With a bit of distance and time away from the game, I realize it’s crazy how much I obsessed about my swing and how much I tried to “fix” it.

I doubted my natural ability so much that I always had a voice in my head telling me what to do and how to swing. I fed that narrative of my swing not being good enough, the narrative of having to constantly work on or fix my swing for my entire career. And it became the truth.

With time away and more clarity, I don’t believe my swing did not need improvement. But, more than improvement, it needed a commitment to a technical structure, consistency in the structure, and a whole lot of freedom within that technical structure.

I was always looking for new and better ways to swing, always working on something, and always trying to take things apart in order to better understand. But, the whole can’t always be better understood by taking it apart.

That thing I was working on (or that swing thought) was where I put all my hopes and tried to get all my confidence from. I believed that the swing thoughts or the pieces of instruction I was giving my body would produce the shots I was looking for.

I put all my confidence solely on thoughts, none into my body. None into the fact that I’ve played this game since I could walk, none into the fact that I had spent thousands of hours practicing, and none into the fact that my body knows how to move and produce shots.

That notion of dissecting everything and trying to understand all the processes is sometimes more harmful than beneficial. In a world full of “experts” that can dissect, understand, and explain everything, I think it’s important to remember that there is an intelligence at work within us that is yet to be fully understood. And it doesn’t need to be.

Don’t get me wrong, I think a solid technique is not negotiable, but just like anything else, one needs to find a middle path. A middle path between technical impulses for the body and trust in the body, between working on technique and allowing the body to move the way it wants to, between effort and ease. A middle path between structure and freedom.

If I had to start over, I would trust my body more; my mind less.