That’s a question that has stuck with me all my life. “Why are these people so good at golf?” Golf is an incredibly difficult game. Millions of people play this game, most of them bad at it, but somehow a few hundred have managed to become amazingly good at it.
In 2025, I spent another year working like a scientist studying tour pros like lab rats wandering through a maze. I’m researching what they’re doing. When you think about it. ask them. I don’t have the answer yet, but here are some interesting things I discovered along the way.
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1. Tour pros’ commitment to grips is on another level
This year I started tracking which pros are using mid-size grips. So far, only a handful. Most often very small and thin grips are used. why? They say it improves clubface control and feel.
But I soon learned that Neil Shipley was also one of those using a mid-size grip.
When I saw him at the practice range earlier this year, I asked him about his grip. He says he’s very particular about his grip and insists that club manufacturers use spiral tape instead of standard strips. That way you can feel the small grooves between the spirals of tape and know exactly where to place your fingers. There’s no chance the rest of us would notice such a thing.
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They are on another level when it comes to feeling and connecting with the club.
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2. Joaquin Niemann’s sidebend is his superpower
Joaquin Niemann has one of those polarizing moves that really energizes armchair golf swing analysts.
The main criticism is that because of the extreme amount of lateral bend in his swing, the amount of moving his body away from the target, people say he’s almost certain to get injured in the future.
Well, that’s not exactly true.
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Yes, it may be true that side bending can be a red flag for injury generally. But it is also true that the human body can move in different ways, and as a result, people are stronger in different ways. Moving like this may be helping Niemann. avoid It’s not a sign that he’s going to get hurt, but that he’s going to get hurt.
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As for how it happened, Niemann said that as a little boy, he naturally gravitated toward this amount of sidebends because it helped him rotate more. Bending like this unlocked his ability to rotate. It gave him pound-for-pound strength. It also made him one of the best ball strikers in golf.
Just because it’s an action that might hurt you doesn’t mean it will hurt him. In fact, that’s how it works.
3. Your stance should be one that suits you, not a textbook.
That insight into Niemann came from a LIV Golf League photo shoot I did earlier this year. Sergio Garcia and Charles Howell III were also there, and that day I noticed that each of them had a pretty unique stance.
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Sergio’s were really narrow, well inside shoulder width.
Mr. Howell was wide, with his toes splayed and his knees sticking out.
As I’ve gotten more into strength training this year, I’ve learned that stance width is highly dependent on the person doing the lifting. A wide width may make one lifter feel stronger and the other weaker.
The same can be said for your golf swing.
A textbook will give you a general idea of how to stand, but the best golfers adjust their stance to what they feel they need. Your posture should feel balanced and strong, like you’re ready to jump. It may be different from what is written in the textbook.
4. Your favorite club needs more than just technology
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At the same shoot, Brooks Koepka showed me a 2-iron that had been so abused that the shaft was almost dented. He says it’s his favorite club and he would never happily trade it for another.
There is no technical advantage to using a golf club this old. Needless to say, the face will almost certainly cave in. But here’s what I learned from Brooks this year. Forget the science when it comes to the most reliable clubs. It’s about intangible assets. If it gives you confidence and is effective, it is doing its job.
5. The optimal adjustment is not the same for everyone
A few months later, at the Cognizant Classic, I was watching PGA Tour players practice at PGA National. At one point, there must have been 20 players on the practice field, and all 20 had alignment sticks on the ground in various configurations.
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Many players would arrange them like train tracks, one at their feet and one along the ball line.
Some accomplished it along the ball line.
Interestingly, others, like Isaiah Salinda, were out of position. Salinda’s The foot line stick was pointing to the left, but the target line was pointing straight ahead. When I asked him about it, he told me that on the course, he keeps his stance open so that he can practice swinging to the right even if he tries to swing to the left and hit the fade. He corrects his tendencies by doing the opposite, so he never goes too far.
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It looked weird, but it worked. That’s the lesson. Find the line that works best for you. Lee Trevino set himself open and it worked. Some people need to set up square, some need to practice setting up open, and some need to set up close. It all comes down to what fits your eye and whether you can hit the ball in the direction you want.
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6. Speed train the entire bag, not just the driver
We filmed rising star Luke Clanton’s swing sequence at the same event, where I learned from his coach, Jeff Lishman, that this little bomber hasn’t just been doing speed training with the driver since he was young. He did speed training using a bag. His coach set target swing speeds for his 7-iron, 5-iron, 3-wood, and driver. His intention was to start with the shortest club and achieve his target speed with each club. This kept his swing from becoming too driver-centric. He wasn’t just chasing speed, he was chasing sustainable speed.
7. Ignore where the ball is going when you work on your swing
It’s no coincidence that Rory McIlroy was finally able to address some lingering issues with his golf swing during the offseason, and then started the season better than anyone on tour, finishing with a Masters win and a career Grand Slam.
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McIlroy spent most of the offseason hitting golf balls, but he didn’t know exactly where the balls were going to go. He crashed them into a blank, turned-off simulator screen one night while in New York for six weeks filming “Happy Gilmore 2.”
The lesson from this is simple. While you’re working on your golf swing, work on your golf swing. What the golf ball is doing is a short-term problem and isn’t very useful for that task.
