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How do you improve if taking lessons isn't the answer?

Lessons are not for everyone, especially if you already have a swing imprinted in your game. You'd basically have to take a year off to retool your entire swing and that's not realistic for most. You have to find out what works for you (trial and error). Short game, putting and chipping, getting up and down is the biggest component imo. And then it's managing your misses. If you don't play a couple times a week you won't have a consistent swing either. I try to hit the range at least once a week to have some sort of consistency but even that's tough.

But your shots from like 60 yards, try a different shot. Instead of a half swing or something try a pitch with a 7 iron or a bump and run type shot. That's managing your miss as well.
 
welcome to the board Ed and great post. Lots of thought out answers that I enjoyed reviewing as well. I could likely write a book as what you describe is largely me as well. I will make a few points about my journey.

- The little Tommy Armour book with Yellow cover was best thing that ever happened to my very mature swing. if key passages on grip, grip pressure and grip pressure through the swing are read literally and recalled in practice, then I think this can really help. One day it hit me reading this that he was yelling at me to stop doing what I'm doing

- small batch practice. I get loose then chip/pitch and make full swings on 25-45 balls. Everyone I try and do perfectly. This imulates what I need to do in play

- Finally, I have roughly 5-10 poor swings a round that drive my score up. Lots of short pitches like you say but I can duck hook a driver or hit a fatty with the 7i as well. My take is that I've simply failed to execute and I go back to the drawing board to see what still needs work in my setup.

I don't think I ever stop hitting poor shots but rather via refinement my good shots get better and my bad shots get better as well. I think mentally that is the way to think about the game.
 
  • Several times a round I hit full swing shots that are just crazy bad, like snap hooks or chunks into a hazard.
Speaking to just this, your feet are very likely the culprit. When I've been plagued by such shots, focusing on planting my feet to the ground has stopped them.

Oh yeah, and welcome to the forum.
 
Wow! Tons of great advice! Thanks. FYI, I just turned 60, but I'm blessed in that I have no physical or health issues. What drives me nuts is I drive it 270ish. usually in the fairway and then it can take me 4 or even 5 shots from there.

I played yesterday and SUCCESS! Shot 40/40=80. Hit 8 greens with three birdies which is my best round in what seems like forever.
 
I’d ask why you think lessons aren’t the way, and maybe have a hard look at why you’re not improving. Is it time commitment? Physical limitations? If you just feel they don’t help, next part..

Work on what makes you weak, or eliminate it. If you suck at 60yd shots, why are you leaving yourself 60yd shots on purpose?

If you’re chunking it, that probably needs a more dedicated eye though to figure out why, or you’re gonna go down a rabbit hole you may not want to visit :/
 
For realistic short game practice, pay a visit to your local par 3 course.

120 yard hole? Hit a full SW, then try to pitch on from wherever that lands. Or try aiming a tee shot right or left of the green and make a save from there.
 
Phil Mickelson has a great video on short game practice and the method he uses. I too struggled with my swing lately. I hurt my back in April and didnt play for a month. Even now I feel sore in the morning in 1 spot when i try to put my socks on. All of a sudden I started a steep downswing that started toe divots and horrible shots that I never had before. I get to the course as soon as they open up and practice chipping and pitching for at least an hour and a half then head to the range for irons and driver then on to the putting green. Today I finally got my swing back except for just a hair out towards the toe which I can fix. Video your swing and Relax!!!! Dont think so much about and it will get better I think its all in those 6 inches between your ears.Today was the most relaxed I have ever been on the course and it really showed. Lately I have a club in my hand or nest to me the whole time.
 
Dig it out of the dirt. I can’t seem to find an instructor that doesn’t start with “You do a lot of good things in your swing…”. I’ve specifically told them I don’t need the soft touch and I prefer brutal honesty. But that line comes up and they never specify what’s good. I have a handful of videos going back to when I started and I saw a big difference in my swings. I need to get back to where I was and I’m taking the dig it out of the dirt approach. The driver is the one place where I want Trackman and maybe a second set of eyes.
 
slow down,, relax... keep your pre-shot routine... (with a true practice swing)
 
The ability to self-diagnose your swing is a huge help in discovering what your practice should focus on, and where to make changes.

