Which Golf Tips Should You Listen To

Which Golf Tips Should You Listen To?





There are good golf tips and bad golf tips. The question is, how do you decide which

golf tips to listen to?

This question has been brought home to me recently because a good friend took up golf

about two years ago. He has really caught the bug and plays several times a week. He

also has lessons and practices frequently. Whenever we play together he is constantly

asking for tips and advice about his swing.

It is my belief that you should only give a player a golf tip if you are sure that it will fit

in with the rest of his swing. I have seen far too many players lose their swings when

trying to adopt a golf tip which simply does not fit in with everything else that goes on

when they swing the club.

OK, I know, there are certain golf tips which are universally sound, like, keep your head

still. But equally there are plenty of other golf tips that can be ruinous even when given

with the best of intentions.

In particular I recall a good player with whom I'd played many rounds who always drew

the ball right to left, usually with good control. One day when his draw was a bit

exaggerated, his partner suggested this perfectly sound golf tip: You know, if you were

to keep your right elbow well tucked in on the downswing you would lose that nasty

hook.

The suggestion was well meant. However, for a player who had a well grooved habit of

swinging slightly over the top of the ball, as Arnold Palmer was wont to do, it proved to

be one golf tip too much. He became so conscious of his right elbow that it threw the

whole of the rest of his swing out of shape and it took him months to get it back again.

The point is that the golf tip didn't fit in with the rest of his swing.

This is a mistake that many golfers make. They listen to all the golf tips out there and try

to adopt them all in their desperate search for a good swing. It is my belief that your aim

should be to groove a golf swing that will give you streams of straight and long golf

shots by modelling your swing on one set of advice. Then you should develop a mind

movie of that swing so that you can reproduce it whenever you play a shot.

Think how long some of the most famous partnerships between players and their swing

coaches have lasted. Think of Jack Nicklaus and Jack Grout, Tiger Woods and Butch

Harmon, Nick Faldo and David Leadbetter to name but a few. All these great players

relied on one coach's vision of their swing to keep their mind movie in shape. They did

not go asking for golf tips from other players.