Top 5 Worst Golf Tips Of All Time.

[eric5148]

I'm constantly amazed by the steady stream of dribble spewed out by golf magazines, books and TV shows. The ratio of bad or just useless to good golf advice is about 5 to 1.

So I present to you now, my list of the top 5 worst golf tips I've ever heard. There are worse tips, but I don't bother to include them because they're not well known. The tips in this list are all very common, unfortunately. I also chose them because they're not just useless, they really make you a worse player.

Feel free to add to the list, or explain your disapproval for mine.


5. "If you're laying up, lay up to a distance where you can make a normal full swing."

What this tip is trying to say is that if, for example, you're playing a par 5 and you have 250 yards to the hole. You hit a 3 wood 220 yards, so you can't make it to the green, you should hit a shot that would leave a normal full swing distance with a wedge. So in this example, you might hit your 170 yard club in order to have a normal full swing lob wedge from 80 yards for the 3rd shot. As a player, it's difficult to see why this is wrong. It feels awkward to hit a club at less than normal speed. So naturally, one would assume that better shots will result from the full swing than a restricted swing. But statistics don't lie.

There is no one on Earth who can, over a large sample of shots, hit the same wedge closer to the hole from a full swing distance than from a less than full distance. All other things being equal, the closer you are to the hole, the closer the shot will end up on average. There are still many pros who refuse to believe this fact.

There is one rare exception to this: that is when the design and/or conditions of the green require the approach shot to have a tremendous amount of backspin to stop on the green. The only way to create enough spin would be to hit a wedge with a high clubhead speed. This pretty much only happens in the majors.


4. "If you're faced with a long putt that you'd be satisfied to get within tap in length, then imagine a 3 foot radius circle around the hole and just try to get the ball into that imaginary circle."

Basically what this tip is saying is that since a > 30 footer won't go in very often, you should completely disregard the possibility of it going in.

Any good golfer will tell you to visualize hitting a tee shot into the smallest possible target. If you aim for the exact center of the fairway, you're much more likely to hit the fairway than if you aim for the entire fairway, when hitting it anywhere in the fairway is an acceptable result. So why do the rules change for putting? Specific targets help you no matter what type of shot it is.

There's 3 reasons why small targets are always better than large targets. First, the clubface can only be pointed in one direction at a time. It's physically impossible to aim a driver face at an entire fairway, or a putter face at a 6 foot wide circle. The second reason also has to do with alignment. When you step up to a tee shot thinking about hitting the ball anywhere in the fairway, you won't pay as much attention to how your body is aligned. You could be aligned 1 yard from the edge of the rough on either side. But since that's still part of your target, it's ok. If your normal margin for error with a driver is 20 yards, you're shots will end up somewhere between 21 yards from the edge of the fairway, and 19 yards into the rough. The same goes for long putts. You could align the putterface and your body 3 feet away from the hole (assuming it's a straight putt) and your subconscious mind will be perfectly satisfied, because it's within your target. If your margin of error on that length of putt is 3 feet, then you'll hit it anywhere from 6 feet offline to in the hole. The third reason has to do with negative thinking and a simple lack of understanding of statistics. Just because a > 30 footer will not go in very often, doesn't mean you shouldn't try to make it. The people who teach the 3 foot circle tip are the same ones who would *WARNING: SLIGHT POKER CONTENT AHEAD* completely disregard a backdoor flush on the flop in Holdem. If it's not going to happen very often, then forget it.

I always find it amusing when TV golf announcers say something like: "Bob has a long birdie putt here. He's not trying to make it, he just wants to get it close." So what the hell is he supposed to do? Try to miss it? If you have two putters of equal skill, the one trying to make all his putts will always get the ball in the hole in fewer average strokes than the one trying to miss them.


3. "One way to read putts is to hang your putter vertically in front of your dominant eye while standing behind the ball, in line with the hole and your ball. If the shaft is not in line with the hole, then putt breaks to the side the hole is on." This is called "plum-bobbing".

If you actually think this works, you're a retard. I won't even bother explaining it. If you're interested in a thorough debunking of plum-bobbing, read Dave Pelz's Putting Bible.


2. "On the backswing, you should shift your weight to your back foot. Then on the downswing, your weight should shift to the front foot."

The problem with this tip is not the idea behind it, which I'll explain later. The problem is with the common use of the word shift. When a beginning golfer hears the term "weight shift," he/she assumes this means that you're supposed to slide or lean your body onto the back foot on the backswing, then slide or lean onto the front foot on the downswing. Horizontal sliding of the hips and leaning with the upper body leads to all kinds of problems.

A swing with a good shoulder turn, and a good resistance of the shoulder turn with the lower body, will almost automatically produce a good weight transfer from back foot to front foot. Telling someone to shift or transfer their weight better is useless, because a poor weight transfer is the result of other more important faults. When those other faults are fixed, the proper weight transfer will follow.

Furthermore, the idea of the weight transfer is one of the most overrated aspects of a good swing. Many excellent players, like Len mattiace and Chris DiMarco, hardly transfer their weight at all.


1. "Keep the putterhead low to the ground throughout the stroke."

This is by far the most bizarre and nonsensical golf tip I've ever heard. And sadly, I keep hearing it often. Although I keep hearing it, no one who says it has ever explained why it would work. Probably because it doesn't. Just think about it: to keep the putterhead as low as possible, you would need to lean or bend over on the backswing, then pull the club back up at impact to avoid scraping the ground, then bend over again on the follow through. This stroke would be impossible to repeat consistently.

Even if you could somehow keep the putter low without making the complicated stroke described above, how would it help you hit a better putt? Perhaps if you have a problem whiffing?