I love to stop by a range and watch the brand new golfers. Even though most of their swings result in whiffs, tops and chunks, they usually manage to smash at least one shot long and straight. It seems to come out of nowhere, and provides the powerful feedback that they must have done something right. But what was it? Few golfers realize it at the time, but the early search to uncover what they did right, and their subsequent successes and failures, are the building blocks of the golf swing they will have for the rest of their lives.

The hardest part for me as an instructor is trying to understand why a person’s golf swing developed the way it did. Those first few shots that sailed high and far started a golfer on a path. But here is the problem: What if a golfer achieves success by lifting up 6 inches in the backswing and then diving down exactly 6 inches in the downswing? As you might guess, they think moving up and down is the right thing to do. So they try it again. Only this time they come down 7 inches, and their club crashes into the ground behind the ball. Now they are totally befuddled, and wish they knew what changed.

Correcting a fault with a fault, as it’s called, is how most golfers go through their golfing life. But not all unconventional moves are faults. There are what I call compatible moves and incompatible moves. If you’re a better golfer, it’s likely that your motions are compatible — not “textbook”necessarily, just more functional. If you’re a higher-handicap golfer, your moves are more likely incompatible.

Jim Furyk, one of the best players in the modern era, has what many refer to as a “funky” swing. I have never, however, met anyone who does not like the result it produces or the $56 million he’s earned on the PGA Tour. Furyk is great because he has a series of compatible motions in his swing: an extremely upright takeaway, followed by a massive vertical drop of his arms and a flattening of the club. He goes from over the hand path plane to under it in the blink of an eye, and then to keep him from getting too far under the hand plane path he completely opens his body and drives it through the ball. Furyk does this every time. It’s poetry if you like this kind of stuff.

Nearly all great golfers have a series of moves in their swing that aren’t textbook, including Arnold Palmer.

I love unconventional swings like Furyk’s because it’s a joy to me to learn how they put it all together. Was it natural for Furyk to lift the club straight up, OR was it natural to drop the arms way down? Whatever one started the motion, the other is clearly a motion that complements it. Fuzzy Zoeller bent way over at address and came up through the shot. Lee Trevino aimed way left, took the club outside and dropped it back in. Bobby Jones took the club WAY inside and across the line, but then flattened the club in transition. All their swings are gorgeous to behold. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Your job as a golfer who wants to improve is to find what works within the existing motions you have, because trying to change your whole swing is fruitless. Be wise and strive to be functional, not optimal. A little fade works, but a big slice doesn’t.

I’ve often thought that if golfers were house pets, they would be more like cats than dogs. If my cat falls from just about anywhere, she lands on her feet. Think about her fall like a compatible move in a golf swing: it may not be pretty, but it worked. If my dog falls, however, she will most likely land on her head. Hitting the ground 6 inches behind the ball is equivalent of falling on your head in the canine world. So if you’re really steep coming down, you may do one of the following: raise your swing center, chicken wing your left arm or back up your upper body, to name a few fixes. These moves would all be the equivalent of landing on your feet. You did what you had to do to avoid a “fall.”

Here a few more examples of things golfers do to avoid “falling on their head:”

• Running ahead of the ball with the upper body is almost always associated with a very early release. It’s a golfer’s way of getting the bottom of the arc near the ball. You may hear, “You’re getting ahead of it” from your well-intended friends. Your response should be, “Because if I don’t I’ll stick the club in the ground six inches behind the ball.”
• Coming over the top is a very natural response to a slice.  As soon as the ball starts going right, you WILL swing left. It’s a very “cat-like” thing to do.
• When golfers play the ball well back in their stances, it is often the result of hooking the ball or hitting it fat. It’s their way of playing the shot to avoid disaster.
• Golfers who hang back on their rear foot in the downswing often do so because they moved too much weight on their front foot during the backswing. It’s a little thing called balance that our bodies are trying to do with every step we take. Or perhaps you are playing with too little loft on your clubs, or your shafts are far too stiff. In other words, you do what is necessary to get the ball in the air.

The list I could make with similar examples is endless, and I see these things every day. My job as a teacher is not to change a golfer’s swing as much as it is to balance it. Some part of the swing comes very natural to golfers, and are part of a golfer’s DNA. If at all possible, those moves should stay and a teacher should do their best to work around them. The best teachers work to make the swings of their students better, not prettier. What to leave in and what to take out is the essence of golf instruction.

As always, feel free to send a swing video to my Facebook page and I will do my best to give you my feedback.