Golf: Mystery No. 1. With Those Swings How Did They Make It To The Tour.

One of my golf mantras has always been the swing is not the thing. Despite our obsession with our golf swings over the years, there have been many ugly, fundamentally bad swings on the PGA tour. There is nothing derogatory meant here. In fact, I have a high admiration for these players, that they were able to break free from the so-called norm and develop some kind of swing that allowed them to play at the highest level of the game. On the opposite side of the spectrum, there have been players that have had beautiful swings that are about as technically perfect as any swing can be. These players have had success on the tour, but not as much as some people think they should have, because of their great looking swings. This list is far from complete but here are some of the golfers with bad looking unpleasant swings that have had good to great PGA tour careers: Doug Sanders, Chi-Chi Rodriguez, Miller Barber, Gay Brewer, Lee Trevino, Hubert Green, Ray Floyd, Paul Goydos, Jim Furyk, Matthew Wolf, Allen Doyle. There are many more that could be added. Even Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus when they came out on tour, had things about their swings that observers were quite critical of. In Palmers case, it was his big turn and how hard he swung at the ball. It was described as a lash at the ball. Nicklaus on the other hand was criticized for the uprightness of his swing and that flying right elbow, that many said would be his Achilles heel. Women tour players have a tendency to have more fundamentally correct swings, but they did have a poster child for the unorthodox swing, if not ugly, in Nancy Lopez. She had such great tempo and balance, that her swing was far from ugly, but there was not one thing about her swing that was fundamentally correct, except for her impact position. The beautiful swingers over the years, whose careers did not achieve what they should have according to some, were Gene Littler, Tom Purtzer, Tom Weiskopf, George Knudson, Steve Elkington, Adam Scott, Greg Norman, and Louis Oosthuizen. These players had very good careers but the general opinion on all of these players is that they should have won more. You could put many more names to this list, but you get the point.

I am not too sure that a lot of golf observers get the point. What I mean by that is, when all of these unorthodox swings are discussed, the golf media is always looking to say something good about them. I saw one golf magazine have a headline that read what you can learn from Matthew Wolfe’s swing. In my view, absolutely nothing. At the top of his backswing the clubhead is directly over his head. Try that sometime but don’t hurt yourself. The other mystifying thing is how did they get to some of their swings. Many of them had fathers that were teaching pros. Everyone has to start somewhere and that is usually the fundamentals. How do you go from there and wind up with the finished product that you see on tour? However, they got there, I think it is brilliant. Some of the players were self-taught and explains some of the quirks that these players have in their swing. No matter how they got there, it still remains a mystery with those unorthodox swings, or whatever you want to call them, how they were able to have such success at the highest level of tournament golf. Some of these players success may have been short lived, and I am sure that makes people wonder if they had had more fundamentally sound swings, would they have had longer periods of success. But slumps are common in golf no matter what kind of swing you seem to have. What about those esthetically pleasing fundamentally sound golf swings that do not seem to be able to achieve what they should. What all of this says to me is that all these swing changes that you read about these players making from time to time is one big waste of time. It boils down to one basic thing that most everybody knows but just refuses to believe. That when you get to a certain level everything is determined right between the ears.

I know some that will read this and think that this really is not all that big a mystery in the game. They will say that the unorthodox swings have enough of the fundamentals of a good golf swing even though they do not look like it to explain their success. The more orthodox swings have some small non apparent flaws in their technique, which explains their lack of success. It is shown that players that change their swing seem to come out of slumps. Yes, these players do come out of slumps and players have won majors after changing their swings, Tiger Woods being that prime example. Nick Faldo is the poster boy for swing change. Hooking up with David Leadbetter he went from basically being a journeyman tour player to a 6-time major champion. He only did this once. In other examples of players who went through swing changes it did bring them success, but no more than they had before they changed their swing. There are some players who changed their swing for whatever reason and never regained the form they once had. Even though this is a mystery to me, I feel that it is a mystery that is not worth solving. What one needs to take away from all of this is that the swing is not the thing. If you really want to improve your game, and who doesn’t, you had better look somewhere else other than your golf swing.