Sue Shapcott
Jonny:
You are our very first guest and I cannot be more honored that we get this time to chat with you. Thank you.
Sue:
You are too nice, Jonny.
Jonny:
We are both in Madison and we're part of a a small but great golf community here. I'd like to hear about your business, Change Golf Instruction and how you got involved in it.
Sue:
Madison is a very keen golf town. Despite the fact that we're a small town of 250,000 people, the golf community is really rigorous. When I got to Madison about 10 years ago, I was able to get a contract and provide golf instruction across the city of Madison courses. I wanted the name (Change Golf Instruction) to reflect how I wanted to go about golf instruction.
I wanted to kind of shake it up a little bit. I didn't want it to just be the same old golf instruction that is a little bit stale.
We've had Change Golf Instruction for about eight years. I hope it represents a place where everyone is welcome. Where everyone can come and learn. Golf instruction is about the golfer, not about us the instructors. My credentials as a player are not relevant to who I’m teaching. Who I’m teaching is what matters. The golfer is at the center of the teaching experience.
Jonny:
I spent some time looking at the Change Golf Instruction literature on your site and I noticed that there is a great amount of focus on the student; that there is a tone of empathy and compassion; you’re not teaching to an exact model.
You have a degree in educational psychology and a PHD with a focus on the role coaches play in motivating recreational golfers. Is that correct?
Sue:
That's correct. So my education wasn't particularly traditional. Like many professional golfers from UK and Europe, we don't have the college programs that you have in the states.
I played professional golf and then came to the states to teach for Hank Haney, who was a big influence on my philosophy and methods of teaching. American golfers are generally well educated, so people would ask me a lot: Where did you go to school? and I got really tired of saying I didn’t go to school.
So in my 30’s I went back and did an undergraduate degree and just loved it, and then did my masters degree in educational psychology. And then my PHD, too.
My dissertation was on the biases that golf instructors have in terms of who they're teaching and whether they think they're able to improve or not, which might be biased by the golfers’ age or gender. It gave me a good basis to build my business on and to learn from that research.
“I don’t care what your swing looks like.
I care what the ball does.”
Jonny:
How did you conduct some of that research? Through real time coaching and your own experiences?
Sue:
It was quantitative. I took study designs from Mathematics, and other areas where there's a lot of gender bias and just adapted them for golf. It was a survey that golf instructors completed and they would report their beliefs about people that they teach and how they would instruct.
Jonny:
You mentioned coaching with Hank Haney who is well known for coaching Tiger. I read a piece where you mentioned that coaching a lesson in front of him was as nerve wracking as playing in some of your more prestigious tournaments.
What are some of the philosophies or approaches that you still carry from your time with Hank?
Sue:
His approach is: I don't care what your swing looks like. I care what the ball does.
So I'm not going to get distracted by things that I don't like.
I might not like your grip, but if it's not affecting what the ball is doing, I'm going to leave it alone and I'm going to work on something that does affect what the ball is doing.
That’s still my approach.
Jonny:
Golf is an endlessly frustrating game. Most golfers get very discouraged very easily, even if they don't play terribly often.
How do you find it to be most effective to encourage and/or motivate the recreational golfer?
Sue:
I keep going back to a researcher Carol Dweck, who is a social scientist at Stanford and her research is in mathematics. She looked at how some kids would persist even when they had hard mathematics problems, and others would quit. She was trying to figure out why some kids stay motivated and others don’t.
Her research really focuses on how we perceive ability or intelligence.
Is it this innate thing or is it something that we learn?
It was really her work that I repurposed for golf.
I think golf ability is something that you can learn, so that's going to change how I teach you as opposed to a golf instructor who believes that golf ability is innate.
As golf instructors we want to have a belief that golf ability can be learned.
In the same way, to motivate students, you need to instill a growth mindset in people that we’re teaching.
So it's like:
I know you can’t do this yet, Jonny, but we're going to keep practicing it.
The emphasis is on the “yet”.
Of course you can't do it yet.
You’re only just starting to learn.
That doesn’t mean that you're not going to be able to do it next week or a month from now or three months from now.
Golf ability is a skill like any other that takes time to learn.
Try not to be so reactive to the ups and downs.
Jonny:
I have a six year old and a nine year old, both of whom love sports.
I read one time that rather than saying something's a good shot or a bad shot, mentally if not audibly, say, “Well, that was unexpected.” rather than saying that was a bad shot and so on.
Because you can start speaking these negative, declarative things over yourself rather than having a growth mindset. Having a short term memory with some of those unexpected moments is important not just in golf, but likely translates to many other areas of life as well.
Sue:
One bad day doesn't mean you are destined to a bad life.
One bad round doesn’t mean you’re a terrible golfer.
