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Strange swings

Tuesday, 10 February 2009
Michael Weston
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Jim Furyk has a strange but effective golf swing

Congratulations to Hugo Finaly who won a Scotty Cameron Red X3 putter. Hugo’s Letter of the Month in the March issue of Golf Monthly concerns the golf swing. It’s a skill we all try to replicate effortlessly and spend hours trying to tweak and perfect, but as Hugo points out, success isn’t always reserved for just those with a model swing. Hugo wrote:

Having witnessed the superb ball-striking skills in last year’s Ryder Cup, I couldn’t help but focus on the peculiar swing of Jim Furyk. Someone suggested that he learned his swing in a telephone kiosk! It matters not as Jim is a world-class golfer, which led me to recall other successful, unorthodox swings.

Irishman Jimmy Bruen led the Walker Cup team while still a teenager, but what made his achievements so remarkable was his method. He drew the club inside the line of flight and turned his wrists inwards to such an extent that at the top of the swing the club head pointed in the direction of the tee box. It was then whipped inside and down into the hitting area with great force. There was a fantastic loop, defying all the canons of orthodoxy, which produced shots of prodigious length, and led to suggestions that the famous loop in Jimmy’s backswing came from his hurling days. What has now become known as the ‘Bruen Loop’ is part and parcel of every hurler’s method of striking the ball.

Then there was Canadian Moe Norman. He achieved 54 tournament victories and 33 course records with a wide stance, ramrod straight legs and a three-quarter backswing.

So, maybe the real lesson we should take from all this is that we should forget about the coaching manuals and just get on with it!

What do you think? Tell us in the Golf Monthly Forum.

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