Searching For the True Golf Swing?
“The Truth Is Out There”
Fox Mulder
I am attempting to discover the true golf swing from Genesis to Revelation. The famous quote from Fox Mulder at the beginning of the fascinating television series “The X Files” says it all: “The truth is out there.”
The truth is out there, and as far as the golf swing is concerned I mean to find it! In my search for the “Holy Grail” of golf swings I need to look beyond the lure of golf with its fun in the sun mentality, beautiful golf courses, exotic locations , and fabulously high tech equipment such as fancy metal drivers with titanium shafts and clubheads the size of loaves of Wonder bread! I need to acquire a paradigm shift to what golf really is to me. It is a very difficult sport in which to learn and perform. But there is hope, the truth is out there!
Learning to play golf requires painstaking effort, insightful study, the patience of Job, and the ability to endure suffering. As M. Scott Peck puts it: taking the Road Less Travelled.
Innate or intrinsic (I love the word intrinsic) talent, normal health, and a fair amount of intelligence are also needed as well. Concerning the talent piece, while it certainly seems significant especiallywhen one wishes to advance to a professional degree of skill, I believe that an average person (like me) could improve with the right understanding and effort! Ben Hogan wrote in his book The Five Lessons: “The average golfer is entirely capable of building a repeating swing and breaking 80.”
Ben Hogan wasn’t blessed with an inordinate well of intrinsic talent yet as his biographers wrote over and over again “he dug it out of the dirt.”
Thus my mantra on my journey for the true golf swing will be “dig it out of the dirt, dig it out of the dirt, dig it out of the dirt!”
Golf instruction stripped down to its basics, especially instruction from a book, can be starkly serious pedagogy! Indeed the excitement and glamour of learning golf, the honeymoon if you will, can come to a crashing end at the first shank, skull, top or chilidip of a poorly struck golf ball! Then reality sets in!
Reality check! Learning the golf swing requires a pragmatic, often undramatic, approach to the aquisition of skill. No more honeymoon! To paraphrase the words of the theologian Rob Bell from his exhilariting book Velvet Elvis, we are always arriving. I’d like to apply that philosophy to my journey of learning the true golf swing!
