7 best tips that worked for GOLF staffers in 2024

Let’s talk ‘door on a hinge.’

And ‘hook on a nose.’

And ‘stance in a whiskey barrel.’

What the? Don’t worry, you’re in the right place and on the correct web page. 

Golf tips, as you are well aware, come in all flavors. There are seemingly countless ways to properly show you how to take a stick to hit a ball. So consider this a holiday gift to you. We’ve tasked a few members of our staff to share their best piece of golf advice they’ve received this year, and those answers are below.  

At the least, they’re colorful — three of the tips make up the first three paragraphs of this article. 

7 best tips that worked for GOLF staffers in 2024 

STAFFER: Josh Sens

TIP THAT WORKED FOR YOU: In my experience, golf tips have a fleeting half-life. They work until they don’t, which usually isn’t long. But this one helped my ball-striking for much of the summer: Imagine that your right hip (if you’re a lefty, it’s your left hip) is a door on a hinge. On the backswing, it opens. On the downswing, it closes. The feeling should be that your right hip is whacking the ball. I’m sure that, as with most tips, there are all sorts of ways that this could be misinterpreted and lead to all kinds of problems. Which might explain the sorry state of my game right now. But, as I said, for a brief, shining period, it worked so well that I almost believed I had golf solved.

STAFFER: Nick Piastowski 

TIP THAT WORKED FOR YOU: While I like my tips to be effective, I also want them to be efficient. I have too many other thoughts going on up there — no comments please — to be bogged down by advice that’s more complicated to understand than Augusta’s greens. And that’s why I liked this tip I found from Butch Harmon that demonstrates how far you should stand from the ball. All you need to do is grip the club, take your stance, then release your right hand. “It should be right across from where you gripped it,” Harmon said on the video. “In other words, just let it come across this way, it hangs, you put it back, you’re the right distance from the ball.” When I gave it a go, I found that I stood a bit too far away. Good stuff. 

STAFFER: Alex Gelman

TIP THAT WORKED FOR YOU: Hitting a golf ball is challenging enough. Picking your head up too early makes it even tougher. I have a habit of wanting to look up to see where the ball is going before I’ve even hit it. To break this tendency, my club pro gave me an unusual tip: He told me to imagine a hook attached to my nose. If I picked my head up, the hook would tug painfully. (For the record, there was no actual hook involved.) This mental trick made a world of difference. A small shift in mindset during a swing can lead to big improvements. After all, golf is as much a mental game as it is physical.

Short Game

STAFFER: Josh Berhow

TIP THAT WORKED FOR YOU: I learned a ton while on-site for our recent Top 100 Teachers Summit, and one topic I talked to a few teachers about was warming up the correct way. In short, most amateurs have no plan on the range, but one trick to maximize that time is to warm up with just 10 golf balls. Or imagine you have just 10 golf balls. The premise is simple: if you have 50 balls to hit, you might swing away aimlessly and not think anything of it. But if you have just 10 to hit, think how much thought and care you would put into the setup, those swings and those shots? That’s the warm-up you want. Less is more.

STAFFER: Sean Zak

TIP THAT WORKED FOR YOU: What has always worked for me in moments of struggle is to imagine I’m standing in a barrel. If you can’t slide your hips backward and forward, you’ll have to rotate those hips to create any power. If you haven’t guessed it already, I battle sliding/swaying hips in my takeaway, which brings all sorts of contact issues into play at the bottom of the swing. So I imagine I’m standing in an old whiskey barrel — like Paula Creamer taught me — and that makes me turn. 

STAFFER: Dylan Dethier

TIP THAT WORKED FOR YOU: I became a dad this year and didn’t really play much golf, which was definitely an adjustment. But I did play one competitive round and it actually went reasonably well thanks to one mantra: Listen to your swing. I make no promises, but if you’re knocking off some rust, try it out! Show up early. Hit some balls. See where it’s going. See how far it’s going. Reserve judgment. Remove ego. Be nice to yourself. See what feel works. And listen to that swing. 

