Christopher Smith

⛳️ Excited to have written an article with GOLF.com on 3 Keys for Better Practice. Here’s a summary of what I shared: 1. The principle of context specificity (practice more like you play): If your practice doesn’t resemble what happens on the golf course, it largely won’t transfer. Simulate real holes on the range, pick targets, and only hit one shot per scenario while going through your full routine. 2. Feedback: Improvement requires consistent, competent & relevant feedback. Use tools like 2D video and/or work with an experienced teacher to understand the cause and effect behind your ball flight & know why you golf ball may ‘mis-behave,’ and precisely what to adjust. 3. Add consequences: Playing golf has big-time consequences, but most practice does not. What gives..?? Create some stress, anxiety & pressure by gamifying your training, competing with a friend, or playing with just one ball (you lose it, you walk in). Legit practice must be geared towards the skills LASTING & TRANSFERRING - otherwise - why practice at all? Your time, effort & energy are incredibly precious commodities; please do make them count! #golf #golfmagazine #golfpractice

⛳️ I’m finally getting a chance to settle after a great week in Florida! I was honored to be a speaker at the @golf_com Top 100 Teachers Summit, hosted at @cabotcitrusfarms For those of you that missed it, here’s a bit of a recap on the lesson I taught during my time as a speaker for this event. The feedback was incredible, so I hope this adds some insight to your approach towards improvement as a golfer. 🎤 If you would like me to come speak at your event, shoot me an email at [email protected] #golf #top100teachers #golfsummit #golfinstruction #golfcoach

⛳️ @golf_com Top 100 Teachers in America for 2026–2027. It’s a true honor to be part of this incredible group. Many of these teachers have been cronies, colleagues & helpful partners in legit golf instruction ‘crime’ for eons; elated to be included alongside them. Unlike other publications/applications out there, this one wasn’t primarily about “likes, clicks, or followers” - you know - the ‘look good, sound smart’ crowd… @golf_com asked about the overall body of work, a catharsis of sorts, the lifetime of dedication to teaching, learning, and improving the game. For me, that’s more than 35 years as a full-time teacher and coach, and over 50 years as a player and student of this great game. The LEARNING never ceases. For those fabulous instructors who haven’t yet been selected, here’s my advice: Rock on 🦾 - keep doing the ‘right thing’ - guiding your students to better golf in lieu of stroking your egos & fattening your wallets… Stay curious. Be skeptical. Question everything & anything, ESPECIALLY people’s claims. Do your homework. Read the studies & research. Disagree without being disagreeable @jerrymowlds Remember: adamantly insisting YOU are “right” won’t lead to contentement - only resentment & confrontation. How does THAT benefit the masses?? AND always always always: keep your Baloney Detection Kit (à la Carl Sagan) in your back pocket. A heartfelt thank you to the @golf_com team & selection committee. Honored, humbled, and grateful. #golf #top100teacher #golfmagazine #gratitude #coaching #golfinstruction