- I'd say to start by making sure your grip and stance are fundamentally sound
- Then I'd find and eliminate big errors in your swing (OTT, excessive lateral sway, reverse pivot, early extension, etc... - YouTube is a big help there)
- Next I would work on the 100-yards and in approaches. Again, YouTube is great; learn the fundamentals of wedge play and master them.
- Then do the same with chipping, pitching, bunker shots and putting
- Then, I'd learn to hit escape/trouble shots like high & low hooks/draws, high & low slices/fades, punch shots, etc. Those are fun to do on the range, pay HUGE dividends during play, and actually help you work on compressing the ball without putting a lot of thought into it
- Finally, I'd work on being a shot-maker. Learn to hit the green with 4 different irons from 150-yards. Playing 9 holes with a single club is really great for that

Mix it up and work on different things, depending on your weaknesses. There's a lot of improvement you can do on your own.

One thing I fell prey to, and I would caution against, is beating balls on the range with swing flaws; all it does is ingrain the flaws.
 
lessons are the answer with caveat...as long as you understand the "why" as well as the how. This is a drum I have been pounding pretty hard lately...

There is a ton of info out there. It is easy to study/learn ball flight laws and once you know them, figure out what is causing whatever the miss is...and if you know your swing, you can make subtle adjustments. Lessons are great as long as the instructor teaches in a way that makes sense to you. I had a top shelf instructor...and yet when the lessons stopped my swing fell apart and I did not know what caused it so I started learning my own swing and those lessons retroactively got much, much better.

Learn the nuts and bolts of the swing and the lessons will make more sense. I always go back to the no longer used classics of journalism...who, what, when, where, why and how...might help
 
Lee Trevino won 6 majors without lessons or a coach so that's not a requirement for being good, you just need to be out there playing and practicing for many hours every day. It helps too if you can go back in time and start when you're in elementary school. One thing you didn't mention was how often you play - do you play less now than you did before? Golf isn't like bowling or ping pong where you can do it a few times a year and muddle your way through. Shooting in the 70s and 80s requires tremendous work and commitment, and there's no substitute for on course playing time. Lessons just offer a short cut in the process.
 
Desmond said:
Video
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As much as I hate seeing my swing, I've gone through enough to know what my bad habit is & how to fix it. If it gets weird, 1 quick video tells the tale.

To give an opinion on the question, find a swing that you can make without thinking about it. There's a natural swing that our bodies want to make, figure out where that swing goes & play it. Personally, lessons were the answer for me. I didn't know nor understand how to fix what was ailing me.
 
I just cancelled my last lesson and have given up on that route... for now. Of the half dozen or so instructors I've worked with, he is by far the best and he helped me completely change my swing. I'm learning to some degree that it isn't always the swing mechanics that hold us back.
 
I figured out that my really bad shots, slices and hooks out of bounds and hitting trees aren't mechanical.
It is how my mind works with my body. I can get rid of them by focusing on a target and forgetting about the trouble.
The clue was they were far too repeatable for them to be swing flaws. The only three hooks that day were OB on the same tee!
 
edhalsim said:
This may sound dumb. Most everyone thinks the way to improve at golf is to take lessons. I've had dozens of lessons from probably a dozen different coaches over the years and my index has gone from about a 6 to 10.0. One guy said he's seen scratch players with worse swings than mine if you can believe that.

