Odogesq

Hi, and welcome! As some may point out, it is going to be difficult to give you good feedback without posting a video of your swing. That said, best course of action to get better is to invest in some golf lessons at a local course and stick with them for an extended period of time. Although you will have to spend some money, i guarantee you will improve and not regret spending the lessons. Without feedback from someone who know what they are doing watching your swing, you will forever be guessing at what you should be doing, regardless of the amount of reading you do on the internet.

Wow, I had assumed you are a beginner. With an index that low it sounds like you just need some range and practice time. Are you sure your full swing is the issue? If you are shooting 75-82, maybe your focus should be on chipping and putting to Dave some strokes.

Hi! YouTube videos can be a great learning tool, but as a beginner it's going to be difficult to just rely on YouTube because you will not be getting the feedback you get from lessons. YouTube video lessons typically focus on one "tip" or on every small part of the golf swing. Signing up for lessons will help you get a big picture understanding of your swing and your very specific swing fault. From there you will be able to better use the YouTube videos to work on specific faults. I agree with everyone else that lessons are a must at the beginning. It took me about two years of struggling on my own before I cracked and got lessons. Since then I have consistently improved each year. I regret not taking lessons first thing when I picked up a club. Lessons basically shrink the learning curve drastically. Lastly, I think you should keep playing while taking lessons and hitting the range. There is no substitute for experience and there are a lot of lies and places you will end up on the golf course that you just can't reproduce on the range. Best way to play is to just pick up your ball if you start holding the group back. Make it a fun, no pressure environment and you will enjoy yourself even though you will not beat the same level.

Hi! Finding a good instructor can be difficult. If you have never taken lessons before, it probably does not matter much who you go with as you will receive tremendous benefits from just about any instructor. Just make sure they are pga certified (or credentialed in some other reputable program, e.g. 5sk). That said, for a beginner you will benefit the most from purchasing at least 4-5 hours of time at once. Most instructors will let you break up that time as you see fit, in 30 min or 1 hour increments. You will most likely get the best results with the first couple lessons being an hour long, and tapering off into 30 min lessons with the rest. If you buy your lessons up front you will be able to negotiate a better rate. For reference I live in So Cal and pay about $80-$120 per hour for the local pros, or $40-$60 per 30 min. My advice would be to seek out the local pros at your local course and just chat with them. You definitely want to make sure they don't have a crazy methedology, or teach only one kind of swing. As long as they believe in focusing on the fundamental (grip, stance, weight shift, body turn) you should be fine. Ask around when you play golf, usually the locals will tell you if the local course has a good pro. Good luck!

No worries! Thanks for the responses and helpful link everyone!

Hi Everyone! So I have been taking lessons and working on turning my hips more during the swing and into impact. Only problem now is that as I turn my hips it brings my arms over the top, causing me to cut across the ball each time. No matter what I do I can't seem to get my arms on plane without some terrible result (hitting fat/thin/shank I used to hit a fairly consistent draw, and my miss was almost always a hook, so I got used to playing the course from right to left. It wasn't perect, but it got me down to a 7.8. However, I had very little hip turn in my swing and instead had a very pronounced "slide." I also tended to leave a lot of weight on my left in the back swing. That said, contact was always good for the most part and ball flight a fairly consistent right to left. My instructor is getting me to load onto the right side and turn my hips as opposed to sliding. Although I am able to make solid contact, I can't figure out how to turn my hips without pulling my arms down and throwing the club out over the top. Very frustrating. I'm playing tomorrow and will just have to play a fade to keep score low. Any advice/help/drills is appreciated.

21 days is a really short window to shave two strokes off your handicap, even with significant instruction and golf/range time built in. Not to mention the rounds of golf you will have to play during that window to get the handicapping calculation to adjust downward. Assuming unli ited resources and time, best chance of getting there though is to do nothing but golf for the next three weeks. Lessons and practice in the morning, and playing in the afternoon every day for three weeks. If you are like the majority of us saps and don't have unlimited resources, I would suggest working on your course management as mentioned above to ensure you you keep the big umber off the card, and also lots of putting and chipping. At a 18 handicap I imagine you can get it close to the green with the first 2-3 shots on any given hole, so being able to chip it close and 1 putt the majority of the time will get your scores lower.

