I’ll disagree. Until high-speed cameras and launch monitors became routine, everyone had the ball flight laws bass-ackwards. Until things like GEARS and pressure plates showed what good players did in a swing, amateurs were taught that the good weight shift and getting back onto the target side before P4 was a “reverse pivot.” X-factor was a thing, until GEARS showed it, and all of the ‘holding the lag’ instruction accompanying it, was an optical illusion caused by our inability to fully perceive 3-d motion through time via 2-d video.
Mark Broadie’s statistical analysis turned course management on its head by showing the falsehood of a lot of pro golf’s ancient wisdom, like, “Drive for show, putt for dough.” Well yes, in that if the upper cohort of competitors is striking the ball equally well, putting decides the winner—but mostly no. (Outliers like Harman’s ridiculous British Open putting performance aside.) This was new. People like Jack were doing it, and being successful, but may not have been all that articulate at showing why it works. Tiger, with “The Tiger 5,” did do a great job of showing what makes you win as a pro golfer.
Those are all new things, tested through experimentation and measurement, which helped broaden our understanding of the golf swing and just what makes a golf ball do what we need it to do. They aren’t just rehashes of old material.
Though most golf instruction is, I’ll agree.