Years back I'd shoot low 80s high 70s and now I shoot high 80s low 90s.
  • My putting isn't that bad. I may lose a couple shots per round but that's it.
  • I hit under 10 GIRs.
  • I'm terrible inside 60 yds. getting close enough to make a putt.
  • Several times a round I hit full swing shots that are just crazy bad, like snap hooks or chunks into a hazard.
I'd love to at least get back to where I was. I've played since I was a kid and it's just not fun anymore playing this badly consistently. Problem is I can't find anything that works. People say "practice your short game"; that's great, but specifically what? Every short game shot is different. I've often said I'd pay someone who could actually help me.

Anyway, thanks for listening and if you have any useful suggestions I'm all ears.
- Ed
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I took a long hiatus from the game for about 12-13 years with maybe a handful of rounds sprinkled in. I came back about 3 years ago expecting to be a 7-8-9 handicap again overnight but it just didn't happen for me. Everything about my game other than putting & sand play was a hot mess...... including my attitude. Once I dropped the attitude the stress level went away as well.

I also did a mental checklist of the shots that I knew I could still hit stress free & fairly consistently to get me around the course and I stuck by them like..........
Baby cut driver ........and I didn't care if it went 220 or 260........just find the short grass
Using a little more club with the irons......... to help with balance & eliminate wild hooks and blocks
3/4 wedge shots instead of full...... to keep balance
Just aiming for the center of the greens with full shots

Believe it or not, I went from shooting low 90's to the low 80's within a few rounds just by sticking to what I could actually do, and not what I wanted to do. I casually practiced on my weak areas once I had that good base to start from.

I'm still a work in progress but I'm consistently into the high 70's and and low 80's now............. with the few obligatory bad blow up rounds sprinkled in. ;)
 
All too often we tend to think lessons are the answer and I do think lessons are critical in some cases, but not nearly as many as we think. IMO it is about what my weakness is. Sure sometimes a lesson will spot it and get you on track, but not always.

The OP stated that his approach shots are the problem and that is what needs to be ironed out. This could be something as simple as alignment, or pressure he is putting on the club, or too much focus on the ball and not landing area, etc. Someone hitting playable 270 yard drives is doubtful in need of any swing changes nor lessons unless the coach is really pinning down the issue.

Although I am not a low capper I understand the approach shot thing in a big way. It is one of my biggest assets to my game. My yardage on approach shots is usually about 95-99 percent on the money and the guys I play with often comment about it. My approach shots will be dead beside the pin, but will often be left or right throughout the day depending on what approach game I brought that day.

One is my focus gets off the target area and I can move/manipulate/mis-align through my swing a 1/4 inch either way leading to a right or left shot. They are still great shots, but cost strokes on the score card if my wedge shots are off at all. Granted it is teaching me a better wedge game, but who really wants to exchange possible birdie putts for pars or even bogeys for that matter?

Someone mentioned getting you a sim. It is possible that would help you, but the range can help too if you have verifiable targets and yardages that equal where your issues are. There are days when things simply happen that seem unexplained. Just the other day I was hitting most of my clubs too far.

For instance my SW 110 yards which I have no clue why that was happening. That is my 95 yard club. Needed about 160-180 with my 6 iron and for whatever reason hit the club 205 with rollout into a waste area. Needless to point out, that hurt me on a lot of shots because I overshot the greens until I could dial it back some. Took me quite a few shots to dial things back and I never fully got them dialed back.

Here are some things that have helped me on my approaches, but on any given day if I bring the bad approach shooter and it doesn't really matter:

1. Practice approach shots in my yard to actual targets - chipping net, paint on the ground, buckets, whatever. Have a goal in mind. If you have 50 balls work to get more than 60% of them on target area.
2. Practice approach shots on my sim. This can be a great tool if used properly. My sim has truly upped my game.
3. Probably the most important of all for me is to keep my focus off all the mental "crap" at the ball and keep the focus on the target/landing area. When I fail to do this I am not going to hit my shots well.
4. Keep my swing path and body center stable when swinging. Too much movement is a killer for me.
5. Don't go to making a bunch of abnormal swing changes during a round. If you hit one good shot, then you are fully capable and a swing change is not the answer.
 
