The Rabbit hole is flooded. Sorry Alice. We are in The Age of Aquarium. The journey to the ‘center of the (Golf swing) earth’ was once spelunking. Now, there is no air down there. Get your scuba gear if you’re looking for the truth about the golf swing today. The medium is meant to slow us down.

I can’t tell you how many times I dreamed of trying to run. Inevitably, I’m suddenly in a swimming pool with water up to my shoulders. Slow-motion, therefore, is the only speed allowed. Pushing the Open Stance philosophy through the quagmire of tips and drills is similarly disquieting. I started forcing myself to wake up and reset. We need, as a golfing culture, to do the same. However, it’s not time quite yet.

Drawing consensus about the ridiculosity of the veil pulled over our eyes by modern instruction, we all need to realize our manipulation. I’m sure Alice would enthusiastically provide us her alarm clock in hindsight. However, since her alarm clock rusted, The Open Stance Academy seeks to open golfing eyes everywhere.

Sadly, cognitive reality and cognitive dissonance cannot co-exist. Samuel Clemens said it perfectly. “It’s easier to fool someone than to convince them that they’ve been fooled”. Our shared deception is also a keystone idea in George Orwell’s 1984. ‘In a world of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.’

Try to be patient. The warped mirror is cracking, and The Mad Hatters are trying to distract us from that fact with bread-and-circus, dance and word-salad. Once considered Sherpas into the unknown, these fancy-boys and -girls are starting to look very silly in their Betsey Johnson-inspired golf swing Haut Coture. Wow.

Take heart. We are living through the darkness right now. And, though the old guard seem like they still call our shots – they are actually circling their wagons trying to figure out how to talk us out of our common sense. They know their relevance depends upon their ability to keep us from noticing the brightening light at the end of the tunnel.

Golf instruction is a personality-dominated enterprise. Charm, wit, etc. replaced common sense and personal responsibility. Strange, isn’t it? The corruption in our golfing world coincided, almost perfectly, with the corruption of our monetary system.

Drips and drabs got the better of us. For example, The Aldridge Act, Bretton Woods, and 1971 Nixon now seem like tributaries to Kelley, McLean, Ledbetter, Haney, and their disciples – now pinching off the oxygen of truth from not only the USA, but golfers as well. We are now dripping with the flood of advice from Mad Hatters one and all.

Why did we enter the rabbit hole at all? Adam and Eve know. When the structures and foundations of our lives are compromised, we are left with Alice’s sense of relativity. Relativism is looking for the rabbit hole when the answers are already a part of us. Without connection to our divine spark, we only feel valuable when someone romances us with commerce and promises. Consequently, over time, submitting to the submersive, extinguishing narrative became “Prosperity”-fashionable for the golfing Joneses. We were just trying to keep up, weren’t we?

We gave up our personal sovereignty so easily in the Age of Aquarium. John Mellencamp wrote “You’ve got to stand for something, or you’re gonna fall for anything”. However, in our current decade, the scales will finally fall away from our eyes, and we will pursue the truth in golf without pretense or provocation by phony palaver. Our rabbit hole hangover will fade, and the Age of Aquarius will drain the Age of Aquarium once and for all.

I’m sure there must be a simpler explanation. Lewis Carroll would be invaluable here.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy

“A Lie Can Travel Half Way Around The World While The Truth Is Still Putting On Its Shoes.”

Disinformation Is Not Just Trick Politics

The Grip (a.k.a. The Hands on The Handle)