Instruction
Do you have the right attitude to improve?
Over the last twenty years, I have seen all types of golfers with different attitudes come to the lesson tee — some people are excited to learn, while others are in full-scale panic mode. Whatever your state of mind, I will tell you that even the best teachers in the world can only do so much if you bring the wrong attitude.
As I have often heard, “the only thing worse than a bad golf swing is a bad attitude!” Nothing could be more true, in my opinion. As I’ve always said, learning anything new is NOT easy and if you think it should be you are in for a long, long day.
Remember the following things when you take a lesson. You’ll have more fun and improve much quicker.
- Golf is hard. It takes time to become proficient, just like any other motor skill. You can’t learn to play the guitar instantly, so why should golf be any different?
- The golf ball does not care how old/young you are, how much money you have made, how many widgets your company sells, etc. Therefore, NO ONE is exempt from the learning process. NO ONE!
- In order to master the complete golf swing with any proficiency, you must give yourself the proper amount of time to learn and require of yourself a consistent effort to ensure your practice time is efficient.
- There is a marked difference between hitting balls on the driving range and actually practicing. Most people are on the tee merely getting exercise, and not doing anything productive.
- To overcome a fundamental flaw in your swing or set up, you must make a high number of correct repetitions, not just a high number of repetitions.
- In order to master the golf swing, you must break it down into stages so you can master smaller sub-skills before you move on. Everything in golf relies on what happens before it. If you make a major mistake during the takeaway, you will have to make up for it on the downswing.
- There is no such thing as a “perfect” swing. Everyone has idiosyncrasies that makes their swing unique, thus we are not looking for perfection on the lesson tee, but rather manageability.
- Most people have no realistic idea of what their current talent level is when they come to see their teaching professional. Just because you were a 3-handicap ten years ago does not mean that you can do so instantly once again. Your time allocation, your body and your talent level has changed over the years — some can get it back, while some cannot. Be realistic with yourself!
- If you have taken lessons from “everyone in town” and had little success, it is not the fault of the teaching professionals you have employed — it’s time to look in the mirror.
- Put your quadruple-Type A attitude aside, it only makes for a tough lesson for all involved.
- Throwing clubs, slamming clubs, and yelling on the lesson tee does nothing to help your cause with your teaching professional — it only looks bad on YOU. I didn’t say you couldn’t get upset, I only said you can’t lose your emotional equilibrium during the learning process.
- If your clubs are not fit (at least on the most basic level), you will be working too hard from the start, and will slow your rate of improvement.
- The reason why you hit it so well with your teaching professional watching and so poorly during your own practice time is usually attributed to the fact that we make you practice more efficiently by giving you instant feedback if you are “forgetting” what you need to do.
- Relax and you will have more fun. Having fun helps you learn more effectively.
- If I had the magic dust, I would have given it to you a long time ago — I’m not withholding information. I can only go as fast as your mechanics will let me.
- Sometimes it’s good to get another opinion if you feel like you are stalling out with your current teaching professional, but take the new thoughts with a grain of salt before you implement fully.
- You must take ownership of your own motion and your own swing. Do your due diligence before you sign up for a lesson. Research and ask questions. All teachers have positives and negatives to their instructional style, so you must find one that meshes with your ideals.
- If you are focused only on hitting the ball better, then spend more time on the range. If you want to score better, spend more time around the green.
- If you don’t understand something, or question the direction your teaching professional is going, just ask! It’s YOUR golf swing. It’s not a dictatorship. It’s a work of art and science between you and your teaching professional.
- Technology is helpful on the lesson tee without a doubt, but ONLY if used correctly by the teaching professional.
- The professionals make it look easy for a reason — they are at the top 1 percent in the world at their profession!
Just a few random thoughts I have learned over the years on the lesson tee. It’s just a game, but that’s hard for all of us to remember from time to time!
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Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!
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My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.
As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.
The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.
Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply. Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:
Mis-aligned hands
By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.
The position of the grip in the upper/left hand
I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean. Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.
To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.
Too much lower (right) hand on the club
It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.
Gripping too tightly
Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.
So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.
