Swing Easy, Hit Hard

Greetings Golfers, 

Last week - March 3 - was the anniversary of the birth of Julius Boros.

He was born 102 years ago (1920) … so, probably a lot of people reading this don’t know who he was.

Well, he maybe had the coolest swing of all time. Take a look at it on YouTube … especially the analysis by Wayne Defrancesco. 

Boros’ famous line was “Swing easy, hit hard”. How good is that? Usually I see one or the other … easy swings that don’t really hit the ball … or hard hits with hard looking swings.

His swing looks very intuitive instead of mechanical. As Defrancesco says “He’s always in motion”. Meaning that when he steps to up the shot … his feet are moving and takes a few waggles, then forward presses, and almost steps into the shot … much like throwing a ball.

If you’ve been reading my stuff, you know that I believe the golf swing is basically a throwing motion. I love Hogan’s analogy of the sidearm throwing motion of a shortstop … that’s the golf swing.

Speaking of baseball … imagine if a Centerfielder fielded a ball in short left-center field … and before he threw to 3rd base, he stopped and pulled out a Rangefinder for the distance.

This Rangefinder thing has become ridiculous. It’s helpful knowledge … but you need to trust your intuition.

Here’s a great saying by Henri Poincare “It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.”

Before you pull-out the Rangefinder … guess what the yardage is … feel the yardage before you test it with your rangefinder. 

We would all be better players if we were more intuitive when we played.

It’s good to know the science of the golf swing and information such as yardage. However, we play much better through trust and intuition than trying to play like a robot.

And it’s more fun.

Cheers!

Tom Abts
GM/Head PGA Professional
tabts@deerrungolf.com