If you've spent any time on golf social media, you've seen it: a beautiful, textbook swing, broken down frame by frame, presented as the way to swing a golf club. Copy this position. Match this angle. Get your arm here at the top.
Here's the problem. That swing was built for one specific body, moving one specific way. It was never built for yours.
The 24 Components, 144 Variations
In 1969, Homer Kelley published The Golfing Machine — a book that broke the golf swing down into 24 mechanical components, which combine into roughly 144 valid variations. Not one correct swing. A hundred and forty-four of them.
That number changed how I teach. If there are 144 mechanically sound ways to deliver a golf club to a ball, then the search for "the" swing was always the wrong search. The right question isn't what does a good swing look like — it's what does a good swing look like for a body like mine?
Your Body Already Has an Opinion
Your body mechanically wants to load, deliver, and move in a pattern dictated by your build — your height, your wingspan, your natural range of motion. Add swing components that fight that pattern, and you get a motion that's hard to repeat and inefficient at transferring power. You can feel it. It's the move that never quite feels natural no matter how many times you rehearse it.
Three Patterns, Not Rigid Boxes
Over 25 years of teaching, most swings I see cluster around three patterns, tied to how a player's body loads and delivers power:
- The Bomber — rear post, low core. Upright posture, a hands-driven takeaway, power from a forward glide into rotation.
- The Artist — center post, mid core. A balanced, one-piece takeaway. The most commonly taught pattern — and, in my experience, the rarest to find naturally.
- The Compressor — front post, upper core. Hip-driven, with a bigger knee kick and a vertical, almost "jumping" power source.
These aren't rigid boxes — they sit on a spectrum. But nearly every swing leans toward one of them, and once you know which, everything else gets simpler.
The Goal: A Swing That Runs on Autopilot
I didn't invent body-type golf instruction. I studied it — through Homer Kelley's framework, through BioSwing Dynamics, through Wright Balance's research at Harvard Medical School — and tested it on real students for two and a half decades.
When the grip matches the body, and the takeaway matches the grip, and the pivot matches the takeaway, the swing stops requiring conscious effort to hold together. That's not a talent thing. That's a fit thing.
Curious which pattern your body is already leaning toward? Take the free 2-minute Swing Type Diagnostic at In-2-It Golf.