This. Got back into golf after not playing for a decade and I wish I got lessons immediately. It’s a long road mentally undoing bad habits. Also focusing on one thing at a time to improve.
I took 4 years off after my daughter was born. I’m just getting back into it this year. I’ve been getting weekly lessons for the past 6 weeks. My swing is transformed. I highly recommend it.
My Dad tells a story. Him and I were playing when I was ten or eleven. A guy we were playing with told him he should get me lessons. He never did and I don't want to question my Dad as to why he did not get me lessons then.
Golf isn’t about being perfect or hitting the perfect shot every time. You can play ugly golf and shoot good scores. Swing your swing, limit big mistakes, learn your misses.
Language makes me overthink sometimes, this isn't a criticism of you but me thinking about your wording.
Doesn't everyone (unless you hole out) make the same amount of putts? Taking fewer putts is probably a better metric than making more. After all, if you 'made' more putts than me, I surely didn't have to putt 1 or more times.
Then think about the idiomatic and contextual aspects of language. Everyone (including you, I imagine) knew what he meant because of the context. Just as you don’t get the impression a course is selling cute little pets when someone tells you they got a birdie on #7.
Agree with this. I'd also add that it took me three years to understand that my consistent fade wasn't something that needed fixing. Like my coach said 'nobody hits golf balls straight and that will never be our goal'.
If you got a consistent 'miss' then learn to play it.
Course management.
When you hit a shit drive and have 185 yards to the green, out of thick rough……..just hit a 7-8 iron and advance the ball into the fairway.
When I first started, I’d try to hit some sort of wood or long iron to the green……and usually screw myself even worse.
Just brought this back into my game as I hunt low single figures after an extended hiatus…playing to a 7 again after a couple of months, I use “Smooth Away” as I am prone to a rapid takeaway when chasing a shot
There's an element of golf that reminds me of poker. Sometimes it feels like everything aligns - you smash a 280 yard drive in the fairway, stick a wedge, drain a 12ft. birdie put, and the dopamine flows and gives you a false sense of confidence. Reality is, most people have a bunch of inconsistencies in their swing, but can still catch a heater. Getting better isn't about the good shots, it's more about protecting your stack - work on your handsy release and early extension, aim for the center of the green, don't try to carry the water, etc.
I'd take a $100 bet that I could beat a tour pro on a single hole. Taking that same bet over 18 holes is just incinerating your money. Golf seems to be more about raising the floor, not the ceiling.
This is it. I constantly have to remind myself that my clubs can hit the ball way further than I can, that I need to trust my club and focus on smooth swings with clean contacts
Contact is key. I always try to tell myself: you know what you are doing, just do it and don’t stop halfway through.
I suck but i at least am good enough to trust myself….sometimes haha. Last round I shot a 94 with 28 putts for some context
Yep, if you’re swinging too hard, chasing the technical details of the swing is an absolute waste of time and you’ll have those “I lost my swing” days. Yeah because it’s based on timing a ton of variables, if you rotate and chill out it reduces a lot of those variables.
I played like shit yesterday, it was so hot, I was struggling with woods like usual and that frustration bled into my irons and putting and I was fatting and thinning, ran a straight four footer five feet by and on the walk from the 12th green to the cart I realized I was all amped up and over-swinging. Chilled out and striped 4i, 7i, 52° to 12’ on a 429 yard par 5 and three putted because I’m still a piece of garbage) but it’s very obvious when it clicks. Over-swinging is a result killer.
You don't hit AT the ball. The ball should not be your focus, sending the ball to the target is your focus
This is along the same lines of people saying they wished they didn't swing so hard. So many people focus so much on hitting the ball as hard as they can, they end up hitting at the ball and that's no bueno.
The game is called “golf”, not “golf swing”
You will enjoy the game more and play better if you treat a round of golf the same way you would treat a basketball game. You would never spend your bench time making tweaks to your jump shot mechanics, so why are you doing the same in golf every time you play?
Course management is needed. Play to your strengths and don't try to hit your top distance shot every time. And to those in your late teens and twenties don't use golf as an excuse to get hammered drunk.
