By David Gould, Staff Editor
Through their many books and live presentations, Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott have influenced golfers and instructors worldwide. As much as they can, Nilsson and Marriott teach on-course. A core principle of Vision54, their coaching brand, is that a student’s performance improvements matter most when they occur in the flow of a round, while that student is moving from shot to shot.
“Think Box, Play Box, Memory Box”—these are Vision54 ideas on pre-shot and post-shot behavior that are well known to many a Proponent member. They were conceived as tools for improving a competitor’s shots and lowering that golfer’s scores, yet it was always clear that as a by-product they could reduce the time needed to get around the golf course.
Fast-forward—and we mean that literally—to the current lament concerning slow play on the pro tours.
Pia and Lynn have seized on this moment to flip the script just a bit. They’ve produced a 12-page, workbook-style guide to their three “boxes” designed not with faster play as a by-product but with that as the clear and present goal.
What this all amounts to is a coin with two sides, with lower scoring on one side and faster play on the other. “Vision 54 Pace of Play Training” is the guidebook’s title and the intended audience is coaches.
“Players are totally untrained and under-coached in this area,” Nilsson said recently. “Nobody wants to be slow, but they don’t know how to be more efficient and still play as well, or better. We think the teachers and coaches of the game need to take more responsibility for the pace of play speeding up—with the added benefit of better golf.”
An article on the book appeared recently on the golf.com website, describing it in admiring terms and recommending it to coaches and players—especially tournament golfers. Nilsson and Marriott thought right away of their fellow Proponent members as a likely audience for it. Any interested member can obtain a free digital copy of “Vision 54 Pace of Play Training” by clicking this link.