My Big Golf Hunch

Here’s a question worth sitting with. How does a human being move a golf club fast enough to send a small ball the length of three football pitches?

It’s not a trick question. It’s a real one. Because when you chase the answer honestly, you end up somewhere the whole industry would rather you didn’t.

So let me show you what I’m certain of, what I only suspect, and - this is the part that matters most - exactly which is which. That last bit is something golf instruction has never once offered you.

It sells you hunches as laws and guesses as gospel.

I’m not going to do that.

What I know: every player on tour is throwing

Whether they’d use the word or not, they are. There is no other way to get a clubhead moving that fast. You cannot shove a club up to those speeds with steady muscular effort - the body simply can’t push hard enough, quick enough.

Speed like that comes from one thing: a throw.

The far end of the club released and whipped through late, the same way a cracking whip, a skimming stone and a thrown ball all work. And the science says exactly that - the speed is delivered right out at the hands, through the release, in the final fraction of a second before the ball.

So “the best players throw the club” isn’t my opinion. It’s about as close to a physical necessity as golf has. There is no second method hiding somewhere that the rest of us haven’t been told about.

If a human moves a club fast, a human is throwing it.

What I also know: the body follows

This is the one that drives people mad, so stay with me, because it’s the key to the whole thing.

What a great player feels he is doing and what is actually driving the club are, very often, two completely different things.

A tour pro will tell you he’s spinning his hips. And he is - the footage shows it. But is that the foot, or the footprint?

He’ll tell you he’s pulling the club down into the late hit position. But is he pulling, or is he throwing?

He’ll tell you his body is the main power source. But is it?

And that’s where the footage lies. We see the body move first, so the swing must be body-led. Body-dominant. The kids, the teachers, the golfers are all told the same thing. I was told the same thing.

But the science told me something else. It says the body doesn’t move fast enough to power the club on its own. I have been trying to prove it wrong ever since. I am yet to do so.

So to me, it’s a throw. And that means hand dominated.

I’m not saying no body - the body follows. But the hands rule the day.

Which means every time someone quotes a famous player at me - “well, so-and-so says he doesn’t throw it, he does X” - they’ve handed me nothing at all.

That’s the player’s feel. It is not the player’s move.

Underneath the feel, he is throwing the club, because there is nothing else to do.

It even explains the players who look like they’d prove me wrong. The ones who rebuilt their swings by numbers. The ones with the physics degree and a launch monitor all but welded to the bag. They aren’t the exceptions. They’re the best proof I’ve got. However elaborate the scaffolding they built inside their heads, underneath all of it they are still throwing the club - because the club does not care what you believe about it. The technique is the feel. The throw is the real.

That is everything I am certain of.

Now I’m going to step past the edge of what I can prove - and, unlike the people who taught you, I’m going to tell you that’s what I’m doing.

Where it runs out

So that’s my big golf hunch, laid out plainly, with the certain parts and the guessed parts clearly marked.

That honesty is the whole difference between what I do and what you’ve been sold.

They gave you certainty they never earned. I’ll give you the truth, and I’ll tell you exactly where it runs out.

But here’s the part that’s about you, not the pros. You don’t need to find their level. You need to find yours - and the sooner you start throwing, the sooner you’ll find it. Not the mastery you see on the telly. Your mastery. The best version of your own game, whatever that turns out to be.

And if you’ve been doing the other thing - trying to copy the pros, leaning on feels, trusting the traditional dogma - and you’re still here reading this, then let’s be honest with each other: the odds are it hasn’t worked. It was never going to.

It’s because you’re trying to fit round pegs into square holes. You’re not throwing. You’re complicating the throw by trying to hit with the big muscles, or with some other theory - like swinging on a 37.35 degree plane.

So put it down.

Start throwing. Move the club - fast, hard, quick, however you want to say it. And get out of your own way.

The throw is real. Start there.