The word materialism doesn’t only mean a love of stuff. The scientific/philosophic definition is: “The theory that physical matter is the only reality, and that everything, including thought, feeling, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena”.

What does materialism in that definition have to do with golf? Everything.

Materialism denies that golf is a magical, spiritual game.

Materialism denies that life is magical and spiritual.

Modern science has adopted Materialism as its religion. I love science. But ironically, science has become closed- minded. Think about that. Science had always attacked religion as being closed-minded … and now science has become dogmatic. Here’s a quote from a local academic: “It really is insane how deep the censorship is in modern academia about alternative and non-materialistic thinking.”

Let’s look at the Materialistic influence on the golf swing. Years ago, the Wilson company invented a machine to test golf clubs – the “Iron Byron”. Good for Wilson and good for golf. But, Iron Byron became the model for future golf instruction. Thus the obsession with posture and alignment. If a machine isn’t positioned perfectly, it can’t make an adjustment.

Let’s get into this. The machine needed a gear to wind-up … the hips then became the gear that winds-up the human golf swing. Machines don’t have hands, so modern instruction decided to take the hands out of the golf swing – the hands just “hold on”.

So then, no matter your size or shape, you have to make the model swing. This thinking has taken over in all sports. Twenty years ago, I used to teach in the winter months at a sports facility. This place was staffed by former professional athletes … and they taught kids, professional athletes and everyone in between. They would make computer models of how to run, throw, skate, swing, etc … then try to make the students into those models.

I disagreed. I said that every athletic motion has fundamentals, and that the challenge for the instructor was to get the student to perform the proper fundamentals with whatever type of body they had.

Not only did we disagree about physical actions – we disagreed about the psychology of sport. They wanted to turn off the emotions – never high/never low … they wanted a robot. I wanted to USE the emotions … not let your emotions use you, but use the emotions that nature has developed that help people reach their highest level of performance.

A few years later, I coached my sons’ basketball teams and ran one of the leagues. While organizing the teams, I went through the registration of every kid in the league. At least half of the kids were on ritalin. Really? We need to drug half our boys to keep them in line? What’s going on here? Do we really want a society of lobotomized robots?

Obviously as our society industrialized from an agricultural society we reaped the benefits of machinery. But that doesn’t mean that machines are better than people. And modern science is amazing and fantastic – it’s greatly improved our lives and our understanding of the universe. But science doesn’t have everything figured out. And science needs to be open to alternative theories as to how and why things work.

The mystery and magic of life have not been figured out. And golf is inherently a mysterious and magical game that is made for human beings – not robots. Materialism is a very limiting philosophy – why would you want to limit your golf experience?