Opinion & Analysis
Bobby Clampett: Why I Could Never Go Back to My Old Swing
In my last article, “Why Tiger and I Could Never Find a Golf Coach,” I described my journey of working with many of the top golf coaches in the world. They all wanted to change my “style” of swing without focusing on how the style change would affect my impact — the only thing that really matters in improving one’s golf game.
Times have really not changed since I began that journey midway into the 1983 PGA Tour season. Style-based teaching is still an epidemic in our game. Golfers rarely improve through traditional instruction because it isn’t focused on improving impact — just the “style” or preferred “style” of a given instructor. This epidemic has pushed countless golf stars right off the tour. David Duval, Ian Baker Finch, Mike Weir and many more all ran into style-based issues once they were influenced by this type of teaching.
In a previous GolfWRX article, one reader asked a very fair question: “Why didn’t you go back to your old swing”? He was referring to the fact that my original swing was good enough to be the No. 1 amateur in the world, earn two Fred Haskins Awards, win a record-setting 12 NCAA tournaments in three years and be a top-20 money winner in my first two years on the PGA Tour. I could write a book on this topic, but I’ll keep the discussion short for the purpose of this article.
The answer is that I probably could have, but in and of itself, it would have been quite a long process. I spent many years on the PGA Tour trying to build new golf swings. By the time the late mid 80’s rolled around, I was settling into one instructor’s style and was committed to it. I started to have a little more success and remember shooting a final-round 66 in Phoenix to finish T6 in 1987. In mid 1987, I decided to work less with a coach and be my own coach, but I still committed to the swing changes I made. I nearly won the Anheuser-Busch Golf Classic at Kingsmill in the summer of 1987. I actually set a new tournament scoring record, shooting four-consecutive rounds in the 60’s, but I was beat out by a shot by Mark McCumber.
I continued on that journey like Tiger is doing now without a swing coach, choosing to focus on scoring and playing. I wish I had my understanding of Impact-Based instruction back then to guide me, but I was still searching for the elusive perfect swing. I was a hard-worker, but I still struggled and my frustrations continued to mount. By the time the 1989 season was over, my energy for playing was waning.
There was a time that I could have made the decision to go back to my old swing, but the changes were pretty grooved after seven years of trying different swing styles and ultimately settling on one. It would have taken a herculean effort to revert back to the old swing, and it certainly would have looked different. My body had changed, and the “muscle memory” or brain mylan supporting the new swing was now engrained.
Fortunately, legendary television golf producer Frank Chirkinian came to my rescue and offered me an opportunity as a television broadcaster at CBS in 1991. The pressure to perform on the PGA Tour was off, and I could focus on studying the best players in the world through the lens of the CBS cameras. I was fascinated by what I saw. All the top players have very different styles of swings — some were even darn right ugly. Upright, flat, laid-off, across-the-line. Cupped, flat and arched left wrists at the top. Big and little hip turns. Short and long backswings. Stationery and moving heads… on and on and on. The best players in the world had movements in their swings that I was trying to remove from my swing. I was intrigued and had to figure out why.
When CBS developed the Bizhub Swing Vision Camera, I had the opportunity to study the golf swing very closely — and I did. It hit me like a 2×4 across the head. Impact was virtually the same for the world’s best players, but how they got there — their individual “style” — was completely different. All the instructors were teaching styles of swings that many of the best players weren’t even using. What if I started to work from impact and go backward with my swing? What if I could be released from worrying about my style and work on impact alone?
My energy for playing the game started to return. It was the late 90’s. I was raising three small children and traveling 30 weeks a year. I had almost no time to play golf. The U.S. Open was scheduled for Pebble Beach in 2000, so I gave myself a two-year goal to try to qualify since Pebble Beach was my home course growing up. I gave myself what time I had, 10 minutes a day to practice. I wasn’t hitting balls; I simply worked on grooving a style of swing that I could own, kind of a morph between my old swing and my new one that would be good enough to produce the kind of impact I knew I needed — the impact all the best players have. I gave myself the freedom to let go of my previously held convictions that there was an ideal style of swing.
This was the genesis of my five dynamics that are illustrated in my book, “The Impact Zone,” and the cornerstone of Impact-Based instruction. After taking months to groove my swing, mostly indoors without hitting a ball, I started to hit my first shots. I would allow myself one hour per week to hit balls and would start to play on the course one day a month. That’s all the time I had for golf. I focused intently on my impact, studying my divots and watching my ball flight. I didn’t have the luxury of the technology we have today like high-speed cameras, accurate launch monitors and force-plate systems that make studying impact so much easier.
