YouTube teaching guru visits Australia

World-renowned golf instructor Shawn Clement recently visited Australia for the first time and presented his unique perspective on the golf swing to keen golfers at Bonnie Doon Golf Club.

Clement is no ordinary golf instructor. The 46-year-old Canadian has been involved with golf for over 36 years; 26 of those have been instructing golfers on the golf swing and he has most recently been reaching out to golfers across the world online with a more natural approach to teaching the golf swing.

Rather than pinpoint positions where the hands and arms should be relative to the body, Clement’s anatomy background allow him to describe and instruct with a focus on the target in much the same way you would if you were throwing a ball.

“These [hands] interchange with hammers, axes, grass whips, golf clubs, cricket bats, etc. So understanding how the tool works and then understanding how your body is designed in relation to what you want to do,” Clement told Inside Golf.

The success of his golf instruction style is evident in the popularity of his website and YouTube videos, which currently have over 38,000 subscribers across the world.

“Instead of giving my students a take-home page, I’d put a video together and say ‘when you go home and you want to remember what the lesson was, go to these video titles and this will help you out,” Clement said.

“And then I get some feedback from Australia, New Zealand, UK, and the United States and I think whoa, this is a game changer!”

Clement is equally adept at golf as both a right and left-handed golfer, playing off scratch and shooting scores in the 60’s off both sides of his body, but his golf instruction videos aren’t specific to any level of golfer and apply across the full range of skill levels.

“Whether you’re nine years old, or you’re ninety-nine years old, because we understand anatomy we would never teach anything that went against how your human body works.” Clement said.

The combination of experience and online interaction gives Clement an interesting position to comment on the progression of the golf swing with respect to more recent advances in technology.

“It’s made the game more fun. The ball is going so much farther. It’s made it accessible to women, to juniors and to everybody else.”

“But a lot of the technology that has come out has over-complicated the game as well. Golf can be over taught in many ways,” he adds.

Shawn Clement’s lessons at Bonnie Doon were a huge success with the golf swing guru aiming to come back to Australia in the near future. In the meantime, you can learn for yourself from Clement via his YouTube page where he posts regular instructional videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/clemshaw.

Watch our full interview with Shawn Clement above (or click http://youtu.be/2iyCK_ncegY)

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