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Tips For Beginner Golfers Struggling To Improve Quickly | Golf Monthly
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Apr 1, 2025
Are you a beginner golfer struggling to improve quickly or someone keen to start playing the game wanting to get off to a fast start? Well this is the video for you as we've collated 11 of the best tips from Golf Monthly staff who've been there, done it, got the t-shirt and now play off a single figure handicap index. Hopefully the advice the team share will speed up your journey to better and it's worth saying that these tips don't just apply to beginner golfers - we're confident there will be some that apply to more experienced golfers too!
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Now are you a beginner golfer that's not improving as quickly as you'd like
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Watch this video as we've got a collection of great tips and bits of advice from single
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figure golfers that are really going to help speed up your improvement. My best tip for a beginner golfer would have to be just learn to smash it
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Learn how to hit it hard, learn how to swing quick. It's far easier later on down the line to learn how to tighten up your technique and
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tidy up a few things than it is to learn how to find extra speed and extra power and it helps you
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with so much other stuff being able to shift it. That comes from the great man himself Jack
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Nicholas. He always said especially for kids learn how to head it a long long way, learn how to move
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the club fast and you can refine it later. I think I would say don't get too one-dimensional
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around the green. Don't just get somewhere near the green and automatically reach for a wedge
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which I think a lot of, certainly I when I was a beginner I thought well that's the club you're
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supposed to use around the green but what you're doing there is bringing a lot of loft into the equation you don't necessarily need you've got to hit it a little bit harder because it's going
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to go up in the air more and you can actually simplify things with various other clubs maybe
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seven iron chip and run these days even a hybrid and quite often a putter so simplify things around
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the green and you'll take fewer shots. So yeah my number one tip would just be learn how to strike
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the ball consistently and just learn your yardages the amount of times that golfers will be stood
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over a shot from say 150 yards and they won know what club goes 150 yards is a big problem Obviously if you can hit that club the same distance consistently you going to be pinned high and you going to be more likely to have a more chance of getting a good score going
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So I think the main tip I'd give is just learn your yardages and make sure you're hitting it consistently
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That would be the main tip. So my beginner's tip would be to practice with intent
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So make sure when you're going out to the range or if you're going to put any practice in
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whether it's putting, short game, make sure that you're practicing something specific
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rather than just going out hitting balls to not having anything to focus on
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My top tip for a beginner golfer, well, that's a tough one
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because there's so many out there, but if I had to pick one, I would say playing your own swing
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If you play with a fade or a draw, play with that. Don't try anything new or fancy
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Head out onto the driving range before a round of golf and before you head out onto 18 holes
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and just see how you're swinging it. If your ball flight's going left to right or right to left
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play with that for that day. Don't try and resort to anything different
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that you're not used to you're not hitting that day, you're going to end up with a far better score and you'll be better off
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if you play with what you've got than trying something new and something different
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So my best bit of advice for beginner golfers would be to have the intention of hitting the ground on the target side of the golf ball. Most beginner golfers have a
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misconception that they need to hit up on the ball to get the ball in the air, and actually
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the opposite is true. And having the intention of hitting the ground at speed in front of the golf
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it's going to deliver a better compression into the golf ball, a bit more spin
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and it going to give you more carry distance and also better control of your strike as well So you know when I been trying to help my wife get into playing golf one of the drills or the swing thoughts I give to her is literally trying to hit the ball into the ground That gets the club and body working in the right way to be able to
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compress the ball, hit down on it with speed. That should give you better strikes, better distance
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and better consistency. That would be my one thing, if you're a beginner, to really focus on
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with every club in the bag apart from driver. Most people know that alignment is really important
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But a really good way to think about it is to imagine that you're standing on a train track and your feet are on the nearer of the two tracks and your ball to target line, your club face is on the other track
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And it's that kind of parallel set up that you need to address that will give you really good alignment
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Right. So my tip for beginners is get yourself off the driving range, you know, if you can play with good golfers as well, because you'll learn a little bit from them
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You know, you'll see what they do around the greens with their shots, their game management
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and the more you get on the golf course, the more you get away from the driving range
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the more comfortable you'll get with this quite scary environment at times. I think the better you'll get quicker
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Right, so my number one tip for beginners would be to tee it forward
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So I see a lot of beginners trying to tee off like kind of yellow tees, white tees a little bit further back
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and kind of struggling a lot. Whereas teeing it forward allows people
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to take the pressure off quite quickly and you hit kind of shots closer to the hole quite quickly
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and it also I think makes the game faster I think it makes it more fun as well
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and also from doing it in the past myself I think you hit a lot of different clubs in the bag when you tee it forward as well So I think to help players teeing it forward is the best way to go I think especially for beginners
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Well, when I was a junior, the thing that always really benefited me was to keep my stats on my scorecard
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So what I used to do was, along with the score down the left-hand column
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I actually marked G for greens hit, F for fairways and P for the number of putts
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20 years have gone on and there's now a number of different more modern methods of doing this than
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just the pencil and paper scorecard form so there's arc of shot tracking technology where
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you can actually have the the stats recorded on your phone or through your apple watch and i know
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that's a really really easy way of doing it and i just thoroughly recommend keeping your stats
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because you're just going to have so much more knowledge of the areas of your game that you're going to need to improve to reduce that handicap so my best tip for beginner golfers would probably
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be just to practice your chipping and putting. So I think the wedge play in short game definitely
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covers more than half of your shots in a round of golf and so practicing your chipping and putting
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doing little drills that will take shots off your score will dramatically reduce your handicap
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and make your golf more enjoyable. So there you have it. Loads of really good advice hopefully
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that you'll agree that's going to help you if you're a beginner golfer improve a little bit
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faster. Go and take them away with you to the practice ground, to the golf course and hopefully
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you'll see your scores tumble. But that's all for me from Effingham Golf Club
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I'll see you next time
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