Customer Reviews

David Leadbetter 100% Golf: Unlocking Your True Golf Potential

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is worth every penney in just the first couple of pages. Leadbetter has written a real gem. This book has the nitty gritty details of how to go out and play better golf quickly and easily. I have bought and read about 4 golf books this year and this book is by far the best. Leadbetter has a way of explaining golf in the form of sensations. This book has a great drill that instantly allows you to feel how the swing is "supposed" to be felt. Once I had that sensation in my mind I instantly started hitting a repeatable swing for the first time. I took my wife out golfing today and explained to her that sensation of the swing and she was hitting the ball correctly for the first time. Excellent book, its a winner.

If you've never heard of David Leadbetter, he's one of golf's premier teachers, with a string of famous students on the tour who sing his praises (starting with Nick Faldo) and he was recently named Golf Digest's "best golf coach of all time". He also runs a string of 16 golf academies, with a home base in Florida.

If you don't have any of David's other products and are interested in an instructional book, this one is a "must-buy." Its text is simple to follow and the ideas are easy to picture in your head. David purposely avoids overly technical dissertations on the swing in favor of simple explanations and drills to find the "feel" of each teaching point. The drills are simple and helpful and laid out in a very easy-to-find fashion with pictures that leave no question in your mind what you should be doing. That's helpful, as the large, hardcover book is a little bulky to take out on the range with you. I find the most value in this book reading it casually when I have spare time -- eating lunch alone, on breaks, on the bus to/from work -- and then I try the drills I can remember when I get home or out on a range.

The lessons themselves run from the very fundamental -- the grip, says David, is the single most common culprit in all of golf -- to the slightly more advanced. While a lot of this material is not exactly "new," some of the drills are new and the text really sort of "sums up" David's thinking to this point. As such, if you already own other Leadbetter books and videos, you might not find too much else of value here, but if you've got the money to spend and have dogeared all your other Leadbetter books to the point of no return, there's certainly no harm in picking up this one as well.

If your golf's library does not have DL's instructional videos and/or books already, this book is definitely for you. If you have, buy this book anyway, it adds to your collection, and also, gives you new thoughts on how you can best "feel" your golf swing, and thus, unlocking your true potential as a golfer, at whatever level that may be. Rather than giving us a mechnaical breakdown of how a perfect swing should be like, which mere mortal like myself would never be able to groove a swing to remotely resemble the perfect swing, DL has given us thoughts on how golf swing should "feel" like, as well as how to groove the feel so as to be repeatable. For example, the thought on how to enable a "connected takeaway" to initiate the backswing has really helped me. There are hosts of others explanations and thoughts you will find useful.

I have to admit, that I think many other books written by Leadbetter are to mechanical to me. This one is different. I guess Leadbetter also has changed his reputation of being too rigid on mechanics as well. This is the book that I realy enjoy reading. It is the most updated summary about modern swing and who can do that better than the world number 1 teacher himself. For those who just begin golfing, you may not fully understnand what he is talking about now, but I suggest you read this book many times, until you understand what mordern swing is all about.

As a golfer looking for guidance on how to improve my game this book was incredible. Leadbetter has a unique ability to breakdown the game to the finest detail in a very clear and concise way. One of my favorite things about this book are the drills it includes. We all know that practicing without a plan leads to little if no results. The drills give you a game plan. I strongly recommend buying this book together with the Practice Golf book also from Leadbetter. I was so impressed with these two books that I went on to buy a third book from Leadbetter which focuses on drills (Faults and Fixes). Having read Tiger Woods golf book recently I can tell you that Leadbetters books are much better.

Having read his other instructional books, I purchased this one thinking what else can Mr. Leadbetter share. And share he did, from basics to advanced techniques. The photographs (frame by frame) were brilliant and the text were short and crisp - drills that you can take with you to the driving range to try.
It would be nicer if he had a section on course management.

I am a big Ledbetter fan. But the truth is, his "Faults and Fixes" is a MUCH better instructional book than this one. If you value learning ALL you can about golf, then buy the book. If you are interested buying only THE best teaching tools, then get the "Faults and Fixes" book instead.

Ben Hogan's 5 Lessons is a classic must read. However, I found this books updated approach much more relevant in understanding the fundamentals of the swing. Easy to understand and clearly illustrated.

This is a great book that goes over the fundamentals one needs in order to develop a solid swing motion. Leadbetter doesn't get caught up in all of the technical mumbo jumbo that he is accused of all the time. What he does do is boil the swing down into the easy to understand concept of the blending of arm/hand movements with the rotary motion of the body. His explanation of this concept is reiterated several times in the book and really gives the reader insight into the core fundamentals necessary to play this game well. I highly recommend it for a nuts and bolts explanation of Leadbetter's concepts.

Leadbetter's style in this book emphasizes a simplistic breakdown of the golf swing coupled with "how it should feel" descriptions which are easily understood and remembered and thus readily transportable to the range/golf course. In other words, he does not fill your head with lots of stuff to think about while you're at the range/course. Instead he provides one or two key thoughts or images which are useful to bear in mind while swinging at the range/course.
More importantly, his drills which accompany the instructional breakdown, enable the reader to actually feel what one should feel during the swing.
For example, feeling tension on the inside (the arch) of the back foot, at the height of the backswing, is now something that I pay attention to each time I swing and that has enabled me to add 10-20 yards to my drives. After some practice, these "feelings" become automatic and do not have to be thought about during your swing.

My chief criticism is that there are too few pictures and/or diagrams to help illustrate the instructions. It is often helpful to see the same shot from many different angles. Given the lack of visuals, it is important to study the text carefully.

Other than that, this a very useful golf-swing-instructional book that unlike prior Leadbetter instructional books, dispenses with the technical discourses and boils the whole thing down to a few simple, useful thoughts and "feelings".