While I can see how this type of setup would help someone get a lot of reps and work on timing, I just think it would be impossible to build a really good swing using only this setup without at least some range time. Reason being that it will be impossible to tell what kind of ball flight the balls have, which basically translates to how much spin, i.e. how shut/open your club face is at impact. Without seeing the full ball flight, you have no idea how the ball flies, and can only see where it starts, if that. Point being, while there certainly are a lot of benefits to this type of practice, it' s important to know the limitations and build in some actual range time too.

In a nutshell, traditional golf instruction will tell you that keeping the club "steep" on the back swing ensures that it does not get get stuck on the inside or result in a over the top move. If your tendency is to take the golf club back on a "shallow," path, meaning more on the inside and around your body, the natural tendency will be to lift the golf club into position as opposed to swinging it back, which may promot an over the top move, and/or it will be harder to get the club back on plane since you have pulled it so far into the inside, resulting into he club being "stuck" behind your body during the swing. All that said, a steep back swing is fine, but if you combine that with a steep down swing the tendency will be to cut across the ball and hit a fade/slice. In order to hit a draw you need to swing the club out to the right, with a clubfave that is closed in relation to the path. The only way to accomplish that after a steep back swing is to shallow out the down swing taking the club on an inside to out path.

The best instructors I have had were always good at communicating their ideas and instructions in more than one way. A failure to communicate can just as easily be the result of a failure to grasp the target audience. People learn and communicate in all types of ways, and imoh, the best instructors will intuitively try different methods. For example, a student might be a visual learner, so demonstrating the proper sequence in person or on video will work better than explaining it verbally. Likewise, some people will learn better by physically being placed into positions and shown what "over the top" or "casting" means. Others, myself included, do better with certain concepts or mental swing thoughts. And now a side note/gripe related to this topic: In my experience, Americans in general are poor communicators. Our educational system does not emphasize writing and proper grammar. As a result, people grow up and get jobs but struggle to articulate basic ideas, concepts, and messages. I say that regardless if your job oe stature in society, you will always have to communicate persuasively either verbally or in writing, and being able.to do so is a life skill everyone should have. Fortunately, that apparently does not stop people from making money because I can't even begin to tell you how many documents I have read that were written by wealthy individuals but totally lacking in cohesiveness. If I was king, I would ensure that the first 10 years or so of a child's education was spent learning to communicate using the English language, both in writing and orally.

I completely agree, when I said a shank is the worse, I meant it's one of the worse kind of shot you can hit on the golf course, mainly because you get no distance and usually end up some here at a 90 degree angle of where you started. At least with a big slice or hook you end I further down the fairway, and even if it goes OB you are taking a drop somewhere further down than from where you started. A shank, on the other hand, is the golf equivalent of an own-goal in soccer, IMHO.

Hello! Every now and then I will shank a ball too. Frankly, if you play enough golf I think your bound to hit a shank or two. Even happens to the pros. That said, a shank is the result of coming into the ball with the hosel. The cause can be a lot of things, but generally it's the result of standing too close to the ball. If you are not giving yourself enough space to swing the club through the tendency will be to come in on the hosel. When I first started playing I had a tendency to shank. My pro had me step away from the ball and take my address position feeling like I'm reaching for the ball. Probably 1-2 inches ahead of where I placed it. When I swung through I had plenty of room to swing the clubhead into the ball. Its not a permanent fix, but if you get the shanks again, try moving away from the ball a few inches on the next few shots to get the feel of making good contact. Then go take a lesson and tell.the pro you shank one every now and then and see what suggestions they have to improving your swing. Good luck! A shank is the worst.

Oh, that makes more sense. Facepalm moment.

I thought all the putting fundamentals stressed a quiet and completely still lower body, with really only the arms moving? Any threads on here about firing the lower hip during the putting stroke? That seems like a sure firewater get the putter offline during the stroke. By playing the ball slightly forward in my stance get the putter to come in flush or up into the ball a ery slight amount just fine.