The Struggle
When you’re playing, how much are you thinking about your technique? When you describe why a shot went poorly, to what do you usually attribute it? I think more often than golfers will ascribe a mistake to poor technique.
Which of course drives us on this eternal search for the “perfect technique”. We watch the best players’ swings in slow motion, and we listen to commentary on what a player does really well in their swing to hopefully be able to apply it to our own swing.
If the amount of swing technique content on social and youtube is any indication, a LOT of golfers obsess over solving this mystery and finding “it”.
But I think we are getting this wrong. I think the “secret” to having a good swing isn’t a secret at all. It’s not mysterious, or flashy, or even swing-related at all. It doesn’t even happen when the club is moving.
It’s boring, obvious, and everyone can do it.
It’s about the fundamentals.
Alignment, grip, posture, ball position, aim.
None of these have anything to do with the club moving.
And those are just the physical fundamentals. There are also mental fundamentals. (Yes, I was tempted to type fundaMENTALS. There, I did it anyway.)
Strategy, commitment, trust, patience, resilience, staying present, emotional control, acceptance.
Again, nothing to do with swinging the club. We’ve listed 13 separate very important things anyone can focus on without ever looking at their swing on camera.
The Solution
In his book The Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin says,
“It is rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skill set.” ¹
This quote hits right in the screws. The best players in the world have great looking swings, but even that can be debatable at times. But what can’t be debated is how well the best players in the world do the 13 things we’ve listed above.
13 might sound like a lot, but when you look at these, it really is a “basic skill set.” There’s nothing complicated about any of these. Nothing mysterious or technical. It doesn’t take a prodigy who played college golf and got right on the tour to do these things well.
You can work on these fundamentals. And you can start today.
One thing for you to work on this week:
List out how you can work on each one of these fundamentals in some way when you go practice. And then when you go play, make it a priority to focus on doing these really well. Score yourself on how well you do these fundamentals, and see how it correlates to your scores.
To-do: Focus on doing the fundamentals REALLY well before thinking anything about technique.