Pro tips: Joe Thiel

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Profile: Joe Thiel is one of about 200 golf pros in the United States who have earned the prestigious PGA Master Professional designation. He has been selected as one of the nation's top 100 instructors by Golf Magazine for many years and also has been recognized as one of the top 50 instructors in the nation by Golf Range magazine. He operates the Joe Thiel World Wide Golf Schools in Olympia and Palm Desert, Calif., and frequently teaches in Asia. Some of his students have included Se Ri Pak and Hee Won Han on the LPGA Tour and University of Washington stars Brock and Paige MacKenzie.

Q: What does it take to improve?

A: The most important thing is motivation. You need motivation, time and a good set of reachable goals. If you are shooting about 100 now, and your goal is to drop into the mid-80s, you need a good teacher who can help you and also design a legitimate game-acceleration program for you. It's important that the teacher be motivated about the golfer's improvement.

Q: You maintain that a lot of golf learning and practice is "backward" from the way you think it should be learned. Please explain.

A: I believe that the short game is the precursor to the long game. If you want to improve your scoring and swing technique, I maintain you should learn the game from the short game first — then to the long game, not vice-versa. When I teach golfers who have a handicap index of 8 or above, we'll have two to three short-game sessions before we go onto the long game. Immediately, their long game is positively affected and learning becomes easier for them.

Q: You emphasize being able to "master your emotions" as a key to lower scores. Explain.

A: Just being a human being is stressful in this life. We need to train our bodies how to relax and go to neutral, and we can use this on the golf course as well as in life. One thing I suggest to help people get control is to focus on their heart instead of their brain, first with a little breathing exercise (in through the nose, out through the mouth) and then a refocusing thought (a pleasant thought and accompanying feeling of that thought) that emits a coherent heart-rate message to the brain. If coherent, we will produce emotions and hormones that will assist us rather then put us in a panic state. Years of research have proven that anyone can learn these simple mental techniques and make golf and life that much more fun and less stressful.

Q: What is the most common roadblock that keeps golfers from improving?

A: They don't practice intelligently and they don't have a game plan for their practice. I describe what I want as real-time practice, which means practice that counts. On a golf course, you don't have a bucket of balls. You have one ball and it has to count. When people practice, they have many balls and hit many shots but never take the time to practice the way the game is played. We should be practicing to play. What happens in real-time practice is that your brain recognizes you are a real-time player.

Q: You work with Tour golfers and rising young players who attend your golf schools in Olympia. But what about the average person who has a job and family and still wants to be a better golfer?

A: Never forget that the reason we all play the game is because it is fun. After all, it's a hobby for many people and they have to balance responsibilities and assign intelligent priorities to life. However, they need to remember that they can be once-a-week practicers and still make great progress if an intelligent plan is put together.