Horizontal Force, Vertical Force and the Long Exhale: Reading a Golf Digest Writer's 'Crash Out' Fault

There is a sound I remember from a course in Sakai, on the outskirts of Osaka, on a Tuesday morning in October 2026. A ball leaving the face of a driver at far too steep an angle, then the thud on a roof. I was standing behind the tee box with a clipboard in hand, and the player said nothing at all. Just one long exhale, so long I thought he had forgotten where he was.

Twenty years in Japan, hosting hundreds of events, many of them amateur tournaments and corporate golf days, taught me that the most readable part of golf is never the scorecard. It is the three seconds after a bad shot: what the player tells himself, and what his body does next. I once thought being an MC meant holding a microphone; it turns out it means holding someone else's heartbeat.

Last October I read a piece by Alex Myers, a senior writer at Golf Digest. He was writing about himself: a round at Rye Golf Club in New York, three birdies, and a driver shot that flew right, far enough to hit a house. He calls the fault "crashing out". I read it and thought immediately of that thud in Sakai.

Alex Myers is not a professional golfer. He is a magazine writer running a year-long personal project called "Late Scratch?" — asking how good an amateur could get if he trained seriously for twelve months. This is a booming genre in Western golf: the journalist steps onto the course and turns his own body into the specimen.

The round at Rye included three colleagues. Myers describes it as an "overall solid round" — three birdies, good ball-striking. But there was one hole, the fifth, that he admits is "never a fun one". And there the driver betrayed him again.

The fault is not new. It appeared earlier in the summer, "a couple times a round", and has a longer history on annual buddy trips — where the pressure does not come from prize money but from a Masters-style green jacket the group awards its champion. In Japan, corporate golf societies keep similar rituals: a plastic trophy, a bottle of sake, a dinner. The pressure is identical to a major final round.

What caught my attention was not the mishit. It was how Myers diagnosed himself. He believed the problem was "all in his head" — a form of yips, an invisible fear of the driver. He had tried many fixes; none worked. Then he called Mario Guerra, an instructor on Golf Digest's "Best In State" list.

In my line of work I read audiences before I read scripts. Thirty-five years of watching sport taught me this: people rarely diagnose what actually hurts them. They diagnose what they fear. And fear always speaks the language of psychology, never of mechanics.

That call changed the reading of the problem. Guerra did not talk about the mind. He talked about force.

His diagnosis: Myers applies "too much vertical force and not enough horizontal force". On certain swings he gets so steep that the body — instinctively — senses a poor position and "crashes out", lunging outward in a desperate but futile attempt to save the shot.

In the technical language I hear on practice ranges, this is the early-extension pattern: the pelvis thrusts toward the ball, the upper body stands up out of its forward bend, forcing the wrists to "flip" at the bottom to rescue the face. A body betraying itself.

The core insight sits here: the problem is not competitive psychology, but a poor mechanical position detected mid-swing — and the very act of "saving" it is the fault.

Guerra prescribed a drill: swing "more horizontally around the body", keeping the club "as low and as parallel to the ground as possible in both backswing and downswing". He described the feel as "almost like making a baseball swing but while in golf posture". A textbook over-correction — turning the shallowing of the shaft into a deliberate, even exaggerated action, then blending it back.

The checkpoint Myers used came from a swing-analysis app. He calls it the "moment of truth" — the delivery position between the top of the backswing and impact, where a good delivery shows the shaft in line with the trail arm. A steep player has the shaft plunging toward the ball there; a good player has it shallowing in line with the arm.

In modern swing analysis that checkpoint sits midway between the top and impact. The difference is a matter of degrees, but it decides the entire ball flight. And here is the thing: no lens, no feel, teaches it faster than one line drawn on video. It is a visual read, not a validated measurement — but it works as a mirror.

What was observed: the horizontal downswing produced a "much lower, better ball flight", and on video it "looked much better than his normal move". Myers writes it did not take long to produce improved shots.

Alongside that sits the mental layer. Mental coach Josh Nichols confirms the mind-body link and names the most common complaint: being "too steep and open at the top and trying to flip things back on track during the downswing to square the club". Myers diagnoses himself with "too many swing thoughts". And he returns to a breathing technique that once gave him "some of his best golf": breathe in for three, out for three.

Every amateur knows one particular distance: the distance between the range and the course. On the range the ball sits still, nothing is at stake, no house waits behind. On the course, every tee box is a conversation with yourself. Myers's driver lives on that boundary: it disappears on the range and reappears on the course, precisely on the hard holes.

