Bad golfers are a dime a dozen. Go out to your local club and you’re sure to see more than a few. Heck, you might even be one of them.
In a game that’s so difficult to become proficient at, there sure are a lot of ways to shoot high scores. As someone who’s posted my fair share of big numbers, I can certainly attest.
However, while bad golfers are not uniform in their flaws, there are certain commonalities many of them share.
Recently, I spoke with GOLFTEC’s Director of Teaching Quality Josh Troyer to find out some of the biggest swing flaws shared by poor golfers. And using GOLFTEC’s OptiMotion technology, he came up with three of the most common ball-striking flaws that bad golfers share.
Key swing mistakes bad golfer make
1. Sway away from the target
While it’s true that you should sway away from the target a bit during the backswing, it’s probably not as much as you think. In fact, when good ball strikers reach the top of the backswing, they actually have moved toward the target by a few inches. This move is called “re-centering” and it’s something bad golfers struggle with. Instead of starting to shift back toward the target, they continue swaying away from the target throughout the entire backswing.
“Golfers who don’t hit the ball very solidly tend to sway away from the target at the top of the backswing,” Troyer says. “Instead of getting their hips to move about three inches toward the target by impact, their hips and shoulders often end up more than an inch behind where they started. That’s a red flag for contact issues.”
2. Separating elbows
Another common swing flaw among poor golfers is that their elbows get further apart during their motion. When a good ball striker makes a swing, their elbows tend to start with their elbows about eight inches apart and they return to that distance by impact. Bad golfers tend to struggle with this move and often create more space between their elbows by impact, which results in a “chicken wing.”
“They might start at eight inches, but by the time they hit the ball, their elbows are 10, 12, or even 14 inches apart,” Troyer says. “That’s a really inefficient way to try to make solid contact. It’s a common cause of thin shots, topped shots, and fat shots — basically because it changes the effective length of the club.”
3. Lack the correct tilt
At impact, good players tilt their right side (for right-handers) some 30 degrees to the right, and that number increases post-impact. With poor ball-strikers, we don’t see that tilt. Instead, they will often stay more level and resort to other, less-efficient methods to save the swing.
“Instead of tilting properly and shifting their sways forward — and bending slightly backward to launch the ball — struggling golfers often do the opposite,” Troyer says. “They sway backward, tilt left, and keep their head and chest pointed down at the ground. Then they have to separate their elbows just to avoid chunking it.”
