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VIEWPOINT tour tales & true

Grant Dodd
Nature or nurture?

G
olf loves a list. Even more so when it is a ranking list,
Mark Roe watches as Ross
numerically suggesting order to the unquantifiable. Fisher refines his sand play.
It started with golf courses (think Australian The coach/player dynamic
is often a two-way street.
Golf Digest’s Top 100 rankings), then evolved to
equipment in its myriad forms. Best driver, best putter, best
golf ball. Heck, why not throw in ‘Best Player of All Time’ for
good measure?
It is the largely subjective nature of such lists that ensures
their perpetuation. Debate and disagreement are the usual
bedfellows of subjectivity, and any editor or producer worth
their salt knows that a splash of controversy is a potential
boon for readership and ratings.
In America, golf publications regularly include coaches in
their ranking lists. Grading inanimate objects and events is
challenging, but it steps up a notch in difficulty when you
introduce the range of intangibles associated with personality,
knowledge and communication.
There is a troubling superficiality about the coaching lists,
namely that they follow a formula of rewarding whoever is
coaching the highest profile players at the time with the highest
rankings. The obvious corollary here is that you are only
worthy of mention if your name is aligned with elite players.
Are your bona fides as an instructor derived through what
and how you teach, or whom? Is the imparting of knowledge populist route, ignoring the significant claims to recognition
at the grassroots level significantly less important than of influential trailblazers like Ian Triggs and Gary Edwin.
involvement in the professional arena? Doubtless this is a (Editor’s note: Both Triggs and Edwin were shortlisted.)
question asked on occasion by PGA professionals the world Triggs and Edwin are as diametrically opposed in teaching
over when such lists are published. If recognition of excellence philosophy as could possible be. The tie that binds is that both
in golf instruction is a career goal, then it appears that this have chosen the road less travelled in their search for golf self
can only be achieved in the modern era through association knowledge. Their commitment to challenging golf’s status quo
with a player of note. and refusal to accept the ingrained instructional methodology
This inevitably leads to the age-old ‘nature or nurture’ of the past is one of the reasons why Australian coaching has
paradigm. Does the coach make the player, or innate talent? evolved down tangential, yet complimentary lines.
A prodigy landing on the doorstep has been the stepping- Triggs championed the power of the mind and visualisation.
stone to fame for a number of leading coaches over the past Edwin emphasised swing geometry and structure. Perhaps
century. The confluence of fate and opportunity in no way the greatest accolade that can be bestowed on both is that
diminishes the significance of their association, but it does in many instances, their respective methods enabled players
leave an unanswerable question hanging in the ether. cemented in a world of golf mediocrity to rewrite the
What level of influence did they ultimately have on the boundaries of their own potential. There is a theory that the
career outcomes of their charges? For instance, would Greg true measure of success is the differential between the starting
ANDREW REDINGTON/GETTY IMAGES

Norman have risen to the heights he did without the tutelage point and the finishing line. If this is held to be true, then
of Charlie Earp? Would Jack Nicklaus have won 18 majors both figures – and their nurturing roles – should be validated
without the guiding hand of Jack Grout in his formative years? substantially in any potential pecking order of the future.
Australian Golf Digest’s 40th anniversary edition
included a number of coaches in the list of the 40 most Grant Dodd played in the 1997 and 1998 British Opens and
influential figures in Australian golf over the past four is now a commentator for golf broadcasts on One and Ten.
decades. In doing so, the magazine chose to follow the To ask Grant a question, visit grantdodd.blogspot.com

48 Australian Golf Digest january 2011

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