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Opinion & Analysis

The problem with golf instruction books

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“When I came to this seminar, I was confused. I’m still confused but on a higher level.”  Enrico Fermi

I have worked with many great teachers in my life; men and women who really understood the nuts and bolts of teaching golf. Together we learned to correct golf swing errors. We learned that every golfer was unique, with their own personal learning style, swing problems, physique and habits. We understood there is no one way to play golf, and the more we allowed for individual differences, the more effective we were in helping them.

But the field of golf instruction is not unlike the academic profession, where the motto is and always has been “publish or perish.” Teachers feel the need to write a book, publish a video, or somehow get their message out to their devotees to be successful or to reap some gain, financial or otherwise. The result of this is often a deviation from their original approach to teaching. Authors choose a title, let’s say How to Swing or How to Set Up, and they set about expressing their belief in the best way to go about that task. When the same teachers are on the lesson tee, however, they’re dealing with a variety of ways to swing or set up, all based on the needs of the individual in front of them. And I think this problem is exasperated when the authors are former players, who are suggesting things almost entirely based how they achieved success at golf.

This is when instruction books and tapes are at their most vulnerable and, in my opinion, are least helpful.

Let me cite one very well-known example to make my point. There is perhaps no more famous illustration in golf books than Anthony Ravelli’s wonderful drawing of Ben Hogan’s grip. There is one very big problem with that picture, however. While Hogan’s hands are positioned perfectly for his swing, they demonstrate a position that may be too much to the left (weak) for many golfers. That grip can be very effective for those who fight a hook, perhaps 15 percent of the people who play golf. And of course, it is the way Mr. Hogan learned to hold the club to offset his own tendency to hook the golf ball early in his career. But the vast majority of golfers may very well slice from that “weaker” grip.

Ben Hogan was perhaps the finest striker of a golf ball who ever lived, very few people in our game would take issue with that at all, but by advocating his personal preference he is not taking into account many of the people who, of course, do not have his talent, his swing plane, his lag, his ball position and so on. And, what’s even more harmful is this: because the great man said it, it became the bible for many readers.

Alex Morrison said golf is a left-sided game, but Ben Hogan said he wished he had three right hands. Ernest Jones said swing the clubhead, but Eddie Merins said swing the handle. Jimmy Ballard teaches moving off the ball, but Andy Bennet wants you to stay on the ball. John Redman suggested a strong grip, but Tommy Armour a weaker one. On and on, ad infinitum… but here’s the catch. I’m willing to bet that every one of those great teachers would make exceptions based on the student that was in front of them on the range. That’s because in golf instruction, there is nothing that’s for everybody.

Some instruction manuals are decidedly more “choice” in their approach. Jim Hardy has always taken the more alternative approach in his work. “The Plane Truth,” criticized by some for taking an only-two-ways-to-swing approach, still offers a choice. In it, Hardy explains that IF you swing one way, THEN you should do this to to complement it.

John Jacobs wrote the seminal work on this subject in his book “Practical Golf” many years ago. Although science has gone on to disprove some of the findings in the book (the initial direction of the golf ball is NOT the result of the path of the golf club, for example), the information is still invaluable from an alternative approach to swinging the club.

If you are attempting to learn to swing from a method-oriented book, you must be very careful to get the whole picture before attempting to incorporate the method into your golf swing. This is one of the most common reasons I see players get stuck in the mud in their improvement. If you are reading a certain book and NOT getting anywhere, there is one of two reasons: the book is spewing misinformation OR you are not doing ALL the book suggests.

When the teacher becomes an author, he or she is entering another realm; an area often removed from the craft of teaching people to play golf and into an area of teaching golf. There is a quantitative difference between the two. Myself and many teachers like me teach people to play golf; we do not teach golf. If you read through my writings on GolfWRX or anywhere, really, they are always written in an if-then format. If you tend to do this, THEN try this… there is no other effective way, at least none that I’m aware of. And if anyone knows of one, I’d be happy to hear it.

Those of us who dare to teach must remain students of our individual disciplines, and our continuing education needs to be shared on a case-by-case basis. Offering universal prescriptions for individual problems is a dead end in my work, and unfortunately many golf instruction manuals are written in this way.

