Jerry Travers was a leading American amateur golfer who won the 1915 US Open competing against the very best professionals available during that time. And after he actually won the event he never actually entered the US Open again, he obviously must have thought that he’d been there, done that, got the t-shirt, and didn’t need to try again. But what he also was was one of the most successful amateurs of his generation competing in countless events and wining countless as well.

Now what he had to compete against the professionals was a fantastic focus on his game and a fantastic focus to win. His actual golf swing was interesting in many ways, lots of leg movement, lots of hip action, lots of different things going on. In many ways he wouldn’t be regarded as technically proficient but what he was able to do was to get his mind in the right place to actually compete against these fantastic players. So his swing was kind of quite risky on the way back, shoulder turn pretty much at 90 degrees to the target, lots of leg action, lots of drive, finishing ending up facing at the target is quite similar to a lot of his contemporaries at the day.

But the one thing we separated him was his will to win, and to do that he had to have a fantastic focus on his target. Now when you focus on the target you can strip away a lot of the technical aspects of the swing and just focus on what you want to do.

And it kind of shows that you don’t need a perfect golf swing to win the very big events, you can have a slightly strange technique where there is a bit of short swing, lots of drive, getting that club moving down towards the ball and down towards the target. But if you have the focus and the ability to think clearly under pressure you can make it work. So if you don’t have what will be considered the technical golf swing, technically perfect golf swing focus more on your target and try and learn how to win, don’t worry about the process, worry about the result.