Style versus Substance in the golf swing

[iacas]

Originally Posted by MiniBlueDragon

Would you be more happy with a swing that has average mechanics and allows you to score ok but which looks amazing or would you prefer a swing which wins you tournaments but which everyone looks at and says, "how he wins tourneys with that swing I'll never know"

To further clarify, virtually nobody is going to choose "pretty" over "wins all the time." Nor should they. However, Jim Furyk or Tommy Gainey, even on the PGA Tour, are in a very, very small minority, and they work a LOT to maintain those swings. So I agree with what you said before - there's a high correlation between "pretty" (to an instructor, that is) and "functional." But that's the thing... to me, probably more than most people, "pretty" IS "functional."

But hey, I was a Pontiac Aztek owner, so I've always been a fan of "form follows function."

Originally Posted by Lofty Lefty

The ultimate is repetition, and knowing your swing.

As for Tommy Gainey, I don't think we'll be seeing too many people teaching their kids to swing like Two-gloves.... He may well be a 1 of a kind, and that's not a terribly complimentary thing to say about a golfer's swing.

One quick point about the first sentence... Everybody has a repeatable swing . If you've played golf for a few months, your swing looks virtually identical every time out. Basically, your swings will look almost "the same amount the same" as a PGA Tour pro's swings. If you flip, you always flip. If you lift and pull your elbows apart at P4, you always lift and pull your elbows apart at p4. Some tiny things will be different - the face will be a little more closed or open from one swing to another, you won't quite pull up fast enough to avoid hitting the ball fat every now and then, etc. but overall, "lack of repeatability" isn't the problem - it's the cause. It's why poor golfers are poor golfers - because they keep making the same poor swing over and over again.

Pros are slightly more repeatable, but they're also working at the top end of the range in terms of sequencing and whatnot, so there's a little less room for variation. You know this is true, too, because you can identify your buddy three fairways over just by his silhouette. Swings are repeatable. I can film a guy today and compare it to a swing he made four years ago and you're going to see a lot of similarities.

The second sentence is just QFT.

[sean_miller]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lofty Lefty

Sorry, I've seen this quite a few times in these fora now, and it's "I couldn't care less"

Saying you could care less has a completely different meaning! I know I'm being a knob, but that's been bugging me!

[DaSportsGuy]

At the end of the day all I care about is what is on the scorecard. I could care less what my swing looks like.

[kevin.chan]

Have to agree with Iasca . Good score normally is the result of a good swing style and tempo . Bad swing style and tempo don't give you the good score . I