Bobby Jones gave us these two thoughts as the basis for building our golf swing.

“Very often, what a man feels he is doing is more important than what he does. The feel, the experience, is so much easier to remember and repeat.”

And what is that feeling?

“The downward or hitting stroke is intended to culminate in a well-timed, powerful contact between clubhead and ball. There is no way to argue that the successful accomplishment of this purpose is not the most important part of the stroke; but the backswing has for its purpose, the establishment of a perfectly balanced, powerful position at the top of the swing from which correct actions of the downstroke can flow rhythmically without the need for interference or correction. In the end, on the basis of consistent reproduction of the successful action, the preparatory movements become just as important as the actual hitting—the entire swing, a sequence of correct positions, following naturally and comfortably one after the other.” [emphasis added]

If you’ll allow me to be poetic, find a backswing from which your forward swing can flow through the ball like a clear, running stream.

Bobby Jones on Golf, p. 212 and p. 41-42.

There is so much out there about how to swing a golf club. One instructor/book/video says do this, and another instructor/book/video says that. Not to mention what this other instructor/book/video says to do.

You know how it goes?

So I’m going to tell you about another video. But. It’s simple. It’s easy to do. And it makes everything fall into place.

1. Pay attention to the spots where he talks about hitting one-handed wedges.

2. Pay attention to the spots where he says grip down and hit a wedge shot–even with your driver.

If you understand what he is saying, and figure out how to do what he’s telling you what to do, I promise that you will hit better golf shots almost instantly.

From time to time I write a post about what I work on with my swing to produce the results I want. You know, down the middle, reasonable distance. Not asking a lot.

For most of 2024 I worked on these things and take them into 2025 fully installed.

I see no reason why they wouldn’t work for you, too.

1. Backswing. All I want from the the backswing is for the clubface to be square when the backswing is finished. Because there are so many ways to get the clubface out of square, I have no guidance on how to achieve this other than to say swing back, check the clubface alignment, and if it isn’t square, figure it out. Hint: start with your grip. How do you check the clubface alignment? If you set up facing north, swing back, leave your hands where they are in space as you turn to the east, and lower the club to the ground.

2. Transition. Start the forward swing at the same speed you swung back.

3. Your head. Everything is moving toward the target in the forward swing: legs, hips, torso, arms, hands, club. Except your head. It stays put until after the ball has been struck. This is a very important point. Another way to say it is, stay behind the ball. See Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book, pp. 75-76.

4. Lag. At the end of the backswing there is an angle made by your trailing forearm and the clubshaft. In a light, graceful way, swing forward so that angle does not straighten out, but do not lock it in place. You could straighten it out, you just choose not to. The momentum of the swing will straighten it out for you at the right time.

5. Tempo and rhythm. Swing at a walk-in-the-park tempo that allows you to feel everything that is happening in your swing and that none of it is rushed. Your swing should have a dance-like rhythm to it. Remember you are trying to swing through the ball, not hit at it.

Casting, or hitting over the top, means to release your wrist hinging at the very start of the forward swing. This is one of the worst faults in golf, and one of the most prevalent, because it is so easy to do.

The object of the swing is to swing the club, not to hit the ball. But that is not intuitive, so people try to hit the ball with their hands as soon as their hands start moving towards it.

That is what makes sense to almost everybody. It makes sense to me, too, which is why one of my major swing drills is in practicing how not to do it.

Imagine you have attached a ribbon to the end of a stick. If you were to swing the stick back and forth, the ribbon would trail the stick.

Now imagine your arms are the stick, when you swing then forward, let the clubshaft trail them like the ribbon would.

When it’s time, the clubshaft will catch up on its own and deliver the hit in spite of yourself.

There are lots of points you have to pay attention to in your golf swing. By that, I mean the points that make your golf swing work. There are likely more than one or two. I have six.

What I’m getting at today is that you don’t have to exaggerate any of them. Don’t overdo them. Just hit each mark in a relaxed way as you proceed through the swing, and you will be just fine.

Harvey Penick said it well when he advised us in his Little Red Book that if he asks you to take an aspirin, please don’t take the whole bottle.

The hands lead the clubhead going into the ball? Just by a few inches. Not by a whole foot.

Retain your lag at the start of the forward swing? Yes, just at the start. Don’t hold on for dear life all the way into the ball.

And so on.

Another way to put it is that when you swing the club, a beginner watching you should say, “That looks so easy to do!”

They shouldn’t think, “Oh, my. I could never do that.”

I think the hardest part of the golf swing is learning how to keep the clubface square. This is how I practice it.

I use a driver. This club is, in my opinion, the easiest club to hit because we are standing the most upright. It is therefore the club to use when you are learning how to keep the clubface square.

I pay lots of attention to my grip and to how I take the club away. From there, it’s figuring out how to swing without upsetting the clubface’s alignment.

How do you do that? Because everybody is different, I can’t say. Either make it your own exploration, or get a lesson(s). Hint: If the clubface is still square at the end of your backwing, you’re ninety percent there.

Once you have the matter figured out, transfer that swing to the rest of your clubs, always referring back to the driver as you do. Let you driver bleed into your 5-iron, not the other way around.

What you do with the club in the first two feet of your backswing makes all the difference between your best shot and your worst.

That is the interval where your clubface can get out of alignment without your noticing it. Open or closed, this is where it happens, and you can’t do a thing about it because you won’t feel it.

Practice this a lot: Take the club away using your normal swing and stop after the clubhead is about two feet away from the ball. Using your arms only, bring the clubhead back to the ball.

If it’s not square, you have something to work on, and it’s simple. Practice taking the club back those two feet so the clubface stays square. Learn what it feels like to do that.

When you play, do this takeaway drill before very shot. Remind yourself of the feeling, because the difference between right and wrong is hard to detect.

With that, and a soft grip pressure, you’re good to go.

When your hips and your arms are moving forward as you swing through the ball, there might be a tendency to shift your whole body forward. Avoid that tendency, if you have it.

When you shift forward, you shift the bottom point of your swing forward, too. Now your swing and the ball on the ground are in a different conversation.

All you have to do is keep your head from going forward, and that will take care of things. Bobby Jones called it “swinging out from underneath yourself.”

When you swing the club back and consequently up, you might have a tendency to rise up with it. That is, raise your body up a bit.

That gives your swing a new bottoming out point, and you have to go reaching for the ball as you go through impact. This is so easy to do without being aware of it.

Give this a try. Swing back and tell yourself to keep your head where it is. Don’t let it rise up.

If you do that, and it feels odd, then you have habit of rising up in the swing that needs to be broken.

How do you break the habit? Practice swinging without your head rising up.