Searching for a Swing
- Alice Watson
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
The golf swing is a fickle thing.
One day it can be second nature, flowing like a well-oiled machine; other days it can be a frustrating mechanical battle with limbs that feel ungainly and uncoordinated.
It is an elusive and mercurial movement that can change, sometimes only by fractions, from one round to the next with extremely varying consequences for both our emotions and the direction of the golf ball.
It seems strange to think that as a junior golfer I grew up without any idea of what my swing looked like. A brief scroll through my camera roll today reveals a recording of my swing pretty much every week. But in the pre-smartphone era, filming yourself on the driving range or out on the course was a rare occurrence.
I am often curious about how I used to swing the club, particularly as my best round (a 5 under par 68 at my home club) was when I was 15 years old and I’ve never since managed to get close.
I am undoubtedly more consistent now than I was then but I wonder what the magic ingredients were that sent the ball sailing unwaveringly towards the pin for those magical 18 holes.
I do, however, recall my swing feeling from that summer’s day on June 13th, 2009 - simply a flick of the wrists on the takeaway to promote a steeper backswing, rather than letting the clubhead drag behind me too early which flattens the swing plane and causes me to get stuck.
And that was it. It worked wonders and the birdies sailed my way.
Interestingly, I had taken a bag of practice balls onto the 7th fairway the night before and fired a series of 8 irons into the green. Whether that evening practice as the light slowly faded made the difference I do not know, but it certainly grooved my swing ready for the next day’s competition.
Today, the two things that seem to put my swing in a sweet spot are firstly, chipping before the round. Whether this is a question of gaining better clubface awareness before the opening tee shot, finding a good tempo, or fine-tuning my angle of attack, I can't say, but it does usually help. The second thing is watching footage of swings I like before heading out to play and attempting to emulate them in my mind's eye. These might be my own swings from a few months or even a few years ago, but more often than not consist of the buttery movements of Nelly Korda and Rory McIlroy - my two swing idols from the professional tours.
The beauty of smartphones being a ubiquitous part of everyday life is that we can find endless reels of our heroes swinging the club majestically and try to take inspiration from their boundless talent. This can sometimes be the straightforward catalyst to ‘a great swing day’, but the risk is that it can just as easily lead to a jam-packed and jumbled mind (not to mention a social media time warp where 20 minutes can elapse in what feels like no more than 5…).
Juniors growing up today are undoubtedly at an advantage when it comes to swing awareness, but I also think there are dangers in over-filming and over-analysing at a time when you’re learning to play and love the game, and your body is changing at such a fast rate. A little part of me sinks inside when I hear well-known coaches of rising stars talk about P1 through to P8 (for the fortunately uninitiated, a shorthand for different technical positions throughout the swing). Yes, there are fundamentals that every golfer should try to replicate but how do you achieve flow and rhythm and power when you’re trying to hit clock-like checkpoints on the way back and through?
I was recently reading The Marvellous Mania (2007), a collection of Alistair Cooke’s musings on golf. The eminent writer and broadcaster behind the BBC’s Letters from America only found the sport in his mid-50s, but he quickly became fascinated with the intricacies of the game. In Chapter 18 on Jack Nicklaus - fittingly, an 18-time major winner who is widely regarded as one of the greatest male players of all time - he cites a memorable quotation from the man himself:
“‘The golf swing for me,’ Nicklaus told Herbert Warren Wind, who has written the best golfing biography that has appeared so far, ‘is a source of never-ending fascination. On the one hand, the swings of all the outstanding golfers are decidedly individual but, on the other, the champions all execute approximately the same moves at the critical stages of the swing… there is still a lot about the swing we don’t know about and probably never will… in any event, scarcely a day goes by when I don’t find myself thinking about it’” (p.95).
This strikes at the heart of the mystery surrounding the golf swing and the endless quest for mastery of it: namely, that there are so many ways to move the club and produce desired shot shapes that, for the hopelessly devoted among us, our attempts to conquer it are a constant, omnipresent thought.
