The UNFK Dictionary

What golf says

None of these concepts are made up. Every one of them is real and measurable. The argument is only ever about whether you should be consciously operating them.

Angle of Attack

Whether the clubhead is travelling down or up when it meets the ball. A genuinely useful number, now checked on a phone between shots by men who cannot feel the difference.

Casting

Releasing the club too early. Though note that you cannot throw something too early - the fault only exists if you were trying to hang on to it. Named after fishing, which is itself a throw, and which nobody involved seems to find at all odd.

Centrifugal Force

The one entry in this section that isn’t actually a force acting on the clubhead. Physicists call it a fictitious force, which sounds suspiciously like a polite word for make-believe. The outward pull you feel is real enough. But there’s no mysterious force pushing the clubhead away from you. It’s inertia. The clubhead tends to keep traveling in a straight line while your hands continually redirect it along a curved path. Centrifugal force isn’t an additional force powering your golf swing. I learned that distinction in Year 8 science. Golf instruction still seems confused by it.

Checkpoint

A place in the golf swing where a golfer stops to check that the golf swing is going well. It never is.

Coaching

Guiding rather than instructing. Two people, one goal, and nobody trying to prove they have all the answers. The good ones talk far less than you would expect.

Connection

Keeping your arms near your body. Traditionally taught with a glove wedged in your armpit - the only known case of golf instruction being simpler than the thing it describes.

Early Extension

Standing up a bit through impact. Also the thing you get told you're doing when the lesson has run out of other ideas.

Face to Path

The relationship that actually decides where your ball goes. Probably the most useful pair of numbers in golf, and still not something a human can consciously operate at the speed required.

Feel vs Real

The discovery that what you feel is not what's happening. Presented as a problem to be corrected, rather than as an accurate description of how every human being has ever moved.

Follow Through

The part of the swing that has already finished happening. Taught extensively anyway, on roughly the same principle as steering a car after it's parked.

Ground Reaction Forces

The floor pushing back. It has been doing this free of charge and without supervision since well before golf existed. Golf has recently discovered it and begun selling courses on it.

Lag

Something golfers spend years trying to create on purpose. Most of them will kick themselves when they find out how easy it was all along.

Muscle Memory

A thing muscles do not have, discussed daily by people who are quite certain they do.

P1 to P10

Ten photographs of a thing that is not a photograph. You are asked to hit all ten, in the correct order, in about a second. Nobody has ever asked this of a pitcher.

Pissing Contest

Something golf instructors do to try and outdo each other, confusing everyone who just wants to play golf. See also: The Great Golf Instruction Pissing Contest

Pivot

How your body moves when you swing. Also how it moves when you get off the couch, though nobody has filmed that at 240 frames a second and charged you to review it.

Release

What the club does by itself, roughly one instant after you stop trying to make it happen.

Rotation

Turning. There is a perfectly good word for it and this isn't it. Costs about forty dollars an hour more to say it this way.

Shallowing

This year's word. There was a different one before it and there will be another one after it, and your golf will be unaffected by all three.

Swing Plane

A line golfers draw on videos immediately before forgetting how to hit the ball.

Swing Thought

An instruction you give yourself that arrives, at best, shortly after the swing has finished.

Teaching

Being told what to do. Sounds like the right idea, and it is also why most of us couldn't wait to get out of school. A teacher who stops talking feels, to himself, unemployed.

Tempo

Usually mentioned in the last thirty seconds of the lesson, on the way to the car.

The Range

A place where golfers strike the ball beautifully, in careful preparation for not doing that.

Weight Transfer

Moving your weight from one foot to the other. Mastered by every toddler on earth. Lost, apparently, somewhere around your fourth lesson.

Wrist Cock

An angle your wrists arrive at entirely on their own the instant you throw something, and never once while you are thinking about them.

What UNFK says

Our own vocabulary. If you've been around a while, you'll have heard all of these - usually more than once, usually about your own golf.

Don't Be A Dickhead

Doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. Same tip, same drill, same range session, same Saturday. Said with affection, and usually to someone who already knows. See also: You Are Not Special

Go For It

Stop thinking and start playing. There's a point where more consideration stops adding anything at all, and it arrives a great deal earlier than most golfers believe.

Half Handy

How I describe my own golf. It means good enough to prove the ideas work, and not good enough to be insufferable about it.

Report Back With Your Learnings

What I ask for instead of you telling me what you think you're doing wrong. Go and try it, notice what actually happened, and tell me. That's the whole method - intention, feedback, repetition. The homework is paying attention. And yes, I know "learnings" isn't really a word.

