Learning to play golf can be overwhelming, especially when you have to absorb so much information in those first few lessons, weeks of practice and years playing. Every golf professional’s style of coaching is different and that’s before you take into account all the tips you’ll get from well-meaning friends and family along the way.
Here at Golf Monthly HQ we were talking about how easy it is to take on bad advice, thinking it’s the right thing to do. So we’re sharing with you those worst pieces of advice that we were ever given, to help you avoid making the same mistakes.
The worst piece of advice I was ever given as a junior was to focus on finding fairways. As a consequence, I became one of the shortest, straightest hitters in my county squad! Three decades later, I look back on my teenage years and I know how detrimental my lack of distance was to my results.
There was no end of occasions when I lost matches to players who simply out-powered me, capable of hitting the ball 50 yards or more further than me off the tee. ‘Swing slow and smoothly with a rhythmical tempo’ were the swing thoughts drilled into me in those formative lessons. If I was starting golf all over again I’d put more focus into speed training, because the modern game is a distance one.
(Image credit: Howard Boylan)
I remember the very first time I introduced my then boyfriend (a good golfer) to my parents. We played a round of golf together on a course that he was unfamiliar with, so my dad (a high handicapper) took it upon himself to tell him exactly where NOT to go on every hole!
He stood on every tee and said: “There’s a bunker on the left, and if you miss right you’ll lose the ball because the rough is brutal. There’s a water hazard in front of the green, out of bounds down the right, and don’t go long with your approach here, because anything over the back of the green is dead.” Bless him, his heart was in the right place, but unknowingly, by pointing out where not to go, he was simply putting all the trouble into the poor man’s head and the pressure on. Needless to say, he didn’t play his best golf that day.
Alison Root, Golf Monthly’s Women’s Editor
Alison Root says that the worst piece of advice as a beginner was that dreaded phrase, ‘Keep your head down.’ “When I was learning to play golf, everyone seemed to say this, especially when I started topping the ball,” insists Alison. “Your chin sinks lower and lower. It actually puts a…
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