Slow motion swings. Yes or no? Useful tool — or wasted reps? Are you YES or NO? Let me know below 👇 #GolfCoaching #GolfTips #GolfSwing #CoachDevelopment #BecomeTheExpert​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Mother’s Day reality check courtesy of @thegolflibrarian & “El Maestro” himself, Severiano Ballesteros, aka Seve (true legends go by one name only, FYI 😎). ⛳️ Lemme guess: you practice a lot but don’t see the fruits 🍋🫐🍑 of your labor on the playing field? ⛳️ I understand. Do you wonder WHY you can ‘do it’ on the range and not on the golf course? I, do not. ⛳️ Sorry - my take isn’t conjecture, fiction or the loudest (and angriest?) voice in the room - it’s based in learning science, evidence & personal experience. That’s a powerful cocktail, BTW 🍸🍸 ⛳️ Much of what I have to offer can be found at the Train2Trust link in my bio, so teachers & coaches - please do peruse for yourselves & your students. Then DM here if you have questions. Oh 💩 - I’m supposed to be selling, marketing & promoting this material (‘tis the ego & greed-based way of the 🌏, is it not??) - not GIVING it away. Oh well, the info, concepts & insight are vital to performance, and generosity never harmed anyone @markguadagnoli ⛳️ Seve image-specific takeaways: * Sand in lieu of artificial turf. What a concept the boy from Santander learned. Little to no forgiveness from a low-point in the swing standpoint - but most of us want to ‘feel good’ during & after a practice session @dr.luke.benoit.golf . Oops… read/learn up on the “Challenge Point” theory @markguadagnoli , Dr. Robert Bjork’s work on “desired difficulties,” then consider how UNforgiving the game we actually play IS. ⛳️ * How about training in a wondrous, climate controlled, uber comfortable simulated environment - when a round of golf is in fact a Disneylandesque adventure - an emotional rollercoaster. So keep up the bulk/block practice (“that’s what all the Tour players do” 🤡) peeps! Ask yourself: how’s that working for you? ⛳️ * Take note of the flippy/wristy early follow thru Seve is demonstrating. Showing what he doesn’t want to do & feel?? Perhaps.. No sé. BOTTOM LINE: do YOU know what you are doing in your swing, and why? Then, what is the specific to you (not the masses on Social) feel-based remedy you must incorporate to hit better? Mandatory for progress.

Some thoughts for your golf on a May Monday - ‘cause the LOUDEST voices in the room & on Social will someday (quite soon, in the grand scheme) be small, and silent… @the.marginalian for the assist & inspiration. “Counterfactuals — explanations about what could or could not be caused to happen in the physical universe, as distinct from the standard scientific theories about what is bound to happen based on what has happened in the past — are one such thrilling mode of rotating in the palm of the mind the unsolved mysteries of nature in order to examine them from revelatory new perspectives, perspectives blind-spotted by our present assumptions. Counterfactuals are the science of otherwise…” ⛳️ What supposed ‘facts’ about technique or strategy are you currently buying into? And: how’s that working for you?? ⛳️ David Deutsch: “There has never been a time when there have been more blatant contradictions, gaps, and unresolved vagueness in our deepest understanding of nature, or more exciting prospects to explore them. Sometimes this will require us to adopt radically different modes of explanation.” ⛳️ Sound familiar? Like how you MUST hit a partial shot, or manage a golf course? Because someone must be ‘right,’ barking & intimidating while spinning the data to their model. ⛳️ Physicist Chiara Marletto reminds us: “There are no absolute sources of certain truth: any good solution to a problem may also contain some errors. This principle is based on fallibilism, a pillar of Karl Popper’s explanation of rational thinking. Fallibilism makes progress feasible because it allows for further criticism to occur in the future, even when at present we seem to be content with whatever solution we have found. It leaves space for creating ever-improving theories, stories, works of art, and music; it also tells us that errors are extremely interesting things to look for. Whenever we try to make progress, we should hope to find more of them, as fast as possible.” ⛳️ Yet in the despicable golf realm, any challenge is immediately poo-pooed, Blocked. Banned. Ridiculed. ⛳️ Shameful behavior. Instead, let us EMBRACE fallibilism & betterment.

“Not possible..” Yet it happened - sub 2 hours in a 26.2 mile jaunt 🏃🏿🏃🏿🏃🏿 ⛳️ Sound a bit like the oft-self-anointed ‘experts’ (isn’t EVERYONE, today?? 🤯) re golf swing. P1 - P1000 positions: “Can’t do that!” “That will never work!” “NO ONE does that!” @mcleangolf @jonathandbuchanan @craig_ronne ⛳️ Then IT happens, unorthodoxy at its finest and most effective & efficient. ⛳️ In every realm, every day. ⛳️ So, where does that leave our method/model pundits? Telling & showing (from their preferred camera angles, but of course) that these “swing Frankensteins” ARE following ‘the’ ways. The musts. The “have to’s” - even when they obviously are not… ⛳️ Ah, the wondrous bi-ped known as the human being: * Always a case study of one @bull3dacademy * Master of compensation (the word gets such a bad rap - why can it not be an elixir? ⚡️@hughmarrcoaching * Able to leap tall buildings and solve problems like no other - in his/her ideal fashion. * Designed and hard-wired to solve problems & improvise, as opposed abiding by frequently misguided & misinterpreted rules, guidelines models. ⛳️ Consistency? Cockamamie - only for the machines. One size, shape & manner fits ALL? Not on this 🌎. Primarily block/bulk practices regimes - even though we play the most, random, chaotic & varied sport known to the universe?? Really…😳🤓🧐 ⛳️ Curious, critical thinkers - come to the rescue please! * Minds open to the possible. * Minds open to “how does that actually WORK for him/her? * Minds open to finding the best way for each individual to swing the crooked stick, and play the Disneylandesque game. ⛳️🏃🏿 Rock on Sawe & his Sub 2 - and others who dare challenge the limits 🦾🙏🏼