For me and a few guys who have really dropped their handicap it's been greenside play and bunkers. A few of us meet at a practice facility from time to time and we experiment with new shots. I just recently started using my fairway around the green. With practice and my natural ability I have been turning 6 foot putts from off the green into 1 - 2 footers, probably shaving 4 - 5 strokes off my game, dropped from a 26 to a 19.7. Still terrible but much better. I found with having so much confidence around the green now my target has become large and it takes pressure off my longer game.

I also like playing par 3 or executive courses these really help out my approach game.
 
How to improve without lessons?

Watch yourself on video, Tempo, Hesitate at the top and let the body pull the club and then swing like heck to the left. :oops:

Work on short game and putting. Once again video.

It's best to look at yourself since feel ain't real.
 
Having a pretty swing is nice but you score on the golf course. Having the data to show what you are doing on the golf course is important. Find an instructor that will do a 9 hole playing lesson to see what the actual problems are. I am "lucky" that I have a couple of people that I golf with that really analyze what I am doing on the course. At the end they will tell me why I suck so bad. :ROFLMAO: If you can start to see what is causing your issues then you can fix them. It is much more in depth than stop 3 putting. It is, why are you trying to hit a draw when your fade is more controllable? Why are you trying to flop every pitch or chip when you can just putt on with no bunker in front of you? Actual helpful questions for course management.
 
As Desmond said, video is enormously helpful. I'm not talking an occasional video. I'm talking video during every single range session.

I'd be willing to bet a lot of money you will look at the video and go "Holy crap! I didn't realize X was that bad. No wonder Y is happening."

The other aspect is building a solid understanding of what your checkpoints are in the swing - in short, what things need to be correct and what you need to be looking for on video. Typically that's where an instructor comes in.
 
JonMA1 said:
Even though I'm at a much worse level of golf than you @edhalsim, I think what you've described above is a big reason why most of my game seems slightly better than my scores. Two swings that feel exactly the same can have drastically different outcomes. I'll play several holes with what I consider to be normal high capper variance and dispersion (I don't have crazy expectations) and then out of nowhere comes a wild hook or push. It's like I just spazz out just before impact on certain shots. I mean, what's the practice plan for eliminating something like that?
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In some respects, there is no fix for that. PGA Tour players spaz out just before impact all the time. Ever see a PGA Tour player pointing left or right after their tee shot? Ever see one put one in the water? Ever see one chunk a chip? Those are their spazzes.

Spazzes happen for a few reasons:
1). A loss of focus or incorrect focus
2). Mechanics are wrong and our attempt to "save the shot" through timing/flipping/etc fails
3). Setup is wrong for the shot, causing bad mechanics

For good players and pros, #1 is often the cause. For not-so-good players, #2 and #3 is usually the cause. Trying to fix poor mechanics during the swing with a miracle timing or manipulation is extremely hard and thus, why not-so-good amateurs are so incredibly inconsistent. In short, our good shots are really luck - when we put the timing and manipulations together.

For those with good mechanics, there's less to correct so even the spazzes or loss of focus shots may not be disastrous. And of course with good mechanics, there's a far better chance their recovery shot is going to be successful.

In summary, the practice plan to reduce those is to continue improving setup and mechanics.
 
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wadesworld said:
In some respects, there is no fix for that. PGA Tour players spaz out just before impact all the time. Ever see a PGA Tour player pointing left or right after their tee shot? Ever see one put one in the water? Ever see one chunk a chip? Those are their spazzes.
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This is a great point and what is worse is that the televised stuff rarely shows the bad shots made by the PGA players. They make a lot of bad shots that most would not believe are made by highly skilled players. Even putts are not as good as most think Look at a 20 foot putt and you see that probably somewhere around 2 out of 10 pros make them.
 