I played a six-round golf marathon one day, helping to raise money for a friend. In the final round, I shot 63 playing in less than 2 hours by myself. Months later, I qualified for the U.S. Open. I led the tournament through much of the first round and made the cut, finishing T37. When I shared the story with the press after the first round, they were amazed that I could have performed this well on 10 minutes a day of practice, a bucket of balls a week and a round of golf a month after not having competed in two years. The key, I shared, was focusing on my impact and letting go of my swing style.
I’ve never looked back with regret, and I have learned so much through the process. I joined the PGA Champion’s Tour in 2010 and played 87 events, earning more money than I did in my 400 events on the PGA Tour. My biggest passion, however, is sharing my discoveries with others in hope that frustrated golfers will be a thing of the past and others will realize the lasting improvement Impact-Based instruction brings. That’s why I left playing the Champion’s Tour three years ago. I went on to become the only PGA Tour winner in history to attain the PGA of America’s highest level of teaching certification, Master of Teaching and Coaching. I’ve discovered that if you improve your impact, you improve your game. It’s really that simple.
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
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!
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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Billable Hours
Jan 30, 2018 at 10:04 am
Bobby Clampett loves himself some Bobby Clampett
gord
Mar 6, 2018 at 11:35 am
Is Bobby still a proponent of Homer Kelley and TGM.. the stupidest golf book ever written?
SV
Jan 30, 2018 at 8:13 am
Studying divots and watching ball flight, pure John Jacobs teaching. It was good 40+ years ago and is good today.
CB
Jan 30, 2018 at 1:49 am
Just gotta have bloody good and strong hands, is what I read from Clampett’s musings
Mark
Jan 29, 2018 at 11:35 pm
Not only do I find the subjects of his articles to be interesting but I also enjoy reading them. His standard of writing is so much higher than the many others who write for GolfWRX (editorial staff most definitely included).
Reeves
Jan 29, 2018 at 11:19 pm
Had you just watched Moe Norman for 10 minutes you would have seen clearly how you got to impact was up to you. add to that 2 minutes of John Daly and Lee Trevino in their prime and impact would clearly be the only similarity….
gord
Mar 6, 2018 at 11:32 am
Anybody who attempts to copy dopey Moe is a Moe-ron ….!
Scott
Jan 29, 2018 at 3:37 pm
thank you for sharing
Ben
Jan 29, 2018 at 5:01 pm
I hope Bobby shares his thoughts on TGM as well.
Engineer Bob
Jan 30, 2018 at 10:43 am
I can tell you what I think of TGM: IT’S TOTAL RUBBISH!!!
the dude
Jan 29, 2018 at 2:02 pm
….and if you want to know more…..buy my Impact golf DVD…..all the secrets are in there…
Brett Weir
Jan 29, 2018 at 11:43 am
Thank you Mr. Clampett for your philosophy of being impact oriented. For years and years I’ve been focusing on having the perfect backswing, downswing, and follow through and never broke 80. I almost quit the game until I came across your teachings and focused on impact. For the past 2 years I didn’t care what my backswing and follow through looked like and focused on impact (keeping the clubface as square through impact for as long as I can with a lot of shaft lean). Because of that, my scores are in the 70s. One day, I decided to video my new swing and to my shock, my backswing, downswing, and follow through were the most ideal I’ve seen in years. You will naturally have the ideal swing for yourself if you focus on having the ideal position at impact.
Ben
Jan 29, 2018 at 4:59 pm
” For years and years I’ve been focusing on having the perfect backswing, downswing, and follow through and never broke 80.”
This suggests to me that you were overly conscious about your swing rather than swinging free of swing thoughts. IOW, you were trying tho think your way through the swing. By focusing your thoughts on impact you liberated your conscious mind and went into automatic mode. Your swing became more natural and simply, worry free.
Allan
Jan 29, 2018 at 11:13 am
Interesting insight into your swing evolution. Could you tell us how your swing was influenced by Homer Kelley’s The Golfing Machine. You were a proponent of TGM but now you seem to have found your own golf swing philosophy. What changed? Thanks
OB
Feb 1, 2018 at 5:14 pm
Clampett Cricketts …. * * * *
Justin Roser
Aug 24, 2018 at 3:49 pm
Silence because everything Bobby and every other teacher knows and talks about is a dumb downed, repackaged, plagerism of TGM period. Anyone who says it’s rubbish is hiding the fact they can read and comprehend basic physics and geometry. It’s all about these guys egos and making money off someone else’s work never giving them credit!