Bubba Watson's unorthodox swing and aversion to lessons haven't prevented him from being one of the biggest stars on the PGA Tour.  Bubba Watson, with two PGA Tour wins already this year, leads the FedEx Cup points race and is second on the money list. Yet he has never had a golf lesson. "No sir, I never felt the need for it," he told me recently. "I never will take a lesson. If I start playing bad golf, I'll just have to find me a new job."  Watson avoids lessons, he said, because he doesn't want to turn the game into a grind. "I just want to play golf and have fun with it," he explained.  At this point in his career (Watson is 32), that's probably just as well. It's hard to imagine how a teacher could even begin to "correct" Watson's swing. It's a quirky, wristy, vertical and extremely violent motion that he hasn't fiddled with much since he figured out how to make whiffle balls curve (in both directions) around his boyhood home in rural Florida. Watson ranks first on Tour in greens in regulation, a testament to his accuracy, and second in driving distance.  "He's smart not to have anybody mess with his game," instructor Butch Harmon told me. "You wouldn't necessarily teach anybody to swing like that, but he knows what he wants to do with the ball, he knows how to do it, and he's been very successful. If the ball is reacting properly, it doesn't matter what it looks like. That's your swing and that's what you should stick with."  There's wisdom here for everyday players. As much as the media likes to focus on players with joined-at-the-hip instructors—Tiger Woods being the prime example—the fact is that most Tour pros use swing coaches sparingly, often just for periodic reviews of their fundamentals, and seldom if ever switch. The only coach Jim Furyk has ever had is his father. Luke Donald, world No. 3, checks in occasionally with his college golf coach, Pat Goss at Northwestern, but not that often. (Watson last week told reporters he thinks Woods shouldn't be so "mental" about his golf swing, but instead just "play golf.")  In the old days, before video cameras and advanced instructional techniques, this was the norm. "My father was my swing coach. I saw him at least once a year for about 70 years, and he never changed anything," Arnold Palmer said in March at his Bay Hill tournament. "He watched me for five minutes and went home. He put my hands on the golf club when I was 6 years old and said, 'Boy, don't you ever change that grip.' Well, I haven't changed it, and I'm 81 years old."  The truth is that golf swings can't be taught, they can only be learned, and learning a swing by yourself has advantages. "The great thing about being self-taught is that you can correct yourself on the course," said Lee Trevino, the six-time major champion who has also never had a lesson (except for a few sessions with Gary Player on bunker play, since the Texas course Trevino grew up playing had no bunkers).  "Feedback is the greatest teacher there is," Trevino told me. "You look at the ball and see what it did, and if you know your swing and your mechanics, you know what you need to do to fix it. A lot of these guys with gurus, when something goes wrong they don't know what the hell to do about it until they finish their round and can make a phone call. But by that time they're out of the tournament."  Jack Nicklaus also just had one instructor, Jack Grout, who taught him as a boy. "Never once did Jack Grout set foot on a practice tee at a tournament," said Nicklaus at the Masters last month. "I saw him maybe twice, three times a year. I think that's why I became a pretty good golfer, because when I was having troubles on the golf course I knew how to correct myself."  Jim Herman is another Tour player who's never had a lesson. He picked up the game, starting at 9, the way most amateurs do: a tip here, a tip there, studying photographs in golf magazines, watching the pros on television. "I just kind of feel the shots. If somebody was telling me I had to get to this position here, or move my hips there, that just wouldn't work for me," he told me.  With lessons, of course, it's possible Herman, 33, would have made it to the Tour much earlier. Trevino, for all his success without lessons, is no advocate for that approach.  "You've got to get some advice, otherwise you're spinning your wheels. You need an instructor to show you about alignment and balance, how to grip the club—that's the most important thing—and how to initiate the downswing. But then it's up to you to perfect it. Maybe you go back for a checkup after two or three months, but the main thing you need is passion. If you've got that passion, you can teach yourself to play golf," he said.  Trevino's 18-year-old son has only recently taken up golf. "He swings like Adam Scott," Trevino laughed, referring to the Australian known for his near-perfect modern swing. Trevino limits his role to passing along tricks about the wedge game, which he learned the hard way, and helping his son interpret feedback so he can fix his own mistakes.
Constant instruction is part of the game, but Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and others say, If it ain't broke....