IMO, what the PGA pros do isn't very relevant to most of the topics we amateurs discuss. If anything, bringing them into the discussion emphasizes the importance natural ability plays on where each of us are at in our games. It's not like there's this group of golfers who possess another level of natural ability and then it just drops off and the rest of us are equal. Those guys were phenomenal before they hired the best instructors in the world and decided to practice for hours every day.

wadesworld said:
Spazzes happen for a few reasons:
1). A loss of focus or incorrect focus
2). Mechanics are wrong and our attempt to "save the shot" through timing/flipping/etc fails
3). Setup is wrong for the shot, causing bad mechanics
Click to expand...
All of those things matter and are worth working on (which I continue to do), but you can't ignore ability as the most important - especially when you apply the inability to learn or develop improvements. I'm not saying this is the case with you @wadesworld or @Luchnia , but when discussing improvement or the lack thereof, the "reasons" always default to things we can control... lessons, equipment, the mental game, strategy, effort, desire... There are just too many folks out there who do all the right things and still struggle to get to the next level. Folks look at what helped them and want to apply that to everyone else. The "if I can do it, anyone can do it" way of thinking. Most people who work hard will find the right buttons to push, but there are some who have tried them all and cannot get to a better level.

Finding the right instructor helped me develop what I believe to be a slightly better swing. It didn't help my scores but hey, he and I did the best we could. If I continued to take lessons from him and worked on my focus, my mechanics and my setup, it might shave a couple strokes - not likely but possible. If so, that would allow me to play at a 22 instead of a 25. :unsure:

Historically, there's no indication all the hard work and lessons in the world are going to help me improve even though failing to work as hard as I do will make me go backwards.
 
JonMA1 said:
IMO, what the PGA pros do isn't very relevant to most of the topics we amateurs discuss. If anything, bringing them into the discussion emphasizes the importance natural ability plays on where each of us are at in our games. It's not like there's this group of golfers who possess another level of natural ability and then it just drops off and the rest of us are equal. Those guys were phenomenal before they hired the best instructors in the world and decided to practice for hours every day.


All of those things matter and are worth working on (which I continue to do), but you can't ignore ability as the most important - especially when you apply the inability to learn or develop improvements. I'm not saying this is the case with you @wadesworld or @Luchnia , but when discussing improvement or the lack thereof, the "reasons" always default to things we can control... lessons, equipment, the mental game, strategy, effort, desire... There are just too many folks out there who do all the right things and still struggle to get to the next level. Folks look at what helped them and want to apply that to everyone else. The "if I can do it, anyone can do it" way of thinking. Most people who work hard will find the right buttons to push, but there are some who have tried them all and cannot get to a better level.

Finding the right instructor helped me develop what I believe to be a slightly better swing. It didn't help my scores but hey, he and I did the best we could. If I continued to take lessons from him and worked on my focus, my mechanics and my setup, it might shave a couple strokes - not likely but possible. If so, that would allow me to play at a 22 instead of a 25. :unsure:

Historically, there's no indication all the hard work and lessons in the world are going to help me improve even though failing to work as hard as I do will make me go backwards.
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Even if you don't take lessons every few weeks and practice every day, having a good relationship with a golf coach you can trust can be worthwhile.

I've long since given up on golf as a self-improvement exercise or an endless treadmill of trying to turn a 20hcp into 15 then 15 into 10 then 10 into who knows what. For me any handicap between 2 and 20 just represents slightly different forms of not be very good at the game. So I don't spend time on the range and I don't have any particular schedule for taking lessons.

But when something about my game goes totally off the rails, it's nice to be able to drive across town and spend an hour or two with my long-time friend and teaching pro. He'll point out what exactly is going on (usually not what I'd have self-diagnosed) and we'll come up with a tweak or a little drill I can do before I tee off to kind of get it back under control.

I find it adds to my enjoyment of the game not having to get derails for weeks or months at a time trying to suss out on my own why I'm suddenly pull-hooking iron shots off the planet or can't get out of a bunker to save my life. It's reassuring to know if it gets bad enough, a phone call and maybe a quick lesson will end the misery.
 
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