I have an online swing analysis program that many GolfWRXers have tried and enjoyed. If you’d like a diagnosis an explanation of exactly what you’re doing, click here for more info, or contact me on Facebook.

Dennis Clark is a PGA Master Professional. Clark has taught the game of golf for more than 30 years to golfers all across the country, and is recognized as one of the leading teachers in the country by all the major golf publications. He is also is a seven-time PGA award winner who has earned the following distinctions: -- Teacher of the Year, Philadelphia Section PGA -- Teacher of the Year, Golfers Journal -- Top Teacher in Pennsylvania, Golf Magazine -- Top Teacher in Mid Atlantic Region, Golf Digest -- Earned PGA Advanced Specialty certification in Teaching/Coaching Golf -- Achieved Master Professional Status (held by less than 2 percent of PGA members) -- PGA Merchandiser of the Year, Tri State Section PGA -- Golf Professional of the Year, Tri State Section PGA -- Presidents Plaque Award for Promotion and Growth of the Game of Golf -- Junior Golf Leader, Tri State section PGA -- Served on Tri State PGA Board of Directors. Clark is also former Director of Golf and Instruction at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort. Dennis now teaches at Bobby Clampett's Impact Zone Golf Indoor Performance Center in Naples, FL. .

37 Comments

37 Comments

  1. stephenf

    Feb 16, 2017 at 11:25 am

    “Exacerbated,” not “exasperated.”

    Anyway…of course your idea is basically right. It’s hard to write an instructional book that allows for different inclinations and different habits a student might bring, but some have done better than others. Even with the best, though, it gets really difficult not to end up trying to cover all possibilities, so that the book becomes encyclopedic and (sometimes) overwhelming. Leadbetter’s stuff has been criticized for this, but the truth is that any individual player who goes to take a lesson with Leadbetter is going to get a couple of critical things to work on that will probably improve his game, not the whole range of possibilities, as ends up happening so often in a book.

    I think this is why some of the best instruction books are often those that limit themselves to a specific approach or a specific problem. One that comes immediately to mind is Peter Kostis’ _The Inside Path to Better Golf_, which to me is the best almost-completely-unknown golf instructional book of all time. When I was teaching I almost never found a player who wasn’t, or wouldn’t have been, helped tremendously by both the concepts and the drills. Kostis (this is back when he was working with the Golf Digest schools, before he was a TV commentator and ended up glurging a variety of contradictory instructional approaches into one big ball) advances the specific and relatively limited idea that most amateurs do things in their swing that get them outside and steep on the downswing, and it kills their games, so the aim of instruction ought to be an inside and shallow approach to the ball, with a free and full release. Anything that helps that is good, and anything that hurts it is bad. That’s the simple mode of the book. He addresses the elements that contribute and those that impede, and he has the student go through organized stages of development, starting with the release of the clubhead from the hands, then adding the rotation of the arms that supports and adds to that release, then the movement of the trunk and legs that supports and enables the swinging elements (hands-arms-club), then the timing that makes it work.

    In fact, the principles from that book (I had a live teacher who recommended it, actually) were what got me from being a sort of scrambling scratch-to-two-or-three handicapper — and I wouldn’t have been anywhere near scratch if I hadn’t had a ridiculously good short game (out of desperation and need, actually) — to a plus-2 and beyond (better than that when I was playing as a pro) who could actually, and finally, strike the ball as well as the other good players I was playing against, which had never been the case before.

    It’s true that any approach like this is overdoable, and eventually you might have to do things to moderate the degree of the inside path and so forth (Kostis covers that possibility briefly at points, but doesn’t let it sidetrack him), and that in fact is what happens with a lot of pros and explains why what works for them at an advanced stage in their development might be literally the opposite of what works for a 12-handicapper. A pro who has already trained himself to swing the club from the inside with an emphatic and free release of the clubhead might need some adjustments that keep him from turning a draw into a hook or from getting so shallow the ground gets in the way (Haney had to cover that with O’Meara at one point, in fact), but almost any amateur who does the same things that pro does to address the opposite problem from what the amateur has is going to be driving the wrong way down a one-way street. (In my specific case, I _never_ had to stop working on shallow-and-inside, and still am to this day, probably because of basic physical characteristics — 6’3″, long arms and legs, etc. — and various natural inclinations. Some people will, some won’t.)

