There are coaches you listen to. And then there are those we read. The difference is not anecdotal. To read a coach is to enter into his reasoning. It's about measuring his ability to articulate an idea, to defend it, to nuance it, to link it to something other than the latest hot tip. If I had to single out just one influence in my golfing career - over fifteen years of more or less assumed obsession - Adam Young would be right up there at the top. Not because he promises miracles. On the contrary: because he tackles the most frustrating, and hardest-to-admit, aspect of golf... the fact that you can work hard, sincerely, and still under-perform. Young is one of a generation of teachers who have shifted the focus of teaching: less “positions”, more “results”. Less dogma, more cause and effect. He has built his legitimacy by writing - on his website, in programs, and via a book that has become a reference for many golfers who want to progress without lying to themselves: The Practice Manual - The Ultimate Guide for Golfers.
 
The essential flip-flop: technique and skill are not the same thing
 
The classic trap of the serious golfer is to confuse two projects. On the one hand, the technique, In other words, the way of doing things (positions, mechanics, alignments, reference points). On the other, the’skill, In other words, the ability to produce a desired result under varying conditions. Young puts it in his own way: skill is the ability to “transform a desired action into a result”. And when you read him properly, you realize that his point is not to reject technique, but to put it in its place: a means, not a trophy.  
 
Sports psychologist Dan Abrahams comes to the same conclusion from another world: technique is a physical task; skill is execution in a game context, i.e. with uncertainty, decision and a form of pressure. And above all: “training in the same place with the same movement” produces a type of skill... more akin to a practice skill than a course skill. This distinction seems abstract. In reality, it explains years of misunderstandings. The “hard-working” amateur golfer often has impeccable discipline: he comes, he hits buckets, he “works on his swing”. And yet, he returns to the clubhouse with the same card, or worse: a deteriorating one. Young poses the vexing question: what if this overly technical approach is precisely what prevents skill from emerging?
 
The driving range is not the course, and this detail changes everything
 
On the course, each shot is a unique object: different lies, slopes, wind, intentions, risks, choice of target, consequences. On the practice range, we rehearse in a stable environment, often without any real stakes, and with a mental target that boils down to “hitting it right”. Abrahams proposes a simple example of a “test of skill”: set up a 20-metre-wide fairway, hit 10 balls, aim for 80% of success, then tighten the target or increase the requirement.
 
The principle is not merely statistical: it imposes a form of pressure, goal-oriented attention and adaptation. Young, for his part, pushes the same logic under the concept of training variability You don't progress so much by repeating “the perfect shot” as by learning to succeed despite imperfection - exactly what the course will ask you to do. This is where it becomes dangerous... for preconceived ideas. Because it removes a comfortable alibi for the golfer: the belief that progress is proportional to the volume of technical repetitions...

Excerpt from the first chapter of Penser avant de swinguer - Tome 1