The Natural Golf Swing (6 page)

Tucson was even better. I was four strokes from the lead heading into the last round and figured a 66 would get me into a playoff. I told my caddy as we went to the tenth tee that 32 on the back side would do it. Then I shot 31 and won outright. Again, I was feeling powerful. My play down the stretch showed it.

On the seventeenth, I hit a shot within a foot of the hole. On the eighteenth, a 465-yard four-par, I hit driver, six-iron. The other guys were coming in with four-woods and long irons. I must have carried that last drive 280 yards, and the hole is a dynamic driving hole: water left and right with a camelback fairway. Miss the ball just a bit and it’s in the water. But I nailed the drive, knocked the iron on the green, two-putted, and won.

You’d think I would have been ecstatic. After all, I had just won two in a row. I should have been elated. But instead, I was exhausted. I’d again been pushed to my emotional and physical limit. Sure, I’d gone longer this time. But inside I was hurting. I felt I was going to explode. The fact was that I had turned myself into a physically strong being, but I was
also controlling my emotional side to the point of total exhaustion. I knew what the swing was all about – I’d studied the thing for so long – but I still wasn’t aware that I didn’t have to contrive it. I still didn’t know that I didn’t need to forcibly control the club and myself. I was still quite a ways from realizing that if I could just set up to the ball properly, incorporate the fundamentals, feel relaxed, and let it all go, then I would have a great time at golf.

One example will demonstrate what I mean. In 1968, I still felt that I had to hold on tightly to the club. To me that meant I would be in control of the clubhead. Grip strength, grip strength, grip strength. I thought golf was a physical game, but it’s not. Not the way I thought: you don’t need to lift barbells. But I was into strength and control, what I call disciplines. I’d stressed the back of my hands so much as a kid while I was into Charles Atlas bodybuilding that I couldn’t play in some tournaments then. Sure, it’s good to be strong. It helps because then you don’t need to tense up to hold the club. Snead once said that you want to hold the club as if you’re holding a bird in your hand. Fine. He has such strong forearms and hands that he can do this. Grip strength is important in the sense that you then don’t have to tense your body to hang on to the club.

But I didn’t understand it this way then. I wanted the viselike grip that I believed would ensure passive hands and a stable clubface. That was non-interference to me. It took a lot of letting go in my later years as a tour player, and while I was teaching, to realize that it’s enough just to hold the club lightly, enough just to feel the skin of the grip against the hands. Now, I stand up to the ball and I feel as if I’m hardly holding on to the club. That’s freedom. That’s balance. Then, I just let the club go where it will. But in those days I didn’t understand these things. I was still controlling. I was still holding on with my mind and my body. I didn’t know how to relax, and that was sad. This is the fear of losing control. It comes from a lack of understanding.

I was a wreck after I got back from Arizona. The city of Toronto held a civic reception for me and I received messages of congratulations from all over Canada. The trouble was, all I was feeling was the need to let go of my stress. I’d incubated so much pressure in those seven weeks, I just wanted to hide; I couldn’t handle all the demands on my time.

Then I missed the cut at Doral in Miami when I went back on tour. After that I played only sporadically the rest of the year. I’d learned a hard lesson at Doral: that I was incapable of relaxing. And I never played the tour in quite the same way again.

When I look back on those years, I see that I didn’t need to turn myself into a machine. Had I understood that the natural swing happens to be the logical swing, I wouldn’t have locked myself up or constrained myself. I could have set up in the proper starting form and then connected through weight transfer to a proper finishing form. I would have understood that the swing didn’t have to be so consuming. I couldn’t let go in those days because I didn’t know what would be there the next day if I did. While I was very sure of what worked for me, I didn’t really understand it as a complete unified theory. I had built a machine and I thought it would break down if I didn’t keep using it. The funny thing was that I knew all I needed to know about the golf swing, but I didn’t know how to communicate it. Even in my own mind it was still a series of pieces. That’s why golf consumed me. I was like the guy who goes to bed at night wondering if his swing will still be there in the morning.

After 1968, I still played the tour, but only part-time. I kept looking for something to replace the tour. That was tough. I stayed out there because I couldn’t find a replacement. You can’t spend all your life doing something and then just walk away from it. From 1972, after I won the Kaiser International Open in Napa, California while on my way to Japan with my wife, Shirley, I was strung out all the time, so used to agony I didn’t know it.

The Kaiser had been the first time I’d felt joyful after winning. It was the first time I let go to any degree. I had been so locked into what I was doing prior to that. Shirley said it was so nice to see me smiling for having won rather than for just having performed well. It wasn’t that I had given up being a perfectionist; it was that I had finally been able to enjoy the competition. I hadn’t put so much pressure on myself that week.

But I had a terrible time with myself after the Kaiser. I had been used to winning by being intense. Suddenly, I was enjoying it. I had played with Jack Nicklaus the first two rounds, and he said that nobody was going to beat me. It was happening. I was at a natural state. However, I still had the dilemma of being in a place I didn’t want to be in: I just didn’t like the travelling.