    Anyway…that’s just one example of a book that avoids the “encyclopedia of everything” approach, instead preferring to focus on a specific solvable problem, in my opinion to great — and very underrated — effect.

    Of course, you can be a true genius and write the kinds of books John Jacobs did, too, which manage to boil down a range of possibilities into simple explanations and conditional statements without being confusing or overwhelming at all.

    • stephenf

      Feb 16, 2017 at 11:30 am

      Sorry, have no idea why hitting the enter key twice doesn’t space paragraphs apart.

      Also a good example of a “limited and specific focus” book: Ernest Jones and his ideas about swinging versus levering. Or Eddie Merrins and “swing the handle, not the clubhead.” Ironically, both were talking about essentially the same thing, even though they put it in superficially contradictory terms — Jones advising to swing the clubhead, Merrins to avoid swinging the clubhead. If you read the substance of both, though, you’ll find that by “swinging the handle, not the clubhead,” Merrins is talking about avoiding a throw of the clubhead with a levering action, while Jones is talking about a true swinging motion that ends at the clubhead.

      • stephenf

        Feb 16, 2017 at 11:32 am

        Also, of course it’s a good point about Hogan, corroborated by others. I forget who it was who said Hogan’s book should’ve been retitled “How not to Duck-Hook, by Ben Hogan.”

    • stephenf

      Feb 16, 2017 at 11:40 am

      As for Jim Hardy, he’s a smart guy who has had a good influence on some teachers (notably Hank Haney) and says a lot of true things, but the basis of his “two categories, 1P and 2P” idea is really flawed. Almost every tour pro and every great player in history, including the ones 1P devotees cite as being 1Pers, actually swings the club on two planes to some extent. Really it’s a matter of a continuum. If you’re exactly perpendicular to your spine angle and exactly across your shoulder line (assuming it’s also perpendicular) at the top, it’s true that you can do certain things and emphasize certain actions more than somebody who is dramatically off perpendicular. But the truth is that very close to 100% of good players are off perpendicular to some extent. It’s a matter of _how_ much they vary from perpendicular, and what they do to accommodate that. It’s also true that forcing a swing into that exact-perpendicular configuration isn’t possible for most players without creating a list of other necessary compensations or problems.

      It’s a good example of a theory that is oversimplified (in posing a bright line between the “two types of swing”), and yet a theory that has helped some players and is useful in certain ways.

    • John Mule'

      Aug 1, 2023 at 8:08 am

      I’ve been playing the game for decades – have read hundreds of instructionals – and taken lessons/advice from known teaching professionals but this is the single best, most helpful series of comments on the golf swing I’ve ever encountered. Only wish I’d have met someone with your insight and expertise much earlier in my development as a player. By the way, the Kostis book is brilliant. I now recommend it to many who want to improve (though I do get funny looks when recommending a 40+ year old golf book to them…).

  2. baudi

    Oct 25, 2016 at 4:36 am

    Nice article! What I like is the reasoning behind your thinking. Following ideas may/will lead to situations where the player gets stuck with his game. To solve this problem there are many possibilities but not any solution fits in as a solution. It takes hard work and a holistic view to get back on track. To get a holistic view on a swing expanding knowledge of certain types of swings is useful. Hence a lot of golf books to be studied.

    However, the chosen examples of Hogan and Jacobs do not make your point. My study of golf books lead to the following futile remarks.

    The grip as demonstrated by Hogan/Ravielli/Wind is not just a picture. It is explained, demonstrated in a full chapter of 19 pages! There is a complete and very consistent motivation behind it. Pages 67 and 102 will contain vital information related back to this chapter. These are the very best pages I’ve ever read on gripping the club.

    Concerning John Jacobs: you write the initial direction of the golf ball is NOT the result of the path of the golf club.
    There is no such claim in Practical Golf. Jacobs’ description and drawings of balllfight/impact geometry are very precise and clear. In the introduction he states : the direction in which the clubface looks is the most important of the four impact elements that determine the behavior of every shot you hit. In the early 70’s Jacobs was not aware of Jorgensens D-PLane but I am sure Jacobs’ would have acknowledged his ideas.