“With my head on now, I would be leading the charge saying I’m not playing on this golf course. But I was 18. I was naive. ”
Jonny:
So you first came upon golf walking to school with your sister.
Sue:
Yes my sister and I would walk across the golf course to get to school in Bristol, England.
Kids would always be going onto the golf course and running off with golf balls.
Kids were a nuisance, including us.
One of the pros said to us, instead of being a nuisance, why you don’t you be useful and earn some money being a caddy.
The pro happened to be a really good golf coach as well, and we would caddy for him and he would give us a few tips. We learned not just techniques, but the art of playing and watching how good players could navigate the course.
Golf in the the UK is very different than it is here, in as much as it’s an everyman’s game. My parents paid £18 a year for us to have unlimited access to the golf course as junior members.
If you showed potential, there was a pathway that was funded for you to play regional tournaments and national tournaments. We were lucky we lived where we did and that there were systems which allowed us to play golf and develop our talents.
Jonny:
I know you've been asked about this countless times and perhaps it’s a very annoying question to answer, but in one of the tournaments you played in, there was a pretty despicable sign in the parking lot. Can you walk us through what the sign said, where it was and where that course currently sits?
Sue:
There is a tournament called the Curtis Cup which is Great Britain and Ireland amateur women against the United States. It's an event that happens every two years. The year that I played was in 1988 at Royal St. George’s in Kent.
It is an old links course, where at the time, only men could be members.
If you were the wife, you were granted occasional times to play.
The course had no women’s changing rooms.
No women’s tees.
And it had a sign when you drove into the parking lot that said, “No dogs or women”.
As a woman, you literally weren't even allowed into the parking lot.
In hindsight you think: why would they have this tournament at this club?
I was 18 at the time and our team would get letters from women in the area saying, why are you playing there, you should be protesting.
With my head on now, I would be leading the charge saying I’m not playing on this golf course.
But I was 18.
I was naive.
Subsequently, the governing body for these major tournaments in the UK, has said to clubs wanting to be on the Open roster, that they need to meet equality requirements.
One requirement is equal membership for men and women.
So that sparked change amongst those clubs.
They could stay as they were if they wanted to.
But if they wanted to host an Open Championship, then they had to change policies.
Jonny:
On that note, because you have had extensive experience and exposure to golf in the UK and stateside, in what ways are they similar or dissimilar culturally?
Sue:
I love public golf in the states. It's the closest thing that I see to golf in the UK.
Even clubs in the UK are not like country clubs here.
The cost of entry is very low, so you don't have those bars.
Demographics at a public course are more what I’m used to in the UK; I’m very comfortable there.
It's interesting in the UK though, because golf does have this club structure to it, that is quite exclusionary.
The cost of entry is low but there are still barriers because it’s this club structure.
For women it’s not that great.
If you’re a person of color, it’s not that great.
The US is a little better at opening up to everyone at public courses but they are an interesting contrast culturally
Jonny:
We’re nearing the end! You’re a champ.
Before our speed round, what keeps you coming back to golf? What’s the siren call of golf for Sue?
Sue:
I ask myself the same question.
There have been many times when I’ve wanted to move on to the next chapter.
It’s in my blood in the sense that golf has been very good to me and my family. So I feel that connection with it.
There's also a pragmatic element to it in that, I know the industry.
I know how it works.
It's a comfortable space for me.
My passion for playing has moved over to coaching.
I get a lot of pleasure out of the interactions that I have with people that I teach and watching them develop.
It still gives me a lot.
“They want the safe.
I want the good.”
Jonny:
I love that.
To wrap, we have some lightning round questions.
Who is your dream foursome?
Sue:
Barack Obama.
Tiger Woods.
Kristen Stewart.
Jonny:
Favorite golf destination?
Sue:
Scotland. Beautiful golf courses.
The ground. The turf is different there.
The courses are just woven into the towns.
Jonny:
A club that nobody should have in their bag?
Sue:
3-Wood.
It’s too difficult.
Not enough reward for the risk.
Jonny:
The Good Lion mantra is: GOOD > SAFE which can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
What first comes to mind when you think of good is greater than safe?
Sue:
I try to be very low risk so I need your mantra.
I need to think about it every day and try to be more good rather than safe.
When someone comes into a golf lesson, it would suggest they want to improve something.
It's really interesting how often people, when you do start changing something, are very resistant.
They want the safe.
I want the good.
What you're doing here, which is safe, isn’t helping you.
We need to let go of the safe and change it and make it good.
Jonny:
You need to have a guiding light that you’re moving toward, that’s anchoring all of it.
Well if the Obama, Tiger, Kristen Stewart, Sue foursome every happens, I may sneak out as a fifth on the second hole.
I would caddy for you anytime Sue.