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Golf's Wise Man

The genius of John Jacobs is back in style

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By Jaime Diaz

Photos by Ben Van Hook

February 2006

John Jacobs takes long, slow strides through the rugged heathland of the New Forest, a 150-square-mile public preserve in southern England established in 1079 by William the Conqueror. At 80, the grandmaster of golf instructors retains a kingly presence -- a full 6-feet-2 even with his still broad shoulders now slightly hunched, a noble face suited for the London stage topped by a wavy silver mane complete with the vestiges of an all-world widow's peak. A lifelong outdoorsman, Jacobs loves quietly blending in among the deer and wild ponies as he compliantly follows his two dogs, Prudence and Pippi J, along their bucolic daily route. But today he has additional company, and when he speaks, it's clear his natural state is to capture and hold human attention.

Despite puffing a bit on an uphill stretch, Jacobs reflects on his life in golf in a seamless, almost musical cantor. He shares memories and rich analysis of great players from Henry Cotton to Ernie Els, opinions on issues from the evolution of instruction to the future viability of the Old Course, and effacing insights into his own strengths and weaknesses. When his train of thoughts stops and he confesses, "I'm lost again," it never takes more than a prompting word or two to get him back on track.

"Blimey, I can blether," he chides himself in his native Yorkshire slang. "It's just that the things I believe in follow logically. In many ways people think there is a mystique about golf. But it really is the most logical thing."

Jacobs has made sense out of more areas of the game than anyone living. Besides having taught more people -- from golf-school masses to European national teams to the game's elite -- than most any other instructor in history, Jacobs played in 14 British Opens and won internationally. He has been a television commentator, best-selling author, chief architect of the European tour, Ryder Cup competitor (and two-time captain) and Hall of Fame inductee.

Peter Dobereiner, writing in these pages in 1994, said in theory "it would be perfectly valid to compile a list of the Five Most Influential People Behind the Rise of European Golf, but in practice it would be no fun. It would have to read: (1) John Jacobs, (2) John Jacobs, (3) John Jacobs, (4) John Jacobs, (5) John Jacobs."

And though Jacobs seldom ventures far from the classic garden home he shares with Rita, his wife of 57 years, he remains in demand as the wisest of swing gurus, with his core ideas about instruction undergoing a new wave of appreciation from the game's best teachers and players.

Even today, according to Guy Kinnings, managing director for IMG Golf in Europe, "When players get hopelessly confused with their swings, they have one common request: 'Call Jacobs.'"

Says Jacobs: "It's amazing I did so many things, because I never really had a goal other than I loved golf."

Actually, he had one.

"Oh, I was mad to be a great player," he says, a fierceness in a normally gentle voice. "I got a flippin' reputation as a teacher and only wanted to be a player. But we don't always get to choose our gifts."

His gift coupled with a hunger to achieve shotmaking control in competition led to his greatest contribution: diagnosing the golf swing through the flight of the ball. Beginning with his instruction books in the 1960s and later at his golf schools, Jacobs shook up the teaching world by using the effect to determine the cause.

IT STARTS WITH THE BALL FLIGHT

Rather than focus on correct body movement, Jacobs refined a system that worked backward from the particular flight of the ball to deduce the clubface alignment at impact, the path of the clubhead, and the angle of that path. From those factors, he determined the swing error and its needed correction. As Jacobs says, "If golf were about achieving correct positions throughout the swing, then the greatest players in the world have it wrong. No, golf is what the ball does, which is entirely dependent upon what the club is doing at impact."

"John's way cuts through everything because it gets down to the essentials: clubface and path," says Butch Harmon, who requires his assistants to read Jacobs' classic 1972 instruction book, Practical Golf, written with Ken Bowden. "John's stuff is simple and easy to understand because it's right," Harmon says. "It works for every player who ever lived or will live."

The system, the inspiration for the golf schools that still carry Jacobs' name, caught on and continues to gain momentum in part because it's founded on the oldest and truest way to learn: watching and reacting to the ball. Intuitively adjusting to the last shot is the definition of digging it out of the dirt, and the most attentive golfers have always known it: The golf ball doesn't lie. But Jacobs was the first to give the process precision, organization and nuance.

"John's breakthrough was a new way of teaching," says Jim Hardy, who learned to teach under Jacobs at his Practical Golf schools in the 1970s. "He boiled all his knowledge into a system, and it just made teaching so much more efficient. John could walk a line of students and basically know a person's whole shot pattern from where the ball went after one swing. And then he would convey the information so that person could basically fix himself."

Supreme ball-strikers from Hogan to Trevino to Singh always let ball flight be their teacher. But Jacobs' model has made it easier for today's players to understand what Jacobs calls "the geometry of impact."

Tiger Woods, helped by Jacobs disciple Hank Haney and his own reading of Jacobs' writings, calls the improved ability to learn from ball flight his most important breakthrough in 2005.

"It's taught me that what I think I'm doing is not actually what I'm doing," Woods said late last year. "So I'll hit a shot where I thought I got it right but then look at the ball flight and go, 'Oh, OK, that's not it. I've got to go back and work on this.' And then you get it right back."