Two that stick out big time for me. 1 is to do with practicing and the other on the course.
1. Feel vs. Real: Video at least one swing per practice session - even chipping & short game. The difference between what you think you’re doing and what you’re actually doing can be massive. Combine this with 1 or 2 notes of what your most important focus(es) of the day were.
The note taking part has been critical for me. It prevents falling into an endless cycle of small swing changes, which gives you slightly different feels and misses to manage every time you play. When you’re doing it correctly, and review your previous notes before your next session, you’ll see you can go months relying on the same feels and thoughts.
2. Everyone has said it, so briefly: course management. I have lost count of the amount of times I’ve seen a “less skilled” (worse looking swing, worse misses) player beat a skilled player because of decision making. No matter what shot you just hit, accept your state and build a plan to get in the hole in the most high percentage way possible
face control and path awareness. not hard to figure out on your own with a wedge doing some short shots trying to work the ball but no one tells you how key this is.
most poeple, as well as the vast majority of the people who post on /r/golfswing have that backwards hand movement from a pro that forces them over the top with an out to in plane: their backswing hand angle is flat while the downswing hand angle is steep and the club follows accordingly. drilling a steep takeaway and a feeling like the hands go out past the ball will cure this.
the other issue is the open face which promotes the classic slice out of the park. again, no one tells you how to cure the slice. they say you strengthen your grip, well that doesn't cure the slice that gives you a crutch where you can still potentially slice from that position if you get too comfortable, since fundamentally you haven't trained face awareness in your hands. all you need to do is think about how the club should be at various points of the swing. most people who slice have an open clubface from takeaway all the way into impact. its as easy as trying to shut it down, neutralizing that lead wrist at the 3 points the club is parallel to the ground, and drilling that feeling.
My dad hits knockdown everything - at this point I don't think he knows what a full swing is with anything other than a driver or 3w. Everything's a knockdown this, baby that, guided swing. He hits greens an exceedingly boring frequency.
He blames it on playing links style rural courses that are wide open and windy. Gotta keep the ball down to fight the wind rather than trying to guess how many yards of cross wind there is, take it out of the equation!
Tempo, and advice is subjective everyone’s body is different so what works for some might not work for others. Find what works for you and stick with it!
As a former baseball player, that the interlock grip wont reduce speed/power. Mostly due to the unusual feel coming from baseball, I had it in my head that I'd lose a lot of distance so I just stuck with the baseball grip for WAY too long.
It would’ve been nice to have speed training tools like the Super Speed, beforehand. Keeping up the intent is key, even with all the physical gains from the gym as an example.
Speed training has been the most helpful thing towards hitting better bombs and breaking par, far more than the typically parroted “swing easy” stupidity can ever hope to be. That and a more resilient long game still gets things by more often than scrapping it up with the short game.
"Swing easy," isn't stupidity. It is about tempo and tension, not speed. You can swing fast and easy at the same time. Freddy Couples, the poster child of an easy swing, was still swinging his driver at 108 mph at 60 years old. That's not slow.
Except Fred Couples has mentioned for the record, time and time again, that he's actually [hitting the ball hard.](https://www.instagram.com/p/CjYiSBovAJd/) The best part is [showing how much faster and more aggressive he, Els, Nicklaus, Korda, and/or whoever else are compared to people who, like you, think swinging easy somehow is the way to go.](https://www.veed.io/view/1ba9c557-788b-4c97-9046-14409a549b54?panel=share) And it applies regardless of club selection. They are not swinging easy.
[So yes, it is very much an exercise in stupidity to try swinging easy. Especially on purpose.](https://practical-golf.com/swing-tempo/) There's no long-term benefits to be had: When amateurs apply that adage of swinging low, slow, and smooth, it’s still just a crappy swing. Only now it's even slower and that much more impotent. No matter how you try spinning it with some ill-conceived mental gymnastics in a last ditch effort to make that overused adage somehow work against anything else that's actually [measured,](https://www.instagram.com/p/C2TXQXyttgt/) observed, coached by those who actually know a thing or two, and so on. Also- depending on who you talk to, 108 is slow and a downgrade. Save the 108 as "not slow" talk for a far-flung future time like when you're truly senile, instead.
