We all start our golfing journey in a unique way. Some grow up with the game, club in hand from the time they can walk. Others find it later in life, maybe as a teenager or a twenty-something looking for a new hobby. Some will start later in life, which shines a light on the beauty of the sport: anyone, at any age, can pick it up.
I fall into the twenty-something category. I grew up a three-sport athlete, football, basketball, baseball. My parents or friends didn’t play golf so I never had exposure to the game as a kid. In fact, the first time I picked up a club, I was a 21-year-old college junior. An injury ended my college baseball career and I needed to fill that void so I decided to take a one-credit elective golf “class.”
While that class was entertaining, the only real takeaway I can recall is lining up your feet like train tracks towards the ball when you putt to make sure you are square. We took a walking field trip to a driving range at the end of the semester, which was the first time I took a swing at an actual golf ball.
I had no clubs and am left-handed. There were three irons that of the lefty variety for me to use. As you can imagine, I was bound to fail. I played a couple of rounds with friends before the school year was over and used a rental mixed bag from the local course. While this might pass as serviceable for some, I am 6’4” and nothing about standard-length clubs fits me.
Had I known what I do now, I’d have taken a very different approach to starting this game that I have grown to love so much. In this article, I’ll cover some things I wish I’d done differently or I wish someone had told me when I started playing the game.
Number One: Getting Properly Fitted Equipment
As I mentioned, I didn’t own any golf clubs when I started playing. Also, because I knew next to nothing about golf, I didn’t realize that clubs should be shorter or longer for someone, depending on factors like height or wrist-to-floor measurement. I was fortunate to have a full set given to me. As a newbie, this was fantastic as it saved me money (of which I didn’t have much as a college student). What I didn’t know was that they were not a match for me. At all. The driver and woods were fine enough as I play a standard length in those clubs. The irons, however, had senior flex graphite shafts. More times than not, I had no idea where the ball was going. With a shaft that was too soft, I couldn’t deliver the club consistently. When you add in the fact that the lie was too flat, you have a recipe for disaster.
Properly fitted equipment puts you in a better position to deliver the club correctly with each swing. Longer clubs, in my case, allow me to start in a better posture. Through my first-ever irons fitting last year (11 years after I started playing), I found I should be playing with my lie angle adjusted three degrees up and an inch over standard length. This has resulted in less toe-first ground contact which, in the past, forced the clubface open and caused many left misses for me as a left-handed player, and fewer thin misses.
I’m not suggesting you get fitted for a brand-new set of clubs. What you can do, however, is find a free fitting or demo day at a course or shop near you. Try some clubs to find your proper specs and then, armed with that information, shop for a used or prior-season set. Even if you can’t find the exact specs, the money you save buying used or prior-season equipment can go towards making the correct adjustments to have them meet your needs.
Number Two: Taking Lessons/Getting Proper Instruction
If I could go back and start from Square One, the very next thing I’d do after finding properly fitted equipment would be to take lessons. I was trying to learn how to play solely by playing the game. I didn’t know what a proper swing should look like. Nor did I know how to take the club away to begin the backswing. I certainly didn’t know how to deliver the club properly to strike the ball. I just stepped up, took a swing and hoped I’d hit the ball reasonably well, trying to rely on my athleticism to make it work. Surprise! It did not.
Looking back, it is comical to think I could pick up a sport like golf with no background and no instruction. In every other sport I had played, I practiced and was coached as I grew up to improve my skills. Golf should be approached no differently and there are a plethora of ways we can receive instruction. While in-person lessons are absolutely invaluable, apps like Skillest connect you with coaches around the world. You can spend as much or as little as you’d like with Skillest as coaches set their own rates. Hayes Weidman recently wrote the first piece of a two part story on his experience with a virtual lesson from a Skillest coach. It’s a great read. Check it out.
In the past two seasons, I have taken a couple of in-person lessons each year and have experimented with Skillest. My game has drastically improved and I have no intentions of stopping any time soon.
