You Are Your Golf Swing

It’s always odd and a little disturbing when other people know things about you that you don’t.  The circumstances can be extreme, like, say, Liv Tyler thinking Todd Rundgren was her dad when it was really Steven Tyler.  Most of us don’t have anything like that, but who isn’t surprised at how your voice sounds when it’s recorded?

If you play golf, your swing is like that.  It’s a personal thing, how you make all of the moving parts work to put the club on the ball to put the ball where you want it -- hopefully.  There are few fundamental rules to it.  Keep your head down and your eyes on the ball.  Keep your left – or, if you’re left-handed, right – arm straight as long as you can.  After that, it’s your preference.  Your swing is your creation.

Golf swings are like Rorschach tests because they tell you something about the player’s personality, his or her psychology.  Ernie Els, at the age of 42, just won the British Open, 10 years after the last time he won that major.  (The majors are the four most important tournaments every year – the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open and the PGA.)  He’s known as the Big Easy, after his swing.  His swing is, and always has been, a thing of beauty, long and languid.  Check it out: Ernie Els swing.  He won the 1994 U.S. Open, at 24, with the same swing he has now.  Somehow, when you watch that swing, it doesn’t seem very surprising that Els has handled having a severely autistic son well, telling his family’s story and putting his fame to work raising money for autism research. 

The comparison of swings with the man who eclipsed Els as a golfer – who, more than anyone else, ensured that Els, whatever his talent, would not win very many majors – is striking.  Tiger Woods is constantly, infamously changing his swing.  He exploded in 1997, winning – at 21 – his first professional Masters by 12 shots.  Then he changed his swing to be more consistent.  In 2000, with his then-new swing grooved, he had the greatest year any professional golfer has ever had, winning three of the four majors.  Els finished second in three majors that year – once, at the U.S. Open, losing to Woods by 15 shots.  Woods then changed his swing again.  The new swing worked beautifully, as Woods won and won, but the stress of it wore down his left knee.  His greatest victory was in the 2008 U.S. Open, where he won in a playoff on a knee with a torn ligament and two stress fractures that required season-ending surgery immediately afterward.  He came back and did very well in 2009, but that year ended with his Thanksgiving weekend car crash that split open the whole mess of his personal life.  Attempting to come back from that, he’s working on a new swing again (Tiger Woods' many swings), with decidedly mixed results.

This is assuredly overstating it, but it’s hard not to see the two players’ personalities in their swings.  Els never changed his swing, even when being surpassed.  A flaw athletically maybe, but perhaps more of a recipe for a good life.  Woods, always changing, always searching with his swing, seemingly with his life, too, to the point of making an absolute mess.  He is now openly frustrated, swearing at himself on the course, going so far as to kick a club at this year’s Masters.

For those of us who play just for “fun,” our swings aren’t as central to our lives – they don’t make our livings – but, if you play regularly, then you spend a lot of time with your swing.  I’ve been playing – at first regularly, then irregularly for many years, now regularly again – for over 30 years, so I have probably spent, in total, years with my swing.  And it’s always curious how much it tells other people about me and how little I understand it.

My first inkling of this came a few years ago, when I got back in touch with a high school friend with whom I’d played on our school’s team.  He said, “We need to play some time.  Got to get another look at your crazy swing, with your front foot flying wide open.  I still try to do that when I want to hit it extra long.”  This was a real eye-opener.  I never had any idea that I was doing anything unique.  When I started paying attention to my feet and other people’s feet when they play, however, it jumped right out that, as I swing through the ball, I pivot my front foot around on my heel, so that my left toe points forward when I’m done.  I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else do that.  When I looked at a picture of me playing in high school, there was the exact same front foot flying wide open.  What does it mean?  It means that I swing too hard and I – without ever thinking about it – release my front foot’s hold on the ground so that the force of my swing doesn’t stop on my knee or ankle.  (Stopping the force of his swing on his left knee contributed to Tiger Woods’ 2008 injury.)  It means that I hit the ball harder – and therefore farther and higher – than my not-very-big frame would otherwise suggest, but that I’m less in control than I’d like.  Just as in my life generally.  Swinging a little hard sometimes.  Not a lot of cool going on.

