Just as there is no wrong way to eat a Reese’s, there is no “right way” to hit a golf ball. This is something I’ve learned after years and years of hitting golf balls (notice I did not say “years and years of playing golf,” because most of my time golfing is spent on the shooting range, hitting balls and doing some chippy-putty afterwards).

In all these years of golf club swinging, I’ve figured out that there is no one “correct way” to hit a golf ball, but there are definitely millions of things that you can be and are doing wrong. I know this because every person who has ever tried to “improve my golf swing” with some hot tip or quick lesson has told me something different that I am doing wrong (and there’s a whole lotta wrong with my golf swing).

My golf career started back in high school. At first I would go to the shooting range with my golfer buddy and hit balls with his clubs. One day, my other “golf buddy” was getting new golf clubs the next day and offered to give me his old clubs. I offered him all of the money in my wallet at the time (which was ten dollars) and my fake Rolex (which I happened to be wearing at the time). I’m sure it stopped working very soon after. It was a great deal (for me).

To this day, these are still my current golf clubs. I did pick up some others along the way, which were also given to me. I added a putter and some woods to my collection, but never a driver. I picked up a sweet golf bag of holding, as well.

Golf lessons are a bigger sham than the McDonald’s Monopoly game back in the 1900’s. If you took a one hour golf lesson with five different people, I’m sure you’d have five totally different critiques on your golf game. Swinging a golf club is like jazz music, it’s not about the things you’re doing right, it’s about all the things you’re not doing at all (that may not make any sense, but maybe it does to a few people who like jazz music).

I think golf can probably be a relaxing activity, if you know what you’re doing (but I would never call golf a sport). Most people drive around in a little cart instead of doing the one part that can be considered a sport — walking. Pros have a bag boy who carries their stuff and tells them exactly what to do. Fans are told to be quiet (in a basketball game, I’m allowed to scream as someone tries to make a free throw, but in golf I can’t make any sound while someone is swinging their club?) There’s a fancy dress code. Sports don’t have fancy dress codes.

There is so much to think about when swinging any golf club, but once you’re actually playing nine or eighteen holes, you need to drop all the thinking and be able to rely on your muscle memory. I haven’t learned how to do that yet, so I will continue to whack balls at the shooting range and play chippy-putty afterwards.