CADDIE'S ROLE:These days on the modern golf range swing coaches get the full picture with the use of cameras and other accoutrements

WHEN PETER Kostis, the golf coach and commentator, gave his analysis of Tommy ‘two gloves’ Gainey’s very home grown golf swing at the Wyndham Championship in North Carolina last week it was a master class in diplomacy.

Kostis is a purveyor of fine swings in America and his most famous pupil is the Englishman Paul Casey who has always sought Kostis’ council on matters technical with his swing.

There are of course many experts on the game who double as swing coaches and therefore are ideally suited to offering their commentary of the game on air. It is a comfortable arrangement where they can not only be on site for their day jobs but also be conveniently well placed to make a quick sortie to the driving range to see their pupils live before the broadcast begins.

It is a very cozy situation where you can be a coach and a commentator all at the same venue. So when Peter Kostis was breaking down the extraordinary swing of Tom Gainey during the bad weather delay last Saturday he was caught between a rock and a hard place because he was being a professional swing analyst and a professional objective observer for the viewers.

The very individualistic action of Gainey was first exposed through the Golf Channel’s Big Break series, where they discover new golf talent in their own entertaining manner instead of the more conventional tour school avenue. He appeared in two of their series and one of the perks for his success was to get a start in a Nationwide Tour event. From the Nationwide he gained his PGA Tour card.

So as Kostis was dealing with the tough act of weather delay time filler he was also put in the invidious position of explaining Tommy’s swing with almost having to issue a health warning of ‘don’t try this at home unassisted’. Many ball/stick games like, hurling, baseball and hockey have similar technical aspects to the golf swing. At the upper level of golf excellence there are of course some subtle differences, particularly at the level that Kostis is dealing with. It is much easier to impart swing knowledge to a high handicapper than the sophisticated streamlined swinger. Nearly all good swingers’ passes at the ball look impressive no matter what their form. With the degree of difficulty in modern course set up the subtlety of errant swing margins has become ever more minuscule but equally more costly.

What the better coaches have is the skill to see the variations of the ideal from the actual with the naked eye as the player is swinging. The old school teachers of course never used cameras and other technical assistance. Their eyes could distinguish subtleties instantly. Of course the modern range is agog with coaches a la mode who tend to ape each other with a very golfer-esque attire and clean cut image. The telling difference is the shades, the spike-less teaching shoes and the camera and swing accoutrements slung over the shoulder. That’s how you distinguish a swing coach from a golfer on the range.

The old school teach with their eyes, the nouveau with their cameras. Both have their place but the purists will of course shun the use of technology to convey their message. Most swing coaches teach text book technique. It is a niche that has grown exponentially since the founder of modern range tutelage David Leadbetter arrived wide legged and pensive on tour in the late 1980s. The idea was to take the ideal classic swings of, say, Ben Hogan or Sam Snead, deconstruct them and teach them relentlessly to their pupils.

Of course the mold is broken when you have raw talent such as in more recent times with John Daly or Jim Furyk and their own very idiosyncratic actions. It is a brave coach who would try to reconstruct those swings. More importantly it would be irresponsible as a coach to do so because you would be arguably interfering with rare genius.

What matters in the swing is getting the club back to square at impact. The pure swinger like Adam Scott will have the club in all the technically correct slots every millimetre of the way back and through. Two gloves Tommy takes an altogether different approach starting with a totally unconventional grip where his left thumb is not on the grip. His swing is naturally more suited to the baseball diamond than the pristine tee boxes of the PGA Tour, but of course he belongs on tour. With his swashbuckling and overpowering lunge at the ball he is a player that the punter can truly identify with. With his wild action he looks more like a public course hustler than a PGA Tour contender. His long journey to the lofty environs of the PGA Tour, though local mini tours, talent television shows and the Nationwide Tour confirmed his resolve and determination.

When Peter Kostis talked us through his bizarre bludgeoning batter of a drive down the ninth hole on Saturday he had no option but to give him a backhanded compliment by commenting that he has wonderful hand-eye co-ordination. What he also did was give us mere mortal viewers the hope of being able to play good golf with a less than perfect technique.

What I am sure he also emphasised as a balanced announcer, as I was out making a cup of tea, was that Tommy ‘two gloves’ has a deft touch at the end of the course that matters most. Which of course we could all improve on if we could find a range that actually had any decent short game facilities.