5 Misconceptions That Prevent Golfers from Improving

Download our free e-book
Sign up for the newsletter and receive our free 30-page eBook on course strategy!

One of the reasons I started Practical Golf was to put an end to the myths and misinformation that golfers spread among themselves. Game improvement advice is often a kind of childhood phone game – by the time it reaches you, the information isn't very helpful.

To be clear, I'm just as guilty as all of you. Many of my own personal mistakes in this game originated from the 350+ articles I've written over the past five years. While I don't have all the answers, I've come closer to the truth of many essential concepts.

In this article, I will discuss five misconceptions that are widespread among golfers. These are all mistakes I have made over the years and I will also link to other articles I have written to further explore these thoughts.

Practice makes perfect

When I first started playing golf, I was obsessed with practice. I would hit 300 balls on the range until my hands were bleeding. After school I practiced wedge shots in the garden for hours. It helped me build many of the skills that I have with me to this day, but it also created an unhealthy habit that robbed me of enjoying the game as much as possible.

At the time, I assumed that all those hours spent practicing would immediately lead to better performance on the course. When I was not playing as well as I expected, I lost control and spent a lot of time sulking through rounds. What I did not know was that golf is much more than just practice and that there should be more balance in learning to play on the course.

The fall I fell into is similar to what many of you experience:

I assumed there would be a connection between how many hours I had worked on my game and what I could expect from my scores.
Much of my practice time was not focused and I only went through the movements.

A common theme in many of my articles is that golfers should have healthier expectations about how much they can practice, how to spend that time efficiently, and then balance how much time you can spend on the golf course. Unfortunately, one does not work without the other. This article helps further explore that concept.

Other Resources:

Your practice sessions probably miss this

Effective wedge exercise

Guide to Practicing at Home

Practicing with a launch monitor

Careful golf is always better golf

For a long time I played what I called a version of & # 39; bang golf & # 39; would call. Everywhere I looked around I saw difficulties and it forced me to take a very cautious approach. After learning much more about strategy and advanced statistics from sources such as Mark Broadie

and DECADE, I believe this method worked against me in certain situations and for me in others.

For the most part, it is a good idea to take a very conservative strategy in making approach shots. I've shown that golfers don't have as much control over the ball as they think they have. So when a player tries to target the pin and make birdies, it usually takes them to succeed, resulting in bogeys or worse. For many of you, I recommend this simple strategy even for almost all of your iron shots.

However, playing too safe also has its consequences, especially with tee shots. Often times, golfers will take clubs off the tee less than the driver because they feel they can hit more fairways. In this test, I showed that hitting the tee's iron against the driver was not really such a winning position. The main problem was that the loss of distance cost me strokes, and I was not as accurate as I thought with an iron.

I now approach tee shots with the mentality that I want to move the ball as far as possible while avoiding the big problems (penal areas, trees, bunkers). Putting too much emphasis on hitting fairways can be a misleading statistic. In other words, landing your tee shot in the rough with a clear path to the green is a positive result.

Swing smoothly and easily

Swing tempo is one of the most misunderstood topics about the golf swing. In my opinion, the concept is all too often obscured by the educational community. Unfortunately, when it comes to the timing of your golf swing, we usually stick with concepts like "swing smoothly and easily". Such sentences do not provide useful advice.

We often wonder about swings like Ernie Els and Fred Couples and comment on how effortless and smooth their swings look. What we don't realize is that they swing about 30-40mph faster than a club golfer, but their impeccable timing doesn't make it look like this. Often times I see golfers trying to overdo a slow backswing (including myself for a long time) thinking it will help them become a better ball attacker because it felt smooth. Usually this does not help.

I wrote this article about swing tempo a while ago. It tells the story of how critical the timing of your golf swing is and how you can work on it. To this day, it is one of the most essential concepts for my own golf swing. In addition, many readers of the site have contacted me with the success of seeing these ideas used in their own practice swing.

Building the right relationship between the timing of your backswing and downswing is fundamental to becoming a better player – just trying to swing smoothly without any meaningful direction won't cut it!

Hit Down On It

Somewhere along the way, golfers spread the concept of hitting the ball as the best way to become a better iron player. Even I used to say to people, "you have to hit the ball to get it up."

But what does that actually mean?

Many of us follow us by watching the pros on TV. For the most part, you will see the best golfers in the world taking huge divots flying a meter ahead of them. When I was a junior golfer, I tried to imitate them and hit my irons in the artificial grass on the driving range. It didn't make me any better.

When we talk about hitting the ball, we are talking about a concept called the angle of approach. The definition is the angle that the golf club approaches the ball through the impact zone. Without getting too technical, here is an image to illustrate a negative angle:

Source: Trackman Golf

With your irons you have a negative or neutral angle. But where some golfers get carried away by the "hit down on it" concept, they get too steep. Professional golfers have extremely high swing speeds, so they can have very extreme negative attack angles with their irons. However, for regular golfers, who have more moderate swing speeds, getting too steep will rob them from a distance, causing problems with the interaction with the turf (think thick strokes) and harming their ability to control the ball.

The truth is, most golfers don't have to do it that often. You are better served with a very minimal angle or even neutral. I rarely take divots and I am measured somewhere between a negative 2 to zero angle of attack with most of my irons, meaning my irons are approaching the golf ball at a very shallow angle. And that's okay; the club's loft primarily ensures that the ball goes up into the air.

In addition, this concept also harms golfers when it comes to hitting their driver. For maximum distance, you want to have a positive angle of approach, which means the driver will follow an upward trajectory as he approaches the golf ball. In my guide to increasing driving distance, I explore this concept more.

Summarizing:

You don't need a steep angle in the ball with your irons, a shallow or neutral angle works great for most of you
Hitting the ground with your driver actually robs most of you from a distance

Take the Break Out of Putts

There are many misunderstandings about wells. One of the biggest mistakes I made was assuming that if I wanted to make a putt, I would hit it with more speed to get the break out. Many golfers believe this is an effective strategy, especially with shorter putts.

It turns out that you make it harder to make a putt if you add more speed. While you may remove the slope variable, you are actually making the hole smaller. To extend this concept, I always recommend golfers to watch this video to illustrate why hitting putts at the correct speed is still your best option:

Wrapping It Up

Hopefully I pointed you in the right direction on a few important topics. I would love to hear of the misconceptions about becoming a better golfer on your own trip. Feel free to comment below