Beginner Golf Tip: Be Careful of These Swing Myths - (Video) - by Pete Styles
Beginner Golf Tip: Be Careful of These Swing Myths - (Video) - by Pete Styles

As a beginner golf or learning to play the game you’ll often get, given advice on the golf course by your playing partners or your friends. And it’s often well meaning advice but sometimes you got to careful of the myths associated with learning to play the game of golf. The biggest one the one I hear all the time is you’ve got to keep your head down. And we get golfers who are learning to play the game with their head glued to the floor like this. They then follow through because they’ve been told to keep looking where the ball was and not look up and yet they still manage to hit the ball over the top or even miss it. And I kept my head down how did I miss that ball. Actually your head can move and probably should move during the golf swing. You watch the best players they allow their head to move not a lot but it does move. Their head moves to the right, in the back swing. To the left in the follow through and then up in the follow through to look up. And very rarely while moving your head upwards actually cause you to be the reason why you topped the ball. More often than not it’s pulling the arms up or the chest up that makes you hit the top of the ball and in turn they move your head. So simply keeping your head down is a myth don’t focus on that work much more about your arms and your chest and keeping those down and straight.

Then if we look at your left arm in the back swing a good thing for most good players is that they will have a straight left arm in their back swing. So something that we quite often teach to a point, physically if you have a limitation where you can’t make a big enough turn with your shoulders, and you get tight across your chest, having a bend in the left arm is okay but don’t bend it a lot. You know if you make a golf swing that gets very narrow and pulled in like this, that’s going to be a bit of a problem. We want to try and get that left arm wide and away from you. But if you have a physical limitation a little few degree bend here is fine. As long as it straightens the back for impact and through a nice big follow through.

One other myth that a lot of people talk to me about is swinging too quickly. And they are always trying to tell me I’ve got to slow my swinging down and I’ve got to swing really slow but you got to play golf on a golf course. It’s over 6000 yards long at some point you must generate club head speed to get distance on the ball. So the down swing needs to be as fast as you feel comfortable doing it. Yes the back swing should be a bit slower. So you have a smooth tempo in the back swing but really like the down swing go quickly and generate some club head speed. People who are trying to swing too slowly always look like they’re not committing and they just hit the ball weakly with no real follow through. And they don’t get the ball out there far enough. If you are on a 500 yard hole the last thing you should be thing about is hitting that thing gently. Make a smooth back swing yes but then really turn through and commit to the ball. Hit it with a little bit of discipline and a bit of assertiveness and that will help you hit the ball better. Avoid those three myths and your golf will improve.

 2013-04-02

As a beginner golf or learning to play the game you’ll often get, given advice on the golf course by your playing partners or your friends. And it’s often well meaning advice but sometimes you got to careful of the myths associated with learning to play the game of golf. The biggest one the one I hear all the time is you’ve got to keep your head down. And we get golfers who are learning to play the game with their head glued to the floor like this. They then follow through because they’ve been told to keep looking where the ball was and not look up and yet they still manage to hit the ball over the top or even miss it. And I kept my head down how did I miss that ball. Actually your head can move and probably should move during the golf swing. You watch the best players they allow their head to move not a lot but it does move. Their head moves to the right, in the back swing. To the left in the follow through and then up in the follow through to look up. And very rarely while moving your head upwards actually cause you to be the reason why you topped the ball. More often than not it’s pulling the arms up or the chest up that makes you hit the top of the ball and in turn they move your head. So simply keeping your head down is a myth don’t focus on that work much more about your arms and your chest and keeping those down and straight.

Then if we look at your left arm in the back swing a good thing for most good players is that they will have a straight left arm in their back swing. So something that we quite often teach to a point, physically if you have a limitation where you can’t make a big enough turn with your shoulders, and you get tight across your chest, having a bend in the left arm is okay but don’t bend it a lot. You know if you make a golf swing that gets very narrow and pulled in like this, that’s going to be a bit of a problem. We want to try and get that left arm wide and away from you. But if you have a physical limitation a little few degree bend here is fine. As long as it straightens the back for impact and through a nice big follow through.

One other myth that a lot of people talk to me about is swinging too quickly. And they are always trying to tell me I’ve got to slow my swinging down and I’ve got to swing really slow but you got to play golf on a golf course. It’s over 6000 yards long at some point you must generate club head speed to get distance on the ball. So the down swing needs to be as fast as you feel comfortable doing it. Yes the back swing should be a bit slower. So you have a smooth tempo in the back swing but really like the down swing go quickly and generate some club head speed. People who are trying to swing too slowly always look like they’re not committing and they just hit the ball weakly with no real follow through. And they don’t get the ball out there far enough. If you are on a 500 yard hole the last thing you should be thing about is hitting that thing gently. Make a smooth back swing yes but then really turn through and commit to the ball. Hit it with a little bit of discipline and a bit of assertiveness and that will help you hit the ball better. Avoid those three myths and your golf will improve.