If you are just starting out in golf or feel like maybe you aren’t making the progress you expected, you are not alone. When it comes to golf for beginners, there are most definitely some common mistakes that all golfers make at some point in their careers.
The Most Common Mistakes of Beginner Golfers
The good news is, the more tools and knowledge you have to fix these issues, the easier it is to take your golf game to the next level! Here are some of the most common golf mistakes and the best golf training aids, training videos, and general tips to fix them.
Let’s dive into the most common mistakes when it comes to golf for beginners.
Not Squaring The Face At Impact
To hit a straight golf shot, the face of your club needs to be square at impact. Some golfers struggle to square the face because of path-related issues, setup, or even grip. In golf, hitting the ball square means that the clubface is perpendicular (or square) to the target line at impact. To ensure this, you need to start with a square clubface at the setup.
Take a slow motion swing and check for squareness at the top. Now take a slow motion swing down and see if it’s square again.
For better golf contact and compression, check out this video by Performance Golf coach Eric Cogorno on our YouTube channel.
If you’re looking for a more in depth training video with tons of extra ways to help improve your golf swing, look no further than the Square Strike System, which focuses specifically on achieving that square face at impact!
Too Much Head Movement
Moving your head too much throughout the golf swing will make it hard to strike the ball consistently. Moving the head behind the ball or even slightly down on the backswing can feel natural, but really you’re losing power because of it.
In fact, it actually makes it hard for you to generate power in your swing.
Instead, try to focus on keeping the head over the ball, making sure it doesn’t change position vertically or horizontally. A good strategy is to use an alignment stick on the ground as a reference point for the starting position of your head in the golf swing.
Not Transferring Weight
It’s natural to want to use your hands and arms to try to hit a golf ball. These muscles are also used when playing other sports, so it’s almost human instinct to swing a golf club back using just your hands and arms.
Golfers who generate a lot of power in their swings and hit consistent shots transfer their weight from centered to the trail foot and back to the lead foot at impact.
This requires a turn of the lower body. You can take some swings with your feet together to try and improve your weight transfer. It’s easier to feel the lower body turn and weight transferring as you move during this simplified swing.
It’s not always necessary to use a golf training aid to fix your weight transfer issue; drills and slow motion practice swings are just as effective.
Most importantly, you’ll learn to keep your arms out of the swing just a bit more.
To shift your weight and pressure the right way and improve your swing, watch this YouTube video.
Coming Over The Top
Coming over the top is probably one of the most common golf swing mistakes.
When you come over the top, the upper body leads the downswing, and the golf club gets off plane. As you swing through, you often cut across the ball and pull it left or leave it out to the right with a big slice.
To stop coming over the top, make sure that the first move down from the top of your backswing is a rotation of the lower body. As you rotate and transfer your weight through the ball, the club should fall into place on the proper plane.
Learning to swing from the inside is a major milestone in golf that produces much straighter golf shots. Keeping a towel under your trail arm is a great way to fix coming over the top. If the towel falls out on the downswing, your club will likely come over the top and get off the plane.
An Improper Takeaway
As important as the grip and setup are, your first move away from the golf ball (the takeaway) can make or break the rest of your swing. The most common mistake golfers struggle with is rolling the club too far inside on the backswing or pushing the hands away from the trail leg as the first move.
The proper takeaway can be easily found using the StraightAway. It attaches to your club and teaches you to keep the club on the perfect path regardless of your initial mistake.
One of the best things about correcting your takeaway is that the rest of the swing just falls into place.
Grip Too Strong or Weak
Finally, we have to address the grip. It’s the only connection you’ll have with the golf club, and when it’s not correct, the clubface angle at impact is greatly affected.
A strong golf grip will help you fix a slice. The lead hand is turned more towards the right, and the trail hand ends up on the underside of the club. The strong grip makes the trail hand more active in the swing – to help you square the face.
A weak golf grip will help you fix a hook. Many times, your grip became too strong at some point. With the weaker grip, your trail hand is less active in the swing.
Ideally, all beginners should look to get a neutral grip. With a neutral grip, you’ll see two knuckles on the lead hand when you are set up to hit. To be able to pinpoint what to look for in a neutral, weak, or strong golf grip, check out this video.
Use These Training Videos & Tips to Your Advantage
How many of these common golf mistakes are you making in your game? Chances are you have, at one point, struggled with one of them in your golf swing.
The good news is, it’s not necessary to completely rebuild your swing; just get to the root cause of the issue and attempt to fix it by your preferred method of training: whether that’s YouTube or SwingFix AI. By identifying, training, and ultimately fixing these golf swing issues, you’ll take your game to the next level and shoot lower scores in no time!
