A Review of Golf’s Future: Part One

It is now time to publish some corrected fundamentals of golf club fitting theory and practice that have previously been poorly taught, understood, and applied and that have substantially contributed to essentially no improvement in golf scores for decades now.  But first I will review a couple of prerequisites disclosed in Waggle Weight Wisdom™ thus far and that need to be thoroughly understood before continuing.

With respect to analyzing and/or working on one’s swing, one’s base golf swing should never be a swing made with any golf club in hand.  It should always be performed with no club (or any other external device) in hand.  This is the only way in which one’s golf swing can be performed with a theoretically perfectly fitted golf club every time, and thus the only manner in which one’s true root golf swing can be consistently made, analyzed, and/or worked on.  The traditional manner of holding on to a golf club, customarily by an overlapping or interlocking of one’s hands together, is the means through which one can most proficiently mimic using a real club when swinging when none is actually present.  Whether previously realized or not, the concept of performing one’s root golf swing in a state of clubless euphoria is the reason a traditional golf grip has evolved into what it is.

The sequence of first learning how to meld one’s hands together to form one’s golf grip, and then developing one’s golf swing centered around this grip in order to simulate the existence of a perfectly fitted, “phantom” golf club in the course of every stroke made, is the sole manner in which to conclusively eliminate every single golf club (specification), any one of which can potentially be an improper fit and which can alter one’s pure golf swing.  This “uncontaminated” swing is then used as a reference against which swing development and clubfitting success or failure can (and should be) judged.  Now there have certainly been good people associated with the golf industry and some sayings have been featured well in the past.  These include that a good golf grip is the foundation of a good golf swing and that the way one’s golf swing develops is decidedly connected to the way one holds onto a club.  These sayings are inevitably true, and the particulars revealed here might help one better understand why this is.

These specific procedures are the most efficient means of approaching and solving one of several unique facets about golf, this being that the game is usually played with multiple individual clubs, where it is routine to make just one swing with any given club only to change to a completely different club for the next swing.  (Practicing on a driving range and swinging the same golf club repeatedly can in this respect be considered a completely different game than playing an actual round of golf).  In virtually all other activities the identical implement is used repeatedly, allowing (and encouraging) one to both get used to any nuance(s) of the individual piece of equipment as more successive repetitions are performed and also adjust one’s swing/action accordingly.  One does not generally have this luxury (and advantage) when playing golf.

To exemplify, I can work on fitting a golf club to my swing (not ball travel results), and if certain club specifications are ideally fit (I will use the swingweight value of the club as an example here) but other specifications are not ideal (I will use the grip size of the club as an example here), I can still swing this club with a very well-coordinated motion all day long provided I do not introduce other circumstances.  But if I were to switch clubs at some point and make a few swings with a club having both my ideal swingweight value and ideal grip size and then return to swinging the first club that I swung so well with just moments earlier, I can all of a sudden swing that first club so horribly and with such an uncoordinated motion that I feel like I never swung a golf club before in my life.  Perhaps this has happened to you if at some point you were fitted for just a driver and you swung well with it at your fitting session, only to subsequently find that you do not swing it so well anymore shortly after swinging one of your other clubs.

This is just the nature of the beast in a game where multiple pieces of equipment are used while playing the game, essentially only one swing is commonly made with one piece of equipment before a different individual piece of equipment is swung, and where every individual piece of equipment has multiple specifications associated with it, any one of which can potentially affect one’s natural swing in varying ways and to varying degrees.  Fortunately, by applying proper swinging and clubfitting procedures (some of which are being reviewed in this very post), this situation can be completely conquered and solved.  Unfortunately, applying proper swinging and clubfitting procedures is still rather foreign to the golf industry as a whole.  Certain vital elements regarding self-teaching, teaching, and/or helping one to play golf in an efficient manner (both skill-wise and cost-wise) are still not generally known and/or applied by the industry, and certain critical elements are even prohibited from being used (in certain countries) at the present time even if they are known.  But these elements will be known and practiced wherever the WaggleWeight™ name is connected with a product or service, including but not limited to a swing teaching or clubfitting entity.  So whether playing the role of a golfer, swing instructor, clubfitter, or more, look for that name to help you become the best you can be at it.

Anyway, in getting back to the fitting of my clubs above, even though it appeared early on that the first club was systematically and perfectly fitted to my golf swing, in the end that was obviously not the case.  And it would have been a major mistake to perform and record my swing while using that first club and to consider the result to be an accurate depiction of my base golf swing.  Even if my swing were recorded when I was initially swinging that first club with a well-coordinated motion, a detailed analysis would likely show an actionable difference(s) between that swing and the swing I would make with no club at all in hand.  Therefore, no matter how well you (or somebody else) feels you are swinging with any given club, you should still never allow your golf swing to be gauged and called true when it is performed with any golf club (or any other device) in hand.  If choosing to do so, if the club is less than a perfect fit for your swing in just one way, and if your swing is altered in any way to any detectable degree as a result, then your golf swing might easily be deemed flawed when there may be nothing wrong with it at all.  And it follows that if your swing is wrongly deemed flawed, inappropriate swing advice might then be given.

While today’s technology might easily be used to add a computer-generated golf club as an example to one’s clubless swing in order to more easily extrapolate certain swing positions for analysis, I reiterate here that this theory and practice is hardly dependent upon today’s technology.  This information can be effectively implemented by a skilled player or swing teacher even without such modern technology.  For whatever reason(s), this knowledge has simply not been revealed for use (to the best of my knowledge) since the time a now-traditional golf grip originally came into being (more than a century ago).  This does not (and should not) currently inspire confidence in the golf industry overall due to its present ineffectiveness at helping golfers in crucial ways.  I will review one more major topic next and then initiate pivotal new matter.