Fix the Grip, Not the Swing: The Hidden Flaw In Your Business Fundamentals
- PG Geldenhuys
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
I’ve been playing golf since I was 14 years old. That’s 37 years of walking fairways, losing balls, and chasing that one pure strike that makes the whole maddening sport worth it. Over the years, I’ve had flashes of brilliance: a single-digit handicap in school, a few under-par rounds, and one glorious hole-in-one at the Seekers Pro-Am.
But mostly? It’s a messy business. Inconsistent, infuriating, and as honest a mirror as life will ever hand you. Fluffed chips, hooked irons, wobbly putts, shanked pitches. The list goes on…
At 51, I finally did something I should’ve done decades ago: I got myself a swing coach. And in our very first session, he dropped the hammer.
Not only was my grip wrong - the fundamental way I hold the club - but that one foundational flaw had quietly ruined everything downstream. Because my grip locked out my wrists, I ended up relying almost entirely on upper-body strength. I was muscling the ball instead of using the stored power in my hips and core.
As Shakira put it: these hips don’t lie. Mine just weren’t being invited to the party.
And that’s the thing. For almost four decades, I’d been trying to play the game with half my body switched off, compensating for the wrong foundation with endless effort, frustration, and inconsistency. The moments of awesomeness supplied a lie that I wanted to believe - that that was just me, my ceiling, my ability level. And yet, is that the truth?
After a decade of mates telling me to upgrade, I finally got some new tech. And yes, they were right: my new driver has given me an extra 20-30 metres, even with my default swing. Then, finally, my coach set me straight on the man management needed to go to the next step - and it hit me like a 3-iron to the ribs: this is how we run our businesses.
We get moderate success doing things a certain way. It kind of works. So we stop questioning it. We build processes around the flaws instead of fixing the fundamentals. We adapt to inefficiency instead of re-engineering it. And when we hit a ceiling, we accept it instead of investing in short-term pain for long-term gain.
We tell ourselves we’re “managing”. But what we’re really doing is leaving power unused.
When my coach explained it, I didn’t want to believe him. I’ve hit some great shots in my life, surely my fundamentals couldn’t be that bad?
But he showed me the data. The video evidence. The proof that I was only using about 60% of my capability because of a few simple errors I’d never corrected.
It’s humbling. It’s also deeply hopeful. Because when you fix the foundation, everything else gets easier.
In business terms: this is the process audit, the workflow review, the let’s-question-everything moment. It’s painful - you’ll feel worse before you get better - but it’s the only way to get unstuck.
This past week away with the family in Plett, I started to feel it. No birdies yet. But a few solid drives. A few crisp irons. The scoreboard isn’t yet telling the story, but I have a feeling. I have hope. Change hurts before it helps. But every small adjustment compounds.
That’s the lesson: trust the process, even when the scorecard doesn’t show it yet.
This same principle shows up everywhere.
Sport: Rassie Erasmus didn’t rebuild the Springboks from scratch. He reconnected the fundamentals - alignment, conditioning, clarity of role - and trusted those small margins to deliver world-class outcomes. And now they’re building on that, with the right outside eyes by way of Tony Brown.
Movies: Tom Cruise, the world’s top movie star, isn’t chasing perfection for ego. He’s chasing truth through iteration. Dozens of takes until the sequence feels right. The 1% mindset made visible. I watched a documentary where he flung himself off a cliff on a motorbike a dozen times to get the shot right.
Business: Toyota calls it Kaizen. The relentless pursuit of incremental improvement. Fix the grip before you swing harder. In fact, swinging harder isn’t the key - releasing the right muscles is foundational.
And it ties beautifully into three bodies of thought I keep coming back to:
Shunryu Suzuki’s Beginner’s Mind - even after 37 years, see the swing as if for the first time.
James Clear’s Atomic Habits - tiny changes that compound into transformation.
Verne Harnish’s Power of One - focus on one measurable improvement that shifts the whole system.
The problem is rarely the swing. It’s the grip. The stance. The habit you’ve stopped seeing.
PG’s Pro Tip:
1. Re-examine your fundamentals. Where in your business (or life) are you gripping too tight - over-controlling instead of leveraging power through structure and flow?
2. Invite your “hips” back in. What underused capability, person, or process could be driving more momentum if you just let it move?
3. Get outside eyes. You can’t see your own swing flaws. Find a coach, mentor, or peer who’ll tell you the truth - even if it stings.
ChatGPT Prompt: “Act as a business swing coach. Audit my current systems and identify three areas where I might be over-relying on effort instead of structure, and suggest how to unlock the ‘hips’ of my organisation.”
Golf is unforgiving.But it’s also a gift. It humbles you into improvement. It reminds you that muscle can’t replace mechanics, and experience can’t replace curiosity.
There’s a lot of golf - and life - left in me yet. And I have a feeling that once these hips start telling the truth, the ball is going to fly.
See you on the fairway.
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