Why I Don’t Believe in the So-Called Fundamentals (And Why Match-ups Win)

Hi. My name is Coach Erik Schjolberg, owner of EJS Golf located in Scottsdale, AZ. I teach Scottsdale golf lessons from an indoor and outdoor bay at McCormick Ranch and I coach golfers all over the world through online golf lessons. My priority is immediate, impact-first improvement: ball first then turf, predictable start line, controlled shaft lean, and rotation. These are not feel-based aphorisms. They are cause-and-effect relationships measured in real numbers. If you control low point and face, the lie stops being an excuse, the range stops being a fantasy, and the golf course starts feeling a lot more honest.

If you’ve spent any time around golf instruction, you’ve heard the word “fundamentals” delivered like a commandment. Grip. Stance. Posture. Alignment. Ball position. Tempo. Plane. Finish. The implication is always the same: there’s a universal checklist that, if followed, will produce a reliable strike and a predictable ball flight. I don’t buy it. Not because setup doesn’t matter, and not because those pieces can’t influence the swing. I reject the way “fundamentals” are typically taught: as fixed rules that supposedly apply to every golfer, in every body, with every pattern, under every pressure situation.

Golf is not a fundamentals game. Golf is a matchups game.

Here’s the proof that ends the conversation for me, because it’s sitting in plain sight on every practice tee in the world: there are golfers with a strong grip who fade the ball, and golfers with a weak grip who draw it. If “fundamentals” were truly fundamental in the way the word is used, those players wouldn’t exist. Traditional instruction loves the tidy story: strong grip equals draw, weak grip equals fade. It sells because it’s simple. But the ball doesn’t care what your grip “should” do. The ball only responds to impact conditions. Period.

If you want to coach ball flight, you need to coach the things that actually create ball flight: club face, club path, and where the strike happens on the face. The club face largely controls start line, and the relationship between face and path largely controls curvature. If you want to understand golf at a serious level, you don’t get to skip that physics because a checklist is easier to teach. This is why my work is rooted in measurement and reality—because reality is the only thing the ball listens to.

The “strong-grip fader” is the perfect example of why fundamentals break down. A strong grip influences the golfer’s available wrist conditions and the way the face wants to behave through the swing, but it does not force the face to be closed at impact. A strong-grip golfer can absolutely present the face open relative to the path at impact and hit a fade all day. How? Because they have a pattern—conscious or not—that makes it happen. They may rotate hard and deliver the handle left while keeping the face closer to target. They may swing left with a face that’s only slightly left, producing a pull-fade. Or they may be so committed to “not going left” that they hold the face off, stall the release, or deliver the handle in a way that leaves the face open to the path. Whatever the method, the result is the same: their impact relationship says “fade,” regardless of what the grip looks like at address.

The “weak-grip drawer” is the same story in reverse. A weak grip does not forbid a draw. If the golfer delivers a club path that’s far enough to the right (for a right-handed player) and the face is slightly closed to that path, the ball draws. That can be accomplished through forearm rotation, wrist conditions, pivot dynamics, pressure shift, or a combination of all of it. Again, the grip changes tendencies and options, but it does not dictate the outcome. Impact dictates outcome.

This is why I coach from the ball backward, not from a model forward. I don’t start by forcing golfers into a picture of what I think a golf swing should look like. I start with what the ball is doing and what the data says the club is doing to create it. Then we work upstream. That’s not just a “modern coaching philosophy.” It’s the only honest way to coach if you actually care about repeatable ball striking instead of teaching aesthetics.

At EJS Golf, my instruction lives inside “The Science of Better Golf,” because science is simply cause and effect with the ego removed. If you want the framework behind how I coach impact and consistency, it’s laid out here: The Science of Better Golf. That page exists because golfers deserve clarity, not folklore.

Now let’s talk about what I actually believe is fundamental—not as a rigid checklist, but as a measurable priority: low point control.

Low point control is the gatekeeper of ball striking. If you cannot control where the club bottoms out, you will always live in a world of fat, thin, and “I hit it great on the range.” You can have a grip that looks perfect and still be a poor striker. You can have posture that makes coaches nod approvingly and still be a poor striker. You can have a beautiful backswing and still be a poor striker. The strike doesn’t care about your poses. The strike cares about where the club is in space at the moment it meets the ball—and where it’s headed next.

When I say low point, I’m not speaking metaphorically. I want the bottom of the arc to be forward of the ball with irons so we strike ball first, then turf. That one concept alone, properly trained, eliminates an enormous percentage of the inconsistency golfers accept as “normal.” It’s not normal. It’s untrained.

But serious low point control isn’t only vertical. It’s also directional—side-to-side. Golfers love to talk about “down” like it’s the only axis that matters. It isn’t. The club is traveling down and forward, but it’s also traveling on a path relative to target. If your pattern is overly steep and excessively “down,” you tend to get harsh turf interaction, inconsistent face control, and the kind of strike that feels heavy and unpredictable. If your pattern is overly shallow and too much “side-to-side,” you tend to get thin strikes, high-face contact, low spin in the wrong moments, and a player who can’t compress the ball to save their life. Great ball striking lives in the middle: enough down to compress and control strike, and enough directional stability to control path, face, and contact point.

This is why I value TrackMan so highly. It doesn’t allow you to hide behind opinions. It doesn’t allow a coach to hide behind “fundamentals.” It tells you what happened. When a player says, “But my grip is strong, I should be drawing it,” TrackMan lets me answer the only question that matters: what were your face and path at impact, and where was your low point? If the player is fading it, the numbers will tell us exactly why. Then we fix the cause, not the mythology.