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The opposite may also be true. Before a round or during tournament week, there are times when you need to put away your video camera and focus solely on the movement of the golf ball.
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Practicing with feedback is important, but it’s essential to practice with the right kind of feedback to match your goals.
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8. Use peripheral vision to improve body position
Brendon Todd uses an interesting five-ball setup on the range, with the middle ball (the yellow ball) directly in the middle. It was a good idea and there was good reason behind it.
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The yellow golf ball is a visual cue to help you visualize where your body was in relation to the ball. He didn’t want to put his body too far behind the yellow ball, and he wanted his lower body to be in front of the yellow ball in the middle. Just having something in your peripheral vision can help you achieve your goals.
The trick has some technical advantages, but he also likes the routine. It gives him a sense of consistency. Your golf days may change, but your approach remains comfortably the same.
9. Feel your hips becoming horizontal to avoid back rotation.
Michael Thorbjornsen shared an interesting tip while filming a swing sequence earlier this year. This is good for people who struggle with reverse pivots.
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Young Stanford graduate tries to feel his hips rotate level When he spins them, they fall to the ground and encourage others to do the same. When a golfer lifts his right hip much higher than his left hip as he turns, he finds himself in a reverse pivot situation. That portends death for their sequence, and perhaps their ball-striking as well.
10. Golfers are getting serious about lifting heavy objects.
During the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill in March, I spent a few minutes with Rory McIlroy and asked him some questions about lifting. I wrote an article about it to highlight the important lessons. More and more golfers are hitting the weights hard, such as benching and squatting, movements that home run batters should perform.
Watch this space: Golf is finally catching up to other sports that athletes have been doing for years. Golfers will achieve this by becoming bigger, stronger and lifting heavier weights in the future. Another wave of speed is coming. I guarantee it.
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11. Swing practice doesn’t have to look pretty.
During the 2025 PGA Championship, I followed Padraig Harrington and Luke Donald for parts of the first two rounds. I noticed how Harrington would practice swinging with the club held low in his left hand, and slam the clubhead into the ground during the actual swing.
Of course, when I hit the ball, I just swung as usual. But I really enjoyed the lesson he was trying to convey. In other words, it doesn’t really matter what your practice swing looks like. Who cares if your practice swing looks weird? You should. Its only use is to give you a last-minute feeling before pulling the trigger.
12. Soft right hand in transition, firm right hand in impact.
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Around the Memorial in June, I became very interested in grip pressure and how it changes during the swing. Coincidentally, that’s when I saw Viktor Hovland working on just that.
Hovland is often seen hitting golf balls with his right hand off the club. This is to prevent you from gripping too hard with your right hand during the transition, causing the club to become too steep.
It’s something Hovand struggles with, and it’s something the rest of us can learn from. If you want a shallow transition, try to feel your right hand soft and squeeze it hard just before impact.
13. Your body follows your eyes.
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Some of the best players on tour these days have some very interesting head movements.
Scotty Scheffler’s head appears to be moving up and down.
Rory McIlroy leans towards his right shoulder.
Ben Griffin lifts his chin as he swings.
When I asked top teacher Sean Foley about this, he told me that golfers’ bodies tend to follow their eyes, and where their eyes go, their bodies follow.
In many ways, what we are witnessing with these head movements is intent. They immediately try to use their eyes to move their bodies. Sometimes that means pulling back to release your hand. That’s what Rory does.
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Golfers may also look up and follow the line down the line in an attempt to speed up their body. Think David Duvall.
The body follows the eyes. If you want your body to do something, think about how you use your eyes to do it.
14. Rotate like a Ferris wheel on your backswing
At the Ryder Cup in September, Top 50 coach Dana Dahlquist, who coaches Bryson DeChambeau, told me something that stuck with me.
DeChambeau is working on increasing his turn in his backswing, but he’s also trying to lift his body as he turns. The reason, to oversimplify, is that Bryson unlocks a greater range of motion as he lifts and turns on the backswing. If you shrink towards the ground while spinning, you won’t be able to rotate much. He would be locked up.
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Up is useful for creating surroundings. The analogy Dahlquist used was a Ferris wheel. The wheels do not roll flat. As it moves, it rises towards the sky. That combination is the real power.
15. The best golf swing is the one that suits your body.
This year, Matt Fitzpatrick made the difficult decision to leave longtime coach Mike Walker and study with Mark Blackburn, the No. 1-ranked teacher in the nation by Golf Digest. Hard decisions aren’t easy, but this reboot worked.
Blackburn’s genius focuses not only on the golf swing itself, but also on how it matches the golfer’s body. Blackburn found in Fitzpatrick that the former U.S. Open champion had a significantly longer wingspan compared to his height, which could have a unique effect on his golf swing. As a result, he tended to stand too far from the ball and his arms tended to be long and flat on the backswing.
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So they moved their arms closer together during setup and made their iron swings steeper and shorter to, in Blackburn’s words, “manage the golf swing radius.” The second half of Fitzpatrick’s season was a revelation as he ended up competing in the Ryder Cup in Europe.
What about the lesson? Be careful if you’re chasing positions. The best golf swing is the one that suits your body. Adjust your golf swing to suit your body. Not the other way around.
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