Note: please see below for an important disclosure.

You may not have heard of Knoodle because it’s fairly new, but it’s a pretty interesting place.  It’s stated goal is to be “a place where people who are bad at stuff go to get good at stuff, and people who are good at stuff go to help people who are bad at stuff.“  In other words, it matches up teacher and student, providing the tools for teachers to easily put together compelling instruction and a place for students to go to take advantage of it.

When I was asked to review the Golf Instruction Series by Josh Zander, naturally, I was interested in seeing what it was all about.

First a little background on Josh Zander.  According to his mini-bio at Knoodle, Zander is a:

“…Class A PGA Teaching Professional at Stanford University Golf Course and Presidio Golf Course. Josh is a member of the Golf Digest Magazine Pro Panel and contributes articles on a regular basis. In 2007, Josh was voted one of the top 20 teachers under the age of 40 in America, voted one of the best teachers in the State of California, and top ranked instructor in the San Francisco Bay Area by Golf Digest. Josh is currently a Titleist Leadership Advisory Staff Member.”

The Josh Zander golf instructional series consists of 14 video lessons on a variety of topics from hip turn to alignment to swing path and a number of others.

Going above the norm, the Knoodle framework adds some cool features to enhance the video experience.  Interestingly, each lesson includes a series of notes, very similar to a PowerPoint presentation.  They sit adjacent to the video and automatically advance as the video progresses to reinforce the video instruction.  All of the notes can be downloaded as Adobe Acrobat files which can be studied later.

In addition, there are mechanisms built in to the Knoodle interface to comment on the lessons, rate them, share them with others, or even communicate with the author.

One of the interesting features of Knoodle is that it lets the instructor set the price of the instruction.  In this case, the price of this video series is set at $10.

As far as the quality of the lessons, I was pretty impressed.  Josh Zander is an accomplished teacher and he presents the lessons in a very easy to understand way.  As I write this, I’ve watched about ten of the 14 lessons and I found them all very concise and informative.  They’ve all been under ten minutes so far, with most falling in the 4-6 minute range.

During the lessons, Zander presents a number of drills and uses a number of training aids while demonstrating the topics at hand.

I found the companion notes to be a nice feature that you don’t really find with most video lessons online.  They not only help to focus on the important points of the lessons, but being able to download them and refer to them later is a nice way to review the material and remember the key points without necessarily needing to review the entire video lesson again.  This might come in handy as you experiment at the driving range.  It’s a lot easier to refer to notes than to watch a video while standing on the practice tee.

One thing that should be noted is that these 14 lessons cover a wide array of topics, but should not be construed as a comprehensive lesson covering everything there is to know about the golf swing.  There are a wide array of topics, but the lessons are fairly focused and brief.

I was somewhat conflicted about the $10 price tag initially.  To be truthful, before I viewed the lessons, I had a hard time believing that the series could be worth it.  The main reason for that is that the internet has grown into such a spring of knowledge (some good, some not so good), but even in the golf world, there is a ton of instruction out there available for free.

After working my way through most of the lessons, though, I think I’ve kind of changed my mind on that.  Josh Zander is a quality instructor and the lessons are pretty well done.  They’re informative and will give you a lot of solid information.  I didn’t tally up the total running times for all the videos, but there has to easily be an hour worth of material.  I don’t know what Josh Zander charges for a lesson, but I have to believe you’d easily pay at least $100 for an hour’s worth of this material from a teaching professional of his caliber.

I have to say that, overall, I recommend checking out the series of lessons.  Players looking to improve will find a wealth of information to help get on the road to better golf.  Knoodle itself is a neat concept and it will be interesting to see it expand and grow over time.  For now, feel free to check out the Josh Zander golf instructional series by clicking here.

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Important Disclosure

As of the time of this writing, I am engaged in an advertising relationship with Knoodle, which you might notice as a big ad near the top of my sidebar.  It is not an affiliate relationship (where I make money if you buy something), nor do I make money for click-throughs.

When I was approached by Knoodle, I was asked about buying advertising and also about reviewing this lesson series.  Before I would accept the advertisement, I asked for assurance that there was no expectation on my review being steered a certain way as a tit-for-tat in exchange for advertising. I was informed that not only was an honest review encouraged, it was expected.

If not for this fact, I would have turned down the advertising revenue, because to me, honesty and integrity are too important to sell.  This is why you have never seen, and will never see, a sponsored post in this space as long as I continue to breathe.

I believe that I have given the instructional series an honest assessment.  Because this is the first time I have ever accepted money from a company for advertising whose product I subsequently reviewed, I wanted to make this relationship completely transparent.  I also want to give you my personal assurance that I have continued to do what I have done from day one.  Namely, to tell you what I think as honestly as I can.

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