Hi,

I've just been getting into golf and am really loving it. There is one problem though, I'm pretty bad and I would like to be able to shoot a decent round of golf. Something like 110 shots or something..

I've hired a coach and he explained me the grip, how to adress and how to swing (mini-swing). This were some real eye-openers but I still need lots of practice.

So I was wondering if you guys could point me to some great golf sites/videos/books or anything for the complete beginner to learn the game pretty quickly (with the right amount of devotion).

Personal experiences/tips are also appreciated!

Thanks!

your coach started you off on the right track, your goal should be to perfect your grip, address, aim, etc...These are the easiest aspects of the game to control and there is no reason you should not be able to be as good at them as the best players in the world

If you have a lot of free time just play and practice a lot and you'll assuredly get better. Take lessons to keep you on the right track and 110 is certainly within reach is a short amount of time.

to shoot lower scores as fast as possible, start practicing a ton and from right next to the hole and then work your way further from the hole.

i.e. get really good at the chips and 5-10 footers before you learn to hit a 5 iron well with great regularity.

get Mickelson's short game DVD asap

I kinda disagree with this. As long as you can chip and putt passably, getting from tee to green will be where the biggest gains are made when you are struggling to shoot 110. If you shank and top the ball, etc all the way down the fairway you can't score well no matter how well you putt. Getting on the green in regulation +1 stroke fairly regularly is the key to breaking 100 IMO.

while you're right that beginners can take most of their shots off from tee to green, i feel like most that have any athleticism or experience in tennis or baseball type sports figure out how to hit the ball sorta quickly.

maybe you'd disagree, but i've practically never seen someone on the course that played like "double turds!" spaulding. don't underestimate the amount of strokes you can take off by sinking all of your 2 footers and a healthy percentage of 5-10 footers.

everyone starts off the day by hitting on the range anyway. you might as well start as early as possible with focusing on the most important part of the game.

Newcomers hit a lot of full shots that are very low probability for them (even more than the rest of us). Maybe they are 3/5 with their 7-iron, and 1/5 with their 3-wood, with the latter's misses more severe. If they were truly committed to the lowest score, improving their short game and getting confidence with a single mid iron might be the fastest way there -- but they wouldn't feel like they were playing the game.

This is just me wild ass guessing. Seems reasonable to me, might be wrong.

The short game is nowhere near as significant for someone shooting 110-130 or more as it is for someone shooting 70-100. It's a simple matter of numbers. The scratch golfer is hypothetically supposed to hit every green in regulation and two putt every hole. 1/2 of his strokes are putts. The guy shooting 120 may only need a few more putts per round, but takes a lot longer to get to the green. Maybe he shoots 120 and has 40 putts, so 1/3 of his strokes are putts. Obviously the short game still matters, but getting the ball onto the green is the most important thing.

From my experience as a beginning, terrible golfer (120 and up), the good rounds are the ones where I avoid the blow-up holes. Sometimes I'll feel like I'm playing pretty well, I make a few bogies, but I completely lose it on a par-5 and hack the ball down the fairway 50 yards at a time. Or I hit a few balls in the water or OB. A 12 and a 3 is worse than two 7s. How do you avoid the disaster holes? Advance the ball steadily and keep it in play. The difference between a two-putt and a three-putt is one stroke; the difference between two solid 150-yard iron shots and six fifty-yarders that never make it off the ground is four shots.

And I agree that full shots tend to be very low probability, and the longer the club, the less likelihood of success. I've started to feel pretty comfortable with my 8-iron and can hit it a decent way (sometimes), but the accuracy still isn't there, and there are a lot of misses, topped shots, chunks, etc.

A lot of times I hear the theory that golf instruction should start at the hole and work backwards. I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that. You can certainly learn to putt and chip without knowing anything about a full golf swing. And the psychological benefits of starting with something easier and working back could be huge. But in simple terms of lowering a score from 130+ to 110, if you can't hit the ball at least 100 yards (preferably 130-150) at a time a decent percentage of the time, you're not going to get there.

Bullitos--assuming you have a good coach and can put in the time playing, you'll get there.

Thanks for the replies!

One more question. I've just found out about golfonline.com and I think there is some great educational content on this site.

Are there any other great educational sites you guys know off and/or any big golf forum (this one is interesting, but kinda small?)

I'd suggest checking out www.golfwrx.com - it's a very broad site and obv much bigger than this one. The equipment sections can be overwhelming if you're not a golf nerd but there is a lot of good content in the swing/fitness/beginners area of the forums.

You can find loads of advice at www.golf.com

What do you guys think about thegolfchannel.com, seems like a very good site with lots of educational content!

the golf channel is great, although I have to say it's quality has gone down over the years. In fact, I'd say it was better when it was free.

They used to have a show called The Golf Channel Academy which ran everyday. They brought in pros and top coaches and dissected swing issues and what not. It was a great learning resource. Now the channel is overrun with mid-day informercials and "reality" tv shows that don't give very much value to the learning golfer.

However, there are a few great shows still for the learning golfer:
- Lessons from a Pro - the host plays a few holes of golf with a big-name pro and they talk about technique, course management, swing thoughts, etc.
- Champions Learning Centre (I forget the exact name of this one, but they talk to guys on the Senior tour about different shots and techniques).
- The Golf Fix - this one's value is argueable as the host is a wreck. He's very knowledgeable, but I don't like the little bread-crumb tips and whatnot and the presentation needs a lot of work.