My dad always told me "let the club do the work".
You can swing hard once you know how to make solid contact. Contact is key.
Also, there's nothing wrong with golfing to just have fun.
Didn't look at the scorecard yesterday. One of my favorite rounds ever.
I wish I would've started using stiff flex clubs sooner. Regular flex clubs are just too whippy for my club swing speed - I didn't fully realize this till later on down the road lol.
Not a new player concept, but for anyone struggling around the greens:
“Short game is far more about technique and body control than it is about hand eye coordination”
If you truly learn and understand
- (1) how a shot is supposed to be played and
- (2) assessing lies to understand where a shot is useable vs. unusable
Short game becomes wildly easier. Matching up INTENT for AoA, shaft lean, weight distribution, use of bounce, point of intended contact on the face, ball position in stance, matching up all of those things to a lie and intended shot correctly makes the execution trivial.
Except for an elevated spinner off hardpan. That will never be easy. But for everything else…
I used to think I had bad hand-eye coordination because of how much I struggled around the greens and nowadays looking back, I kinda feel like I must have had sick hand eye coordination to *ever* pull shots off the way I was approaching some of them.
No one cares how far you hit any given club, unless it’s a driver and they’re on your scramble team. Figure out reasonable distances for your irons, and swing with a reasonable tempo. I learned to play during the Tiger era, and I swung everything except my driver entirely too hard. Still not convinced it’s possible to swing a driver too hard. 😂
My issue is people get used to the flat perfect lie and then get upset when they're hitting "good shots" at the range but it doesn't translate to the course. Well yeah that's obvious the course has uneven lies different grass everything is changed once you step onto the course and actually have to shoot low scores. You won't learn how to do that hitting a bucket off a mat for an hour
I agree with that. I still think it's positive to gain confidence with your swing. It's a mental game and even if lies and grass length won't translate it's still beneficial to build confidence in your game
My dad always told me "let the club do the work".
You can swing hard once you know how to make solid contact. Contact is key.
Also, there's nothing wrong with golfing to just have fun.
Didn't look at the scorecard yesterday. One of my favorite rounds ever.
Keep your control (left arm) straight and turn your shoulder to be in line with the ball. Pretty much only two swing thoughts you need to know to get going.
It’s ok to keep driver in the bag. Nothing wrong with a 200 yard 5 iron off the tee. Puts you in position to make par every time. If you’re not hitting the big stick well that day, give it a rest. You’ll have a more enjoyable round.
Nothing wrong with a 200 yard 5 iron shot, unless your 5 iron doesn’t go 200 yards. Not all of us are long hitters. Average 5 iron distance for a mid handicap is 160.
I wish I would have had lessons earlier. My first lesson was when I was in my 40's. I also wish I would have been fitted earlier for my clubs.
This. Got back into golf after not playing for a decade and I wish I got lessons immediately. It’s a long road mentally undoing bad habits. Also focusing on one thing at a time to improve.
I took 4 years off after my daughter was born. I’m just getting back into it this year. I’ve been getting weekly lessons for the past 6 weeks. My swing is transformed. I highly recommend it.
My Dad tells a story. Him and I were playing when I was ten or eleven. A guy we were playing with told him he should get me lessons. He never did and I don't want to question my Dad as to why he did not get me lessons then.
How much did you improve with lessons?
I went from a sixteen handicap to a eight handicap. I am currently an eleven handicap. Need to take lessons again!
Golf isn’t about being perfect or hitting the perfect shot every time. You can play ugly golf and shoot good scores. Swing your swing, limit big mistakes, learn your misses.
& work on putting & reading greens. I quietly match scores of much better ball strikers on a regular basis simply by making more putts.
Language makes me overthink sometimes, this isn't a criticism of you but me thinking about your wording. Doesn't everyone (unless you hole out) make the same amount of putts? Taking fewer putts is probably a better metric than making more. After all, if you 'made' more putts than me, I surely didn't have to putt 1 or more times.
