What Jim Furyk’s 58 Really Taught Us…

What Jim Furyk really taught us with his phenomenal round of 58 yesterday in the final round of the Travelers Championship is that we need once and for all to get over “pretty is better.”  This is made abundantly clear in the following excerpt from a book written by Jim Hardy who is in Golf Digest’s Top 10 Instructors in America list.

“Because of his unorthodox backswing, I doubt that anyone ever goes up to Jim Furyk and asks him who his instructor is because they sure want to learn to swing like he does.  People don’t do that because they have been sold a bill of worthless goods on what’s important.  Most golfers think pretty is good, or classic is good or even having both would be much better.  It’s a shame, because they should ask Jim for his instructor’s name and number.  They should learn to deliver the club head to the ball, to release it just like Jim Furyk because he does it perfectly.  Somewhere along the line Jim, and all the others above, plus countless other champions, realized or were taught just what was important.  It’s the release.”

We need to learn how to release the club properly so that we can control ball flight and impact and stop listening to people that say it is all about positions.  Positions are the result of good ball striking and not the cause of it.

It is generally accepted that Ben Hogan and Moe Norman are two of the greatest ball strikers of all time and they have very different golf swings.  You can get some guidance from studying them but your swing and positions will not be identical to theirs ever.

Jim Furyk is living proof of what Ben Hogan said to David Frost.  “Sonny you don’t hit the ball with your backswing.”

Congratulations to Jim Furyk for becoming the first player to shoot 58 in a PGA Tour event.  I know the course played to a par of 70 but in over 1.5 million tour rounds he is the first.  That, and the fact that he had also shot 59 in another tour event.  I would say that “pretty” doesn’t seem to matter that much.

Cover Photo via YouTube