There are, as far as I can tell, several dozen parts to my golf swing. I imagine there should be three or four, all working in sweet accord, synched as finely as the watches in a Hollywood-choreographed heist caper.

My swing unfortunately works in the opposite manner, so that, like the proverbial house of cards, if one part is slightly off, the rest collapse immediately, leaving me with a physical act similar to what someone might look like if attempting to swing a club while undergoing electroshock therapy.

First, there’s the issue of address. One could argue that technically this isn’t part of the actual swing—but to my thinking the experience of the swing begins the moment you stand over the ball. That’s when the latent potential of the swing is activated, along with the fantastic sense of panic that accompanies the act of preparing to hit a golf ball. The ostensible calmness with which the clubhead rests on the ground is in inverse proportion to the dread that begins to melt over the person holding the club. If the recreational golfer standing over the ball were captured in art, the name of the overt portrait might be something like “Serenity and the Ball.” Change that portrait to an EKG printout and the title becomes “Terror at Address.”

Posture, too, counts as part of the swing, insofar as it has a direct influence on the result. A good golf stance is essentially one in which the golfer looks as though he has started to very carefully sit down on a toilet and stopped one third of the way. Knee bend, in other words, is crucial. Hip position is, too. Weight distribution is a third important component, position of hands relative to the groin a fourth. One also mustn’t forget shoulder plane or spine angle, nor should he swing heedless of head tilt or grip pressure. If you disagree that these are all parts of the swing, try ignoring one of them and see how many skins you earn.

Once my swing is, against all psychological resistance, triggered, a number of other elements come into play, all fighting against one another in a chaotic and misguided battle for supremacy. If my swing were a corporation and its components the staff, each of them would be called in by the HR manager to be told they needed to become better team players. Actually, they’d be told they needed to learn how to better leverage potential synergies across multiple touchpoints.

As far as my particular swing is concerned, no factor is more vital than clubface angle. For years the faces of my clubs have arrived at the ball as though they’ve only traveled there by accident, so that by the time they do reach the destination, instead of squaring up to the ball they start to turn away, fearful of something I still can’t understand. Now you may be saying to yourself that the angle of the clubface at impact probably has more to do with the way I swing than any form of metaphysical fear. This is a highly logical assertion, and probably true. But I still don’t get why my clubs are so afraid.

Front-arm stiffness, as any golfer knows, also plays a decisive role in guiding the swing along its proper path. My front elbow exhibits a strong desire to bend at all points in the swing despite my frequently irate objections. So I’m dealing with a phobic clubface and a slack elbow. No wonder I can’t break 100.

Beyond these impediments, there is the hip turn, or more specifically, the need to create resistance against yourself by twisting one half of your body away from the target while keeping the other half completely in the dark. Though this kind of move is best left to cartoon characters, the experts continue to fool a good part of the population into thinking it’s the best way to swing. Thankfully the new stack-and-tilt proponents are endorsing a lazier style that doesn’t involving wrenching multiple vertebrae out of place.

The hip turn can itself be divided into sub-components, since it must work with the rest of the torso on the initial backwards twist but then take the lead on the way back, opening a fraction of a second before the knee, heel, chest and arms get involved—“leading” them through, that is. It’s an enormous responsibility, but one the hips must live with. I can’t imagine the guilt they must feel every time they forget to alert the other parts before opening. (Wait, we forgot to tell the knees! THE KNEES!)

Many of golf’s swing elements make a scrap of sense on their own, but instructors for some reason insist on making us aware of both a swing element and its direct opposite, then insisting we integrate both into our technique. We’re led to believe that we must remember within the space of a few seconds to swing down on the ball and come up through the ball; pronate the wrists while not forgetting to release; grip the club like it’s an egg but swing like you mean it; keep the club low but end with a nice high finish, so that our playing partners will keep their eyes fixed on our elegant pose rather than the fact that our ball has just dented a tree 20 yards off the fairway. I attribute all these paradoxes to the fact that even golf pros don’t have a clue what they’re doing. Not that this stops me from paying them.

A few times per round, of course, something glorious happens: All the parts of my swing somehow fall into alignment, and the ball, after soaring through the sky for what seems like hours, lands in just the right spot, making me smile with as much wonder as pleasure. It’s this instant of harmony that every golfer is perpetually trying to capture—making even golfers like me, who capture it no more than a handful of times among dozens of awful shots, continue to pursue it enthusiastically for the same reason a man will invest months of effort for the prospect of seeing a pair of breasts even once. That moment makes everything that has come before it worthwhile, just as a great drive on eighteen makes the seventeen errant drives preceding it seem suddenly acceptable. Yes, when all the parts of the swing agree to put aside their differences and work in concert, the feeling is sublime. I use the sexual analogy because no man, having seen a pair of breasts, can ever again pretend he hasn’t. Ask any of your playing partners about a great shot you remember them hitting, and watch the light come into their eyes. Watch as they get misty while describing it (and, in all likelihood, acting it out with an imaginary club). Why are they so emotional? Because you never know when one part might get crossed up with another, and it can take an excruciatingly long period to get the whole mess untangled again.