The Ultimate Way E Book Review

The Ultimate Way
by Chad Westra
Ultimate Golf and Academy

The Ultimate Way is a $9.99 e-book from Chad Westra of the Ultimate Golf and Academy in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The book is one of a number of products offered by Westra, including a CD of the book and a DVD of golf tips. A copy was emailed to me for my review.

The intended audience for this ebook clearly is the beginning golfer. It covers grip, ball position, stance, the backswing, and so on. None of it is revolutionary. As someone who has consumed hundreds of golf instruction books (which may explain my perpetually confused swing), I’ve seen most of it before.

The “Ultimate” part of the book comes from the notion that swing guru A.J. Bonar—of whom Westra apparently is a disciple—has found the key to the golf swing. For those not in the know, Bonar teaches what has been described as a “handsy” swing to manipulate the clubface.
That isn’t necessarily good or bad—it just is what it is.

The best part of the book is that at every point, the author offers clues for different learning styles: visual, auditory and kinesthetic. For example, in the section on releasing the clubface, Westra writes:

Auditory learners should release the clubface with the bottom hand by counting (3) aggressively. A lazy (3) can keep the clubface open; resulting in a slice.

Kinesthetic learners should release the club starting at position (3) and stopping at waist height of the follow-through called position (4). Refer to the clubface drill to capture this feeling.

As a teacher I appreciated the approach to different learning styles. It’s something that’s not often explicitly addressed in golf instruction.

I’m very much sitting on the fence on this one. But there’s one thing about it that really annoyed me:

At the bottom of each page of the pdf is a notice saying “Easy PDF Creator is professional software to create PDF. If you wish to remove this line, buy it now.”

If I were trying to sell an ebook, I would have bought the license for the software that created it. The notice just makes it look cheap.

Hopefully, they’ve made enough money from the ebook to be able to afford the licensing fee.