Golf Teachers Can’t Agree On Anything

A warning before we start. The gloves are off in this one. Not to have a go at anyone personally - but because some things need saying plainly, and I’m done saying them softly.

Ask ten golf teachers a simple question.

What is the golf swing?

Not what influences it. Not what contributes to it. Not what happens during it.

What is it?

You’ll get ten different answers.

One talks about rotation. Another about sequencing. Another about pressure shift. Another about ground reaction forces. Another about wrist angles. Another about the kinetic chain.

All of these things may play a role. But none of them actually answer the question.

They’re descriptions of parts. They’re not a model.

And forty years into the modern instruction era, with all its bodies and badges and gadgets, the industry still cannot give you one straight answer to the most basic question in the entire field.

Sit with that for a second. Because it’s worse than it sounds.

A model is different

A model simplifies complexity into something useful. It tells you what matters most and, just as importantly, what you can safely ignore. A model is an act of exclusion. It draws a line in the sand.

That’s where modern golf instruction struggles. The industry has become incredibly good at identifying variables. There is no shortage of information.

But information is not a model.

A list of everything that matters is not a model.

A catalogue is not a model.

The problem isn’t that golf teachers know too little. The problem is that many refuse to prioritise.

Everything matters. Everything is connected. Everything depends.

And when everything matters, nothing matters.

“We already say that”

I got a comment this morning on Facebook. A golfer had seen the bit about the swing being a throw, and he had his rebuttal loaded.

He thought he’d caught me out. He’d actually handed me the whole argument.

Let me clear this up, because I get it often. I have never said throwing is new. Plenty of great players have called the swing a throw, and I’m upfront about that. So if your best shot is “someone already said this,” you’re not arguing with me. You’re agreeing with me and mistaking it for a punch.

Because here’s the part that should stop you cold. The same industry that says “throw it, release it, feel the hands” also says “take your arms out of it, quiet the hands, power it with the big muscles, drive it from the ground up.”

Both messages. Same industry. Often the same coach. Sometimes the same lesson.

So which is it?

That’s the contradiction I want to drag into the light. Not that nobody mentioned throwing. Plenty have. But then, in the next breath, they told you to do the opposite.

They don’t say two things. They say everything.

Once you see it you can’t unsee it. It isn’t just throw versus big muscles. It’s everything.

A teacher sees my book focuses on the throwing motion and I hear, “well, we already say that.” Of course they do. But if I’d said the key was the right knee, someone teaches that. Ground reaction forces, lead wrist angle, X-factor, shallowing, quiet hands, gravity - every one has a teacher, a channel, a book or a paid programme behind it.

The industry covers the entire surface area of all possible advice. So whatever you propose, somebody can claim they already said it. Of course they did. They said everything already, and that’s the problem.

Saying everything is the same as saying nothing. If every variable is the key, there is no key.

The industry won’t draw the line. Drawing it means being wrong sometimes, and being wrong loses customers. So they hedge into infinity. Cover every base. Claim every idea. Commit to none.

And that is why the golfer drowns. It isn’t a lack of information. They’re buried in it. Every lesson adds another thing to manage, another part to consciously control, another checkpoint. The teaching only ever adds. It never subtracts. And a swing built from a hundred conscious controls cannot be performed by a human being in a second and a half.

So I ask one question

When an instructor backs me into a corner, I don’t argue. I ask.

Then the fun happens.

He’s got two ways to answer and both of them lose.

If he stays vague - “it depends, every golfer’s different, there are many ways” - he’s just admitted he doesn’t have a model. He has a buffet. He can’t be wrong, because he never said anything that could be tested. But he can’t claim a system either, because a system that fits every case predicts nothing.

If he gets specific - “drop the arms, then rotate through, control the knee” - now he’s said something. And now we can hold it against the science. Now it comes apart, joint by joint.

That’s the vice. Vague enough to be safe is too vague to be a model. Specific enough to be a model is specific enough to be tested. He can’t have both - he wants the credibility of a model and the escape hatch of having said everything.

You don’t have to win the argument. You just have to make him state his.

A guild, not a profession

Here’s where it stops being about one teacher.

These organisations, as a general rule, don’t actually have a model. And they’re built so they never have to. They certify people. Exams, playing standards, business modules, a pathway. But at the centre, where a theory of how a human learns to move ought to sit, there’s a hole.

One graduate goes out and teaches gravity golf. Another teaches stack-and-tilt. Another teaches ground-up sequencing. Another teaches quiet hands. All certified. All contradicting each other. All legitimate. The badge doesn’t certify a model. It certifies membership.

And that’s the proof they don’t understand learning. If you had a real theory of how a person acquires a complex motor skill, that theory would rule things out. You could not certify gravity golf and its opposite, because the science would tell you one of them is wrong. The fact that everything passes means nothing is being measured against anything.

That’s the difference between a profession and a guild. A profession is organised around a body of knowledge. Medicine has physiology. Engineering has physics. You can be struck off for violating it. A guild is organised around membership - you’re in because you passed the gate, and once you’re in you can say what you like.

Golf instruction has dressed up as a profession. It’s built like a guild.

That’s why “what’s your model?” detonates. You’re asking a guild a question only a profession can answer.

What the heart actually does

Hold golf up against real medicine for a second.

People will say doctors disagree too. They do. But not like this. A surgeon can’t open you up on a hunch and a new theory. The theory goes through review, trials, scrutiny - it has to survive contact with the evidence before it gets anywhere near a patient. The disagreement in medicine sits on top of a shared commitment to testing. The gate is the evidence. In golf the gate is the membership fee, and sometimes it’s just an internet connection and a TikTok account.

And medicine is out at the frontier. Sequencing tumours. Editing genes. Biology so complex it’s barely comprehensible. Meanwhile golf can’t tell you what the swing is, and can’t even agree on where its power comes from.

Imagine that in medicine. Imagine cardiologists who couldn’t agree on what the heart does. One says it pumps blood. One says no, it’s the lungs driving the circulation. A third says the diaphragm. All certified. All practising. None required to settle it. You would never let those people near a patient.

But this tends to be how the golf industry works. And it’s not just the power question. It’s repeated for almost every part of the game.

You name it.

So no, I’m not being a smart arse when a bloke tells me throwing is nothing new. I’m pointing at the gap. They say throw. They teach the opposite. They can’t tell you what the swing even is. And they’re the gatekeepers of how millions of people learn this game.

That’s the lie.

My answer

Here’s my super-abbreviated version, and I’ll put it on the table where it can be shot at.

The golf swing is a two-handed throwing motion.

You may agree with that or disagree with it. That’s fine. But at least it’s a model. (And really, it’s more than a model. It’s a lens - but that’s a bigger conversation, and one for another day.) It’s clear. It’s testable. It’s memorable. Most importantly, it gives the golfer somewhere to start.

From here, a whole coaching protocol can be arranged that can assist the golfer.

The purpose of a model isn’t to explain every detail, or to pretend you do everything even where those things conflict. If someone wants to teach a beginner “big muscle” theory, fine. I am not about to say “I do that too.”

The purpose of a model is to help a human being perform a difficult task.

Golfers don’t need another list. They need a filter.

That’s what a model is.

This is the shorter cut. The full version - and its second part, which goes further - is on the Substack.