Then think about the idiomatic and contextual aspects of language. Everyone (including you, I imagine) knew what he meant because of the context. Just as you don’t get the impression a course is selling cute little pets when someone tells you they got a birdie on #7.
Bravo But..they don’t sell little pets? 😢
Lol, I see what you mean, just remember, if you make a putt, you’re done, if you miss, you must putt again.
Checks out! :)
Agree with this. I'd also add that it took me three years to understand that my consistent fade wasn't something that needed fixing. Like my coach said 'nobody hits golf balls straight and that will never be our goal'. If you got a consistent 'miss' then learn to play it.
Course management. When you hit a shit drive and have 185 yards to the green, out of thick rough……..just hit a 7-8 iron and advance the ball into the fairway. When I first started, I’d try to hit some sort of wood or long iron to the green……and usually screw myself even worse.
Swing easy. A 260yd drive in the fairway is better than a 300yd drive in the woods.
tell that to the bomb-and-gouge data but also tell that to me before I rocket one into the water on the other fairway while swinging out of my shoes
Find a 2 word tempo indicator and make that your only swing thought when standing over the ball. This has helped me more than anything on the course
My instructor gave us a 3 beat example (2 going back and one to swing) Hole-In-One or Ti-ger Woods. I use Ta-co Bell
Freddy Couples. Freddyyyyy Couples.
Pooty TANG
Tempo indicator? ... Tell me more please!
Just brought this back into my game as I hunt low single figures after an extended hiatus…playing to a 7 again after a couple of months, I use “Smooth Away” as I am prone to a rapid takeaway when chasing a shot
Mother fucker is my go to.
There's an element of golf that reminds me of poker. Sometimes it feels like everything aligns - you smash a 280 yard drive in the fairway, stick a wedge, drain a 12ft. birdie put, and the dopamine flows and gives you a false sense of confidence. Reality is, most people have a bunch of inconsistencies in their swing, but can still catch a heater. Getting better isn't about the good shots, it's more about protecting your stack - work on your handsy release and early extension, aim for the center of the green, don't try to carry the water, etc. I'd take a $100 bet that I could beat a tour pro on a single hole. Taking that same bet over 18 holes is just incinerating your money. Golf seems to be more about raising the floor, not the ceiling.
Thank you for this elaborate tip!
Stop swinging so hard.
This is it. I constantly have to remind myself that my clubs can hit the ball way further than I can, that I need to trust my club and focus on smooth swings with clean contacts
Contact is key. I always try to tell myself: you know what you are doing, just do it and don’t stop halfway through. I suck but i at least am good enough to trust myself….sometimes haha. Last round I shot a 94 with 28 putts for some context
Yep, if you’re swinging too hard, chasing the technical details of the swing is an absolute waste of time and you’ll have those “I lost my swing” days. Yeah because it’s based on timing a ton of variables, if you rotate and chill out it reduces a lot of those variables. I played like shit yesterday, it was so hot, I was struggling with woods like usual and that frustration bled into my irons and putting and I was fatting and thinning, ran a straight four footer five feet by and on the walk from the 12th green to the cart I realized I was all amped up and over-swinging. Chilled out and striped 4i, 7i, 52° to 12’ on a 429 yard par 5 and three putted because I’m still a piece of garbage) but it’s very obvious when it clicks. Over-swinging is a result killer.
This is it. Tempo is king.
Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
You don't hit AT the ball. The ball should not be your focus, sending the ball to the target is your focus This is along the same lines of people saying they wished they didn't swing so hard. So many people focus so much on hitting the ball as hard as they can, they end up hitting at the ball and that's no bueno.
Course management is so critical to low scoring.
The game is called “golf”, not “golf swing” You will enjoy the game more and play better if you treat a round of golf the same way you would treat a basketball game. You would never spend your bench time making tweaks to your jump shot mechanics, so why are you doing the same in golf every time you play?
Course management is needed. Play to your strengths and don't try to hit your top distance shot every time. And to those in your late teens and twenties don't use golf as an excuse to get hammered drunk.
learn to read a lie, especially in the rough. especially for chipping but also for your approach shots.