More from the Wedge Guy
- The Wedge Guy: Golf mastery begins with your wedge game
- The Wedge Guy: Why golf is 20 times harder than brain surgery
- The Wedge Guy: Musings on the golf ball rollback
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Not the dreaded headcover under the armpit drill! As if your body is defective and can’t function by itself! Have you seen how incredible the human machine is with all the incredible feats of agility all kinds of athletes are accomplishing? You think your body is so defective (the good Lord is laughing his head off at you) that it needs a headcover tucked under the armpit so you can swing like T-Rex?
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Nick
Sep 24, 2014 at 7:21 am
I don’t disagree with any comment in the article but I found it so hard to find even a half-decent teacher. I live in a good golfing area with over 12 clubs within 30 miles, I’ve tried lessons with about 6 teachers and only one had enthusiasm for the learning process. Most were jaded from students who either don’t practice or don’t follow up a first lesson with another. Some were personable, some were not.
I’ve been lucky to find someone who has studied Mac o’ Grady’s swing (therefore had a recognisable philosophy) and has enthusiasm. My practice is fully focused on full swing whilst I learn correct body movements and coil. Without doing any short-game specialist practice, I’ve gone from a regular 18 to a 6 inside a year. Now that I hit on average at least half my GIR I need to spend more time working on the scoring aspect but managing to get my drive down a fairway and to do something other than fat approach shots has improved my score and golf outlook more than being able to leave a 5th/6th shot from 30 yards 2 ft away would ever do.
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Rumble
Sep 23, 2014 at 12:07 pm
Before you jump on Tom, whom is a fantastic writer, realize that it is an opinion of his (albeit widely accepted) that short game improvement will make your scores go down faster than if you just worked on ball striking. Some points are valid i.e. hitting a ball OB will wreck your score, while a 3 putt is only one stroke. However, if you look at the course of an entire round, or better yet a full season (which I won’t give an example of for brevity) the short game is a large percentage of strokes, that even a small improvement will trend you in the right direction.
For example, lets say on hole 1 par 4 you hit the ball OB, you are now teeing off your 3rd shot. Which you club down conservatively and put the ball in the rough, where you hack it out and are now laying 4 30 yards from the green. Lets say you have a average short game and it takes you 1 shot to get to the middle of the green and 2 putts. Thats a 7. Lets say you have a great short game and now you turn that into a 6 with a 1 putt. If you play that way the whole way into the clubhouse because your course management skills need work, you saved 18 strokes being able to putt or chip one less time per hole. Inversely, if you strike the ball like a PGA Pro who hits about 13-14 GIR on average and you have a poor short game you will still shoot 4 or so over par if you 2 putt every green, and thats conceding you get out of every tricky shot around the green into 2 putt range. I could also go into how you can never get enough repetitions to exactly predict every full swing shot you will need during a round due to variations in lies and wind and moisture etc, but a small amount of repetitive short game practice can more quickly produce good results. Hence why it’s accepted that your scores will go down rapidly with a better short game.
rockflightxl1000
Sep 23, 2014 at 1:26 am
Tom, you need to have Barney Adams incorporate this in his articles regarding decreasing participation in the game. I think all the things you’ve listed here are why “avid” golf participation is dying out. This is not an easy game to become proficient at. It’s resource intensive and the only certainty that the game offers you is that you’ll be poorer after you play it. However if played correctly the satisfaction is immeasurable.
Tom Stickney
Sep 23, 2014 at 11:23 am
It is a tough game for sure.
Hellstorm
Sep 23, 2014 at 12:15 am
Thanks for the insight Tom. I appreciate these short little articles you put out that serve to get people more centered. I totally agree with the work around the greens portion of learning and lowering your score. Not only does it save you strokes when you are around the green but it takes a tremendous amount of pressure off of your long game. Short game practice helps build rhythm and most importantly confidence and when you are getting the ball up and down, trying to squeeze that extra ten yards out of a drive becomes less important. Bombing drives does nothing for your score if you dont have the skill to get it close on less than full shots.
Think of that older overweight guy that you see out on the course who is barely making 200yds off the tee and is hitting long irons and woods into the par 4’s. He isn’t hitting too many GIR but he is making a ton of pars and bogeys because he is getting the ball in the hole from in close. That guy isn’t at the range trying to squeeze more yardage out of his swing, he is worrying about getting the ball close on that third or fourth shot and managing the course according to his game. I think everybody that is trying toi lower their scores could learn a lot from that guy.