Not to mention there is tonnes of coverage from every tour from Thursday to Sunday. We may not be able to hit the ball like pros, but you can still learn from watching how the do things.

Grunched after this post, but I agree with what both of you are saying. The cool thing about practicing short game (pitches/chips/up and downs, etc) is that it also helps out the long game tremendously in the beginning where your main concern is just making solid contact.

Getting a good feel around the green with pitch shots and chipping greatly improves your understanding of how the ball reacts to the clubhead when struck in a lot of different situations, and that carries over to the fullswing.

Also, presumably you'll be making solid contact more often from around the green due to the swing being shorter and more under control and that should increase confidence on full shots since you will come to "expect" decent contact based on past experience.

golfchannel is still free? I've watched lots of beginner video's without paying.

Is there any content you have to pay for? Is it worth paying for?

TBH i would focus on keeping on the fairway, if that means you have to hit a 5i and not a Driver do it, if you could go 5i, 7i, pw, 2 putt thats 5 shots. 5 shots every hole is a score of 90.

Dont worry about mashing the ball 300 yards of the tee with the Driver, my dad takes the piss out of me because i dont use a Driver atm, but i hit my Irons good, i keep on the fair way, i aim to hit to the 150 marker, where i can use GW/PW to get on the green and putt and it works!

Rather then zig zag all over, lose balls, have to ship out of trees. Keep it straight and you scores will tumble down!

The sad thing is that when you shoot a "decent" score of 110 you wont be happy with that.The score of 100 will be the next target and so on and so on.Golf is like that,just when we think we are happy with our game someone shifts the goalposts.It's that next step that keeps us hooked and comming back for more punishment.Sometimes you will hate it with a passion and swear off it for life.However its sweet whispering of booming drives and huge putts sunk will lure you back everytime.

Very true, and I'm 100% sure I'll be like that too, it's ingrained in my personality. Nonetheless atm I'm basically too bad to play 18 holes, and that sucks .

I'm practicing alot though, almost every day for a few weeks now, getting better and better especially at my short game.

I agree a lot with this.

I went out Saturday. My first 3 drives were 300, 280, and 330 (some help from the wind). Then I had a few horrible OB drives on holes 5-9, and ended up shooting a 47 because of it. On the back 9 I put the driver in the bag, and hit 6i 200yds in the middle of the fairway on any driving hole, and shot a 41 on the back with a similar short game as the front 9.

I don't practice 60yd pitches enough, so a full 9i approach is probably going to end up just as close to the hole as a 60yd pitch for me. So a good drive vs. a good 6i shot doesn't make much differnece often. But a bad drive vs. a good 6i shot favours the 6i heavily.

Obviously it is pretty poor advice for a good golfer. But for someone trying to do the best they can with the limited skill they have it's solid imo.

If we're talking about SCORING, most high-handicap golfers would do best to bring maybe four clubs to the course: a putter, a wedge, whatever iron or hybrid they hit well, and a wild card club (most would choose a driver, but if they were being honest about scoring, they should likely choose another iron or hybrid).

Put it this way, if someone had my family at gunpoint and the ransom was that I had to SCORE well, I would play a very different game from the one I go out and play generally. I bet the bump and run would start to look a lot better to me, and I know iron off the tee would become very appealing indeed.

Most of the suggestions you guys gave me are mostly just temporary solutions for scoring better without fixing the real problems beginners have.

Most beginners have bad technique, bad timing, bad everything. This isn't fixed with aiming at the fairway with a 5 iron or something, at least that's not the advice I wanted when opening this thread .

I have ordered and read some books, including 5xx from Hogan (have ordered it, forgot about the exact title), what do you guys think of this book?

I've also read Tiger's book and am reading Tom Watson's book about strategy/tactics. What do you guys think about those 2?

The only way to become not a beginner is to play golf a lot. A lesson every few weeks would help, but consistent practice is what you need to break out of hackville.

Actually, you're wrong.

The advice you say is designed to just score better will also give you the perspective necessary to understand the game better. I cannot think of any better advice I never got and wish I had.

But if you feel the need to stripe it 340 off every tee and knock everything from inside 100 yards to within ten feet, just disregard it all and good luck at Q school.

But again, if you don't like the advice so far, let's start with this advice instead:

Go out and buy the best set of clubs on the market.

No, this is a poker site.... Making the correct % play is better no matter the skill level. Just a low % shot for a poor golfer, might be a high % shot for a good golfer.

laying up to 130 in the fairway on a 350 yd PAR 4 is not just a temporary soultion vs. gunning for the green and leaving youself a 60y pitch out of the rough. It might simply be the smarter play that yeilds a lower score on average.

I understand all that, I've won lot of money playing poker and I hate gambling, so I'm all about percentages.

But, I meant to say that I rather learn the basics first (as in knowing how and why to hit a certain shot) in addition to shooting high percentage shots. I'm naturally not a high risk taker, so mostly I dislike taking the risky route anyway.

If you say it will give me perspective to understand the game better, what do you exactly mean by this?

And my question about those books also still stand, are they any good or are there way better options?