The Natural Golf Swing (2 page)

This attitude makes for frustrated golfers. They will study instruction book after instruction book and take series of lessons after series of lessons. Today’s frustrated golfers will buy instructional videos and watch them until all hours, hoping to find the secret. I’ve heard of one fellow who tapes the swings of all the great players, inserts images of his own swing next to each, and then compares his moves to theirs. I guess he figures he’ll pick up something that will help him play the game he thinks he should be playing. He goes from tip to tip and theory to theory trying to find a better way to hit the ball. The only trouble is, golf is not a hit-the-ball game.

I believe that golf involves a swing motion directed toward a target. Moreover, it’s a whole-body motion. We don’t hit at the ball, rather, we swing a unit – our hands, arms, and club – indeed, our whole body,
through the ball toward our target
. We focus on the target. The ball simply gets in the way of the clubhead as we swing through it. We find a location for our bodies relative to the ball so that we can make contact with the ball as we swing toward the target. If the ball is in the right location, we’ll get it every time along the way. The ball will sit in the path of the clubhead. We won’t need to control the club or force it on track. We’ll let it track. We won’t need to interfere with the golf club.

Golf is a target game, and we should direct all our efforts toward making a swing motion toward the target while letting our bodies travel freely. The golfer’s task is to find a repetitive motion so that the clubhead will send the ball to the target while taking him along to a finishing position in which he is in balance. He needs to find a means of connecting the starting position to the finishing position. I’ll teach the means of doing so in this book.

I refer to the swing as a motion. We ignore the ball. As I say, it simply gets in the way of the motion. The motion connects the starting position to the finishing position. We design the starting position so that we have the best chance of making a motion toward the target and we design the finishing position so that at the end of the motion we face the target. The club simply travels as it will, carried along by centrifugal force and inertia, the laws of motion that govern all physical activity.

When we understand that golf is a target game, we can more readily conceive of a “natural” swing; natural because as a motion it is ruled by the aforementioned laws of motion. In the following pages I’ll show you how to make a swing motion based upon these fundamental laws. The motion will enable you to turn golf into a most pleasurable physical experience. And you won’t have to do anything consciously in order to use the laws once you understand the fundamentals of the natural swing. The laws are there already; they’re part of nature, part of you. I’ll show you how to
let
them operate, how not to interfere with them. I’ll explore with you all the ways in which golf is a “passive” game, one in which we
let
most things happen rather than
make
them happen. You’ll learn these involuntary or automatic aspects of the motion (they tend to be positions during the swing that most golfers think they must create). There are indeed a few voluntary actions that you must learn, but they
simply get you in motion. They have nothing to do with putting yourself into a position during the motion. If you start in a good position and finish in a good position not much can go wrong in between. I’ll show you why.

How many times have you played a round of golf while thinking of who knows how many different things to do during your swing? And how many times have you been so thoroughly exasperated that on the last tee you finally said: “The hell with all these tips and ideas. I’m just going to set up properly and swing toward my target.” I’ll bet it’s at that point that you’ve often hit your finest shot. I call it the “come-back-tomorrow” shot, or the “what-time-do-we-play-tomorrow?” shot.

So what happened then? How did you suddenly make your best swing? Very simply, you gave up control. You stopped trying to manipulate the clubhead and hit the ball. You forgot about doing this and that during the swing. Maybe you visualized a full swing, maybe you thought only of rhythm, or maybe you thought only of swinging through to your target. Or maybe you didn’t think of a thing. The point is that
you gave up control and the result was that you gained control
. You stopped thinking about what to do with the club and let it flow on its own. You connected a starting position to a finishing position. The club went along on a pure path and you went along for the ride. You let centrifugal force and inertia work.

I remember the first time I felt centrifugal force and inertia (centrifugal force is the outward force acting on a body that is rotating in a circle around a central point; inertia is the property by which matter continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion unless that state is changed by external force). The effect generated a powerful and accurate swing, yet I hadn’t a thing to do with it except allow it to happen. All I did was set myself in motion.

Until then, I’d only had glimpses of a pure swing. I’d thought I had
to do
so much to swing a golf club, but suddenly in one swing I felt like the golf club had swung itself. There was
no resistance. I sensed that the club was travelling on a pure, undisturbed path, and that I wasn’t doing a thing consciously with my hands and arms to take it there. It was a feeling of totally letting go. It felt wonderful.

Having experienced how fluid and pleasurable the swing could be, I naturally wanted to repeat it every time. But like the golfer who makes that exciting “come-back-tomorrow” shot, I knew I couldn’t depend on my feelings to bring it back. I needed to understand what had happened that time. And so began a personal quest for a conception of the swing that would best allow the force to operate. It took me some fifteen years to fully understand it all and another ten to feel I really knew how to communicate it to people. All along I was using a natural motion, but I needed to understand it as such. Now that I do, I can give you the benefit of my studies. The golf swing is not at all difficult; you’ll find that once you understand the conception of the swing as a natural motion, you’ll make rapid progress.

There’s no need for you to suffer on the course. Golf can be a real joy. But you need to understand what you are trying to do. You cannot change effectively unless you have a clear image of what you are trying to do.

The golf swing that I advocate is an impersonal swing. We are all trying to accomplish the same objectives: create direction, distance, and trajectory. If the laws of motion are operative, and they must be, then it follows that we should be able to find a way to accomplish these objectives that is independent of the idiosyncracies of each and every golfer. This isn’t to say that my swing won’t look different than yours, or yours from the next guy’s. We are all shaped differently, and so our swings will vary in shape and appearance. You’re taller or shorter, more or less flexible, or heavier or lighter than the next fellow. But you’re also the exact same being: you have a body which we can perceive as a machine. And we want to put this body in the service of meeting the objectives of the game.