Anyway, thanks for the insight and keep up the good work.
Tom Stickney
Sep 23, 2014 at 11:23 am
Thank you
snowman
Sep 22, 2014 at 4:18 pm
Here’s a thought that might help some folks….Find a system or a set of keys(with an instructor or on your own) you like/understand/make sense/work for you and stick with them. Know your tendencies, common errors. Make notes that you can go back to when things aren’t working (Full Swing, Short Game, Putting). I play with a lot of guys that are just wandering in the wilderness and have no idea even what they are trying to do in their golf swings. A system/set of keys will give you something to use as a foundation for your game.
Tom Stickney
Sep 23, 2014 at 12:35 am
Agree. Thx.
Jason Hawk
Sep 22, 2014 at 2:44 pm
I spent all summer trying to get better instead of just playing. I have so many swing thoughts going on, I sometimes freeze up over the ball and can’t start my swing. Any tips to play thought-free? Thanks!
Tom Stickney II
Sep 22, 2014 at 3:14 pm
Beer! Seriously. Just relax and have fun.
Don Koo
Sep 22, 2014 at 2:20 pm
Very true words Tom. Well said. In particular the part about having to look in the mirror. Many place blame to everything but themselves.
Tom Stickney II
Sep 22, 2014 at 2:26 pm
We’re all guilty
Fred
Sep 22, 2014 at 12:27 pm
Hi Tom. Some very good advice…apart from the 4th last tip. Smashing your drive out of bounds costs you more than not making that 5 footer (more often than not). In my opinion going low requires a good short game, breaking 100 is more to do with not going OOB or duffing approaches
The Crow
Sep 22, 2014 at 1:37 pm
Exactly what I was thinking. Chipping and putting well usually only saves you 1 stroke on a given hole. Driving the ball in play saves you 2 strokes. If people are on or near the green in regulation they are taking a bogey or double at the most. Wild off the tee for the high handicap usually leads to triples and higher.
Tom Stickney II
Sep 22, 2014 at 2:27 pm
In your opinion
Willy
Sep 22, 2014 at 8:08 pm
I agree with you Tom. Getting the swing smoothed out on the practice tee, and working on the short game for scoring better. Tee box is important, but there’s options from there in terms of club usage. The closer to the green you get, choices become limited….
Tom Stickney
Sep 23, 2014 at 12:35 am
Thx.
Jake Anderson
Sep 23, 2014 at 3:41 am
It is not really a matter of opinion. Fred was just being polite. While short game is important, nothing is more important for scoring and enjyoing the game than being a good ballstriker.
Derek
Sep 23, 2014 at 6:38 am
I actually agree with you guys here.
I didn’t start shooting low until I became an above average ball striker and understand the mechanics of controling my flight in all aspects (Curvature, height, etc)
I didn’t start shooting rounds at or under par until I became an good putter and good wedge player.
When I was younger and wild and didn’t understand the mechanics of the swing I was always chipping and putting for 6 or 7… When I started to understand the swing and began striking the ball in a more appropriate fashion and learned to keep the ball in play I was only chipping and putting for birdie sometimes… Par mostly and every so often bogey or worse.
It was at this point that I realized that if I could keep my fundamental technique with my swing and then focus on chipping and putting… well that’s where I shaved strokes off of my 15 handicap and I am now a +4.2 index.
Maybe this is just my experience but this has been my experience with all of my friends as well. In fact, one of my friends who is completely amateurish at golf other than he somehow is an phenominal; and i’m not just saying beginner’s luck, or he makes more than your average bear… I’m talkin drains 20 footers like it’s his job… and it’s not. Anyways, regardless of how exceptional he somehow is at putting, his putts are always for 6+… When I showed him some key fundamentals (as taught by the greats) and gave him some swing ideas to mull over (A la Mark Crossfield and WRX etc) and he found his own groove… Well, lo and behold he is now a steady 15 handicap. Where he regularly shot 120… Food for though I suppose.
mulliganboy
Sep 23, 2014 at 10:23 am
3 from the tee?….
Or 3 putt?
Which would you rather have when playing “for fun”?