No instruction was necessary to get Furyk driving the loop
Jim Furyk, the 2003 U.S. Open champion with the distinctive loop in his backswing, appears to have a homemade swing.
He doesn't.
The definition of a homemade swing is that the player must be self-taught. Furyk's father, Mike, was a club pro when Jim took up the game and gave him lessons.
"He taught me the fundamentals and basics of the game," Jim Furyk said.
"I wouldn't call it homemade," Mike Furyk said of Jim's swing. "He was competitive, and he wanted to have some fun playing in tournaments. I just helped him to do that and guided him in the right direction. When he asked for help, I gave him instruction. When he didn't, I left him alone."
The Furyks realized early that Jim wasn't going to be a mechanical player. The loop was there from the start.
"No one ever taught me to take the club outside and loop it around," Jim Furyk said. "That's what I did the first time I picked up a golf club. That's what was natural and felt good to me. We tried to tinker with it, but I was never comfortable with it because it felt too mechanical."
"He's not the first one," Mike Furyk said of the loop. "(Lee) Trevino swung that way, Miller Barber and Hubert Green swung that way, and I'm sure there are lots of other players who swung that way.
"Those swings all proved the test of time; they all held up. It would be foolish to change it."
The swing has served Furyk well. He has won 10 times on the tour and is a major championship winner.
"It felt good to me, and I could trust it," Furyk said of his swing. "Within that swing, he (his father) taught me a lot of basic fundamentals."
Just like golfers with classic swings, Furyk has the club on the correct swing path and square to the ball when he brings it down.
"It's all about impact," Mike Furyk said. "It's that six inches down at the bottom of the golf swing when you go through the golf ball."
Furyk's swing was so natural that it was easy for him to groove it and make the action repeatable.
"It's like an old friend," Mike said. "I believe the mechanical golf swings that people build and try to be robots, I don't think under pressure those swings hold up.
"I feel like if you take your little house dog and you corner him, he's going to bite you. And I think when you're coming down the last nine holes of a 72-hole event and you need to win a golf tournament, then that swing better be an old friend and you better not think about how it works. You better be able to believe in it and trust it. I think the best players in the world do that."
Mike Furyk said his son took up golf because he liked the individuality of it.
"He was a very good football, baseball and basketball player and a good competitive swimmer," Mike Furyk said. "(Golf) gave him a chance to do something on his own. He liked that.
"I guess the only thing I encouraged him on was this: Tiger Woods is the No. 1 player in the world because he's Tiger Woods. He's an original, not because he copied anybody. I always told Jim a copy could only be second-best."
Reach David Westin at (706) 724-0851 or david.westin@augustachronicle.com.
