Top High Handicapper Mistake

What do you think it is, why it's holding us back from shooting good scores, and how to improve in this area.

I voted overswinging. Followed Closely by poor stance etc....

Course Management!

Mainly just playing more golf will improve this... but a few of the big mistakes I see most high cappers make are as follows...
1) trying to make up for a bad shot with a miracle shot
2) picking a club based on the 1/5 shots that they actually hit that well
3) planning... plan for the next shot
4) knowing your game and limitations - don't play a shot you have 10% chance of pulling off
5) wasted strokes around the green

100 yards and in......the high handicappers I play with can actually hit it pretty decently, but can't score to save their lives....everybody wants to go to the range and pound the driver...put it away and hit 90% of the bucket with 7 through wedge...and figure out a way to play from around the greens

Nah, that's a myth. Most high handicappers are poor ballstrikers. I've always had a great short game, and it never helped that I was trying to get up and down for triple. Short game only

seems worse because they have to use it more. I can gaurentee you that not a single person here with a handicap above 10 hits more than 50% of greens in regulation. If you hit 100% of your greens in regulation, and 3 putted every single on, you'd shoot 90. Now, you 2 putted half of them, you're down to 81. Missing greens is the reason for high handicaps. Put a tour pro's short game with their swing, and you're still a 15 handicap. The #1 mistake high handicap golfers make is not listed, swinging outside in. It's a major problem, and the cause is simple enough, they're swinging at the ball, not through it. Coming over the top does not allow room for error, and leads to problems. You have only a small window in which to hit the ball when you're casting and coming over the top. Golf is a game of managing misses, or we'd all shoot 18 every time out. Higher handicappers don't allow themselves room for error, in their swing or their course management. Let me put it to you a better way. My swing is decidedly ugly. I generally am not the most physically able person on this planet. But my mishits are all but rarely playable. Even if I make a poor swing, my ball is going to go, at worst, 20 yards short, or 20 yards to the left or right (usually left). I also know that my swing has a lot of room for improvement, and I'm not afraid to start duffing and shanking balls to get better in the long run. That's one thing I find common among people who never get better, they don't want to make a change if it makes them hit the ball worse. They will make a change, get better, then give up when the major mishits start up. The good player, however, will fight through the mishits, and keep at it until it's ingrained. So, not only do we have a mistake high cappers make, we also have a way to tell if they will ever improve. I have a friend who has a wierd, loopy over the top swing, but he doesn't want to change it, becuase he hits it bad when he makes a change. The thing is, while others get better, he just stays the same, week after week, year after year.

I voted for "other". The thing that seemed to hold a lot of guys back when I was starting was fear.

I wanted to tell them, "Stand up straight, you're not playing billiards. Hold that left arm straight - this isn't baseball. Get your hands fused together, it's not a hockey stick. Keep your head down - there are no defenders to fake out. Make a full shoulder turn and keep that GD head down and left arm straight - get your back facing the target and club shaft pointing at the target - perpendicular to your shoulderline. Take a full GD swing already . Learn what torque and loading and unloading the shaft feels like, then get a coach to straighten it in your second season - later!! Get used balls and if one goes OB - oh well. Oh yeah, and if you peel one onto the highway, get out your chequebook.

That's the #1 mistake and the easiest to fix.

not working on the short game. High handicaper spend too much time trying to hit their driver, fairway wood, irons but spend little time with the chipping and pitch shots that are so important to scoring.

Weight too far back, no chance to hit the ball properly from that position.

Reverse pivot. When I go to the range, almost every mid-high capper has some sort of reverse pivot, and it makes it extremely difficult to get into a good position at impact. Overswinging and poor stance are easier to correct I think

If I could, I would vote for three things: 1) a poor weight shift 2) flipping/casting/not maintaining the flying wedge and 3) a poor takeaway that either gets the club behind the hands or the hands don't go deep at all and they're swinging on the wrong arc.

I guess high handicappers do a lot of things wrongs. Hard to pin point one thing because all the faults are interrelated.

lost balls.

Basically, a crappy swing?

I know I didn't explicitly state it, but I wanted to talk about the full swing, not short game or course management. Please keep the discussion to that.

Blowing up and getting a big number on one hole many times carries over to the next tee and so on, confidence means a lot to high handicapper and is very fickle sometimes. Attitude means a lot, a poor one almost always guarantees poor play. Also not trying to swing like you're trying to slay the dragon and save the princess helps too.

Most high handicappers I golf with have a bad out to in swing that produce a ugly slice. Or their hands are way ahead of the club head leaving the face open. That's one of the biggest problems I see.

I want to change my answer. I actually think the number 1 mistake made by anyone is........tension.

I voted "other" because there wasn't "all the above", and since course management and short game are now out I'll just focus on my personal swing.

My personal swing varies. Sometimes the take away is an issue, sometimes the transition, sometimes the downswing, almost always my torso movement throughout the whole swing. In fact I think if I could get the torso/spine/hips/legs/knees/shoulders/feet/neck/shoulders/head/arms/hands all figured out I could probably have a pretty good swing. Simple, eh?