Build the perfect pre-shot routine with GOLF Top 100 Teacher @christophersmithgolf .

Think less. Play better. GOLF Top 100 Teacher Christopher Smith (and speed golf world-record holder) breaks down how his rapid-fire pre-shot routine translates to the golf course.

YOUR concepts (or your teacher’s?) for golf & golf swing: black & white + bias towards someone else’s preferences? Or… Consider…. “In the early 1980s, the Australian philosopher Frank Jackson (b. August 31, 1943) set out to explore how knowable that mystery is with his knowledge argument — a thought experiment, also known as Mary’s Room or Mary the Super-scientist, probing the unfathomed regions of consciousness and the limits of what is knowable with the proboscis of our rational inquiry. Living in a black-and-white room, reading black-and-white books, and watching black-and-white screens, Jackson’s conceptual Mary studies what the world is and how it works — its physical structures, processes, and causal relationships. But then she leaves her monochrome confines and encounters color — itself the product of physical processes and phenomena, yet producing in Mary a perceptual-psychological experience beyond the knowledge of those processes and phenomena, beyond everything she had understood about color through the knowledge-acquisition paradigm of learning.” Thx to @the.marginalian for this & Patrick Syme for the color chart up top. Sunday ponderings 🧠🤯🙏🏼

⛳️ Whats your club face doing? I ask a lot of people—I show up and say hey, have you ever paid attention to or felt what the golf club is doing? And specifically the part of the club that hits the ball—the head and the face. They look at me like I’m from Mars. Oh no. But they can tell you all about pressure shift, and rotational pieces, and vectors, and this and that—what their body’s doing. I say, that’s cool, it’s important. But by the way, this thing right here—this tool, this head—this is what hits the ball. Have you ever paid attention to what it’s doing in space? You are swinging it. Whether that’s a putter or a full swing. So that’s my responsibility. Our responsibility. Let’s just make a few swings here. Let’s make a few putting strokes here. Just pay attention to what that thing is doing on the end of that stick. That’s actually gonna hit the ball. Face awareness. Clubhead awareness. It’s not trendy and it’s not cool anymore. We gotta do these cool things. I can tell you how much vertical force you’re putting in and out of the ground—never mind the club. All this speed training we’ve done over the last few years—everybody wants to hit it farther. I do too. At what price? You hit it farther and more crooked. That’s great. How’s that work for you? I always ask people: how’s that work for you? You’re doing this and that—great. How’s that working for you? Well… not very well. Well, you better do something different. #golf #golftips #golfclubs

⛳️ Can we get serious, and can we get serious now? Fellow teachers and coaches—about how to help people legitimately get better. Instead of just simply trying to entertain them. Help them in the process of improvement. Assist them. Instead of trying to impress them with some kind of fancy, smooth, tech talk. And think critically about the plethora of different ways to hit shots, swing a golf club, and play the game. Instead of spinning metrics and data and numbers into some ridiculous bias or preference that we think is right. So let’s get serious now. The proof’s in the pudding. The best in the world just showed us all this last week at Augusta. It’s our job to help our players perform the best they can. However they can. #golf #golfinstruction #golfcoach