I was 13 years old when first introduced to any kind of golf instruction—formal or otherwise. Golf Digest arrived in early 1970 with a close-up of a golfer’s left wrist at the top of the backswing, the pen-and-ink illustration floating on a bright red background. The copy underneath the visual heralded the “simple, foolproof, hit-it-straighter-and-longer, certain-to-improve-your-game Square-to-Square swing introduced inside.”
Suffice it to say that this newfangled technique pioneered by Dick Aultman and Jim Flick crashed and burned amid the Wilson Staff irons and whiffle balls of my back yard, but the process ignited a lifelong quest to hit better, flusher, straighter, and longer shots.
Over four decades, I have taken numerous lessons from a variety of talented instructors. My social media algorithms send a constant flow of posts with tips and tricks and the latest and greatest clubs. I watch instructors on YouTube wax about takeaway and posture and rotating through the ball. I have signed up for online swing training courses promising 20 yards of additional ball flight.
Sometimes it all works and folds into nirvana, like the day in August when I was playing in a two-man team event at my home club, my partner dropped out because of illness after four holes, and I shot three-over on my own ball to stake our team to third place with another round to go. On others it all turns to muck and sludge and you’re hitting a wedge shot thin on one hole and laying sod the next and you’re too embarrassed to speak your score out loud to the assistant pro at the counter for handicap posting.
That’s part of the appeal of the game beyond the competition, the beauty of the venue, the camaraderie with the guys. It’s the insatiable drive to get better. You cannot master the game. But you can always find a firmer handle on it than the one you had last month and battle the tendencies established many moons ago.
Twenty years ago, I got a 10-minute flash lesson with noted instructor David Leadbetter at a media event in Texas; he told me I was too scrunched at the top of my backswing, and I needed to work on getting more extension. Funny, my pro told me the same thing just Sunday afternoon. Well, that’s maybe not so funny if you think about it.
The quest never ends. During the Covid pandemic in 2020, my gym shuttered its doors, and I set up a modest exercise room in my house. I hung some mirror squares on one wall so that I could swing the golf club and monitor my tendencies to move off the ball at takeaway and lift out of my posture. I also hung a half dozen vintage railroad posters touting golf destinations in the British Isles, France, and Switzerland so that I could dream of sexy golf adventures trips while doing bird-dogs on the mat.
I recently decided to combine my workout room and my home office into one studio. Now half the room is my desk and bookcases, the other a half dozen kettlebells, a bench and a handful of golf training aids. I have a putting carpet, a wall-mounted band for rotational exercises and a couple of gadgets to promote getting more compression at impact.
Now I can pop up from my computer screen at any moment for a quick golf fix. I am grizzled and wise enough now to accept there is no destination with the golf swing. But what a journey. And that’s what matters the most.
Lee Pace has written and published more than two dozen club histories over three decades from his home in Chapel Hill, N.C.