  3. Steven

    Oct 20, 2016 at 1:16 pm

    Great Article Dennis. I 100% agree. A major problem is that most amateurs don’t have the time to ingrain the entirety of a “method”. Many golfers will also give up when getting the full method doesn’t happen quickly. I believe it is much better to work with the good parts of a swing that is natural for the person and then make adjustments for consistency, etc.

    The classic example for a non-traditional swing is Jim Furyk, but you can also look to Dustin Johnson. His bowed wrist and closed clubface at the top are not advised, but he clears his hips fast and gets the face square when it matters. Jordan Spieth has a modified chicken wing finish. No one is the Iron Byron, so we all need something that works with our natural tendencies. The smaller the adjustments to our natural swing, the easier it is to take to the course.

    Keep up the good work Dennis.

  4. Bilo

    Oct 20, 2016 at 6:44 am

    Hogan 5 lessons and Stan Utley was all I needed to become scratch. Reading is fundamental!

  5. Riggie

    Oct 19, 2016 at 7:35 pm

    Many, like me, start with one or two golf instruction books, do not like what they read and end up buying more and more till the golf books are not really teaching nothing but becoming a hobby collecting golf books…my reason trying to find the same ideas in two different books…while after about 60 instruction books I gave up….no two teachers seem to highlight the same principal ( I even have 3 different versions of the Moe Norman single plane SIMPLE single plane swing). Just go to the driving range and find a way to take the club back and bring it back so club face points where you want to hit the ball..once you can hit it where you can find it you can figure out how to hit it higher, lower, farther.. or better yet one you can hit it “more or less” toward the green go and practice putting for hours and hours..that will lower your score..

  6. Grizz01

    Oct 19, 2016 at 3:58 pm

    Periodicals are pretty much useless as well. Once you have 6 months worth they just start to repeat themselves. Seriously, this is not rocket science. Very few things are new to golf/golf swing for the last 40 years. In fact I think most average golfers are dying from information overload. Just hit the ball.

  7. Stevo

    Oct 19, 2016 at 12:17 pm

    I have bought many instruction books (Nicklaus, Leadbetter, Watson, etc.). I agree that each one taught something different and were generally not much help.

    I have gone thru 5 instructors (multiple lessons from some) who said I had a decent swing, but never really offered anything different to try. Of course, as often happens, I hit the ball pretty well when I was with them. But on the course, I never knew where the ball was going, usually not where I wanted it to. Scared of the hook, so I might over-compensate with a slice, and then vice versa. I tried every kind of swing change (including some useful info from Martin Hall on GC), but never found the magic elixer.

    Ready to give up the game at 69, I recently decided to go back to the beginning, the grip. I felt I was all over the place at the top. I dug out my Ben Hogan Five Lessons, and used his grip concept. Wow, for the last 4 rounds I have been hitting them where I am aiming. I rarely lose a ball, whereas I could lose 10 a round before. Looking forward to practicing and using Ben’s concepts, recommend you at least give it a try.

  8. ooffa

    Oct 19, 2016 at 9:14 am

    I would much rather read and study a book then work with a golf instructor.

  9. dapadre

    Oct 19, 2016 at 6:18 am

    Great article as always Dennis and so very true! I was having this sort of conversation in the clubhouse the other day. Since every individual is so unique (long arms , short arms, flexibility levels, eye dominance etc etc) there is not perfect swing for everyone. I love BH 5 fundamentals an he was without doubt one of the greatest ball strikers BUT………….He fought a hook so his whole mind set was avoiding that left side. He set up pretty closed on his mid to long irons/woods, Trevino on the other hand setup crazy open with a strong grip in a time mind you they said with strong grip you couldnt win. Scott Percy uses a baseball grip, Steve Jones used a reverse overlap to win the 1996 US Open. I could go on and on. I believe you need to find that which works for you as it revolves around you based on sound golf basics. At the end of the day, im a firm believer that IMPACT (ZONE) is everything. Take all swings and see the impact position……..the same.

