Worst Golf Tip You Ever Received

[stealthhwk]

Seen lots on best golf tip ever...how about the worst you ever got. Ill go first. 

Keep the left arm straight

This lead to me locking my right arm straight at address producing tons of tension in my swing. I have never realized this was a problem til I decided to quit golf. After reaching that decision for the hundredth time, I spent about four hours trying to answer one question. What is the worst part of my swing. I identified trying like hell to keep the left arm straight as most likely to be my number one swing killer. Decided to put it to the test. Ball striking was incredible and I saw serious distance gains. Hit a hybrid 15 yards further than normal and flew four greens. Gonna have to make some distance adjustments for sure. I forgot about keeping left arm straight as the proper turn produces a straight left arm automatically and voila! The hybrid found the fairway but ran long into water and the four greens I flew resulted in additional strokes and I still shot six strokes lower than usual. I HATE "Keep the left arm straight." Chances are its been holding me back for years! 

[Hatchman]

Ok.

"Your stance is wrong." By a loud mouth course Marshall when I was behind the ball on the 18 tee box.  He then came up and properly aligned me to his liking and closed my stance causing me not be able to clear my hips.  Resulted in me trying to drag my hands/club head through to finish causing a slice into his house that was to the fight of the fairway.  Darn near broke his window.   

He silently walked away back to his chores.  And we played on.  

[Lazarus]

Keep your head down!

 

 

[Ernest Jones]

 

20 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

Keep your head down!

 

 

Yeah, that would have been my choice. That's one that ****s up tons of golfers!

---

Ok, here's a putting one. 

When putting, make sure you accelerate through the ball. 

[Piz]

In sequence:  keep your head down, your left arm straight, and don't try to kill it.

[alleztom]

When I was a 24 handicapper I was told "it's just your tempo". It was not just my tempo.

[David in FL]

Buy golfsmith stock...

[inthehole]

49 minutes ago, Piz said:

In sequence:  keep your head down, your left arm (edit: reasonably) straight, and don't try to kill it.

LOL - that's exactly what I tell new golfers.   Those are the tenants of my golf game ....

 

For me, the worst advice I received is "you have to play the ball further forward with irons/ wedges"

[jkelley9]

@stealthhwk mine was the same as yours. Left arm straight the whole way, and as stiff as I could hold it. It workde for bringing me from a 105+ shooter to a ~92-95 shooter but when I had to switch instructors because my guy went to Golfsmith GolfTec, he said "sure, you can do that if you want to learn golf the way I did the first several years and end up with 7 elbow surgeries over your life." So we cut that out quick and I dropped form 92-95's to 81-85's in less than a year and a LOT less strain on my body. With that old swing I could literally barely finish 18 holes, in a cart, without being completely exhausted (@28 years old). Now I can walk 27 holes and be fine. 

I've gotten tons of bad, unsolicited tips on my golf swing but I honestly can't even remember them. Whenever I'm on the receiving end of that I just nod politely and I'm trying to white noise it out because I don't want people messing with my head. It doesn't happen TOO often... but it does. Oddly enough I would get tips from players worse than me more often than when they were better than me. So strange.

Edited December 9, 2016 by jkelley9

[RandallT]

I think I was much derailed by the whole idea of "dropping into the slot."  One video I tried to learn from was about dropping the whole package down from the top, right down to A6. 

For me, that advice was in a void without context (I took the advice anyway! Duh) and it promoted or solidified my steepness, in retrospect. So while the tip may be helpful to some, I think I suffered as a result. 

[mcanadiens]

Early on a well-meaning friend who happens to be 6-foot-5 told me I needed to bend my knees significantly at address. I imagine that's because he had to do that to get his massive frame low enough to strike the ball with off-the-shelf golf clubs. Needless to say, it messed me up pretty good in my first year of playing. It eventually took a heart-to-heart conversation with the guy to get him to ease off.

[saevel25]

The ball starts where you aim and ends up where your clubface is pointing. 

You putt for dough and drive for show 

 

[Patch]

Not so much a bad tip, but way back at the beginning of my golf journey, I purchased some group lessons. For $80, I was to recieve 4, 90 minutes lessons as part of a group. 

First lesson went fine I thought. The instructor covered some stuff, and told me I had a decent swing. He gave us some stuff to work with on our own. 

2 days later, at our second lesson, a new instructor showed up. He promptly told us all to totally disregard everything the previous instructor told us. That the guy didn't know what he was talking about. This even though they both work for the same company. 

That incident right there put a sour taste in my mouth about golf instruction that lasted for decades. 

[paininthenuts]

Worst golf tip I ever had was "take up golf"

[GolfLug]

I don't know.. Maybe 'hold the lag'... For most parts I am fairly immune to outside advice.

Honestly the worst 'tips' are the ones that I have given myself and there are too many to list. The promiscuity I suffer from in terms of golf swing thoughts is almost a medical condition. I have done 'better' over the last year in that aspect and it has made a difference. It is a miracle that I have stuck to my priority for this long.     

[Groucho Valentine]

I agree with some of the other posters on here. "Keep your lead arm strait" and "keep your head down" are the worst pieces of advice golfers give to each other. 

[Marty2019]

I think the worst advice I've ever received was, to fix my over-the-top swing problem, keep my back to the target for as long as possible on the downswing.   That's just putting a band-aid on a swing flaw, offsetting one swing flaw with another one.  It works if you're disconnected at the top and need to start your downswing by pulling down on your hands.  But it didn't fix my real problem, which was the disconnection at the top of my back swing, plus lack of proper shoulder tilt on the down swing. 

 

 

 

 

 

[rehmwa]

One guy advocated a big outside-in club path compensated by a very closed face.  Resulted in a pretty consistent baby fade.  (at a cost of lots of yardage and a swing that had no ability to improve from, and virtually no shapability or controllability)

Took a long time to recover from that one.