Make Golf Easy with 4 ½ Position Golf Swing from EduKAYtion
Kay McMahon, one of America’s best golf instructors, is looking to take golf to the masses with a unique – and easily accessible – beginner’s lesson plan.
With all the amount of time and energy that’s spent on teaching the golf swing, it’s incomprehensible that someone figured out a way to teach a person of just about any age to play golf in 20 minutes, or thereabouts. What, impossible you say? Not so. It’s true and provable. Just ask Kay McMahon, teacher extraordinaire.
McMahon, who is in Golf Digest’s 50 Best Women Teachers in America and in the LPGA Teaching Hall of Fame, has taken her knowledge as a PGA Class A pro and an LPGA teaching professional and created a new system she calls Golf 8.5. Her new method came from the frustration of not being able to get some points across during a traditional teaching session, as she explained in a You Tube video. It was her ah-ha moment.
“I had to change, not them. I had to figure out some way that if everybody’s not getting it, what do I need to do to teach it differently,” she explained. “And so I had to really simplify it.”
Boy did she. Enter Golf 8.5. She whittled the golf swing down to a four-and-a-half step system plus four basics that everybody needs to know to learn to play golf. That adds up to Golf 8.5. It’s golf without all the mumbo jumbo. She just plain demystified it.
The four basics are the grip, clubhead position, alignment and posture. You don’t have to move to do those, and they are relatively easy to learn and remember. Then there’s the swing which she boiled down to just four-and-a-half positions. Bingo, you’re playing golf. Check out this video where five young girls demo the McMahon method counting all the way.
To break down the steps for you, step one, for the right-handed golfer, is what McMahon calls making a Y. That’s the first half of the takeaway, where you lift your hands and arms up to the side, waist high, keeping them extended in the shape of a Y, until they are parallel to the ground.
Step two is the L, where you bend your right elbow to get to the top of the backswing while keeping the left arm straight, or as straight as you can, depending on flexibility.
Step two-and-a-half is the Elevator where you transition down from the L position, and McMahon calls that a half instead of a full step. That’s the beginning of the downswing.
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The next step is getting to another Y which you make with your arms by moving through impact and extending the arms parallel to the ground, waist high, after hitting the ball.
Step four is the finish, which she calls “LL” because you bring your arms around your left shoulder, bend your elbows and make two L shapes. You’ll be facing the target.
The McMahon method is quick, it’s easy and she routinely helps people go from zero to golfer in 20 minutes. She has taught youngsters and oldsters alike with this method, and some of her students are now college players.
For me, when I tried Golf 8.5 at the International Network of Golf spring conference, I already knew the first four, so it was just the remaining four-and-a-half as a refresher. She made it simple and easy and gave lots of atta girl and atta boy comments to everyone trying her system. She had instant feedback with her iPad, too, and emailed us golf swings after the one-on-one mini-clinics.
McMahon is making golf less intimidating for rank beginners
In addition to having the four-and-a-half step swing, McMahon developed some clever rules of the road for beginners.
They include:
Start each hole no farther away from the pin than the 150-yard markers.
Tee up every shot or use preferred lies.
Start with 9 holes and play just every other hole. Walk the first hole, and play on the second hole, and so forth.
If you are in a greenside bunker and can’t get out after one swing, then toss the ball onto the green and go from there.
So, instead of messing up your head with all manner of techniques and getting frustrated, you can now reduce that to the four things you’re going to do before the swing and four-and-a-half things you’re going to do in the swing. It takes the pressure away by removing all the complicated stuff. If her young students are any guide, it sure makes golf fun, too.
McMahon is currently Director of Instruction at the Cranwell Resort and Golf Club in Lenox, Mass. You can check out some of her videos YouTube and find out more about Golf 8.5 by visiting her official website.