  10. Mat

    Oct 19, 2016 at 6:16 am

    I guess that’s why Bobby Clampett’s stuff resonates with me. In a lot of ways, he isn’t teaching the “swing”, rather he’s focusing on making sure the student understands what the club head is supposed to do *at impact*. It’s something that 95% of players don’t fully grasp to a material level. You don’t have to know trackman stuff, but you do have to understand “compression” / the feel of proper impact, how your path affects it, and how to achieve it within your body’s abilities.

    I’ve read many how-to-swing books, and most demonstrate what works for them, or a “majority”, or whatever. Perfect detail. But when a player reads it with a terrible idea of how to hit a ball, it engrains the wrong thing. It makes you better at hitting a bad shot!

  11. Tim

    Oct 19, 2016 at 12:54 am

    Dennis, I get what you are saying, but don’t you agree that, ideally, biomechanics and physics would create swings that look very similar among golfers without viable physical handicaps or serious mobility issues? Other than small variances, we are all made the same with muscles that contract the same way and we all work within the limitations of the laws of physics. My point being that there should be and is a “best” way to swing that works within these scientific laws. This would give everyone the highest odds of making a repeatable swing that creates the greatest accuracy and distance possible given your physical make-up. I get that there are thousands of ways to play golf well. Hopefully I have made it somewhat clear that scientifically there should be a best way to swing that could be applied to the masses because of our shared, slightly varied, biological factors and the laws of physics that we are forced to operate in.

    • Dennis Clark

      Oct 19, 2016 at 3:43 pm

      Tim, I agree to this extent: Biomechanics and the resulting physics of ball flight are universal but the programming of those motions is individual. In my experience as a teacher, i have observed that the neurons activated to direct the physical motions are highly individualistic. Everybody I teach internalizes the result of an unwanted outcome differently. To some it is an abject failure and to others a learning opportunity. Therefore they will DIRECT their body to activate a quite different set of motions. Yes these too have existential limits as you noted, but if we, as teachers, disregard the mind’s effect on HOW to program muscle, tendon, skeletal movement, we are removing the “human element”, as Homer Kelly said. I have learned not to take that risk. That is what I meant by teaching people to play golf, not teaching golf. If I isolate the instruction to simply the motions and not the person, I’m on shaky ground…brain dead people unfortunately do not move. The uniqueness to which the article makes reference, is more neuroscientific than scientific, I suppose. I wonder if Jim Furyk learned to program his muscles to first lift the club straight up, OR did he first learn to drop it way behind him? It really doesn’t matter, does it? Thoughts? Thx

    • Bob Pegram

      Oct 20, 2016 at 2:39 am

      Tim –
      You are not considering that people learn physical performance habits from other sports or even other physical tasks before they ever get serious about golf. Those physical performance habits become second nature and are often difficult or impossible to get rid of when learning the golf swing. They affect what methods work. Sometimes only unorthodox methods work.
      There are also physical variations that greatly affect a golf swing. For example, there is no way a golfer on the loose-jointed end of the spectrum can swing the same as a golfer with very little flexibility. Their ranges of motion are extremely different, therefore their methods of swinging a golf club have to be different to be successful.
      Arnold Palmer learned to slash at the ball when he was very young. Even though, when he was middle aged, he could swing smoothly and gracefully when relaxed, as soon as it counted, the slashing swing overwhelmed any other type of swing he knew how to perform.
      We all have tendencies like that and so there will never be a standard swing for successful golfers. We all have to adapt our swings to our physical quirks.

      • Dennis Clark

        Oct 20, 2016 at 4:02 pm

        True Bob. Many boys for example start with baseball; the biggest habit learned at a young age is “step into the pitch’. This “habit” often equates to what Brian Manzella calls “handle dragging” and…of course slicing!

  12. Rmauritz

    Oct 18, 2016 at 9:23 pm

    Faldo’s A Swing For Life is the best golf instruction book I have read.

  13. Pingback: The problem with golf instruction books | Swing Update

  14. Tom Stickney

    Oct 18, 2016 at 6:10 pm

    Great article Dennis

  15. Tom

    Oct 18, 2016 at 4:40 pm

    Swing the club head through the sweet spot with a square (ish) face and a straight (ish) path at a high rate of speed.

