In the 1960’s Alastair Cochran and John Stobbs were commissioned to undertake a research into how to best swing the golf club. This entailed putting together a team of scientists of different fields of expertise. From physics, ballistics and anatomy, to bio-mechanics, ergonomics, and cybernetics. Naturally, his was done without the use of powerful computers..

This year celebrates the 50th anniversary of the publication of this research and it was an honour to take part in the further education day organized at The Belfry, UK where Alastair Cochran spoke about how he went about writing this exceptional book.

Mr Cochran was joined by present day experts in the world of golf, who compared the finding of the 1968 book to what we know today. These included Rob Neal, Sasho Mackenzie, Steve Otto and Eric Wallace.

What was very interesting was how the vast majority of the conclusions made all those years ago are still valid today, just we now have access to much more high-tech materials. One difference though came out of our now much deeper knowledge of skill acquisition, where it was previously thought to be desirable to have as little variability when repeating a motion, but we now know high performers have quite wide corridors of movement.

It was a long way to travel for a further education day, but well worth the effort.