Golf Instruction

The golf industry is flooded with golf instructions related to swing positions and the sequence of motion in the golf swing.  The number of golf swing methods adopted and endorsed by the games best players, illustrated and endorsed in videos, books, and magazines, is available in greater supplies than at anytime in the history of the game.  The club heads have gotten bigger and the golf shafts lighter.  Despite all of the swing instruction, video equipment, and new technology; handicaps have stayed the same over the last 20 years.

It would seem the golf ball alone would have been enough to tip the scale and drive handicaps lower.  After all the ball is designed to fly straight and far which should make misses less frequent.  Such is not the case.

The problem is one of perception.  Most golfers believe the answer to playing great golf can be found by chasing the perfect swing.  Unfortunately our egos will not let us free ourselves of this misconception.

The baseline consists of basic targeting, green reading, golf practice, and course management skills. Swing mechanics speaks for itself.

Strategic and mental golf includes advanced targeting, course management, strategy, mental toughness, short game mastery, visualization, and effective practice skills.

If your swing is perfect and you do not have any of the learned skills for playing strategic and mental golf, then your effectiveness a player is about 40 on a scale of 0 – 100. Consider this, if Tiger Woods effectiveness as a player was measured on his golf swing alone, a perfect swing without any strategic skills, he would rate about a 40. The opposite is also true. If his strategic skills were in the 50s, and his swing was OK…not great, he would still rate about 80 on the players scale. The minimum level to play on the PGA Tour is above 80.

Tiger made three major swing changes since his arrival on the PGA tour. Even during time periods when he was making these major changes and his swing was marginally effective in competition, he was still winning golf tournaments. The reason is because he has exceptionally strong strategic and mental skills. All Tour players have strong strategic skills; without them they would not survive the intense competition.

Do not be confused by the intense stare that Tiger has in competition. That stare also seen with players like Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, and others is not concentration. It’s a bi-product of concentration; keeping your strategic and mental ducks in order. The higher you go on the strategic and mental scale the higher the level of concentration required to stay there.

Becoming a great player is a blend of physical and mental skills development. You should work on your swing like 99% of all successful tournament and low handicap players have done…find a PGA Professional to help you. A good teaching pro has a great eye and can help you match proper fundamentals to your body type and flexibility levels. Trying to improve your golf swing without the guidance of a teaching pro or video equipment and golf analysis software is like trying to write War and Peace, with pen and paper instead of a computerized word processor. Can it be done; yes, but not very well.

If you are serious about becoming a better player, then you should find the proper balance between your full swing practice and your strategic and mental skills development. Only after you make a commitment to allocating 70% of your practice time to a strategic and mental improvement plan will you develop into the player you want to be. Your goal should be to find a proper golf swing that is reasonably repeatable and easy to maintain.

Your choice of sources related to online golf instructions is endless.  If you Google the search term "golf lessons" the system will return 4.2 million websites, videos, articles, or other items related to golf lessons.  It gets really juicy when you Google the search term "How To Golf".  The system returns 149 million locations.

So what are we supposed to make of this?  How many of these golf instructions are created and presented by PGA Professionals?  How much of this material is real instruction verses marketing hype? There are endless promises of a quick fix or a swing gimmick, guaranteed to be the "secret".  

The biggest problem you face as an aspiring golfer is understanding what your body type restrictions are, flexibility levels, hand/eye coordination, practice time available; and then matching those things to the golf instructions that best suit your unique golfing aptitude.  That’s why a PGA Professional is so helpful; to help figure out what will and will not work for you.

There are some things universally important in golf swing instructions.  These items should be included in all teaching methods with slight variations for specific technique. 

Setup Fundamentals

Setup fundamentals are very important to achieving success hitting golf shots.  Jack Nicklaus visited his long time coach, Jack Grout,  at the beginning of every season to make sure his setup fundamantals were correct before playing in competiton.

Swing Positions

There are ideal positions that you want to strive for but not at the expense of learning how to play the game.  The simple and proper golf swing focuses on the "impact position" as the most important aspect in a golf swing.  Whether you look like Jim Furyk, John Daly, or Tiger Woods is of little consequence if you get the club back in the right position at impact.

Short Game

More than 60% of the game is played from less than 100 yards.  The golf short game is the scoring part of the game and influneces your ability to go low more than any other aspect of golf.   Good golfers have good short games.  Great golfers have great short games.  The Tour pros have great short games. The two go hand in hand.

Mental Game

Many great champions have stated that golf is 90% mental and 10% physical.  The importance of that statement never seems to have the impact on the majority of golfers that it should.  Part of your improvement plan is to become a mental giant.  This aspect of golf more than any other seperates the "men from the boys".

How to Practice 

This fundamental is probably the least understood of all of these discussed.  Generally people say to themselves, "I’m going to learn how to play golf" and they race to the range.  Very few start out trying to be good putters with a great short game.  Most of golf’s great champions grew up learning the game using shorter clubs then graduating to longer clubs.  Most golfers do the opposite..they start out trying to learn the game with the hardest club in the bag…a driver.

Great practice results in great play.  You will be on the road to becoming a great player when you play like you practice.  Most golfers have it reversed.  When you perfect your practice disciplines playing the game gets much easier. 

Learn these fundamantals to build a repeatable golf swing, a consistent golf game, that results in your ability to become a good to great golfer.