FRANKLIN, Tenn. --- At 6-foot-7 and 315 pounds of hard muscle, Tennessee Titans left tackle Michael Roos is not your typical golfer. His reasonably normal-sized hands, attached as they are to the end of his brisket-sized forearms, appeared minuscule, and the 7-iron they held looked like a fairy wand. Even so, after an hour of nonstop swinging under the eye of an instructor, he was exhausted.

"It's not an easy sport," Mr. Roos said. "I was using muscles I haven't ever used before."

About a dozen Titans, taking a day off from spring practices, showed up Wednesday afternoon at a Nashville-area golf course as part of a promotion for The PGA of America's Free Lesson Month. A few players, like Mr. Roos, had some experience with the game. Most of the others, like the team's $4.5 million-a-year linebacker David Thornton, were rank newbies and had to be shown even how to hold the club. Most wanted to learn in part because they get invited to charity golf outings, but Mr. Thornton, 28, had another reason: He recently bought a home on an Arnold Palmer-designed course in an exclusive community nearby and figured he ought to know how to play.

The intriguing thing about watching strong, fit athletes with tremendous hand-eye coordination take on golf is not that they get just as frustrated as regular Joes doing the same -- you'd expect that, golf being golf -- but how they learn differently, and what that suggests for how we regular people might approach learning.

"These guys already know about athletic motions, most of which are universal," said Neil Collins, the PGA Professional paired with Mr. Thornton. "As an instructor, I'm just trying to tap into what these guys already know and show them how to apply it to golf."

Up and down the line, weight shift and upper-body rotation were the primary subjects of discussion. I saw very little advice about traditional topics like the position of the hands during the backswing and a great deal of focus on how to finish the swing in balance, with all the weight over a straight left leg, the chest facing the target and the trailing right foot on tippy-toe.

"If you can get that right, everything else will follow," Mr. Collins told Mr. Thornton. "Don't even think much about the arms. Just keep them relaxed and let them swing wherever the heck they want to."

For Mr. Thornton, however, this was not an easy lesson to absorb, perhaps because in his usual line of work, athletic motion is inextricably linked to delivering violent blows with his body. During a break, I asked him which of his football skills seemed most related to golf.

"The stance feels very familiar. As a linebacker I'm always in that kind of attack stance, with my weight on the balls of my feet, ready to go," he responded. The hardest part about golf, he said, was learning to swing through impact with his body rather than striking at the ball with his arm muscles. "Golf is not a power sport, it's not about how hard you swing. You've got to learn to use those fine-motor movements," he said. "The main thing I'm taking away from this afternoon is that I need more lessons."

A few spots down the range, safety Vincent Fuller seemed to be having a better go of it. His instructor, Hank Patton, spent most of the first half of their time together working, without a ball, on getting Mr. Fuller to the proper finish position. When Mr. Fuller's right thigh didn't come around far enough, Mr. Patton tapped at his right foot with a club. He did the same when Mr. Fuller bent his knees too much setting up to the ball -- a carryover from the more crouched athletic position he was used to from football.

But when Mr. Fuller was finally allowed to hit a ball, the results were impressive. The fourth ball he hit, and many after it, sailed off in the kind of high draw that many experienced players only dream about. I've seen quite a few first golf lessons, but never one where the student took to the game so quickly. Interestingly, the next quickest-study newbie was also a defensive back, Michael Waddell.

"It's really fun to teach beginners who are very athletic," said Mr. Patton. "The worst learners are men who think they already know how to hit a golf ball, because they get locked up in their preconceptions, but guys who will listen to what you say and then do it, they learn very quickly. A lot of women beginners are like that, too."

Mr. Roos, a native of Estonia, had also made a lot of progress by the end of his session. The self-taught swing he arrived with had been almost completely vertical, like a Ferris wheel. Now it rotated more around his spine, like a Ferris wheel tilted at 45 degrees. His teacher, Steve Kirkpatrick, said that the enormous mass of Mr. Roos's torso necessitated a more compact backswing than usual -- "there's a lot of bulk there he has to keep under control" -- but by quitting time Mr. Roos clearly had a new, more fluid athletic feel to his swing. I watched him hit four dainty little 7-iron shots in a row, each one crisp and high -- but then two stinkers. "Football is a lot easier than golf, that's for sure," he said.