How to Improve Your Golf Game

1. Lessons

Dave Tutelman -- June 28, 2006

If you don't know how a golf swing is supposed to work, or you don't know what your golf swing is actually doing, then you will never improve. The job of a teaching pro is to identify the most important disfunctional parts of your swing, and teach you how to make them functional. The right teacher for you is one who can (a) identify your biggest problems, and (b) convey them in terms that are helpful to you.

First of all, if you're a complete beginner, then a series of lessons is in order. At this point, you probably don't know what sort of teacher you need. So ask friends for recommendations. Even start with a series of group lessons; many golf courses and some adult-education evening programs offer them. But do take lessons from day one. It is much harder to correct a bad habit than to simply develop a good one.

For the rest of this page, let's assume that you have played golf -- or at least tilled the turf with farming implements by Callaway or Taylor Made -- for a while, and you are not satisfied with your game and want to improve. What sort of teacher should you look for?
  1. You need a teacher that can respond to the way you learn, and can communicate with you so you understand what is to be learned. Here are some examples of different ways to learn:
    • I tend to be analytical (this should come as no surprise if you have read any of my other articles). I respond to a teacher who tells me not only what, but why. And if the why doesn't make sense to my knowledge of mechanics, I'm outta' there.
    • Other people are visual. They may respond to seeing the swing done right, and seeing their own swing captured on video. Someone whose approach to learning is strongly visual should seek out a teacher that uses video (both stock swings and capture of your swing) effectively.
    • Still others are tactile. They want to know what they should be feeling at various points of the swing. They don't need to know what it looks like, but rather what it feels like. Some teachers convey this well... and some don't.
    BTW, this is usually not either/or. I tend to have a strong tactile component to my learning of the golf swing, as well as the analytical component. A good teacher should be able to sense how his/her student is learning and teach to it. Which brings us to...
  2. You need a teacher that has a lot of different ways to achieve a desired result. Swing thoughts are personal; people respond to them very differently. A teacher that has just one swing key for someone who is lifting his head will do very well with a few students and fail dismally with the rest. You need a teacher who can approach each fault with half a dozen cures, trying them until one "clicks" with the student. For lifting one's head, some cures might be:
    • The old, "Keep your head down."
    • A visual clue, "Watch the clubhead hit the ball."
    • A tactile clue, "Feel your right shoulder come under your chin."
    • Some key involving keeping the spine angle.
    • Holding the student's hair during a swing, so it hurts if the head moves. Don't laugh. Jack Nicklaus credits his teacher Jack Grout for doing this with him -- and making him better for it.
    • OK, this one you can laugh at; I've only seen it proposed as a joke. A fishing line attached to your golf hat, ending in a fishing hook at your crotch. A very Pavlovian way to learn keeping your head down.
    • Etc, etc, etc...
  3. Be wary of a teacher with one notion of a "perfect" swing, that wants to get every student to swing like that. It may work for a Tiger Woods or an Adam Scott, who (a) is a superb athlete, plus (b) is willing to put in all sorts of practice time, and finally (c) is grooming the swing for a lifetime career in professional golf. But unless you are setting yourself a program of complete swing change -- and the practice that goes with it -- you really want a teacher that can pick out a few things that are the most damaging your golf game and focus on fixing those.
    BTW, I once embarked on a major swing overhaul. It brought about quite an improvement in my golf game. But I wouldn't advise it unless you have the discipline and dedication to follow through on it. (See the next section on Practice for the implications.)
  4. The teacher should be aware of how your equipment may be limiting your game. Too many teachers don't look very hard at your clubs, and quite a few don't look at them at all. I'm not saying a teacher should be a clubfitter; in fact, I have met few teaching pros who really understand clubfitting. But they should recognize things like poor posture caused by the wrong length club, or a club model grossly unsuited to the student's game. (E.g.- a "player's blade" in the hands of a bogey-or-worse golfer.) A set of clubs that is really ill-suited to you can indeed be the major limiting factor in your game. If so, the instructor can't teach you a proper swing, only compensations -- "band aids" -- to minimize the damage your clubs are causing. And it's shocking how many teachers don't recognize this.
    Of the three best golf teachers I know, two have a close relationship with an excellent clubfitter and the third is himself one of those rare teachers who is a good fitter. All three are very conscious of equipment flaws and mismatches, and get the customer to the workshop if they even suspect golf club problems.
Now you're ready to start picking the teacher that can help you move forward with your game.

One final note: the instructor can and should demand that you practice between lessons, and that you show major improvement in what you worked on the previous lesson. If he/she does not, then neither of you is sufficiently dedicated to your improvement to expect any significant results.

Which brings us to the issue of practice...




Last modified 6/30/2006