  16. Mike

    Oct 18, 2016 at 4:11 pm

    So do you think the BioSwing guys are closer to getting it right describing various difference characteristics and coming up with screening tests to see where players fit?

    This is not a pitch or a b*%#& about BioSwing either. I know little about it.

  17. farmer

    Oct 18, 2016 at 2:53 pm

    The biggest problem is that feel is not real. What you think you are doing is not necessarily what you are doing. If you could video your swing and play it back on a life sized screen, you would see what an instructor sees, at least to scale. It is unlikely that a hdcp player could accurately identify where they go off the track, and even less likely that they could identify the cause.

    • Philip

      Oct 18, 2016 at 4:48 pm

      Except even video is not necessary “real” – I can change how a swing looks by changing the angles used to take the video, or lens/camera combination, or f-stop. I think one just needs to use consistent perspective when evaluating their swing and understand how to compare it to anyone else if they want to. I used to think my swing was really flat and that I had very little back swing because I was viewing it by turning my head versus from a mirror in front of me.

      • Dennis Clark

        Oct 18, 2016 at 6:40 pm

        True Phil. moving the camera even a few inched can make a difference. Radar better but 3-D Best! Look into GEARS eval, it’s well worth it!

    • Dennis Clark

      Oct 18, 2016 at 6:44 pm

      Feel and real are not only NOT the same thing, in golf, they are not even close!

  18. James Lahey

    Oct 18, 2016 at 2:12 pm

    Nice article.

    To me this underlies the importance of taking from a variety of sources. That way, any one teacher’s bias will be balanced out–not all that different in how we build our life values and philosophy. Just another way our the path through our golf lives mimics our real lives.

    ~JL

    • Dennis Clark

      Oct 18, 2016 at 6:38 pm

      True JL, golf is a microcosm of life. Have you read “Golf in the Kingdom”?

    • Dennis Clark

      Oct 18, 2016 at 8:36 pm

      Old Percy, turn-in-a-barrel, Boomer…Great contributor in early days of golf.

      • Greg V

        Oct 19, 2016 at 8:07 am

        Dennis,

        I think that “turn in a barrel” is an over simplification of Boomer’s concept. What is lost in that, is that Boomer wanted the hips to turn “high”; if they sink, they can get stuck in the barrel – which can happen when the legs flex too much, or when the spine angle is lost.

  19. Bobalu

    Oct 18, 2016 at 11:49 am

    Spot on article!

  20. Greg V

    Oct 18, 2016 at 10:58 am

    Excellent article.

    This is precisely why I love to read, and re-read Percy Boomer’s book “On Learning Golf.” It is precisely because Boomer taught by feels, and not by “do it this way.”

    Fortunately for me, Boomer’s “feels” are still relevant today: the braces, the feeling of keeping the hips and shoulders “up” but the arms “down” and others.

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Opinion & Analysis

The 2 primary challenges golf equipment companies face

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As the editor-in-chief of this website and an observer of the GolfWRX forums and other online golf equipment discourse for over a decade, I’m pretty well attuned to the grunts and grumbles of a significant portion of the golf equipment purchasing spectrum. And before you accuse me of lording above all in some digital ivory tower, I’d like to offer that I worked at golf courses (public and private) for years prior to picking up my pen, so I’m well-versed in the non-degenerate golf equipment consumers out there. I touched (green)grass (retail)!

Complaints about the ills of and related to the OEMs usually follow some version of: Product cycles are too short for real innovation, tour equipment isn’t the same as retail (which is largely not true, by the way), too much is invested in marketing and not enough in R&D, top staffer X hasn’t even put the new driver in play, so it’s obviously not superior to the previous generation, prices are too high, and on and on.

Without digging into the merits of any of these claims, which I believe are mostly red herrings, I’d like to bring into view of our rangefinder what I believe to be the two primary difficulties golf equipment companies face.

