In the winter of 2007, I had the good fortune to have been selected to teach golf in the Kingdom of Bhutan, deep in the Himalayan Mountains.  Largely because of travel weight restrictions, I had none of my training devices with me.  Add to that the language obstacles, and I really had to learn new ways to get my point across.  Even though everybody spoke English, there were many terms and intonations that were totally different. 
Even the simplest gesture like shaking ones head up and down was different. Here, yes was more of a side-to-side movement that reminded me of a Bollywood Indian dance.  Many times I took a yes to be a no, a pretty big mistake in communication!

To get my point across, I found myself using shadows on the ground a lot, in some ways better than a mirror because you don’t have to look up.  This was a trick I had learned from my mentor in Jacksonville, Norrie Wright years before, but I dropped it because of the inconsistency of sunshine in Nova Scotia.  I began to use this shadow tool for showing body motion, especially swaying of one end of the spine or the other.  Luckily it was sunny nearly every day I was here.

To fix problems with the golfer’s swing path, I used a large, dried out sod that happened to be lying on the range.  It was just the right size to show the same thing that the much more expensive `inside approach’ can do.  I can picture the ad on the Bhutanese Golf Channel: `for 3 payments of $19.95 (900 nultrim), we will send you the training sod, and act now to receive a free shadow’.

I also found myself drawing lines in the dirt to show target line, swing path, bottom of the arc, using golf tees to show a proper grip, and much more.

There is a game played in Bhutan, of throwing a large dart, very long distances, to a small target.  When I watched the men playing this game on a Sunday afternoon, what struck me was the similarity between their throwing motions, and the way the right arm (trail arm for lefties) works in a golf swing.  Even the grip was similar, held in the fingers with the index finger curled around like the trigger finger.

The only difference was of course the plane, rather than overhand, a golfer’s right arm works in a side-arm fashion.  So I purchased a dart (kuru in Dzongkha) in a corner store, set up a target on the ground where a golf ball would be at address, tilted at a slight angle, and had the juniors learn to hit bulls-eyes with that side arm throw.

This taught them how to load and release the right arm, to me a key element of good ball striking.  It showed as well that the instrument should be held softly, not strangled.  This is a drill I will definitely be bringing back to Canada. The sod, I will probably leave here for the next coach.

Ed Hanczaryk