In my last article, “Why Tiger and I Could Never Find a Golf Coach,” I described my journey of working with many of the top golf coaches in the world. They all wanted to change my “style” of swing without focusing on how the style change would affect my impact — the only thing that really matters in improving one’s golf game.

Times have really not changed since I began that journey midway into the 1983 PGA Tour season. Style-based teaching is still an epidemic in our game. Golfers rarely improve through traditional instruction because it isn’t focused on improving impact — just the “style” or preferred “style” of a given instructor. This epidemic has pushed countless golf stars right off the tour. David Duval, Ian Baker Finch, Mike Weir and many more all ran into style-based issues once they were influenced by this type of teaching.

In a previous GolfWRX article, one reader asked a very fair question: “Why didn’t you go back to your old swing”? He was referring to the fact that my original swing was good enough to be the No. 1 amateur in the world, earn two Fred Haskins Awards, win a record-setting 12 NCAA tournaments in three years and be a top-20 money winner in my first two years on the PGA Tour. I could write a book on this topic, but I’ll keep the discussion short for the purpose of this article.

The answer is that I probably could have, but in and of itself, it would have been quite a long process. I spent many years on the PGA Tour trying to build new golf swings. By the time the late mid 80’s rolled around, I was settling into one instructor’s style and was committed to it. I started to have a little more success and remember shooting a final-round 66 in Phoenix to finish T6 in 1987. In mid 1987, I decided to work less with a coach and be my own coach, but I still committed to the swing changes I made. I nearly won the Anheuser-Busch Golf Classic at Kingsmill in the summer of 1987. I actually set a new tournament scoring record, shooting four-consecutive rounds in the 60’s, but I was beat out by a shot by Mark McCumber.

I continued on that journey like Tiger is doing now without a swing coach, choosing to focus on scoring and playing. I wish I had my understanding of Impact-Based instruction back then to guide me, but I was still searching for the elusive perfect swing. I was a hard-worker, but I still struggled and my frustrations continued to mount. By the time the 1989 season was over, my energy for playing was waning.

There was a time that I could have made the decision to go back to my old swing, but the changes were pretty grooved after seven years of trying different swing styles and ultimately settling on one. It would have taken a herculean effort to revert back to the old swing, and it certainly would have looked different. My body had changed, and the “muscle memory” or brain mylan supporting the new swing was now engrained.

Fortunately, legendary television golf producer Frank Chirkinian came to my rescue and offered me an opportunity as a television broadcaster at CBS in 1991. The pressure to perform on the PGA Tour was off, and I could focus on studying the best players in the world through the lens of the CBS cameras. I was fascinated by what I saw. All the top players have very different styles of swings — some were even darn right ugly. Upright, flat, laid-off, across-the-line. Cupped, flat and arched left wrists at the top. Big and little hip turns. Short and long backswings. Stationery and moving heads… on and on and on. The best players in the world had movements in their swings that I was trying to remove from my swing. I was intrigued and had to figure out why.

When CBS developed the Bizhub Swing Vision Camera, I had the opportunity to study the golf swing very closely — and I did. It hit me like a 2×4 across the head. Impact was virtually the same for the world’s best players, but how they got there — their individual “style” — was completely different. All the instructors were teaching styles of swings that many of the best players weren’t even using. What if I started to work from impact and go backward with my swing? What if I could be released from worrying about my style and work on impact alone?

My energy for playing the game started to return. It was the late 90’s. I was raising three small children and traveling 30 weeks a year. I had almost no time to play golf. The U.S. Open was scheduled for Pebble Beach in 2000, so I gave myself a two-year goal to try to qualify since Pebble Beach was my home course growing up. I gave myself what time I had, 10 minutes a day to practice. I wasn’t hitting balls; I simply worked on grooving a style of swing that I could own, kind of a morph between my old swing and my new one that would be good enough to produce the kind of impact I knew I needed — the impact all the best players have. I gave myself the freedom to let go of my previously held convictions that there was an ideal style of swing.

This was the genesis of my five dynamics that are illustrated in my book, “The Impact Zone,” and the cornerstone of Impact-Based instruction. After taking months to groove my swing, mostly indoors without hitting a ball, I started to hit my first shots. I would allow myself one hour per week to hit balls and would start to play on the course one day a month. That’s all the time I had for golf. I focused intently on my impact, studying my divots and watching my ball flight. I didn’t have the luxury of the technology we have today like high-speed cameras, accurate launch monitors and force-plate systems that make studying impact so much easier.

I played a six-round golf marathon one day, helping to raise money for a friend. In the final round, I shot 63 playing in less than 2 hours by myself. Months later, I qualified for the U.S. Open. I led the tournament through much of the first round and made the cut, finishing T37. When I shared the story with the press after the first round, they were amazed that I could have performed this well on 10 minutes a day of practice, a bucket of balls a week and a round of golf a month after not having competed in two years. The key, I shared, was focusing on my impact and letting go of my swing style.

I’ve never looked back with regret, and I have learned so much through the process. I joined the PGA Champion’s Tour in 2010 and played 87 events, earning more money than I did in my 400 events on the PGA Tour. My biggest passion, however, is sharing my discoveries with others in hope that frustrated golfers will be a thing of the past and others will realize the lasting improvement Impact-Based instruction brings. That’s why I left playing the Champion’s Tour three years ago. I went on to become the only PGA Tour winner in history to attain the PGA of America’s highest level of teaching certification, Master of Teaching and Coaching. I’ve discovered that if you improve your impact, you improve your game. It’s really that simple.