Simple + Naughty

The whole business in two words. The first one is the promise. The second one is why you remember it.

Swing For The Fences

What I say to someone being careful with a golf club. Steering is not swinging. Nobody in history has learned to throw a ball by throwing it politely.

The Billy Test

A much simpler way of evaluating golf instruction. Will this ultimately help me beat Billy on Saturday? See also: The Great Golf Instruction Pissing Contest

The Golf Expertise Illusion

The tendency to mistake sophisticated explanations of the golf swing for effective golf coaching. See also: The Great Golf Instruction Pissing Contest

Unfuck

To remove rather than to add. The only verb this business has ever needed, and the reason everything here is shorter than you expect.

You Are Not Special

The belief that the way human beings learn movement applies to everybody except you, whose case is unusual and requires a list. It does not. Congratulations: you're a person, and you learn like one.

What Australians say

For the ninety per cent of you who aren't one. You don't have to use these. You just have to know what I mean when I do.

Carn

Come on. Shouted at a golf ball that has already made its decision and has no intention of reconsidering.

Chook Raffle

A shambles. A chook is a chicken, and the raffle is exactly as well organised as that sounds. Also: most Saturday competitions.

Have A Crack

Attempt it properly. First cousin to Go For It, with marginally lower expectations and marginally more beer. See also: Go For It

Ordinary

Bad. Australians register disappointment by understating it, so the same phrase covers a thinned wedge and a house fire. "Yeah, that was pretty ordinary." - that was appalling and we both know it.

Ripper

Great. That was a ripper of a shot. Most correctly used about a shot you didn't entirely mean, which is most of the good ones.

She'll Be Right

It will be fine. Said, reliably, moments before it is not fine.

Strewth

An expression of disbelief, worn down over a couple of centuries from "God's truth". Covers everything from genuine astonishment to a playing partner's club selection. Spelt strewth, struth or streuth depending on who's writing it down, and nobody has ever settled it. "Strewth mate, are you really hitting a wedge here?" - I have concerns about your yardage, your ego, or both.

Tinny

Lucky. Not a compliment and not quite an insult - somewhere in the middle, which is where most Australian words live. Also a can of beer. Context does the work. "That shot was tinny." - you got away with one. "Hand us a tinny, would ya mate." - pass me a beer.

Yeah, Nah

No. "Nah, yeah" means yes. There is no rule for this. You simply know, or you don't.

What Dave says

Dave is a bloke I play with most weeks. He has never read a book about golf, has no interest whatsoever in what the club is doing, and gets up and down from places that ought not to permit it. He says these things constantly, in a flat voice, and almost entirely to me. He is, annoyingly, quite good.

Dave has taught me one thing in all of this stuff: To be mentally strong. To ignore all the rubbish and focus on my game. He has also helped me enjoy the banter too... which makes golf fun.

Are You Going To Be Long?

Asked on the putting green, the moment a short putt has stayed out. It sounds like a polite question. It is, in fact, a full wind-up, and a reminder that Dave is a very good putter and I am not. "Are you going to be long?" - I don't miss those. Take all the time you need.

Have You Been Playing Long?

Asked in a deadpan voice immediately after a playing partner misses an easy putt or hits a poor shot, with the polite interest usually reserved for someone who took up the game last Tuesday. A running joke, not a dig. "Have you been playing long?" - I saw that, and that is all I intend to say about it.

I'll Still Make Four

Announced on the tee, the moment a drive has gone sideways into deep trouble. An expression of complete faith in one's ability to recover from any position, delivered some minutes before any evidence for it exists. The maddening part is that it almost always turns out to be true. The bloke who isn't panicking really does get out of trouble more often - which is either a coincidence, or the entire argument of this website.

Just, Have A Look At Yourself

Said after a poor shot, particularly once the person who hit it has started to get a little frustrated. Delivered with a long pause after "Just", which does most of the work. Sounds like a telling-off, but is closer to an arm around the shoulder. "Just, have a look at yourself." - hey mate, it's OK. No need to carry on too much here.

Run Like You Stole Something

Shouted at a golf ball travelling along the ground at considerable speed. Expresses expectation rather than hope, and is usually shouted by the person responsible for it. Also offered to a playing partner who hits a low runner off the tee, in which case it is a compliment. "Run like you stole something!" - I have hit this a little low, and I already know it is going to be fine.