What 20 Years Of Sports Science Taught Me About Golf

Way back in 2004, I helped organise a comprehensive biomechanical study into the golf swing.

I’m not sure how it all happened, but my very average playing ability at the time was enough to attract the attention of a local sports scientist. A full geek who loved the idea of testing the game of golf.

We hit it off because we were both dissatisfied at how we would play.

Me? I was a scratch golfer who couldn’t get the ball into the hole in fewer attempts.
Him? He was playing off 20, had no consistency and would spray the ball all over the golf course.

But simply, we both were frustrated at how difficult the improvement process was. Lessons, theories and practice didn’t seem to work that well. And it made no real difference that our level of play was so far apart. Golf was just too hard.

My new golfing mate, thanks to all of his contacts, arranged for some golf science to take place at a university in New Zealand. We were off to the races.

The golf science

I was told at the time the scientific testing protocol was the most comprehensive. This wasn’t surface level stuff. We tested:

• Full-body kinematics
• Kinetics and force production
• Segment sequencing
• Joint loading
• Movement patterns through every critical phase of the swing

Golfers were wired up, placed on force platforms, and captured in motion using 3D modelling systems. The data was then analysed by biomechanics specialists, not golf coaches guessing at positions.

The philosophy at the time was simple and, on the surface, hard to argue with:

So that’s what we did.

And to be clear - some of that work did challenge conventional thinking. Certain ideas about sequencing, force production, and movement efficiency simply didn’t hold up when exposed to real data.

It was serious, cutting-edge work for its time. And I’m still proud of it.

But here’s the part that matters.

Despite all that data. Despite the precision. Despite the models and simulations - the most important thing I learned during that period had very little to do with biomechanics.

The really important stuff

When I look back on that period now, the most valuable things had very little to do with force plates or kinematic graphs.

The first big thing was simply time spent with the scientists themselves.

These people were incredibly sharp. Proper thinkers. But what surprised me most was how grounded they were. Even though most of them weren’t golfers, they had a very real-world understanding of human movement, learning, and performance.

They weren’t obsessed with positions the way golf instruction often is. They were interested in systems. In adaptation. In how humans actually learn skills over time.

Just having conversations with them changed the way I thought about golf - not technically, but conceptually. It forced me to step back and question things I’d previously taken for granted.

For example, I had spent years messing around with my golf setup and grip. What did they get me to do instead?

Get comfortable.

It made a huge difference right away.

The second big influence came when we started travelling and presenting this work internationally, including at conferences like the International Society of Biomechanics in Sports.

That experience was eye-opening. Suddenly I was surrounded by even more scientists. Other geeks working in athletics, swimming, throwing sports, rehabilitation, and skill acquisition. Golf wasn’t treated as some sacred, untouchable thing. It was just another movement problem within a much bigger human context.

That alone was humbling.

But the real breakthrough - the one that stuck with me - came much closer to home.

The line that changed it

At one point, as the data piled up and the models became more refined, I started to become obsessed. Positions. Numbers. Angles. Sequences. The science itself became the focus.

And that’s when one of the scientists said something that stopped me in my tracks.

They weren’t dismissing the work. They weren’t saying biomechanics don’t matter.

What he said was this:

At some point you have to stop analysing what we already know, and learn how to coach it.

That was the line. That was the shift.

The message was clear: the science had done its job. Now the real challenge was helping humans move, perform, and learn - not proving another theory or chasing another position.

That moment changed everything for me.

From that point on, my focus moved away from chasing perfect technique and toward understanding learning. How people actually improve. How confidence forms. How trust is built. How skills hold up under pressure.

Over time, I became far more interested - almost obsessive - about becoming better at natural learning, golfing and coaching, rather than becoming better at biomechanics, positions, or swing theories.

This, more than anything, is what makes the difference on the golf course.

The greatest gift

Looking back now, the greatest gift those years gave me had nothing to do with data, mechanics, or models.

They gave me a learning approach.

Those scientists didn’t coach me how to swing the club better. They showed me how humans actually learn. And once you see that, you can’t unsee it. We are not machines that need constant fixing. We are adaptive systems, hard-wired to learn when we’re allowed to get out of our own way.

When learning becomes the focus, something interesting happens. You get the best of both worlds.

Technique improves - often without you trying to make it improve. Performance becomes more reliable, especially under pressure, and that’s what most golfers are chasing. And most importantly, golf becomes deeply satisfying again. That’s the gift that’s often overlooked by the mainstream golf teaching industry.

If you don’t have satisfaction you have nothing. And if you’re always chasing your tail, trying to figure out what you’re doing wrong and fixing stuff, you’ll never reach a level of satisfaction worth talking about.

For me, golf stopped being a technical puzzle and became a learning vehicle. Through that lens, I’ve played better golf than I ever thought I was capable of. Not perfect golf - far from it - but honest, repeatable, pressure-proof golf. And in the process, I became a far better coach, because I stopped trying to fix people and started helping them learn.

Ironically, this whole journey began in sports science. It began with force platforms, mathematical formulas, and complex biomechanical models. And that work mattered.

But walking away from the obsession with positions and theories - and learning how to actually play and coach - turned out to be the real breakthrough.

These days, that’s my mission.

And instead, to play the game.

Because that’s where learning happens. That’s where performance lives. And that’s where true enjoyment and satisfaction are found.

And in my opinion, that’s the greatest gift golf has to offer.

This is the lens the whole of UnF#ck Your Golf Swing is written through - the mechanics are in there, but they sit quietly in the background.