David Siskind | Sunday, 21 December 2025
When I was a kid we had a mono record player in a room we called the sun parlor. I’m pretty sure that most of our vinyl was mono as well - this was during the fifties. Our collection was modest but eclectic. We had Goldman’s band playing Sousa, Fat’s Waller’s “Ain’t Misbehaving”, a couple of Sidney Bechet albums, some Glen Miller and Benny Goodman and two musical theater albums - West Side Story and Three Penny Opera. Somehow my revisionist memory throws Guys and Dolls in there but I’m pretty sure the album wasn’t in our cabinet. But it was West Side Story that most captured our imagination. I saw the play on Broadway and then the movie came out in 1961 dictating all of our cultural attitudes and fashions. I loved it. Except for the song “Something’s Coming.” It was Sondheim's line “catch the moon, one-handed catch” I objected to.
One-handed catches used to be a thing. Starting In 1958 I had dinosaur little-league coaches, who had grown up with baseball gloves barely bigger than one’s hand, admonishing us to “use two hands.” I don’t think they had ever used a “modern” mid-fifties era baseball glove. They were already big by then, with substantial webbing between the thumb and forefinger. There was no role for a second hand. The ball never popped out of the glove. Getting your bare hand involved was asking for jammed fingers. So I always thought my coaches were idiots (harsh). They were certainly not good teachers. I don’t remember them as being helpful or inspiring.
I enjoyed and occasionally excelled at some learning experiences but was never inspired or helped particularly by my teachers. I often cut classes throughout my schooling, usually avoided formal coaching, and chose to learn from books rather than from mentors. I wish it weren’t so - coulda been much better at everything. I did take some golf lessons from a freelance “pro”, Earl English, who hung out at the Rancho Park driving range here in LA. I loved the guy but found his teaching unorthodox and got my head turned by Golf Digest magazine articles which often contradicted each other. They certainly disagreed with Earl’s teachings. In retrospect Earl was onto something. He was asking me to try to maintain the wrist cock established at the take-away throughout the swing through the ball. I was thinking of him while practicing the natural flop and the late rotation Paul discussed and when practicing stopless and torque twist snakehead shots. But, because he couldn’t or wouldn’t speak to the physics of his approach I couldn’t listen or learn further.
It seems as if teaching has taken a great leap forward in recent years. I think a lot of work has been done on methods and results applying measurements and metrics to evaluating the efficacy of various approaches. Paul opened my eyes to all of this recommending some reading around external cues and Constraints Led Approach training. I read two by Rob Gray. Looking at the Master Class videos and comparing recent updates with some of the original postings shines a light on Paul’s evolution here. He often suggests exploration around the edges of his drills. It’s more about discovery and ownership than dictating the right way to do things. I wish I had read The Republic when I was supposed to. Learning is a joy, and as I have found, better late than never, that teachers, now more than ever, are a big help.
Cheers to all you instructors.
Merry Christmass
David Siskind