One: As Terry Koehler, back when he was the CEO of Ben Hogan, told me at the time of the Ft Worth irons launch, if you can’t regularly hit the golf ball in a coin-sized area in the middle of the face, there’s not a ton that iron technology can do for you. Now, this is less true now with respect to irons than when he said it, and is less and less true by degrees as the clubs get larger (utilities, fairways, hybrids, drivers), but there remains a great deal of golf equipment truth in that statement. Think about it — which is to say, in TL;DR fashion, get lessons from a qualified instructor who will teach you about the fundamentals of repeatable impact and how the golf swing works, not just offer band-aid fixes. If you can’t repeatably deliver the golf club to the golf ball in something resembling the manner it was designed for, how can you expect to be getting the most out of the club — put another way, the maximum value from your investment?

Similarly, game improvement equipment can only improve your game if you game it. In other words, get fit for the clubs you ought to be playing rather than filling the bag with the ones you wish you could hit or used to be able to hit. Of course, don’t do this if you don’t care about performance and just want to hit a forged blade while playing off an 18 handicap. That’s absolutely fine. There were plenty of members in clubs back in the day playing Hogan Apex or Mizuno MP-32 irons who had no business doing so from a ballstriking standpoint, but they enjoyed their look, feel, and complementary qualities to their Gatsby hats and cashmere sweaters. Do what brings you a measure of joy in this maddening game.

Now, the second issue. This is not a plea for non-conforming equipment; rather, it is a statement of fact. USGA/R&A limits on every facet of golf equipment are detrimental to golf equipment manufacturers. Sure, you know this, but do you think about it as it applies to almost every element of equipment? A 500cc driver would be inherently more forgiving than a 460cc, as one with a COR measurement in excess of 0.83. 50-inch shafts. Box grooves. And on and on.

Would fewer regulations be objectively bad for the game? Would this erode its soul? Fortunately, that’s beside the point of this exercise, which is merely to point out the facts. The fact, in this case, is that equipment restrictions and regulations are the slaughterbench of an abundance of innovation in the golf equipment space. Is this for the best? Well, now I’ve asked the question twice and might as well give a partial response, I guess my answer to that would be, “It depends on what type of golf you’re playing and who you’re playing it with.”

For my part, I don’t mind embarrassing myself with vintage blades and persimmons chasing after the quasi-spiritual elevation of a well-struck shot, but that’s just me. Plenty of folks don’t give a damn if their grooves are conforming. Plenty of folks think the folks in Liberty Corner ought to add a prison to the museum for such offences. And those are just a few of the considerations for the amateur game — which doesn’t get inside the gallery ropes of the pro game…

Different strokes in the game of golf, in my humble opinion.

Anyway, I believe equipment company engineers are genuinely trying to build better equipment year over year. The marketing departments are trying to find ways to make this equipment appeal to the broadest segment of the golf market possible. All of this against (1) the backdrop of — at least for now — firm product cycles. And golfers who, with their ~15 average handicap (men), for the most part, are not striping the golf ball like Tiger in his prime and seem to have less and less time year over year to practice and improve. (2) Regulations that massively restrict what they’re able to do…

That’s the landscape as I see it and the real headwinds for golf equipment companies. No doubt, there’s more I haven’t considered, but I think the previous is a better — and better faith — point of departure when formulating any serious commentary on the golf equipment world than some of the more cynical and conspiratorial takes I hear.

Agree? Disagree? Think I’m worthy of an Adam Hadwin-esque security guard tackle? Let me know in the comments.

@golfoncbs The infamous Adam Hadwin tackle ? #golf #fyp #canada #pgatour #adamhadwin ? Ghibli-style nostalgic waltz – MaSssuguMusic

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Podcasts

Fore Love of Golf: Introducing a new club concept

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Episode #16 brings us Cliff McKinney. Cliff is the founder of Old Charlie Golf Club, a new club, and concept, to be built in the Florida panhandle. The model is quite interesting and aims to make great, private golf more affordable. We hope you enjoy the show!

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Opinion & Analysis

On Scottie Scheffler wondering ‘What’s the point of winning?’

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Last week, I came across a reel from BBC Sport on Instagram featuring Scottie Scheffler speaking to the media ahead of The Open at Royal Portrush. In it, he shared that he often wonders what the point is of wanting to win tournaments so badly — especially when he knows, deep down, that it doesn’t lead to a truly fulfilling life.