Never again did I have the feeling I had in Napa. Maybe I was too immature to handle the lifestyle. But after my three sons reached school age, I couldn’t stand being away from them.

And Shirley, of course, couldn’t travel as much with me. I hated the isolation, but I kept at it. I should have left the tour then, but I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Then in the late 1970s, I discovered teaching, which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed since. The day after I got home from Florida in 1978 was the day I started writing notes to myself about teaching. I wanted to communicate what I knew. But I had no teaching skills. It had been enough to learn for myself. But I couldn’t sit down with people and tell them in acceptable fashion what I was experiencing. What had happened was that I wasn’t questioning my emotions, the response I was getting from myself. And I only started putting it all together when others started questioning me. My experiences have made it possible for me to talk with people about their own tensions. But tension is unnecessary. Golf can be a pleasure.

Fortunately, I met a few people along the way who helped me see this. One fellow was Richard Lonetto, a sports psychologist at the University of Guelph. He had worked with other athletes on developing skills like balance and rhythm, and one day he took me out to Glen Abbey and had me play that round with my eyes closed. I was also hooked up to a heart monitor at the same time. That’s the day I shot 67 with my eyes closed on full swings. My heartbeat was so slow that I might have been meditating. Lonetto showed me that I didn’t need to see the ball as long as I had a pure form. Since that day I’ve done a lot of unsighted practice. It’s amazing how quickly you can learn if you’re in balance, and how much of a one-piece motion the swing really is. It’s further proof that golf is not a hand-eye game. The ball just sits there. If you set up in a correct starting position and connect it to the finishing position while using laws of motion effectively, you’ll contact the ball along the way.

This insight freed me. It really woke me up. I was amazed that I could make such a free swing without watching the ball. Here was a major clue: if we set up properly and simply made a motion to a target, then we didn’t have to think about the ball. We would repeat the motion every time. The ball would simply get in the way.

Golfers have accepted so much. And they tend to accept that golf can’t be natural. But you shouldn’t mess with Mother Nature. Letting nature work frees us to enjoy golf. The game can be good for us if we allow things to happen. It’s an entirely different experience from trying to make them happen. Once we understand the mechanics of the
natural swing motion, we can use the natural laws to our advantage. Then we can give up the controls. Then we can fly. Then we won’t tie ourselves in knots every time we contemplate a golf shot.

Balance is the underpinning of the natural swing motion. It’s the heart of my philosophy. I advocate a balanced, natural golf swing, one you can use for the rest of your life.

M
Y CONTENTION
is that golf is a target game. This means that the swing is a motion toward the target, not toward the ball. If it is a motion, it must conform to the laws of centrifugal force and inertia. We’ll consider these in detail in a moment. Right now, I’d like to give you an overall impression of the motion. As you read the following description, try to visualize and sense the motion.

The golf swing motion is a means of connecting a starting position to a finishing position, everything being set up and performed in balance throughout. This is a natural happening based on a logical sequence of events deriving from physical laws of centrifugal force and inertia, performed under the governance of balance. We move the mass – the hands, arms, and club – by moving the body. Power is transmitted through the body to the clubhead. The mass moves by weight transfer and rotation; we do nothing consciously with the hands, arms, and club. We assume a symmetrical starting form by distributing our weight evenly between the left foot and the right foot. We then transfer weight by moving to the right foot, while rotating around our trunk. We thereby control the motion by controlling the centre.

Footwork carries the club.

The swing motion is a transfer of weight performed in conjunction with a body turn. (We will discuss the motion in terms of the right-handed golfer.) Having completed the backs wing, or what I call the loading motion, we then transfer weight by moving to our left foot – as we do while walking – to begin the downswing, or unloading motion.

When we complete the loading motion, seventy-five per cent of our weight will be on our right foot. At the end of the motion, one hundred per cent of our weight will be on our left foot. All of our weight does not go to our right foot during the loading motion because the head, moving freely as we make no effort to keep it still, more or less faces the ball. During the unloading motion, though, the transfer of weight to the left foot and the move through the ball toward the target allows the head to face the target at the finish. We finish solidly on our left foot at natural height, with knees, hips, and shoulders facing the target and in immaculate balance.

It is important to emphasize that we do nothing consciously with the hands, wrists, and arms
during the motion. They merely extend symmetrically from the centre and move due to the body motion. Footwork carries the body. This promotes clubhead security and guarantees a constant blade angle throughout the swing. There’s no need to manipulate the clubhead. Proper footwork promotes a constant blade angle.

A proper starting form and a proper finishing form allow the momentum of the mass – the arms, hands, and golf club – to flow as it will during the swing. We pre-set in the starting form the circumstances that will enable us to make an uninterrupted motion toward a target. We take care of as much as possible by assuming a proper starting form. We want to give ourselves the best chance of making a pure motion.

If you start in a good position and you finish in a good position, not much can go wrong in between. That’s the beauty of the natural, relaxed golf swing that incorporates the laws of motion. That’s the beauty of balance.