Guerra's diagnosis aligns with a trend that has run for more than a decade on the professional tours: shallowing the shaft, moving away from a steep, hands-dominant, out-to-in delivery toward a rotational, flatter move with less wrist action. Myers's fault is not exotic. It is the orthodox fault of the modern amateur — which is why his writing travels.

Let me pause here. Thirty-five years of watching sport has shown me that amateurs everywhere make the same storytelling mistake: calling the mechanical the psychological. A slice is not "fear". A topped shot is not "lack of confidence". But because no one sees their own body from the outside, we attach invisible words to it.

On Vietnamese courses I have visited during trips home, the story is even clearer. New players tend to believe a more expensive driver will solve the problem. In Japan that belief becomes a vast accessory market: grips, shafts, launch monitors. Guerra reminds us of something older: vertical force and horizontal force. The body, not the club.

A technical fence does not stop emotion; it only makes it pool up.

That is why I like how Myers tells it. He does not separate the head from the body. He lets Guerra fix the mechanics and Nichols tend the mind. Two craftsmen, two bridges. As someone on the inside, I see this is something many Japanese academies understood long ago, while the Vietnamese market is still learning.

But this is where I have to be blunt, as someone who has hosted too many seminars listening to promises.

Guerra's horizontal drill is an early signal, not proof. Myers reports improvement after one session. No ShotLink, no launch-monitor figures, no retention data. He admits there is "homework to do on the range", and the on-course goal is to "find a blend". He himself says the new swing "looked better" on video — an eyeball judgment, not a number.

The first risk is relapse. If the fault is genuinely yips-like — situational, pressure-triggered, club-specific — then a "one-session cure" deserves suspicion. Yips are notoriously persistent and relapse-prone. A three-birdie round proves the underlying ability is intact, but that is exactly what masks the specific, recurring driver defect. Strength in one segment is hiding a weakness in another.

The second risk is over-correction. Applied too literally, the "baseball swing in golf posture" feel can create a new fault: too flat, a block to the right. Myers's own "find a blend" framing acknowledges the exaggeration is a temporary tool.

The third risk is subtler: too many thoughts. A steep player who senses the bad position mid-swing tends to add a compensation — and that compensation compounds the fault. A self-reinforcing loop. Fix the mechanics while ten thoughts remain in the head and the mechanics will return. This loop is the real worry, because it lives not in the drill but in the habit.

And there is a point readers easily miss: Myers writes for a major magazine. He can call a "Best In State" instructor, a mental coach, a sport psychologist at will. That is a resource most amateurs — in Vietnam, in Japan, anywhere — do not have. Read him to learn how to ask questions, not to copy a single session.

At industry level, Myers's article is a notable signal. It sits inside a trend louder than any press release: demand for the coaching ecosystem is rising. A credentialed instructor, a mental coach, a sport psychologist, a swing app — all named in the same piece, with no disclosed sponsorship. That is context and soft promotion at once.

The Japanese golf industry I follow weekly is moving the same way. Academies in Osaka, Kobe and Nagoya no longer sell pure "swing lessons". They sell packages: technique, fitness, and — most importantly — the mind. Mental-performance revenue in Japan has become its own line item in the reports of major academy chains, something nobody imagined a decade ago.

For Vietnam, where recreational golf is booming, this is a double lesson. On one hand, players are taught that improvement is a guided process. On the other, if they read closely, they are taught that one session is not a solution. Between those two ideas lies a gap in expectations, and that gap is usually filled with equipment spending.

From another angle, the "journalist as protagonist" model Myers uses is a durable content machine. It is cheap to produce, easy to share, and can run as a multi-part series. Each installment is a test; each test is an open question: will the drill hold up on the course? That is deliberate engagement design, and it explains why the piece ends with an open door rather than a conclusion.

Every contract begins with a back-lot story. Myers's began with a ball flying into a house. Perhaps the most valuable thing to keep from that article is not the horizontal drill but a small question: when your body is trying to save a shot, are you seeing it — or only hearing your own long exhale?

I have hosted countless award ceremonies and stood behind countless tee boxes. I have never seen anyone cure a fault by calling it "in the head". But I have seen many begin to fix it, once they were willing to look down at their own feet — where vertical and horizontal force compete, and where the shot is decided before the club ever swings. If there is a lesson for Vietnamese players in this American story, it may be this: ask the body before asking the head. And give the answer more time than a single session.