Photos are still not needed on the scorecard as of Wednesday, and you can imagine Ryan is grateful to Gerard, although it certainly makes you wonder:
How exactly would you draw a swing that “looks like Daniel Berger and Jon Rahm had an aneurysm on the downswing?”
Poor Gerard. Talk to Golf Digest Luke Kerr-Dineen in 2023 he said he heard that about his move. But he doesn’t exactly do that disagree, or.
In successive sentences on Wednesday, Gerard gave the following assessments:
“Yeah, I don’t watch my swing on video that often.”
“I know this isn’t the most visually appealing thing in the world.”
“Sometimes I don’t even like looking at it.”
And yet, just look at the guy.
Four years as a professor.
The world’s 26th ranked player.
Masters invitee.
So yes, Gerard is doing well, thank you very much. Why, choose your cliché. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t mess with success. And so on. But that can all go out the window when Rory McIlroy is to your left and Adam Scott is to your right. Gerard knows all that better than most. He talked about it all on Wednesday, ahead of this week’s Cognizant Classic, and since his thinking, along with his swing, got him where he is, it might be worth a read.
Oh, and below is a down-the-line video of Gerard’s swing.
“I think it’s just one of those things,” Gerard said, “that you feel comfortable being yourself and you feel comfortable working. When I was growing up, there were people who said, you gotta change, you gotta change. I just always did it the way I felt most comfortable, and I felt like I could hit the ball right out of the middle of the face. …
“When you’re working your way up, you’re basically doing whatever you can to find an edge, to find a shot here or a shot there. The way my swing works, for me, it’s very consistent. For other people that may not be the case, but for me, I feel like I can repeat the same motion a lot of times and hit the ball right in the middle of the face most of the time. That’s what brought me a lot of success growing up.”
“There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when you’re on the PGA Tour. It’s about fine-tuning. It’s about continuing to improve, believing in what got you here, because if you start reinventing the wheel and making wholesale changes, it can lead to a rabbit hole of lack of confidence and poor results, and then you’re in a spiral, and it’s hard to put it back together.”
Well, you should never to adjust? You have to never looking for inspiration? No, of course not. And Gerard indeed speaks from a much better place than, for example, the 14-handicap who writes this article.
But the center of the clubface is all you want.
That’s also easy to draw.
To wrap things up here, let’s let Gerard continue. He had a few other shareable thoughts on Wednesday.
Gerard gets to work
“I don’t think there’s an easy path in this profession. You have to earn every step of the way. I feel like that’s what I grew up with through my parents and instilled in my DNA through my coaches, college coaches and teammates. It’s not going to be easy. It’s not going to be a piece of cake. You’re going to earn it, and there are a lot of really good players out there that really want it. If you want to compete with them guys, you’re going to want it just as much, if not more, and be willing to put in the effort.”
“I think going from junior golf, working hard, trying to get to college, going to college, being the smallest fish in a big pond, figuring out how to score on more difficult courses, learning to be a more well-rounded individual on and off the golf course, and then going pro, starting all over again, at the lowest rung, working your way up, finding success at every level, gaining experience and then reaching the pinnacle of golf here on the PGA Tour, it just teaches you resilience. It teaches you a lot preparation and time management skills.
2026 Cognizant Classic Thursday start times: Groups round 1
By means of:
Kevin Cunningham
“But you have to want it, because if you don’t want it, there’s a million other guys sitting there this week who aren’t playing at home who want it just as much, if not more, and they would trade anything to be in the spot I am now.
“If I’m not willing to do the work, someone else will. There are a limited number of jobs here for a reason, and someone will come and take mine.”
Gerard about the use of launch monitors
“I think TrackMan is a great tool. You can use it to fit golf clubs. You can use it to make sure your numbers end up where they need to be. Sometimes it even tells you if a club is broken, like if you broke a driver’s face.
“I’m a very feel-oriented player. I feel like I’m trying to make shots. I’m not trying to play math. TrackMan, obviously I have one, but I use it in a way that’s basically conducive to hitting a number or hitting a golf shot, and then I would start looking at it at the distance or the height or something like that when I’m looking at something in particular.”
Gerard on his level of self-awareness – at the age of 26
‘I think my parents have been very successful in giving me confidence, but they have also taught me that you have to work hard, and that is not handed to you.
“I played a lot of golf in college at UNC with a lot of really good players, and I came in there my freshman year almost irrationally confident and got my ass kicked by Ben Griffin for about nine months straight.
“I think that stuff like that teaches you that there are a lot of good players here, and you can’t just come in and take over. There are some guys who have that talent and that ability and jump off the page, but I was never one of those guys. I was always one of those guys who got there, got better and better, kept getting better, crawled up, crawled up, and by the time I graduated high school or I left college, I was one of those guys, but it took me some time to get there.
“I think it’s because I have to work hard and put in a lot of hours and talk to a lot of people, trying to figure out how to get better, talking to college coaches — Coach [Roy] Williams was great, Carolina basketball coach. Guys like that, who have a lot of experience and for whom I have a lot of respect, have given a lot of good advice and a lot of encouragement, but also remember to stay true to yourself.
“Being true to yourself isn’t necessarily just on the golf course. It’s off the golf course too. Try to make sure you understand where you came from and that you want to stay on the path you’re on.
“I think there are a lot of people who helped us along the way.”
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#world #opens #up.. #swing #doesnt