Historically, it is taken for granted that the moment someone starts having golf lessons their game will go to the dogs for a lengthy period before they see any signs of improvement. But why should this be the case?

Often lessons will start with the statement, “Let’s see you hit a few shots and have a look at what you’re doing wrong”! I believe that instead of dealing in negatives (and just looking at faults can become very negative) we should look at how to take the swing forward and build a correct and solid technique. In practice, if a golfer is working towards building a new swing, their old faults will disappear anyway. I’m not saying it’s easy, but

there has to be a template for the ‘model swing’ that we can all work towards, instead of just ‘tinkering’.

The one big problem with fixing a fault is which fault to fix, as every swing is made up of compensatory faults. One fault in an otherwise perfect swing would cause a problem, either accuracy or quality of strike, so another fault steps in to try to ‘plug the gap’ as it were.

With a world class swing, there is a chain reaction of movement with the whole body being involved. Note the full follow-through position of a top player; the higher handicap golfer never gets to that balanced finish position. We talk of a ’chain reaction of correct movement’. Faults interfere with this chain reaction and what we see as we move up the handicap scale are swings that look ungainly and incorrect, as the faults interfere with the natural chain reaction.

The statement I have heard most over the years is consistency, or in fact, lack of it. Why? Some days the game feels easy and yet the next time you play it’s back to the same old stuff. It might even be just one shot - that effortless strike that sails away leaving you puzzled because you don’t know how to repeat it. We know we are capable of hitting the ball well but can’t seem to produce the good stuff often enough and certainly not at will.

Practising a lot will make things marginally more consistent, but will not produce substantial results if the golfer is just standing hitting balls. The chances of stumbling on ‘it’ are extremely unlikely and sadly the faults are being further ingrained into the subconscious. When we identify a fault and try to eradicate it, we upset the chain of compensatory faults and bang goes whatever game we had. Our experience has shown that eliminating one fault tends to introduce other faults, other compensations, so as one goes another comes along.

If you look at the best players, they all fit into a template, the ‘model swing’ if you like, even though they each have their own idiosyncrasies. Tom Watson's swing is a great example of a simple, timeless and efficient swing, with minimum moving parts and wasted energy. But more than that, it's a 'swing' in the true sense of the word. His performance proves that it's never too late to play to your full potential, whatever level of golfer or age you are. I'll be publishing a video piece on this soon so keep an eye out for it.

And as for Tiger Woods and his failure to make the cut at Turnberry, yet again he has turned the tables and come out the winner at this weekend's Buick - even without a new swing or a new coach! His swing fundamentals are so solid that even the odd fault sneaking in now and then cannot upset him for too long. There is so much we can all learn from Tiger's swing - don't believe that old nonsense that you can't learn to swing like him. After all, if he's doing things correctly - isn't that what we want to do too? Just not as aggressively fast.

We'll be looking at these top players' swings in the coming weeks and months, and we’ll explain how you can move away from the frustration of the faults and fixes approach and build towards your own model swing. There'll be something there to help you all - I promise!