Henry Cotton Technique - The Golf Swing

Henry Cotton on the Golf Swing

From Henry Cottons Book:

Cotton is golf’s ultimate ‘hands’ man, an unrepentant iconoclast who relentlessly insists: (a) that the ever-growing accent on body action is at best wrongheaded and at worst physically injurious and (b) that there is no way mechanically to program and fundamentalize the golf swing, at least insofar as the average mortal is concerned.

In proclaiming that the key to sound and long-lasting golf lies in the condition and actions of the hands, Cotton does not deny that other methods work – simply that the hands method, once mastered is the easiest, most effective, and longest lasting.

The only really adamant stance he takes is against the concept that the golf swing can be mechanically standardized – a position borne of his own failure to do just that after one of the greatest single efforts in history to accomplish such a goal.

Golf is an individual game and will ever be so, whilst human beings vary in physique. The thoroughness with which American golfers have analysed golf in an attempt to find ‘the secret’ has further convinced me there is no secret.

‘To watch a first-class field drive off must surely convince everyone that a golf ball can be hit in many ways.’
Later he also conceded that his original highly mechanistic approach to developing a putting stroke was one of the chief reasons he was so poor a performer on the greens, compared with his prowess at at reaching them.