I took lessons.

Some made me worse. One made me better.

But none of them explained why I became a better golfer.

What ultimately changed my game wasn’t another mechanical tip. It was understanding my own swing.

After my first real swing change, I started beating par regularly. Later came rounds in the mid-60s. That journey sparked a much bigger question:

What actually creates great ball striking?

Coaching only deepened that curiosity.

For my first three years as an instructor, I poured everything into helping golfers improve. The results were good, but something never sat right. The advice I was expected to teach demanded far more complexity than the game itself seemed to require. It wasn’t how I had improved, and it wasn’t how many of golf’s greatest players described their own swings.

That’s when the Forgotten Master Moves project began.

Twelve years later, these are the principles that guide everything I teach.

Building, Not Repeating

Before golf became my profession, I spent nearly a decade working in product development and marketing for internationally recognised companies.

Those years taught me how great products are built.

You start with principles. You understand the problem. You create structure. You test relentlessly. Most importantly, you make the product easier to use—not more complicated.

Eventually, I left that career to pursue the only thing I truly wanted to do: golf.

When I entered the coaching world (and especially the first step of the PGA education), I couldn’t help comparing the two industries.

The difference was striking.

In product development, vague explanations and inconsistent results simply aren’t acceptable. Products that confuse customers don’t survive.

Yet golf instruction often seemed built around exactly that. Endless, unstructured and, quite frankly, completely conflicting information. More focus on sales itself than on what you are actually selling.

I didn’t want to build another coach-dependent business.

I wanted to build an educational framework.

One that helps golfers understand their own swing instead of relying on vague, often unanchored advice.

That became Forgotten Master Moves.

Feelings Over Mechanical Instruction

Ernest Jones spent more than 120 pages writing about one simple idea: Swing the Clubhead.

His conclusion was equally simple.

You have to feel it for yourself.

I believe great golf swings begin with clear athletic intentions rather than endless mechanical thoughts.

Understand how to move the club correctly and many of the visible pieces—your backswing, grip, posture, release and sequencing—begin to organise themselves naturally.

The feeling creates the movement. The movement creates the positions. Not the other way around.

There Isn’t One Perfect Swing

Hogan didn’t swing like Nicklaus.

Nicklaus didn’t swing like Trevino.

Tiger Woods didn’t move like Nick Price.

Ian Woosnam didn’t move like Seve Ballesteros.

Different players solved the same challenge in different ways.

Understanding those underlying movement patterns has become one of the central ideas behind Forgotten Master Moves.

It allows us to stop taking someone else’s medicine and instead discover the movement pattern that actually fits us.

Your inspirations matter. Your natural power matters.

Finding your pattern is one of the biggest shortcuts in golf improvement.

Movement Over Freeze Frames

A golf swing is a movement.

Not a collection of positions.

Slow-motion analysis certainly has its place, but many golfers end up studying photographs instead of learning to move.

The real question isn’t whether a position looks correct.

It’s whether the movement that created it is correct.

Move the leaders.

The followers will usually organise themselves.

Old-School Wisdom Over Modern Complexity

The greatest swings in history were rarely built through complicated instruction.

At the same time, many of the old masters never explained every piece of what they were doing. Much of the knowledge was assumed, felt or simply left unsaid.

My goal isn’t to reinvent golf instruction.

It’s to reconnect those timeless ideas with the movement principles that made them work.

When those missing pieces are understood, many old-school sayings suddenly become suprisingly logical.

Achievability Above All

A swing change should feel achievable.

If an idea is so complicated that you struggle to perform it on the driving range, how are you supposed to trust it on the first tee?

The best changes simplify your thinking.

One clear athletic intention is almost always more powerful than twenty mechanical thoughts.

When your brain understands the task, your body becomes remarkably good at solving it.

Longevity Matters

A great golf swing shouldn’t only perform.

It should last.

Many of the game’s greatest ball strikers played competitive golf for decades with remarkably fluid, athletic motions.

Today, more golfers than ever generate incredible speed—but many also struggle with injuries at surprisingly young ages.

I don’t believe those two things are unrelated.

Longevity has become one of the guiding principles behind Forgotten Master Moves.

Power means very little if your body can’t enjoy it for years to come.

Find Your Pattern. Find Your Swing.

Forgotten Master Moves wasn’t created to keep golfers dependent on coaching.

It was created to help golfers understand their own motion.

When you understand your movement pattern, you stop chasing every new tip on YouTube.

You stop collecting swing thoughts. You stop trying to become someone else.

Instead, you develop your own swing with confidence, clarity and purpose.

I believe golf instruction should educate—not create dependence.

You aren’t supposed to spend years trapped at the same handicap. You’re supposed to understand your swing.

Own your swing. Trust your swing.

Lastly, My Short Story

Petter Tärbe. A genuine golf nut.

I started playing golf in 1988 and reached a 2 handicap by the age of 17. I never really made it any further because I had major swing faults that no one could help me solve.

I returned to golf in my early 30s and began changing my swing. That’s when I started shooting under par.

I then spent three years coaching hands-on and absolutely loved it, but I knew too little. At the same time I started shooting rounds in the mid-60s, I also kept injuring myself over and over again.

That’s when Forgotten Master Moves became my research project.

I wanted to understand what actually builds great golf swings. Golf swings that stand the test of time. Not slow-motion mumbo jumbo, but the real mechanisms behind elite ball striking.

Twelve years later, I feel I’ve understood enough to explain what the old-school masters were really trying to say.

Version 1 came in 2023 in book form. Now I’m at Version 5, and I’m proud to say it’s as good as I can make it.

START THE JOURney – FIND YOUR OLD SChool PATTERN

Your inspirations and your subconscious view of the golf swing matter more than anything when it comes to making a lasting swing change. The goal is to find the pattern that fits you best. Take the quiz and check out the best choice for you below:

FMM EDUCATIONAL PATTERN PAGES

General Article Collection Pages

More FMM Swing Articles

Some General Swing Tech Posts (with Videos)

Old School General Articles