Those are the three keys to good swinging when it comes to any sport, to be honest.  You are taught a setup and a swinging technique in cricket and baseball and it should be the same for golf.

In any other sport, in fact, you have standardized technique. Take any sport and, if virtually every place where training takes place, you’ll find the same mechanics being taught.

Whether it be tennis, track & field, baseball, football, swimming – you won’t find one successful school where the technique differs from the technique being taught elsewhere – the successful instructors are the ones who can figure out ways (or have ways that have been passed down to them by mentors), where their methods produce superior performance.

I found this to be the same when I studied the best swingers of the Classic Golf Swing era – they invariably held to certain principles that were very close to optimal technique, and where they differed because of personal idiosyncrasies, you’ll find that the best of the best were closest to optimal.

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Of course, personal aptitude and athletic ability will sometimes muddy the issue – Tiger Woods, for example, has always had what I would call mechanically-unsound swing techniques from his youth to the last time he teed it up, and less-than-ideal setups at times, but his talent for golf, his athletic ability and furious drive to win overcame all of that.

Until they didn’t.  You can hardly win anything when you can’t get out of bed to swing a golf club because of the way you’ve been swinging.

That aside…

There isn’t a lot to look at when it comes to the golf swing besides the setup (how to stand over the ball and where the ball is in relation to your feet), balance and pivot action.

The first two will affect the third.  If you aren’t in a proper setup, you’re already at a disadvantage, and if you aren’t balance, that is also a disadvantage, and the pivot action will suffer even if you know the proper pivot action.  I’ve found this out by playing constantly with the setup and balance – they are important to a proper swing.

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The pivot itself, if one is balanced and properly set up – that is also a variable, because you can have a perfect setup and balance and then try to swing in the Modern Golf Swing method, and all of that good stuff goes out the window.

That’s why today’s pros are forever fiddling with their swings – there is no proper way to swing using the Modern Golf Swing methodology, so there will never be an end to fiddling and fussing and “I had it last week, but this week I can’t even get the ball in play…”

There is no magical trick or secret to the golf swing – it is only a matter of treating it like you would any other sports motion or athletic motion if you will.

The actual playing of golf is much more complicated – you have the place from which you’re hitting the ball, the intended landing area or target, and whether or not you must account for wind, shaping the shot and of course being careful of possible hazards.

All of those factors are dealt with before you even get over the ball, and at the point, it is only swinging.

I make sure to follow a routine when hitting balls on camera, but if I didn’t want to, as sometimes when I’m focused on something, where I can literally tee up a ball, step back into the setup and let fly:

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In that swing above, I tee the ball up, step back and nail the setup, I’m perfectly balanced from address to finish, I make a good pivot and I smash the ball straight down the line, in literal seconds.

That swing above was one where I put a pretty good swing on a ball with the camera running and had one last ball remaining.  I said to myself, “Let me just hit another drive right now instead of re-setting the camera,” and I completely skipped the pre-shot.

Would I hit a ball so quickly on the course?  Probably not, but it’s not rocket science.

Setup, balance and pivot.

Anyone who says it’s more complicated than that is selling something, and it’s probably a bunch of high-priced lessons that don’t leave you any better off when you’ve emptied your wallet.

A tennis forehand or backhand is more complicated when you factor in that you’re moving, the ball is coming at you, and you have a split second to react to hit the ball somewhere in play across the court.

Keep it simply, follow the fundamentals, and treat the golf swing as no more difficult to learn than any other athletic motion.