It’s something of a growing trend, signaled by one word.
Here’s Wyndham Clark saying it following his U.S. Open win last year:
“I’m working on my own on my golf swing…I don’t have a swing coach. That’s helped me own my swing and own my game. I worked with some great coaches, and they were very good at what they do. But I didn’t know where the ball was going, and I didn’t own it.”
Here’s Justin Thomas saying later that year:
“I became dependent on them and then I just lost all ownership, all accountability to where when things were going wrong, I was looking to them to answer the questions instead of I’m the one that needs to figure it out at some point.”
And on Wednesday ahead of the 2024 Presidents Cup, here’s what Max Homa said:
“Everyone in here has gone through that at some point. It’s one of those things, more for me I need a break and sometimes I don’t do a great job of taking ownership of my golf swing so kind of putting the ball in my court a bit, and you know, trying to figure it out myself. I mean, as much as a coach can be brilliant, a genius like Mark, I know my golf swing better than anybody, and I can see it and feel it. Just trying to take some ownership like that.”
If the repeated bolding didn’t give it away, the word I’m referring to is “ownership” and “own.” It’s a word that pops up more and more among pros these days, almost always in the context of pros talking about why they left their golf coach.
But what, exactly, are they talking about?
A little Monday morning golf swing inspiration from Max Homa's winning press conference.
"It's a beautiful game. Sometimes you're just one good swing thought away from being good again."pic.twitter.com/rZ1XBoXNg0
— LKD (@LukeKerrDineen) January 30, 2023
The Codependent Trap
Canvas a tour driving range, and you’ll see lots and lots of people. Players, caddies, coaches, trainers, agents, assistants; an entire ecosystem of specialists that has sprouted up around players.
What you won’t see a lot of is heavy-handed golf swing technical work. That stuff, hopefully, has happened already, during off-weeks. During tournament weeks, the teams around each player are there on stand-by. Monitoring the situation on site, hopefully never needed, but ready in case of emergency.
This approach works for some, but can also create a sense of codependency.
Jared C. Tilton
Players can lose confidence, feeling they don’t understand their golf swing well enough to fix it themselves when things go wrong. And coaches themselves can be left feeling like scapegoats, being blamed for things that aren’t their fault.
And so the swing back towards ownership. A kind of self-reliance where players learn how to work on the technical golf swing stuff themselves, with only occasional input from friends, caddies, and coaches.
7 golf swing ‘ownership’ questions
In many ways, it’s something the rest of us can learn from.
We don’t have the luxury of having the best coaches on the planet at our beck and call, so we need a sense of ownership over our own golf swings.
How do you do that? It’s hard to know exactly, but if you can answer these questions, that’s a good start:
- Do you know your golf swing’s good and bad tendencies?
- Do you understand what causes your worst shots?
- Do you have a sense of what your body can (and can’t) do physically?
- Do you know how to play when you’re not swinging your best?
- Do you know why certain drills work for you, and others don’t?
- Do you know how to make quick in-round golf swing adjustments?
- Do you know how to avoid double-crosses?
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