Two that stick out big time for me. 1 is to do with practicing and the other on the course. 1. Feel vs. Real: Video at least one swing per practice session - even chipping & short game. The difference between what you think you’re doing and what you’re actually doing can be massive. Combine this with 1 or 2 notes of what your most important focus(es) of the day were. The note taking part has been critical for me. It prevents falling into an endless cycle of small swing changes, which gives you slightly different feels and misses to manage every time you play. When you’re doing it correctly, and review your previous notes before your next session, you’ll see you can go months relying on the same feels and thoughts. 2. Everyone has said it, so briefly: course management. I have lost count of the amount of times I’ve seen a “less skilled” (worse looking swing, worse misses) player beat a skilled player because of decision making. No matter what shot you just hit, accept your state and build a plan to get in the hole in the most high percentage way possible
I like the idea of recording short game swings. I regularly record driver and iron but never wedges (or putter for that matter). Good tip!
face control and path awareness. not hard to figure out on your own with a wedge doing some short shots trying to work the ball but no one tells you how key this is. most poeple, as well as the vast majority of the people who post on /r/golfswing have that backwards hand movement from a pro that forces them over the top with an out to in plane: their backswing hand angle is flat while the downswing hand angle is steep and the club follows accordingly. drilling a steep takeaway and a feeling like the hands go out past the ball will cure this. the other issue is the open face which promotes the classic slice out of the park. again, no one tells you how to cure the slice. they say you strengthen your grip, well that doesn't cure the slice that gives you a crutch where you can still potentially slice from that position if you get too comfortable, since fundamentally you haven't trained face awareness in your hands. all you need to do is think about how the club should be at various points of the swing. most people who slice have an open clubface from takeaway all the way into impact. its as easy as trying to shut it down, neutralizing that lead wrist at the 3 points the club is parallel to the ground, and drilling that feeling.
never make a 100% swing with a wedge. They're precision clubs, not bludgeons. You're better off clubbing up and hitting an 80% shot almost every time
My dad hits knockdown everything - at this point I don't think he knows what a full swing is with anything other than a driver or 3w. Everything's a knockdown this, baby that, guided swing. He hits greens an exceedingly boring frequency. He blames it on playing links style rural courses that are wide open and windy. Gotta keep the ball down to fight the wind rather than trying to guess how many yards of cross wind there is, take it out of the equation!
Tempo, and advice is subjective everyone’s body is different so what works for some might not work for others. Find what works for you and stick with it!
not all golf balls are the same
As a former baseball player, that the interlock grip wont reduce speed/power. Mostly due to the unusual feel coming from baseball, I had it in my head that I'd lose a lot of distance so I just stuck with the baseball grip for WAY too long.
Plant your front foot on your transition during downswing for better ball striking.
Don’t reach as far back somehow adds more distance for me.
A good club fitting makes a difference.
I wish i just had fun
Play the forward tees. The game is challenging. No need to make it impossible from the start.
It would’ve been nice to have speed training tools like the Super Speed, beforehand. Keeping up the intent is key, even with all the physical gains from the gym as an example. Speed training has been the most helpful thing towards hitting better bombs and breaking par, far more than the typically parroted “swing easy” stupidity can ever hope to be. That and a more resilient long game still gets things by more often than scrapping it up with the short game.
"Swing easy," isn't stupidity. It is about tempo and tension, not speed. You can swing fast and easy at the same time. Freddy Couples, the poster child of an easy swing, was still swinging his driver at 108 mph at 60 years old. That's not slow.
Except Fred Couples has mentioned for the record, time and time again, that he's actually [hitting the ball hard.](https://www.instagram.com/p/CjYiSBovAJd/) The best part is [showing how much faster and more aggressive he, Els, Nicklaus, Korda, and/or whoever else are compared to people who, like you, think swinging easy somehow is the way to go.](https://www.veed.io/view/1ba9c557-788b-4c97-9046-14409a549b54?panel=share) And it applies regardless of club selection. They are not swinging easy. [So yes, it is very much an exercise in stupidity to try swinging easy. Especially on purpose.](https://practical-golf.com/swing-tempo/) There's no long-term benefits to be had: When amateurs apply that adage of swinging low, slow, and smooth, it’s still just a crappy swing. Only now it's even slower and that much more impotent. No matter how you try spinning it with some ill-conceived mental gymnastics in a last ditch effort to make that overused adage somehow work against anything else that's actually [measured,](https://www.instagram.com/p/C2TXQXyttgt/) observed, coached by those who actually know a thing or two, and so on. Also- depending on who you talk to, 108 is slow and a downgrade. Save the 108 as "not slow" talk for a far-flung future time like when you're truly senile, instead.
