The 8 Best Golf Swing Tips You'll Find

Quick answer: The tips that lower scores fastest are the boring ones. Get your grip neutral, check your alignment with rods every session, play clubs that fit your speed, and learn to shift pressure into the ground rather than swaying. After that, keep your arms connected, aim at the middle of the green, learn the basics of a bunker shot, and spend real time on putts inside four feet.

To someone unfamiliar with golf, it would seem that repeating a good shot should be easy once you have hit one or two. To anyone who has played more than a few times, that is clearly a misguided conception. If consistent success is elusive for people who play for a living, what chance do the rest of us have? And yet it is precisely that difficulty that keeps us coming back.

Here are 8 golf swing tips that will get you hitting those picture-perfect shots more often.

1. Get Your Grip Right

The grip is perhaps the most important fundamental in the golf swing. It is the one point of contact between you and the club.

The key is to start with your lead hand on the club first. Here is what Golf Digest had to say about it: "Always put your left hand on first, because it's your guide to sensing the alignment of the clubface, then add your right hand. As you look down at your grip, make sure your left thumb rests slightly to the right of the top-center of the shaft."

On your lead hand, your thumb and index finger form a "V" - you want that V pointing at your chest, which indicates a neutral grip. The closer the V points to your trail shoulder, the stronger your grip.

If you are new to the game, it is imperative to build good habits from day one. The more you train your muscles to move a certain way, the harder that pattern is to change later.

2. Use Alignment Aids

The best golf swing in the world will not produce results if your alignment does not match where you think you are aiming. Golfers often develop bad swing habits purely as compensation for bad alignment.

For example, a golfer unintentionally aiming right of their target may subconsciously come over the top to start the ball on the intended line. They then spend months trying to fix an over-the-top move when bad alignment was the root cause. Before you change your golf swing, make sure you are aiming where you think you are.

Use alignment tools in every practice session. Our Alignment Disc and Padded Alignment Rods make it easy to stand rods upright and move them as needed - here are all the ways to use alignment rods.

3. Play Clubs That Fit You

If you are looking to make the game harder than it needs to be, opt for heavy, stiff shafts and steer clear of forgiving irons.

If you want to play your best golf, use clubs that fit your skill level and physical capabilities. It is pretty cool to show your friends new forged muscle-back irons; it is much cooler to actually improve your ball striking with game-improvement irons.

• Driver: make sure it has 10.5 degrees of loft or more. Loft is your friend and will help you hit it longer, even if you do not have a high swing speed yet.
• More fairway woods and hybrids: get rid of heavy, hard-to-hit long irons. High-lofted woods and hybrids are more forgiving, launch higher, and punish mishits less.
• Get fitted for shafts: as a beginner, graphite shafts in your irons are generally a good idea - lighter shafts make it easier to swing faster.

And find a forgiving putter. Mallets are more forgiving than blades.

4. Shift Your Weight and Pressure Properly

Power comes from the ground up. Watch advanced golfers and you will see them pushing off the ground to generate force on the downswing. Watch beginners and you will see the lower body neglected entirely, with the upper body starting the downswing.

• At setup, your weight is roughly 50/50, or slightly forward of center for most shots.
• On the backswing, pressure should spike into the inside of your trail foot - without swaying. That is how you load up.
• On the downswing, as you lead with the lower body, most of your weight and pressure should be on your lead side before impact. That is how you unload it.

This is not easy to feel, which is why we created the Pressure Plate - the board only tips when your pressure genuinely moves, so you find out immediately whether you loaded or just swayed. The full detail is in our weight shift guide.

5. Keep Your Arms in Sync

Your arms play an enormous role in the swing. If you hit a lot of thin or fat shots, check that your arms are working together and staying in sync with your chest. Poor arm structure shows up as a flying elbow or a chicken wing.

Generally it is wise to keep your arms from separating too much throughout the swing, to eliminate unnecessary movement - and you want them fully extended at impact. Easier said than done.

If you want to work on arm structure, ArmAlarm gives you real-time audio feedback while you swing. Strap the band around each wrist and if your arms separate too much, you hear it.

6. Don't Go For Every Pin

Any golfer looking to score better can do so by playing more conservatively. Aiming at the middle of the green maximizes the number of outcomes where your ball finishes on the green.

Aim directly at a pin tucked on the left edge and a significant percentage of your shots will miss left of the green - no matter how good you are. Aim at the center instead: miss left and you are in great shape, hit your line and you have a medium putt, miss right and you are probably still on the green.

It is about playing the percentages. Your chances of getting up and down from off the green are much worse than your chances of two-putting from 35 feet.

7. Learn How to Escape the Bunker

As a beginner you are not expected to be a wizard out of the sand, but a few basics will save you a lot of shots.

• Use your sand wedge, choke up 1-2 inches on the grip, and open the face. Most golfers are intimidated by opening the face, but it is necessary in the bunker.
• Ball position in the front center of your stance, with slightly more weight on your lead foot.
• Hinge your wrists quickly - it adds speed and makes it easier to accelerate through heavy sand.
• Focus on a spot 1-2 inches behind the ball. You do not hit the ball; you hit the sand, and the sand carries the ball out. Accelerate through it.
• If your range has no practice bunker, our Bunker Mate lets you practice bunker shots anywhere - no rake required, and it works in a simulator bay.

8. Practice Your Short Putting

Most beginners focus on the full swing, so you can separate yourself by spending a little effort on putting. Scores drop quickly once you consistently make putts inside four feet - statistically the lowest-hanging fruit in the game.

Spend a few minutes before or after your range session on short putts:

• Make sure your putter is aligned correctly at setup.
• Develop a consistent routine you can rely on out on the course.
• Keep light grip pressure to remove tension from your arms.
• Always accelerate through the stroke.

Key Takeaways

• Master the fundamentals - grip, posture and alignment - to establish good habits in your golf swing.
• Make sure your clubs fit you and your swing speed.
• Use training aids to get feedback on different parts of your game and improve faster.
• Be more conservative with target selection if you want to lower your scores.
• Golf is a hard but very rewarding sport. Stay patient and enjoy the journey - everyone is bad at the beginning. Stick with it.

Check out our YouTube channel for drills and tips: