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Making significant progress on your swing or game without lessons

twentytwomonk

twentytwomonk

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So I've been playing for about the last 2 years, and I've really just started to figure out a lot of the basics. Lessons have been on my to-do list for a while now, but as some of you know, I just love putters to damn much to be able to sock the money away!

My question is, do you think that you have the ability or previously would have been able to make your way through significant swing changes to improve your game without lessons? I'm not necessarily talking Ben Hogan type game-changing swing improvements, but enough to start taking decent chunks out of your handicap. Do you have the ability to really critique your swing without the help of someone else and figure out where things are going wrong? And are you using things like smartphone apps like MyProToGo and others to take a look at things and see what you're doing right/wrong and make the necessary changes on your own?
 
We always hear about Bubba Watson and a few others who have never had lessons.... but for us majority, if you want to significantly better you need lessons. Playing golf a lot will certainly help you improve without lessons, but you will plateau quickly. Unless your one of the God given talent types....
 
My improvement has come from both lessons and practice. Lessons are good but if a person doesn't invest the time to practice and entrain the changes then the benefit of the lesson will be lost. I take at least two weeks between lessons so that I can work on the stuff my instructor has me doing
 
Yes I think you can. I remember when I was shooting 120ish and now I'm down in the low 80's. I had 5 simple lessons when I was a jr then didn't play much in my late teens to early twenties when I started to play more it was ugly but I just went to the range and figured it out.
 
Swing video for Freddie and do what he says and you'll be better. Free of charge and the best lessons I've seen out there. He helped me a lot more than my professional lessons locally.
 
mcrobertsjmac32 said:
We always hear about Bubba Watson and a few others who have never had lessons.... but for us majority, if you want to significantly better you need lessons. Playing golf a lot will certainly help you improve without lessons, but you will plateau quickly. Unless your one of the God given talent types....
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I agree. The way forward will always be with another set of qualified eyes overseeing what you are doing swing wise.
 
Without lessons? Sure, you can get pretty good without them if you have a good general sense of what's going on with your body and a good natural swing to start with. Without good instruction or guidance? I don't know. I've never had a formal lesson, but I've watched a lot of pro golf and golf tips/shows and I've used certain things to incorporate into my swing to work on. That's helped me tremendously.

I do think my next step is some formal lessons though just to take me over to the next step in my game.
 
twentytwomonk said:
My question is, do you think that you have the ability or previously would have been able to make your way through significant swing changes to improve your game without lessons? I'm not necessarily talking Ben Hogan type game-changing swing improvements, but enough to start taking decent chunks out of your handicap. Do you have the ability to really critique your swing without the help of someone else and figure out where things are going wrong? And are you using things like smartphone apps like MyProToGo and others to take a look at things and see what you're doing right/wrong and make the necessary changes on your own?
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The answer is a resounding no for me. I also think that's the answer for 99.99% of people in the world. Hell, even professional golfers have instructors and teams and still also ask other pro players to look at their swings.
 
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I have never had a lesson; in fact, I never saw a video of my swing until 1971 when my college coach got access to a rare (and costly) video camera and vcr in 1971. I was surprised to see that I was swinging at that time almost exactly like Johnny Miller, whom I admired but never tried to purposely emulate. I remember as a youngster trying to get better, spending a lot of time watching my reflection in one of the big clubhouse windows, as well as using my shadow as a swing representation in hopes of getting a good sense of body positions during my swing. (What I wouldn't have given for a cell phone camera or any of the other tech available now.) My swing was developed with a LOT of solitary trial and error on the practice tee...
 
It is possible to groove a repeatable swing without lessons. That's not always a good thing.
 
No intentions of devaluing lessons as I do believe that if one has the time and the means this is the way to go. Having said that I also feel a good deal of improvement is very possible as DIY golfer.

Started golfing right out of college and was pretty bad for a couple summers. Couldn't break 110 most outings and really struggled. Towards the end of my second year year I kind of connected with some of Jim Flick's teachings on the swing and read as much as I could of his material. Stuck with it and developed a longer, loose home-made swing that when done well produced a nice high fade type of ball flight. I made producing that ball flight my focus and also got a season pass at a local muni course. The combination of playing more often and having a committed swing focus got me shooting in the 80's pretty frequently with my best rounds coming in at 81 or 82.

Fast forward 20 years and I had pretty much stopped golfing except for work related scrambles & customer golf. Really wanted to get back to the game so joined a league and started golfing on weekends. Again with pretty so-so results as I really struggled to break 90 and had a lot of rounds in triple digits that first season & a half back. This go around I looked at a lot of different swing teachings and decided to go with a more compact pass at the ball and focused hard on consistently producing a draw ball flight. Took that swing commitment and another season pass that allowed me to play a lot of rounds and within a couple of years had the handicap in the 12's and have broken 80 three different times.

Will admit that this is not an ideal road to improving scores or to a well rounded game but it worked for me. I mostly golf for fun and playing holes and rounds is how I enjoy the game the most. Two different times this approach allowed me to get better while going about the game in a way that kept it fun and interesting.
 
When starting out 20 years ago, I was shooting about 135. After getting down to 115 - 120 it stop improving.
So, I went and bought "Golf for Dummies", 5 Lessons, etc. videotaped my swing, etc. Got down to a 105.

After quitting for 2 years and starting back up several times, with lots of practice, I can now shoot 92-95 average.

I had Freddie look at my swing video a while back, and he gave me pointers that helped, a lot.

My score will never get any lower without lessons.

If you try to do it all by yourself, you can pickup quickly, and then lose it all the next week.

Like the posts above, even the pros have coaches. They take lessons often.

If you were a great dentist, you wouldn't try to do your own root canal.

Jack

PS. If I took lessons, by practice time, the lesson or the feel of what I should be doing would be gone.
 
Then there's this: regardless of the amount of lessons or practice, for one reason or another, some of us will always suck at this game.
 
I basically dropped from 110 to 90's on my own, but as others stated you can groove bad habits in your swing.... which I did. Even though I improved, I hit a wall where I couldn't get any better without changing my swing mechanics. It took alot of time and effort to correct my mistakes of the past. Still working on it.
I should've taken some lessons first and saved myself alot of time and effort.
 
InTheRough said:
Then there's this: regardless of the amount of lessons or practice, for one reason or another, some of us will always suck at this game.
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I get the distinct impression that's gonna be me!
 
I've been playing for about a year and a half now. I've never had any lessons, and rarely visit the range. I have a homemade swing that has some flaws, and through filming my swing and analyzing it, I have been able to spot flaws and come up with swing changes on my own. Freddie gave me some pointers after seeing a picture of my backswing, that helped as well. I'm now at a cap of 18, and will probably be able to shave some points of in the coming months.

However, a trained professional will probably be able to spot even more issues with my swing, and will likely be able to have them fixed a lot faster as well.
 
You can improve quite a bit practicing on your own, but going through a swing change on your own... I wouldn't recommend it.

I am fighting my way back from tinkering with my own swing and it has taken lots of time, energy and yes lessons. I overdid things (taking the club way inside) then made multiple compensations to try and correct some basic swing flaws. I practiced them on own over and over... now I have to unlearn those things while trying to ingrain proper swing fundamentals.

My advice, look around (internet or from other golfers you know) find a decent pro and have a quick lesson. You very well could be on the right track, but better to find out now than get several miles in the opposite direction and have to reverse course like I did.
 
Lessons are necessary if you want to advance your game to the point of serious improvement. I was stuck in the double digits until I found an instructor that helped me to refine my swing and address problem areas. I went from a 12 to a 5 in a year taking only a few lessons and working on the changes.
 
Also, if you find an instructor who advises making wholesale swing changes, leave. Any great instructor will unlock your potential using your existing swing. What you may end up with is a swing change, but a great instructor will guide you there in a manner that you will find comfortable and exciting to achieve.
 
fupresti said:
Lessons are necessary if you want to advance your game to the point of serious improvement. I was stuck in the double digits until I found an instructor that helped me to refine my swing and address problem areas. I went from a 12 to a 5 in a year taking only a few lessons and working on the changes.
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Solid take. Based on my own game I really get the feeling that the law of diminishing returns kicks in hard for a DIY golf swing as you approach single digits.

Definitely sense that if I am ever to play single digit golf and have a golf game that travels lessons need to be in my future.
 
HoosierGolfer said:
I agree. The way forward will always be with another set of qualified eyes overseeing what you are doing swing wise.
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+1. I thought I had the ability to identify minor issues and make adjustments. But at the end of last season/start of this season, I was pushing my irons and couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. I took one 60-minute lesson and my problem was solved. The instructor said he saw what I was doing wrong within the first 10 seconds of our lesson and he got me back on track. I needed that second set of eyes.
 
Making significant progress on your swing or game without lessons

Otis32 said:
Solid take. Based on my own game I really get the feeling that the law of diminishing returns kicks in hard for a DIY golf swing as you approach single digits.

Definitely sense that if I am ever to play single digit golf and have a golf game that travels lessons need to be in my future.
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I believe that most of us are largely incapable of identifying causes and applying fixes in the correct sequence or to the right thing. We might catch a part of the swing that is flawed, apply a fix and see incremental improvement, but that's it. If you spend much time in Freddy's thread you see this all the time. It isn't a knock on us lay people but instead a pat on the back to trained teaching professionals - they have a unique skill.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I have been on a journey to get back to as good as I once thought I was... :)

played a ton as a kid....didnt really get serious about till the last decade...in those years have taken handicap from average to now under a 5 handicap...

for me, it was not about lessons but about practice...and just playing time...

I am a technology geek, so video definitely played a role...and knowing the core of my swing, I was able to fix things on my own...However, I watch a ton of golf channel and instruction videos...in the last two years is where I have made the biggest changes...These took me to single digit, to now sub 5, and most of these changes have been due to short game practice...However in that process, my core swing has truly shaped up and my opinion is this is based upon grooving better ball impact position and being able to navigate trajectory with the ball...which translated to the same thing in my mid and long irons, as well as a year long journey to learn how to shape the ball better...

I had a traditional OTT move, and have mostly removed that, and can now shape the shot pretty reliably...

My misses now, are mostly attention, and course management...
 
Some people will see amazing improvements with lessons, that they'd never have managed on their own. Other people can get better by hitting enough balls and understanding why the ball is doing what it is, or why you're hitting a club fat/thin, etc.

I started playing a little under two years ago, prior to that I had played maybe a dozen rounds in my life. Fall of 2013 I played maybe 15 times, got hooked, bought some real clubs, set up a net in my garage for the winter, watched a lot of YouTube lessons and explanations, you know the drill. At that point I would probably shoot over 100 playing by the rules.

I bought a two year membership to a course near my house at the start of 2014, and all last year I played like 4 or 5 days a week. In the club championship I shot 92-86, it's a fairly short and easy par 70 course. I ended up playing over a hundred rounds in 2014. I told myself I'd get lessons but I didn't hear any glowing reviews of local pros from my friends and golfing acquaintances so I kept putting it off.

So far this year I've played 40-45 rounds and just shot 78-80 in the club championship and am actually disappointed because I should have been in the mid 70s both days but had a few bad holes late in each round. So it's definitely possible to drop your scores considerably without lessons, but I think the only reason I managed it is because of how much I'm able to play. The fact that I usually play as a single and play 2-3 balls on most holes is also a big part of it.

I'm still considering lessons but unless something suddenly goes very wrong with part of my game I will probably just keep working on things myself.
 
Suprfli6 said:
So far this year I've played 40-45 rounds and just shot 78-80 in the club championship and am actually disappointed because I should have been in the mid 70s both days but had a few bad holes late in each round. So it's definitely possible to drop your scores considerably without lessons, but I think the only reason I managed it is because of how much I'm able to play. The fact that I usually play as a single and play 2-3 balls on most holes is also a big part of it.

I'm still considering lessons but unless something suddenly goes very wrong with part of my game I will probably just keep working on things myself.
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If you've gone from novice golfer to rounds in the 70's in a year and a half, I'd hazard a guess that you have a lot of natural talent and probably should just keep doing what you're doing.
 
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