My dad always told me "let the club do the work". You can swing hard once you know how to make solid contact. Contact is key. Also, there's nothing wrong with golfing to just have fun. Didn't look at the scorecard yesterday. One of my favorite rounds ever.
Tempo is speed
Take lessons as soon as possible. It’s easier to learn a good swing than try to unlearn and old swing and replace it with a new swing.
Never try and force or hold an impact position. Lag is created naturally by a good swing. Swing the clubhead.
People didn’t come to yankee stadium to see babe Ruth bunt. Let the big dog eat
" Hit the little ball before you hit the big ball." (planet Earth).
I wish I would've started using stiff flex clubs sooner. Regular flex clubs are just too whippy for my club swing speed - I didn't fully realize this till later on down the road lol.
Not a new player concept, but for anyone struggling around the greens: “Short game is far more about technique and body control than it is about hand eye coordination” If you truly learn and understand - (1) how a shot is supposed to be played and - (2) assessing lies to understand where a shot is useable vs. unusable Short game becomes wildly easier. Matching up INTENT for AoA, shaft lean, weight distribution, use of bounce, point of intended contact on the face, ball position in stance, matching up all of those things to a lie and intended shot correctly makes the execution trivial. Except for an elevated spinner off hardpan. That will never be easy. But for everything else… I used to think I had bad hand-eye coordination because of how much I struggled around the greens and nowadays looking back, I kinda feel like I must have had sick hand eye coordination to *ever* pull shots off the way I was approaching some of them.
No one cares how far you hit any given club, unless it’s a driver and they’re on your scramble team. Figure out reasonable distances for your irons, and swing with a reasonable tempo. I learned to play during the Tiger era, and I swung everything except my driver entirely too hard. Still not convinced it’s possible to swing a driver too hard. 😂
How much fucking math is involved in this game.
You could buy electric 'push' carts.
You don't need to spend as much time at the range as you think. More rounds. Incorporate a lesson
I'd disagree with that. I think the bigger issue is people just hitting stock shots on the range. Practice certain shots and try to hit targets
My issue is people get used to the flat perfect lie and then get upset when they're hitting "good shots" at the range but it doesn't translate to the course. Well yeah that's obvious the course has uneven lies different grass everything is changed once you step onto the course and actually have to shoot low scores. You won't learn how to do that hitting a bucket off a mat for an hour
I agree with that. I still think it's positive to gain confidence with your swing. It's a mental game and even if lies and grass length won't translate it's still beneficial to build confidence in your game
Go to a grass range then. You won't get elevation but you'll get fucked up grass and divots all over the place. Matted ranges are just not the play.
Yeah obviously if you are going to a range then at least have it be grass
My dad always told me "let the club do the work". You can swing hard once you know how to make solid contact. Contact is key. Also, there's nothing wrong with golfing to just have fun. Didn't look at the scorecard yesterday. One of my favorite rounds ever.
Keep your control (left arm) straight and turn your shoulder to be in line with the ball. Pretty much only two swing thoughts you need to know to get going.
It’s ok to keep driver in the bag. Nothing wrong with a 200 yard 5 iron off the tee. Puts you in position to make par every time. If you’re not hitting the big stick well that day, give it a rest. You’ll have a more enjoyable round.
Nothing wrong with a 200 yard 5 iron shot, unless your 5 iron doesn’t go 200 yards. Not all of us are long hitters. Average 5 iron distance for a mid handicap is 160.
I wasn’t aware of that.
how to use the search bar so i could make sure the same thing i want to post hasn't been posted every day for the last 1000 years.
Thank you so much for the constructive tip👍🏼😊