When Tiger Woods swings his driver, or Bubba Watson, you can see the power and you almost hurt yourself just looking. Then there is Ernie Els, the favorite player of all recreational golfers. With what seems like no effort, he hits the ball as far as anyone. How do you hit the ball so hard with such an easy swing? For starters, appearances can be deceiving.

Ernie hits him harder than you think, but let’s go back to his development as a young golfer first. The story goes that as a child, he would hit plastic balls in his backyard. With an easy swing, they would advance about 70 feet. If he hit one as hard as he could, he would hit about 70 feet. This taught him that taking off his shoes was not the key to good golf.

What it does is obey the fundamentals of the golf swing, the first of which is setup. Your grip, stance, aim and stance before taking off the club define the movement you can take. A good setup tends to restrict your movements to the correct ones. In a poor configuration, anything goes and most of it is wrong.

The second fundamental of his swing, the one that makes him stand out, is his rhythm and tempo. He never rushes things, letting them unfold in the right sequence and at the right time. He really does swing hard. If you have the opportunity to see it live, you will be in for a big surprise. But its rhythm and tempo allow your swing to flow gracefully and effortlessly from start to finish. They allow all their power to be concentrated at the moment of impact in a square hit in line.

Imagine that you have hung a rug and are hitting it with a tennis racket to remove the dust. You know that to get the maximum effect from your hit, the racket must hit the mat by traveling directly towards the mat, not at an angle to it, and the entire head of the racket must hit the mat flush, without hitting the mat first with a edge of the racket.

Now think of the carpet as a golf ball and the racket as the head of your club, and there you have it: a square hit in line. This is how to hit the ball hard, and that’s what Ernie does. Always keep in mind that hitting hard and hitting hard are two different things.

There’s one more thing about him that, try as we might, most of us won’t be able to copy: talent. Ernie, along with all professional golfers, has a talent for hitting the ball from afar. Either you are a long hitter or you are not. Paying attention to the fundamentals allowed him to fully develop his talents. You can do the same and hit the ball as far as your talent allows, which will be enough.