From a performance standpoint, my goal is always the same: tighter dispersion, less curvature, and a start line the golfer can trust. That is scoring. That is confidence. That is what holds up when you play for something that matters.

Dispersion tightens when club face and club path are stable. Curvature shrinks when the face-to-path relationship lives in a tight window. Start line becomes predictable when face control becomes predictable. And face control becomes dramatically easier when the golfer is not throwing the club head past the hands at the last second because the low point is behind the ball. That’s why low point is not one topic among many. It is the topic.

Now, there’s a specific impact dynamic I consider non-negotiable for most golfers who want to become dependable strikers: by impact, I want the pelvis over the lead ankle, with shaft lean and rotation that continues through the strike. That is not an aesthetic preference. It is a functional requirement for controlling low point and delivering the club with a stable handle and a manageable face.

If your pelvis hangs back behind the lead ankle at impact, the bottom of the arc tends to drift behind the ball. That forces compensation. The golfer flips to find the ball, adds loft accidentally, changes the face at the last instant, and then wonders why their start line is inconsistent. They think they have a “swing issue.” What they have is an impact issue. The body failed to get forward enough soon enough, and the club had to improvise.

Pelvis over lead ankle does not mean sliding and stalling. Sliding without rotation is a disaster—blocks, hooks, and a face that becomes hard to manage because the pivot quits and the hands take over. Rotation without getting forward is also a disaster—thin cuts, weak contact, and a player who lives in wipey golf. The point is this: pressure forward and rotation must coexist. That pairing is one of the central matchups in real ball striking.

Shaft lean matters for the same reason. I’m not asking golfers to “hold lag” or create some artificial angle for Instagram. I want the handle to win the race into impact because it organizes the strike. Proper shaft lean is a byproduct of controlling pressure and rotation so the club head does not pass the hands too early. When the handle wins appropriately, delivered loft becomes predictable, contact improves, and distance control stops being a guess. The golfer starts to compress the ball instead of scooping it, and the turf becomes feedback rather than punishment.

Rotation is the third piece, and it’s misunderstood by almost everyone who’s been “taught” rotation. Rotation is not “spin your hips as fast as possible.” Rotation is organized opening of the body so the handle can keep moving, the club can travel on a repeatable path, and the face can be controlled without panic. When rotation stalls, the club head throws past the hands, the face changes rapidly, and golf becomes timing. Timing is not a skill. Timing is a gamble.

This is exactly why “fundamentals” fail as a teaching model. Fundamentals-based coaching tends to create golfers who obsess over what things look like. Matchups-based coaching creates golfers who understand what things do. I’m not building “pretty” swings. I’m building functional impact.

And once you understand that, the strong-grip fade and weak-grip draw are no longer confusing—they’re obvious. A strong-grip golfer can hit a controlled fade if they deliver a slightly leftward path with a face that is just right of that path. A weak-grip golfer can hit a controlled draw if they deliver a rightward path with a face that is just left of that path. Both patterns can be world-class if the golfer controls low point, face stability, and strike. Both patterns can also be a mess if the golfer is compensating at the bottom because the body is not organized at impact.

This is where I’m going to be blunt, because golfers deserve bluntness: the “fundamentals” conversation often becomes an excuse for lazy diagnosis. If you can’t explain why a strong-grip golfer fades it, you don’t understand impact. If you can’t explain why a weak-grip golfer draws it, you don’t understand impact. That’s not an insult—it’s a standard. Coaching means you can solve patterns that don’t match the brochure.

So what does my coaching actually look like in practice?

First, I define the ball flight the golfer needs, not the ball flight they wish they had. Some golfers need less curvature more than they need more distance. Some golfers need start line control more than they need a new backswing. Some golfers need a predictable low point more than they need any conversation about grip at all. Then I measure where we are right now. I want to see the club path, face angle, face-to-path, attack angle, and low point tendencies. I want to see if the pelvis is getting over the lead ankle by impact or if the player is hanging back and hoping. I want to see if the handle is forward with rotation or if the player is flipping to create speed. Then we match drills and feels to the required change, and we confirm the change with data.

Notice what’s missing: I am not asking the golfer to “get worse to get better.” I do not accept that as a normal process. Improvement begins day one when the golfer starts training the correct cause-and-effect relationships. When low point and face are trained correctly, the golfer experiences immediate feedback and immediate progress. It’s not magic. It’s physics.

If you’re in Scottsdale and want this done with you in person, my Scottsdale program is here: Scottsdale Golf Lessons. If you’re not local—or you want structured feedback that travels with you—my remote coaching is here: Online Golf Lessons. Both are built around the same standard: measurable impact, not pretty positions.

Let me close by bringing it back to the point that matters most. I don’t believe in “fundamentals” because golfers have been sold the lie that golf has one right way to move. It doesn’t. What golf has is one truth at impact. Your body can get there through more than one pattern, but it cannot cheat the requirements of face control, path control, and low point control. That’s why I coach matchups. Matchups respect individuality while demanding measurable standards. They allow a strong-grip golfer to be a phenomenal fader, and a weak-grip golfer to be a phenomenal drawer, because the ball doesn’t care what you call “fundamental.” The ball cares what you deliver.

When you train low point with the proper amount of down and side-to-side, measured by TrackMan, and when you organize impact with pelvis over lead ankle, shaft lean, and rotation, you gain control over club face and club path. Control produces a tighter dispersion, less curvature, and a start line you can trust. That is what ball striking is. That is what scoring is. 🎯

Coach Erik Schjolberg
EJSGolf
The Science of Better Golf
Scottsdale Golf Lessons
Online Golf Lessons