world making golf swings in very slow motion. For example, we can’t change our golf swing at full speed. At least I haven’t met anyone yet. I I don’t think I ever will. So I understand the complexity and the fragility of trying to make changes, but you have to work on it slowly and then build it up, build it up, set appropriate goals for the offseason or the next twelve months or whatever it may be, and just keep telling that to your coach and see where your game can go.

Editor’s note: Click for more information about golfing at Metedeonk National Golf Club here. And for more information on how you can donate money to help McDonagh’s father, who is battling cancer, click here.

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