The most efficient way of doing this is to create a swing motion in which balance is the bedrock fundamental. We do nothing in the natural swing that is at the expense of balance, since disturbing balance will lead to a loss of control and power. Everything I will say in this book is based on balance. I won’t ask you to do a thing that disturbs balance. The balanced swing is the most satisfying swing. It’s also the most logical and simplest swing that will get the job done.

A word about the title of this book:
The Natural Golf Swing
. If something is natural, why do we have to learn it?

Bear in mind that walking and talking are natural, but we did have to learn these skills. We learned them over a period of time, even though we didn’t know what we were learning, or even that we
were
learning. Gradually it became natural for us to walk and talk. Those of us who have learned another language as adults have had to learn a new vocabulary along with the rules or fundamentals of the language, its grammar. The same goes for, say, ice-skating or dancing. We learn the grammar of these motions before we can do them without thinking.

Most golfers speak a language without knowing the vocabulary or the grammar. Golf, as I’ve said, is not a hand-eye, hit-the-ball game. Strike these phrases from your golf vocabulary. Replace them with words such as target and motion.

I say that golfers don’t know the vocabulary or grammar for one reason: I’ve been there. I was in the same position for too long. It didn’t matter where I was – Canada, the U.S., Japan, or the U.K. – I heard the same ideas you’ve heard, tried every gimmick you’ve tried, and probably more. I struggled for the first fifteen years of my career to find a swing that I could be sure would work when it mattered most, while I contended for championships.

It took me those fifteen years of observation and thinking and playing to begin to understand the logic behind the swing. And only after this last decade of teaching – I left the tour in the late 1970s to teach – have I come to see that the swing does
not have to be complicated, as long as we appreciate that the logical swing is in fact the swing that is the most easily repeatable. This swing is a natural swing in the sense that it’s governed by basic laws of nature.

You have exactly what you need to learn the swing I’ll show you. You won’t need to manufacture a thing. I’m going to teach you a way to swing that has nothing to do with
making anything happen
. But it will have everything to do with
letting things happen
. There’s nothing fancy or complicated about it. If I can do it, anybody can. I mean this. I’m no different than you.

Think of it. I’m not a fabulous physical specimen. Nor was I born with a flair for golf. But I know that the golf swing is so much easier and more enjoyable than you think it is. I know this because I’ve been through the same theories you have. I bought every misconception, tried them all. But my studies eventually took me to the point where I realized the swing is natural. It can be graceful.

Golf is a physical activity for relaxation. I don’t see how a golfer can be relaxed if he clutters his mind with ideas of where to put his elbows on the backswing, or what to do with his hands when he comes through the ball. This is the old paralysis by analysis that we’re all too familiar with. We make ourselves crazy when we think so much. As far as relaxing goes, forget it. Who can relax when he’s so mixed up? Who can relax when he figures he’s found the answer on one swing, only to top or snap-hook the next shot?

If golf is a physical activity for relaxation, then we might try to find a swing motion that will encourage relaxation. But most golfers look like they’re in straitjackets. There’s no freedom or ease of motion.

It hurts me to see the way most golfers approach the game. I don’t think it’s right that you should be so frustrated. That’s why I’d like to introduce you to a new game in which balance is the number one key.

I’m not going to tell you what’s wrong with your current swing. I couldn’t anyway, since
I can’t see you. But frankly, I don’t care what’s wrong with your swing. I don’t work with what people have. I work with what they can be. And so I ask only that you drop what you have. Let it go. Put everything that you have heard aside. Take a fresh look at the swing.

Once you’ve learned the natural golf swing, you will be in position to understand, appreciate, and even enjoy every shot you play, including those that don’t come off as you wish. You’ll be able to evaluate any one shot because you’ll understand the factors that go into the successful swing motion. You will progress from being concerned with the result of a shot to being absorbed in the process of swinging. You’ll learn that what matters isn’t what you do on any one shot, but what you are attempting to do. You’ll be taking the long-range view.

In the next chapter, I will present the way I learned the natural swing. I’ll discuss the general theory of the natural swing in chapter three, while balance in all its aspects will take up chapter four. Chapters five through eight will present the motion itself: the starting form; the loading, or backs wing motion; the unloading, or downswing motion; and the finishing form. In chapter nine, I’ll discuss all the misconceptions we’ve bought that have kept us from the natural swing, while in chapter ten I’ll present a series of drills for practising the segments of the motion. In chapter eleven, I’ll review the natural swing motion from a particular point of view. There’s a glossary at the end of the book to which you can refer to familiarize yourself with the terms I’ll use in the book.

We can get so much out of golf. I know I have, and I’d like to see the same for you. Golf is the game of a lifetime, one in which you can get better and better.

A
LTHOUGH
this is a book about letting yourself play golf naturally, in some ways it’s odd that I should be writing it. I originally thought that the mechanics of the swing were what really counted, and that all I had to do was learn the parts. Fortunately, I also felt that if I were going to incorporate anything into my swing, it had to be logical. In the end, I rejected the illogical for the logical, the unnatural for the natural. It was just the way I looked at golf. But it took me fifteen years to become a “natural.”

The atmosphere at St. Charles Golf and Country Club, where I began around 1948 (I was born in Winnipeg in 1937), was conducive to my inquisitive mind. At least half a dozen guys who worked on staff were good players and strong competitors, and we all worked seriously on our games. The pro, Les Beaven, was also very talented and, more importantly, he encouraged the juniors. Then there were Al Nelson, Len Collett and Len Harvey, who won the 1953 and 1954 Manitoba Opens. Both Collett and Harvey are pros now, as is Jimmy Collins, another capable St. Charles player who went on to become the pro there. He’s still there. I watched these guys and became passionate about golf right from the beginning. I knew I had to work at it to compete in such a crowd.