That’s Wet! a Golf blog in West Palm Beach Florida

Your Golf Swing

It was an epiphany - you know, where inside your head lightning crashes, the ground moves and Eagles and Birdies ensue. And I want to share it with you because there’s a chance you’ll relate to what I’m saying and you’ll learn to be a better golfer because of it. Well, that’s asking alot but here’s to being hopeful!

There is no perfect swing, there is only your perfect swing.

And you must commit to your one and only swing 100%. 99.9% won’t do it. This is my fundamental problem. Could it be yours as well? For me, it all started with trying to hit that silly little white ball in the first place. Ever since then I’ve been attempting, succeeding, and flailing at hitting the ball soundly. To be sure, it’s been two parts flailing to one part succeeding.

What you and I have in common with the Pros is that we can’t take who we are out of our swing.

You can’t make Jim Furyk swing like Tiger Woods. It’s not going to happen. Not any more than you’d Colin Montgomery to swing like Fred Couples. These are all examples of distinct swings, that have a lot of character in them. But every pro has a distinctive swing, some just don’t show it as obviously as these Pros do.

A major part of my confusion about the part where you hit the ball has been trying to comprehend and act on seemingly incongruent instruction from our various swing gurus. It’s not that I haven’t studied them or listened to them closely. I have. But the real problem is that they’re ALL right. Every one of those golf gurus teach sound, yet different techniques to hit the ball. And all the best swing coaches can produce great results given an average talent to work with. So, it they’re ALL ‘right’ and they can ALL produce great results the missing part of the formula must be YOUR swing. That reminds me…who was it who spoke about an authentic swing? Ah, back from a quick search. That was Bagger Vance the Movie. So much for deep thinking on my part. OK, so my epiphany was actually programmed by a movie featuring Wil Smith and Matt Damon. I’m so shallow.

What actually gave me my ah-hah moment yesterday was watching this year’s 88th PGA championship at Medinah. I was listening to the commentators talk about a player that was making a radical adjustment to his ‘normal’ swing in order to deal with the lie he had. He pulled the shot off, and you could see how different his swing looked from his normal one. And I was reminded of myself hitting nice pure shots using wildly different techniques and feeling so perplexed. Of course, more often than not, I change my mind about which swing I’m using from shot to shot, or which one feels good that day (usually none of them). But every guru will reinforce that all that really matters is what is happening when your club is running into that little white ball and for a few milliseconds after that. You can do a pirouette in your back swing as long as you look something like a golfer when you’re actually hitting the rock.

Back to the part where you have to honor your one and only swing. As a person, my overall outlook would favor the ‘life is shades of gray’ view vs. life is ‘black and white.’ So it’s no surprise that I look at golf the same way. And I have a tough time picking one route to go down at the expense of another, in many things. I don’t often see one single path as obviously better. Given this, I tend to waste a lot of time making up my mind and once I do decide to strike out on my journey it’s not uncommon for me to be thinking I should have taken the other path. This is no way to produce great results in life or in golf. When I do commit to something I often achieve my goals.

So my dilemma, and maybe yours as well, is who can really dial-in what my perfect swing is? Must we all do it ourselves and go through painful years of trial and error or is there an instructor out there that I can find old man par with? Am I the only one who sees that the entire paradigm of golf instruction could swing to a new perspective where it was about the teacher helping you find your perfect swing - rather than teaching you THEIR perfect swing? Come to think of it, isn’t that what the Pros do when they change coaches or select one in the first place? Aren’t they saying that this one specific swing coach is the one that understands THEM more than all the others? I mean Tiger did just fine with Butch Harmon didn’t he?

What do you think? Have you had an experience like the one I’m looking for? Are you a golf teacher and feel there are limitations to this thinking? Who agrees with me? Anyone,

Bueller?