Somebody Already Said That

You’ve met this bloke. Maybe you’ve been this bloke.

He reads one of my posts, something goes off in his chest, and he reaches for a name. “Ernest Jones already said this.” “Shawn Clement teaches this.” “It’s all in Search for the Perfect Swing.” He types it with a little flourish and sits back, case closed.

Here’s the funny part. He’s right. And he’s somehow decided that being right about that is the same as making a point.

It isn’t new. I’ve never said it was. The idea that the swing is a throw is old - properly old. Good coaches have been circling it for a century, and some of them, Jones especially, got closer than almost anyone. I’ve got nothing but respect for them. I’m not standing on their work pretending it’s mine. I’m standing on it and saying so, out loud - which is more than the industry that quotes them has ever managed.

So yes. Nothing new. Now what?

Name me a single subject on earth that doesn’t have a hundred books saying more or less the same thing. Tennis. Running. Chess. Cooking. Business. Raising kids. Every one of them has a library, and every library has a sameness running through it - because they’re all pointing at the same reality, and reality doesn’t rearrange itself to give authors something fresh to write. There are probably no genuinely new ideas left in any of them. Haven’t been for a long time.

That’s not a scandal. That’s what the truth looks like. Every physics book re-explains gravity, and nobody storms in to tell Newton he ripped off Galileo. When a lot of clever people, across a lot of years, keep landing in the same spot - that isn’t proof the spot is fake. It’s about the strongest evidence going that it’s real.

But here’s what the name-droppers never grasp. Saying it isn’t new tells me nothing. And it tells you nothing. Pointing at a bookshelf is not an argument. It’s a place to hide. It feels clever - there’s a little hit of superiority in “well, actually, so-and-so said this first” - but when the words settle, nothing has actually been said. It’s the noise a person makes when they’d rather be seen as well-read than admit they’re stuck.

Because that’s what it really is. It is always easier to name the person who said it than to go and do the thing they said. Easier to collect coaches than to collect birdies. The fella typing three names at me has usually read more golf than I have and plays worse than my beginners - and he cannot see that those two facts are the same fact.

There’s a sister move to the name-game, too, and it needs its own word: the mislabel. “Oh, this is just Moe Norman. Single axis. Single plane.” No. It isn’t - and let me be dead clear, because it matters: I am not teaching you to stand like Moe or match a single plane. I never have.

Single plane is a position. A geometry. A shape to copy. It is the exact kind of thing I spend my life begging you to stop chasing. The throw isn’t a position - it’s a movement, an intention. It doesn’t care what plane your club swings on. It produces whatever plane your body wants, and yours won’t be Moe’s.

And here’s the irony that ought to stop them cold. Moe Norman was one of the purest strikers who ever lived, and he threw a club as beautifully as anyone who’s drawn breath. His famous single plane wasn’t the instruction that built him - it was the shadow his action cast. The industry looked at the shadow, bottled it, slapped a name on it, and sold it back to you as the cause. Same mistake, different decade. They photograph the footprint every time and forget there was ever a foot.

So let me ask the only question that matters. The one none of them want.

It doesn’t matter in the slightest whether Jones said it, or Clement, or Shoemaker, or a book older than your father. Pick whoever you like. Give them all the credit. Now answer me this:

Why aren’t you playing better golf?

You’ve read the lot. You know who said what, and when, and in which chapter. And you’re still standing on the first tee, hoping. If knowing who got there first actually helped, you’d be off scratch by now. You’re not. So the name-dropping hasn’t merely failed to help you - it’s the very thing keeping you stuck. You went hunting for who owns the idea instead of going out and using it.

New or not, an idea still has to land. It has to be said in a way that finally works - for you, in your body, on your course. That’s the only job I’ve ever cared about. I’m not interested in being first. Half the good ideas in golf were taken a century ago. I’m interested in being the one that finally makes it click, and then showing you exactly how to do it.

So here’s my offer to the next person reaching for a name. Keep it. I’ll hand you Jones, Clement, Shoemaker, Newton and the whole shelf, no argument. You can have every name in the game.

I’ll take the golfer who’s actually getting better.

Go play. And don’t be a dickhead.