When I started playing regularly again in the last few years, I began getting more comments on my swing.  The most striking is one I’ve heard many times, from people I don’t know.  You frequently play golf with people you don’t know because the ideal group is four people, so, if you show up as a single, you usually get matched with others.  Many times now, within the first few holes, after I’ve stepped to the tee, taken my practice swing and then hit the ball, my heretofore unknown partner has asked me something like, “You’ve been playing since you were a little kid, haven’t you?”  One asked me if I’d been playing since I was 12.  When I told him that I actually started when I was 9, he said, “So much the better.” 

The first time this happened, I was dumbfounded and had to ask, “How’d you know I started as a kid?” 

“You look very natural.  You don’t hardly even think about it.  It’s one practice swing and then pow!  It’s not like me.  I learned when I was an adult.  I had to take lessons and all of that, so, when I get ready to swing, I’m always remembering where to put my elbows and my feet and a bunch of other things.  I can barely remember to swing.  Have you ever even had a lesson?”

“One.”

“That’s about what I thought.”

The funny thing about having this information about yourself out on display when you play golf, though, is you’re the only one who can’t see it or feel it.  You’re inside your swing, so you can’t see it and it happens so fast, it’s hard to feel when it’s good and when it’s bad.  You see the results, obviously.  You can even feel the results, as you can tell through your hands whether you hit the ball on the sweet spot or too thin or on the toe.  You can’t, however, see how far back your backswing goes or the angle at which the club drives through the ball or whether your club was open, closed or flush at impact.  You can’t feel in the middle of your swing that something is right or wrong.  It’s like being an astronaut during the brief period when a spacecraft can’t communicate during reentry.  And people with whom you play won’t tell you much about your swing because there is an unspoken rule among golfers: do not give advice unless asked.  And few golfers ever ask.  Giving someone else unsolicited advice on his or her golf swing is, if you’ve ever watched Pulp Fiction, about like giving someone else’s wife a foot rub.  You just don’t do it.

This leaves, then, mysteries.  How does my swing look?  How does it work?  What am I doing wrong?  Right?  There’s really only one way to know and that’s video.  But who’s vain enough to ask a friend or a loved one to sit there and videotape you hitting golf balls?  All golfers want to know, though, so, when I finally decided to take a second lesson – my push fade was driving me nuts and injuring the many trees my shots were hitting – I had one non-negotiable requirement: there needed to be video.  I needed to see my swing.

When, at my lesson, I finally saw my swing, it was revealing.  My teacher spotted my problem quickly – I was pushing my hands out too far from my body and needed to keep my hands in tighter throughout my swing.  More than that, though, it was striking to see on video that, at the end of my swing, my shoulders were bent so far back that they were behind my hips, forming my back into a backwards C-shape.  My teacher called an “old school reverse C swing” and I liked that very much because “old school” makes me think of Julius Erving with a big Afro throwing down vicious 70s dunks.  And Dr. J was the coolest.  In addition, all of those years, I had no idea I was working my back the way I do.  On screen, it looked like it would hurt, but it never does.  “Do you ever have any back problems?” my teacher asked.  No, I really don’t.  I guess I’d trained my back to take that particular kind of abuse over the last 30 years.  And there was that front foot flying wide open, every time.

It was especially strange to try to fix the problem my teacher identified.  Every time I tried to keep my hands tight in, it felt so odd, like I was going to hit myself in the left foot every time.  Every time, I felt like I was going to fall over forward because swinging with my hands close threw off the balance I’d had for 30 years.  I couldn’t argue with the results as the ball went straighter . . . when I managed to do what I was supposed to do.  Doing that, though, required me to think more about each swing, which was almost contrary to what had been good about my swing in the first place.  It just feels so weird.

It is good, however, to stretch yourself now and then, even if it only means trying something a little different when you play golf.  It is a tough balance because you can lose your swing and a lot of other things if you throw out the fundamentals – ask Tiger.  It nonetheless is important to try because, if you don’t, how will you ever know what you can do?