My approach to learning the golf swing baffled my first real teacher, Ranger Rick Walker, because his instruction centered around his concept of “The Same.”  This principle offers numerous merits for average – perhaps most – golf students, because it not only promotes consistency and repeatability, (which could be argued is the entire purpose of golf), but it also allowed a skilled professional like Walker the opportunity to quickly analyze and debug swing problems in virtually a glance, as soon as he became familiar with a particular student’s tendencies.  In 1994, Rick would often admonish me with this phrase, when he saw me experimenting with a new backswing move, or a new address position, or some wacky new drill, and although I understood his sound reasoning in this matter, advice of this kind flew past my ears like a Gerald Ford tee-shot.  Not being intimately familiar with my “rebellious” personality, Walker didn’t comprehend that a principle like “The Same” was anathema to me in virtually every aspect of my being, with the possible exception of eating, bathroom visits, and, of course, paychecks.  In other words, an idea like “The Same” couldn’t have been further from my core than if it was spawned in the Kuiper Belt.

 

No, my angle on mastering the golf swing was acutely obtuse rather than “right,” and today I’m nearly prepared to call it a “theory.”  The scientific fields of Dynamics and Evolutionary Biology contain great examples that will support me on this controversial statement, namely the principles of Least Action and Natural Selection.  William Rowan Hamilton, among others, created a vastly useful mathematics demonstrating that a closed physical system will always arrive at a state displaying the least energy, and even more impressively, this technique is routinely employed by quantum physicists today to solve problems otherwise intractable.  Charles Darwin of course, discovered the principle which underlies all of biology, which states that only the fittest species survive in the competition for survival.  Both Hamilton and Darwin essentially proved that out of all possible combinations of “things,” only certain “things” can exist, and for damn good reasons.

 

Without really understanding either of these “things” very well, I nevertheless experimented with virtually every golf motion I could wrap my brain (and body) around, and over this 12 year “evolution” I believe I have arrived at a species of swing that is quite fit for playing quality golf, a swing that indeed requires the least energy to perform at the highest level I’m capable of.  Although my torturous path to Hogan Heaven (Nicklaus Nirvana?) is certainly not for everyone, if you’ve reached your retirement years and are still struggling to break 90, you may want to abandon “The Same” and try something a little different.

 

Thus, in the famous words of the great British golfer Monty Python, it’s time for “something completely different.”

 

Don’t laugh too hard, but Darwinian Evolution may also explain why you’re having so much trouble with your current golf swing.  It’s really not a wild guess on my part, because I’ve personally experienced the phenomenon I’m about to describe countless times during my own practice sessions.  I KNOW what I’m about to say is true, in other words, but you may think I’m only “monkeying around” at this late juncture in the essay.  I would never dream of doing that to a fellow hacker, but I must admit that this new hypothesis of mine humorously explains the common golfing phrase “banana slice.”

 

Here we go.  Monkeys live in trees, and humans evolved from monkeys.  When monkeys lose their balance, (and you need only watch The Discovery Channel for a week to see this perfectly natural occurrence, and witness one of our furry ancestors tumble to the ground from his jungle perch), what is their immediate, normal response?  Before they hit jungle floor, I mean?  THEY TIGHTEN THEIR GRIP on anything available, impulsively clenching their pre-human fingers firmly around nearby limbs or even leaves, in an effort to prevent falling.  You would do exactly the same thing, if a strong wind threatened to raise your insurance rates and knock you out of the tree you are pruning.  It’s a perfectly natural behavior, one that I claim originated in the tree-houses of our dim past.

 

How does this evolutionary artifact affect your modern golf swing?  Very badly, to put it mildly.  When a golfer loses his balance during the swing, his hands will naturally grip the club tighter, because losing balance means you are virtually FALLING down, if only for a brief instant before your brain (and hence body) can make a (largely unconscious) correction.  As any professional will tell you, a relaxed grip is one of the cornerstones of good golf.  More precisely, since grip pressure varies between golfers, a consistent grip pressure is the root fundamental to a consistent, balanced swing.  Oddly enough, a human golfer who loses balance is actually LESS FORTUNATE (!) than a monkey surrounded by tree limbs firmly connected to a rooted trunk, because obviously the golf club is not connected firmly to anything!  It makes a very poor safety harness.  So, when the unbalanced golfer clenches impulsively and grasps more tightly to the club handle, he essentially imitates Wile E. Coyote gripping a tiny umbrella in a hailstorm of boulders:  not much good is going to happen.  The golf club is literally floating in space, and unfortunately -- so are you.

 

Basically, when you suddenly grip the club tightly in the middle of your swing, in a futile attempt to restore balance, you LOCK UP your all-important wrist joints and forearms, thus losing several precious degrees of freedom, and changing the mechanics of your arm-action from the powerful double pendulum into an unbalanced and more rigid SINGLE pendulum, with altogether different dynamics.  In other words, you’re screwed, because the complete golf swing requires less than two seconds – those boulders are coming fast – and you don’t have the time to get back on track before impact.  Balance is CRUCIAL therefore, and developing good balance can take YEARS of hard practice… just ask The Flying Wallendas.  This is why golf is so damn difficult for the weekend player.

 

In summary, if you want to play better golf, you’d best stop monkeying around, and start working hard on your balance.