This might sound deranged to the non-golfer who thinks we leave our games at the course or even the lucky golfer whose swing comes easily and naturally to them most times they step foot on the fairways. But as a self-confessed addict, I can admit that there isn’t a single day that goes by when I don’t think about my golf swing.
You may have seen the memes, which are usually of men it has to be said, rehearsing a specific part of their swing while travelling on the tube, waiting by the water cooler in the office or passing time during a TV ad break. These are the warning signs of a true golf devotee, someone whose consciousness is totally consumed by what Jack Nicklaus describes above.
Bryson DeChambeau, the 2-time US Open champion who has become symbolic of the modern-day pursuit of faster swing speeds and longer distances, is famous for his marathon-long range sessions in which he tries desperately to find that intangible ‘something’ in his game. His straight armed, single plane action with the same length clubs right the way through the bag is unconventional but unquestionably successful and he often cites Homer Kelly's (1969) The Golfing Machine as the instructional inspiration behind his unorthodox swing.
Adam Scott, the softly-spoken Australian with a Masters victory to his name, is praised for having one of the silkiest swings on the planet and it was interesting to hear him reflect recently in an edition of The Golfer’s Journal podcast that he takes inspiration from the 7-time major winning South Korean, Imbee Park, who has a remarkably slow and melodic tempo on the LPGA Tour.
By contrast, Charley Hull, the English professional star from Kettering, has an incredibly powerful but well-balanced swing, with the club reaching parallel at the top and then firing aggressively through impact. Such is the speed she generates that the shaft of the club slams into the back of her neck on finishing and there is no question that she takes a leaf out of John Daley and Laura Davies’ books in encouraging golfers to hit it hard first and foremost.
And finally, the US standout star Nelly Korda with 2 major victories to date - and who I mentioned earlier for her elevated place in my own Hall-of-Fame - has one of the most aesthetically pleasing swings in all of golf. A swing so good it looks simple and effortless, and hits all the classical 'textbook' positions. The drill I often see her doing is putting a second ball behind the one she’s hitting and slowly propelling it backwards with the blade of the club; a rehearsal that fosters a smooth, on-plane takeaway.
What this serves to illustrate is that whether you’re at the height of your professional powers or just taking up golf as an amateur, the search for the perfect swing is a limitless, life-long pursuit.
There is no worse feeling than standing over the golf ball and having a million and one thoughts running through your head. Equally agonising is watching your playing partner’s tormented hesitancy, knowing full well that they’re cycling through a list of tips from their previous lesson. ‘Stand up tall, stay centered, don’t take the club back too far inside, ensure the shaft doesn’t cross the line at the top, let the clubhead fall with gravity, keep the face square through impact, clear your hips so your hands don’t take over, swing towards the target line, oh and hold a nice balanced finishing position…’
With that, I’ll leave you with some famous reflections on the golf swing from some of the best to ever play or write about the game - in the hope that they work their special magic when you next walk onto the tee...
“You swing your best when you have the fewest things to think about” - Bobby Jones
“There are no absolutes in golf. Golf is such an individual game, and no two people swing alike” - Kathy Whitworth
“Reverse every natural instinct and do the opposite of what you are inclined to do, and you will probably come very close to having a perfect golf swing” - Ben Hogan
"It's not enough just to swing at the ball; you have to loosen your girdle and really let the ball have it” - Babe Didrickson Zaharias
“The golf swing is like a suitcase into which we are trying to pack one too many things” - John Updike
“Golf is 10% technique and 90% mental” - Annika Sorenstam
“Tempo is the glue that sticks all elements of the swing together” - Nick Faldo
“When the putts go in it frees up your swing” - Karrie Webb
"Swing easy to hit hard" - Ernie Els
“As far as swing and techniques are concerned, I don't know diddly squat. When I'm playing well, I don't even take aim” - Fred Couples
