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24 questions, answered straight

Questions

What UNFK is, which book to read first, and the objections people send me before they buy anything.

UNFK, and me

The short answers.

What does UNFK mean?

Work it out.

It's unfuck - to remove rather than to add. It's the only verb this business has ever needed and it's why everything here is shorter than you expect. Most golfers don't need more; they need less of what they've already got.

Simple and naughty. The first word is the promise. The second is why you remember it.

It also means there's some swearing. See below.

What's with the swearing?

It's the Aussie way.

For most people golf is deadly serious, and the swearing helps cut through the bullshit. It gets attention, and it tends to relax people who've spent years being told golf is a game of manners and mechanics.

If straight talk and the odd swear word is likely to offend you, please don't proceed. No hard feelings - there's plenty of golf instruction out there that won't.

Do you teach golf?

No. I coach.

Teaching is being told what to do. It sounds like the right idea, and it's also why most of us couldn't wait to get out of school. Most teachers think they need to talk a lot.

Coaching is mentoring. Guiding. Working with you to get to your goals. A team, rather than someone who thinks they have all the answers and needs to spew technical ideas at you to feel important.

Silence is often golden.

Who is Cameron Strachan?

Me. Australian, about as far from a traditional golf instructor as you'll find.

Shot a par round within a few months of taking up the game, then completely lost the plot - and that setback is what sent me digging into how people actually learn. Got to a plus 3 handicap by ignoring traditional methods. Multiple club champion. Coached Aaron Baddeley on his look-and-shoot putting technique. Spoke at the International Society of Biomechanics in Sport conference, one of the first non-scientists to do so.

Since then: thirteen books, more than 800 articles, over 1.5 million words on golf improvement, and twenty-five years of coaching golfers.

The longer version is here.

Why haven't I heard of you?

I haven't heard of you either. Let's start again.

Hi. I'm Cameron. Twenty-five years of coaching golfers, thirteen books, more than 800 articles, and a handicap that got to plus 3 by ignoring most of what the industry told me to do.

But you're right - I'm not on television. I've never been on a tour bag. I don't make the videos where a bloke in a golf shirt draws lines on your hips and tells you your pelvis is late.

Here's the thing, though. The coaches you have heard of are mostly famous for the exact thing I'm asking you to stop doing. Getting well known in golf instruction usually means being very good at the industry's favorite trick: making the swing sound complicated enough to need a specialist.

I'd rather be useful than famous. Ask me again in a year.

What's the actual goal here?

Playing golf.

That's the master plan. If you're not getting out on the course, playing, exploring, experimenting, making mistakes and having some fun, you've missed the point.

Golf isn't a swing-building contest. It's a game. The course is where the real learning happens.

Do you offer a guarantee?

No. I don't do guarantees.

Not because I'm worried about the material. Because if you need a guarantee before you're willing to try something, experiment, play and take some responsibility for your own golf, this is probably not for you.

UNFK isn't about handing you certainty. It's about helping you become a better golfer.

Digital products here are non-refundable, and I say so before you buy rather than after. Here's the reasoning.

What's the No Dickhead Policy?

Pretty simple. No dickheads allowed.

That means no abuse, no endless arguing for the sake of it, no entitlement, no trying to prove how clever you are.

You don't have to agree with me. In fact, disagreement can be useful. Just don't be a dick about it.

Books and products

What each thing is, and which one you actually need.

Which book should I read first?

The Golf Lie. It's the newest, the shortest and the clearest statement of what I think. Sixty pages, under two hours, and it starts from scratch - you don't need to have read anything else of mine.

If the argument lands, everything else I've written will make more sense afterwards.

What's the difference between The Golf Lie and UnF*ck Your Golf Swing?

The Golf Lie is the argument. Why golf has been made harder than it needs to be, who that suited, and what the swing actually is. It's the shorter, sharper one.

UnF*ck Your Golf Swing is the fuller treatment - more of the how, more detail, more pages. Same philosophy, more of it.

Read The Golf Lie first. If you finish it wanting more, UFYGS is the next one.

Is there an audiobook?

Yes, for most of them. The Golf Lie, UnF*ck Your Golf Swing and UnF*ck Your Golf Brain all have audiobook editions, and there's an audiobook bundle if you want the lot.

They're all listed in the shop with prices on them.

What comes with The Golf Lie?

The ebook in PDF and EPUB, and the practice material to test the idea for yourself on a range. The audiobook is an optional upgrade at checkout.

Full detail is on the book page.

Are there videos?

Yes. UNFK Your Golf Drive is a fifteen-lesson course with five video lessons in it, and there's video inside some of the other products too.

I'm also putting things on YouTube, free.

Do you do paperbacks?

Some, yes - UnF*ck Your Golf Swing and a couple of bundles come as hardcopies, and The Golf Lie is now out in paperback. They're in the shop under Hardcopies.

I've bought something before. Where do I find it?

Log in at unfk.golf/login. Stuck? Try the help desk first, it answers most login questions in seconds. If you still can't get in, send us a message and a real person will sort it out.

I entered the wrong email address. What now?

First, check the thank-you page from your purchase. Your download link is there. You can also ask the help desk. If you still can't get to it, send us a message with your name, the email you meant to use and what you bought. It's fixed by hand, usually within one to two business days, Queensland time.

Where do I actually start?

The free lesson. Three ideas, ten minutes, costs nothing and asks for nothing. If it makes sense to you, the book is the next step. If it doesn't, you've lost ten minutes and I've lost nothing.

The obvious objections

The things people email me before they buy anything.

This sounds too simple.

It is simple. That's the point, and it's also why it's hard to sell.

Golf instruction has spent decades adding, because adding looks like expertise and it's easier to charge for. Simple isn't the same as easy, though - letting go of the complexity you've spent years accumulating is the hardest part of the whole thing.

Surely good players work on mechanics?

Plenty of them do, and plenty of them get worse for it. The ones who transform their golf tend to go the other way - they simplify, they trust the motion, they stop managing it mid-swing.

What I'd say is this: the better the player, the less they're thinking about their body when it matters.

What about biomechanics? Ground reaction forces?

All real, all measurable, and none of it is a swing thought. Your legs push against the ground whether you think about it or not - it's been happening free of charge since well before golf was invented.

I spent twenty years around sports scientists. The most useful thing I took from it was how little of it belongs in your head over the ball.

Don't Tour players work on positions?

Some do. They also hit a thousand balls a week and have done since they were children, which is the variable nobody mentions when they show you the drill.

Copy the practice, not the checkpoints.

Isn't throwing different from swinging?

Have a look at what your arm does when you throw a stone at a wall, then look at a good golf swing. It's the same machinery doing the same job at a different scale.

That's the whole argument, and it takes a book to make properly. The free lesson is the short version.

Why hasn't golf instruction done this already?

It did, for a while. The best ball-strikers golf has produced came up being coached to throw, before anyone could show them a slow-motion frame of their own hip turn and tell them to fix it.

There's an article about exactly that in the recommended reading.

I can't throw.

You threw something into a bin this week without thinking about it once.

It's the most common objection I get and the one that falls apart fastest. There's a whole article on it.

Will this work for me?

I don't know, and anyone who tells you they do is guessing. What I can tell you is that it costs nothing to find out - read the free lesson and see whether the way I think about golf makes any sense to you.

If it doesn't, don't buy anything. That's a perfectly good outcome.

Not answered here?

Just ask me

Send me a message and I'll answer it. If enough people ask the same thing it ends up on this page.

More sections are coming - the throwing model, practice, positions, on-course golf and the rest.