10 Rules For Making A Swing Change

By Butch Harmon
With Guy Yocom
Photos by Dom Furore March 2009

01 Your ball flight will tell you when.
You don't change your swing because of what your buddies are saying, you don't do it so you can swing like your favorite pro, and you certainly don't make a change out of boredom -- you'd be surprised how many golfers do. Ball flight is really all that matters.

Nick Watney, who got his first PGA Tour win in 2007, used to have a tough time fading the ball. He had trouble driving on holes that doglegged to the right and hitting iron shots to back-right pins. Nick had a vision of what a fading ball flight should look like, and when the ball wasn't responding to the things he tried, that's when he came to me. We worked on weakening his strong left-hand grip, and the main point of reference was how the ball was reacting. So not only did his ball flight tell him a swing change was necessary, it was also the biggest factor in monitoring his progress.

02 Don't go it alone.
There's a saying among teachers: "Feel and real are never the same thing." Meaning, what you think you're doing with your swing and what you're actually doing are a lot different. You've got to see a PGA pro to help you make an accurate diagnosis and identify the right change for you. And don't limit yourself to one or two lessons. You need the pro's eyes to check your positions, because you can't see yourself swinging -- and you can't videotape every subtle change. I don't know of a single modern tour player who has made a big swing change by himself, so for the average player to go it alone will probably do more harm than good.

03 It's about commitment.
After Tiger Woods won the Masters in 1997, he insisted on overhauling his entire swing to try to become more consistent and versatile. I warned Tiger that he might be in for a very rough time if he did that, and I even suggested that we make one small swing change at a time. But Tiger wanted to do it all at once. The process took patience on Tiger's part, because he didn't see immediate results and didn't have a very good year by Tiger standards in 1998. It took trust that it was the right decision and unbelievable amounts of hard work to make it come together. But mostly it took commitment, a vow to stick with the program come hell, high water or worst of all, high scores. And it paid off: Tiger had a huge year in 1999. It's rare to see that level of commitment, especially among recreational players. But if you don't have at least some of that, you're pretty much wasting your time.

04 A swing tip is not a swing change.
A band-aid fix that gets you through the day, or even through a few weeks, is not a swing change. I've got nothing against tips, but you can't expect them to hold up. They help the outcomes but not the cause. It's like giving Novocain to an aching tooth -- when it wears off, you're going to be in more pain than ever until you get the tooth fixed.

A swing change that addresses the root cause of a problem is more complicated than a quick fix. It'll have a positive influence on other aspects of your swing. For example, if you're taking the club back too far inside and then coming over the top, the change I might give you -- starting the club to the outside so you can more easily direct it to the inside on the downswing -- will have the added benefit of making your swing arc wider and longer. Not only have you gotten rid of the slice, you've increased your clubhead speed.

05 If it feels good, you're not doing it right.
Because a swing change involves either a totally different motion or a wholesale change in your grip or setup, there's no way it should feel comfortable. In 1992 I began helping Greg Norman make some changes (widening his stance, flattening his swing, modifying his release and a few others). In the years that followed, Greg had periods when he played the game as well as anybody ever has. But the changes never really became second nature to him, and he began moving away from them. I think that hurt him. At the 1996 Masters, he blew a six-shot lead in the final round, noting his swing didn't feel right.