 

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“Is it great to be able to win tournaments and to accomplish the things I have in the game of golf? Yeah, it brings tears to my eyes just to think about it because I’ve literally worked my entire life to be good at this sport,” Scheffler said. “To have that kind of sense of accomplishment, I think, is a pretty cool feeling. To get to live out your dreams is very special, but at the end of the day, I’m not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I’m not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world, because what’s the point?”

Ironically — or perhaps perfectly — he went on to win the claret jug.

That question — what’s the point of winning? — cuts straight to the heart of the human journey.

As someone who’s spent over two decades in the trenches of professional golf, and in deep study of the mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the game, I see Scottie’s inner conflict as a sign of soul evolution in motion.

I came to golf late. I wasn’t a junior standout or college All-American. At 27, I left a steady corporate job to see if I could be on the PGA Tour starting as a 14-handicap, average-length hitter. Over the years, my journey has been defined less by trophies and more by the relentless effort to navigate the deeply inequitable and gated system of professional golf — an effort that ultimately turned inward and helped me evolve as both a golfer and a person.

One perspective that helped me make sense of this inner dissonance around competition and our culture’s tendency to overvalue winning is the idea of soul evolution.

The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies has done extensive research on reincarnation, and Netflix’s Surviving Death (Episode 6) explores the topic, too. Whether you take it literally or metaphorically, the idea that we’re on a long arc of growth — from beginner to sage elder — offers a profound perspective.

If you accept the premise literally, then terms like “young soul” and “old soul” start to hold meaning. However, even if we set the word “soul” aside, it’s easy to see that different levels of life experience produce different worldviews.

Newer souls — or people in earlier stages of their development — may be curious and kind but still lack discernment or depth. There is a naivety, and they don’t yet question as deeply, tending to see things in black and white, partly because certainty feels safer than confronting the unknown.

As we gain more experience, we begin to experiment. We test limits. We chase extreme external goals — sometimes at the expense of health, relationships, or inner peace — still operating from hunger, ambition, and the fragility of the ego.

It’s a necessary stage, but often a turbulent and unfulfilling one.

David Duval fell off the map after reaching World No. 1. Bubba Watson had his own “Is this it?” moment with his caddie, Ted Scott, after winning the Masters.

In Aaron Rodgers: Enigma, reflecting on his 2011 Super Bowl win, Rodgers said:

“Now I’ve accomplished the only thing that I really, really wanted to do in my life. Now what? I was like, ‘Did I aim at the wrong thing? Did I spend too much time thinking about stuff that ultimately doesn’t give you true happiness?’”

Jim Carrey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”

Eventually, though, something shifts.

We begin to see in shades of gray. Winning, dominating, accumulating—these pursuits lose their shine. The rewards feel more fleeting. Living in a constant state of fight-or-flight makes us feel alive, yes, but not happy and joyful.

Compassion begins to replace ambition. Love, presence, and gratitude become more fulfilling than status, profits, or trophies. We crave balance over burnout. Collaboration over competition. Meaning over metrics.

Interestingly, if we zoom out, we can apply this same model to nations and cultures. Countries, like people, have a collective “soul stage” made up of the individuals within them.

Take the United States, for example. I’d place it as a mid-level soul: highly competitive and deeply driven, but still learning emotional maturity. Still uncomfortable with nuance. Still believing that more is always better. Despite its global wins, the U.S. currently ranks just 23rd in happiness (as of 2025). You might liken it to a gifted teenager—bold, eager, and ambitious, but angsty and still figuring out how to live well and in balance. As much as a parent wants to protect their child, sometimes the child has to make their own mistakes to truly grow.

So when Scottie Scheffler wonders what the point of winning is, I don’t see someone losing strength.

I see someone evolving.

He’s beginning to look beyond the leaderboard. Beyond metrics of success that carry a lower vibration. And yet, in a poetic twist, Scheffler did go on to win The Open. But that only reinforces the point: even at the pinnacle, the question remains. And if more of us in the golf and sports world — and in U.S. culture at large — started asking similar questions, we might discover that the more meaningful trophy isn’t about accumulating or beating others at all costs.

It’s about awakening and evolving to something more than winning could ever promise.

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