Bottom line: With so many options to get personalized coaching, there’s no excuse not to put yourself in the best position possible to succeed early in your playing days.
Number Three: Spend More Time Practicing
We’ve talked about making the correct equipment choices as well as getting some initial lessons. The next thing to discuss is practice. Yes, I’m talkin’ bout practice!
This is something I didn’t spend nearly enough time on when I started. Heck, up until a couple years ago (and even to an extent now), I didn’t get as much practice as I’d like. I’d go to the range and hit some balls but more often than not it was only before the round I was playing that day. The more you practice, the more consistent your swing will become. Dropping strokes off your score will follow as you build that consistency. What we need to differentiate is the difference between hitting balls on the range and actually practicing.
Think back to your younger years. Whether you were involved in athletics, music, theater, etc., you had regular practices. Using myself as an example, basketball practice didn’t just consist of getting up shots in the gym for an hour and calling it a day. You’d perform drills, work on offensive and defensive sets, how to break a press … the list goes on. All of this was with one ultimate goal in mind: to help mold me into a well-rounded player.
You must take the same approach when it comes to golf. Heading to the range and hitting balls until your hands hurt is not practice. You need to focus on specific skills in order to lower your scores. Whether you’re working on changing a specific part of your swing or practicing hitting different shots to different targets, a structured plan will be beneficial to your improvement as a golfer.
Number Four: Short Game, Short Game, Short Game!
You will make or break your scoring by how accurately you hit the ball from 100 yards and in. For most recreational golfers, the number of times we will stick an approach outside of 100 yards to a high-percentage birdie try is low. This is where short-game practice comes in, including putting.
When I started playing, I could count on one hand the number of times I practiced shots around the green. I would venture to say that over the first eight or so years I played golf, it was fewer than five. No, that isn’t an exaggeration. I have friends who never practice their short game or putting and they can’t figure out why they can’t break 90.
I see plenty of golfers at my local course on the range, bombing drive after drive. Rarely do I see those players in the short-game practice area. The players I do see there? They can score. Period. I played last week with a kid who I coached in high school basketball who has a 0.2 index and he missed plenty of fairways. You want to know where he didn’t miss? Shots inside 100 yards and, if we want to get really specific, 40-yard chips and shorter. Every time, he was on the green and giving himself a chance to get away with a two-putt or less. I’ll bet you can see where I am going with this but I’ll say it anyway. When I see him at the course, he’s in the short-game area. Oh, he also shot a 35 on the front and finished the round with a 75.
If you want to get off on the right foot, work on your short game. You can thank me later.
Number Five: Take Your Medicine
New golfers are often errant off the tee. Even on approach shots, you’re not always going to hit the ball where you want to and will end up in trouble. In this situation, “take your medicine.”
Take the shot the course gives you with the least amount of trouble present (trees, hazards, water, etc.). Don’t get me wrong, the thrill of pulling off the hero shot by squeezing it through that gap in the trees like your favorite Tour player on Sunday is a high we all dream of. However, the odds of mere mortals pulling that shot off with any amount of success is little to none. We will hit that tree, the ball will ricochet back towards us or worse – out of bounds – and we have added yet another stroke to the scorecard (and possibly ended up in a worse position).
I was guilty of this when I started playing. No matter what I had to hit the ball through or around, I was always trying to advance it, skill to do so or not be damned. I always thought I could. I was usually wrong. This cost me strokes and led to frustration, which typically further unraveled my round. Make the smart play and get the ball back into an area where you have the best chance to get to the green. No, hitting the ball laterally, or even backwards, is not the sexy play but it is the right one.
As a new golfer, you may be struggling to break 90, 100, 110. Eliminating strokes by attempting the “hero shots” is a good place to start. Allowing for an extra shot into the green might help to take some of the pressure off the next shot, which could help you hit more greens.
Armed and Dangerous
I hope these five things have you feeling armed and ready to take on your next practice session and round. If someone had told me these things when I started out, my improvement (a work in progress) may not have taken so long to develop. I want you to play your best golf as soon as possible.