The Natural Golf Swing Read Online Free PDF Page B

no purpose in the golf swing. It would simply go where it wanted. It struck me that trying to keep the head still was unnatural. It also caused so many problems: poor balance, keeping the weight forward while moving back, picking the club up, and that reverse C position so many golfers fall into at the finish of their swings and that hurts their backs. (I’ll have more to say on this later.) So, as I said, I had one of those “aha!” experiences at Oakdale. Now I was going to put the swing into the form it best functions in. I was going to develop an impersonal swing.
    Until 1960, I had learned so much, good and bad, from other people. I didn’t necessarily accept their ideas as the be-all and end-all, but I was curious and I’d experiment if I thought the ideas made sense. Logic was the deciding factor. I’d observed other players for a few years and was able to put things together in a reasonable fashion. It started with the grip and it ended with balance. I had persevered until I got it. I wasn’t going to let up until I had some answers. I was like a kid with his Lego blocks: pick up a piece here, add another there. I’d use what seemed logical. I was fitting pieces of a puzzle together, but I had to continually think about the pieces. I still didn’t feel I could perform the motion without contriving it. I still didn’t know that the natural swing was the one where you set up the motion at address and let it happen, by design.
    I first felt that the swing must be impersonal just prior to going on tour in 1961. In the meantime, I’d won only one cheque in my first three years on tour – for a hundred dollars in the Crosby when I made the cut. But I didn’t care. I was learning. I’d come home and my head was full of things to work on. I may not have been making any money, but so what? This was a learning process. I was going to school and I had to go through it. I wasn’t at all discouraged. It gave me something to work with. That’s why I played so well in Canada. I had all kinds of motivation to get at it when I came home.
    I didn’t lose very often at home. It wasn’t that I was that terrific a golfer or that I had any particular gift for the game. But I’d done my homework and was more knowledgeable than others. I kept saying, “Look at me, I’m nothing special.” There must have been something in my head that made sense. I had a passion to understand the why, the causes of good golf shots.
    Still, I felt the tension in those early years. I was playing to make a living, but my real intent was to practise. That’s how I felt. I needed to practise to improve, yet I had to make a living. So I had to play with what I had at the time. I didn’t want to start changing while I was playing.
    By 1960, I had practised for some ten years. Sure, I was winning Canadian tournaments and making a living, but I still wasn’t good enough for where I wanted to go: as far as my potential would carry me, the big leagues, world-class. I wasn’t going to make it the way I was going at it. I could accept that I was better than the next guy, but I felt forced and restricted – it was work, not fun. And I didn’t like the idea that I had to hold myself in to get the job done. Had I stuck with that approach I never would have succeeded. I’d have become rigid with anxiety.
    I knew what the swing was about. I knew that I had to develop a pure, undisturbed plane – the path the clubhead travels on – and to maximize an arc, the perimeter or outer boundary of the plane. In both cases, I knew that I wanted them the same every time. That’s what Hogan had, and it meant consistency. You could live with consistency.
    I also felt that I would be more consistent if I could keep the clubhead from fluttering during the swing. I would feel more secure if I knew where it was, if I weren’t flipping it around. So I had arrived at the notion of passive hands, where the hands do nothing but hold on to the club during the swing.