18
holes at local qualifying, at one of roughly a hundred sites
In June 2027 the U.S. Open goes back to Pebble Beach. I am going to try to qualify for it on the swing this whole thing is built on, and I am posting every round of it, the good ones and the ones that fall apart. Come learn the swing from me while I do it, and watch whether it holds up when it counts.
To enter, the USGA needs to see a handicap index of 0.4 or better. That gate stands in front of the three rounds, not behind them. Getting under it is the first part of the work, and you will watch that too.
I left golf at twenty with a ceiling nobody could explain, and a habit of losing golf balls on the holes that mattered. I came back twenty years later, rebuilt my swing around the simpler one my father had found, and checked every change against biomechanical models for three years. What came out has nothing left to time. One plane, no loop, 125+ mph of clubhead speed and 175+ mph of ball speed, and a fraction of the usual strain through the back.
The speed is the part people ask about. The part that matters for a qualifier is that a swing with nothing to time has nothing to break when it counts.
It is not a new idea. My father and the machine led me to Ernest Jones, a golf professional who lost his right leg in the First World War and shot 83 within months, balanced on the one he had left. He could not slide. He could only turn and swing, and he spent the rest of his life teaching three words: swing the clubhead. His story opens the book.
It is the swing the book is about. Now it has to go do the one thing a book cannot: post a number.
Couldn't break 100. Three weeks on the method, drills in my living room, no range. I shot 76 on the hilliest track in North Carolina.
Started golf a year ago, best ever was 107. Three months in I broke 90, then shot 69 on a Par-64. Strangers ask if I am a teaching pro.
Fifty years of golf. Two grand on lessons that made it worse. Ten minutes with the method and I am drawing my 8-iron twenty yards further. At seventy-one.
I could keep teaching this swing quietly and let the testimonials do the talking. Plenty of people do. But I wrote a book that asks you to doubt a hundred years of instruction, and a claim that big deserves a test that can fail.
A qualifier is that test. The card does not know what I believe. It does not care about the models or the motion capture. Three rounds in the sixties, or it did not happen.
So every round gets posted. The practice rounds. The index coming down. The day it falls apart on the back nine. The local qualifier in front of nobody. If this swing is what I say it is, you will see it. If it is not, you will see that too.
Ernest Jones put his version on a scorecard at Royal Norwich, on one leg. I have two legs and a qualifier.
That is the deal, and it is the only kind of proof I have left to give you.
The book makes a claim: that golf spent a hundred years teaching a swing assembled from positions, when every other power sport on earth moves in one sequence. A claim like that is cheap until somebody puts a scorecard behind it. That is what this is.
One sequence. Ground, hips, body, arms, in the order a thrower and a striker and a puncher all already use. No positions to hold, nothing to time to the hundredth of a second. The same thing Ernest Jones taught in three words a hundred years ago: swing the clubhead.
Three rounds stand between a public tee time and the U.S. Open. Local qualifying is 18 holes. Final qualifying is 36 in a single day. Three rounds in the sixties and you are in.
Every round posted. Score, course rating, slope, and what the swing did under it. The index moves in public, in whichever direction it moves.
If it does not hold up, you will watch it not hold up. A swing that only works on good days was never worth your money, and I would rather you saw that here than found it out on your own.
The teaching does not stop if the run does. That is the only promise worth making about something this uncertain.
The index is calculated from the rounds above with the World Handicap System formula: each round gives a score differential of 113 divided by the slope, times the score minus the course rating, and the index is the average of the best differentials in the most recent twenty rounds. It needs three rounds before it means anything. It is my own running number off my own posted cards, not an official USGA index issued by a club.
You read the book and something in it would not let go. You play once a week, maybe less, and you want a swing that survives the week off. You are done paying by the hour for positions.
It is not for anyone who wants a quick tip. There are no tips here. There is one swing, taught properly, and a man going to find out in public whether it holds.
Do I need to be good already?
No. Grant could not break 100 when he started. The swing is the same at every level. What changes is how much old habit is in the way.
What if you do not make it?
Then you watch me miss, and you watch what I do about it. A swing that only works on good days was never worth your time. The teaching does not stop if the run does.
How much of my week does this take?
The drills fit between your couch and the TV. Ten feet of wall and a wedge. Most people feel the chain the first afternoon.
Who is Ernest Jones, and why is he in the book?
A golf professional who lost his right leg in the First World War, shot 83 within months on one leg, and became one of the most sought-after teachers in America, teaching three words: swing the clubhead. He is the oldest proof I have that a swing with no slide and nothing to hold works. His story and a drill built on his handkerchief open the book.
Can I cancel?
Any time, in two clicks, on Patreon. No contract, no phone call, no one trying to talk you out of it.
Qualifying is in the spring of 2027. Everything between now and then is the part worth watching: the index coming down, the swing under pressure, the rounds that go wrong. Join at the start and you see all of it from day one.
Not joining yet? I send a short note after every round of the run. No charge, and it keeps coming either way.
Billed through Patreon. Cancel any time, no lock-in, nothing to cancel by phone.
Not ready? Start with the book. Golf's Great Lie is the whole argument, ninety pages, free.