STAFFER: Maddi MacClurg 

TIP THAT WORKED FOR YOU: One of the best tips I received this year was a simple putting tip from Joe Plecker, a GOLF Top 100 Teacher. We were on the putting green, and Plecker was using a putting ramp to demonstrate how speed can affect your line on the greens. He explained that speed not only impacts your line, but over time, it can skew your ability to read the putt and find the optimal line for your desired speed. As someone who is heavy-handed on the green, this sounded all too familiar. So, I asked Plecker how I could sync up my speed and line, sans putting ramp, of course. And he told me that an easy way to improve your distance control and line is to putt while looking at the hole. I tried it out a few times and holed half of the 10-to-15 footers that I selected. While I can’t see myself incorporating ‘heads-up putting’ into my on-course approach, I will absolutely be using it before my rounds to adapt to new conditions or unfamiliar greens. 

Let’s keep the tip conversation going. Last month, the author of this story published an article headlined “My nephew is looking to break 80. So I asked Nelly Korda for 1 tip,” and you can find that story by clicking here, or by scrolling immediately below. 

*** 

NAPLES, Fla. — Sorry, Mason. I was just trying to help. 

If I embarrassed you in front of Nelly Korda, I apologize. 

Wait, what? Wild, right? I’ll try to explain. Mason is my 16-year-old nephew, and, in his uncle’s estimation, has true golf hall of fame potential. But first he has to break 80 consistently. 

Korda, of course, you know. Seven-time winner this year on the LPGA. Fifteen-time winner overall. By all measures, she’s great at golf. She’s also at this week’s CME Group Tour Championship, the LPGA’s season-ending event. 

And so am I. 

So I thought: Why not? I asked Korda and other LPGA pros this:

My 16-year-old is looking to break 80. He shoots in the mid-to-high 80s now. What’s one tip you’d give him?

It was a bit frivolous. But the benefit, I think, was three-fold. The players talk shop. Mason gets a tip. Maybe you do, too.

Except now Mason is worried that Korda thinks he isn’t that great. Whatever. The kid will live. 

Maybe break 80 consistently, too. 

The full exchanges are below. 

Nelly Korda 

Nelly, kind of a lighthearted question. My 16-year-old nephew is trying to break 80 for the first time. He shoots in the mid-80s, high 80s. What’s one tip you would give him?

“One tip I would give him? Well, two,” Korda said. “A lot of the people that I see who are ams never have a stick down on the range. If you don’t know where you’re aiming, there is a high chance you don’t know where you’re aiming on the golf course.

“Tip two, I see a lot of people stand on the range and just drilling golf balls or just practicing a lot instead of going out and visualizing.

“At the end of the day, golf is a game of creativity and you’re never going to have your A-game. One day the wind will be off the left and one day off the right. The hole will play completely different. It’s all about creativity.

“So going out and playing a lot.”

Lexi Thompson 

My 16-year-old nephew is trying to break 80 for the first time and shoots in the mid-80s right now. What’s one quick tip you would give him?

“That I would give him to break 80?” Lexi Thompson asked. “How long has he been playing?”

Been playing about four years.

“Oh, that’s pretty good then,” she said. “He’s going in the right direction. I always say the biggest tip that helped out the most when I went out and practiced was always have a goal in mind. Always have something you want to improve on. It could be the smallest or biggest of things, the mental side. As we know, golf is such a mental sport. Could be working on the mental side and visualizing shots.

“So going out there with a purpose. Don’t just go out to the golf course and be like I’m just going to hit some balls today or play. Have a goal, something you want to improve on. That way, you’re not wasting any time and it’s always productive practice.

“Even if you struggle a little bit, you had a goal, you committed, and you’re striving to be better.”

Lydia Ko 

This is an easy one. It’s instruction-based. My nephew is trying to break 80 for the first time. He shoots like mid-80s, high 80s. What’s one tip you would give him?

“One tip. I would say try and nail down what is the consistent reason — I think when you shoot in the 80s or high 70s, it’s always not because you consistently make a bogey, but it’s more like one hole where you made a double,” Lydia Ko said. “And most of the time, those mistakes are very repetitive. And even for me, I play and have — it’s kind of the same reason why I make those mistakes. Try and nail down what that key dominator is and that way you’ll be able to work on that and I think that slowly fixes itself without you trying to break everything down and try and make everything better.” 

Ally Ewing 

My 16-year-old nephew is trying to break 80 for the first time. What’s one tip you would give him?

“My tip would be go to a tee box that makes that realistic,” Ally Ewing said, “and then when you break 80 on that tee box, move back a box. So I would move up to a tee — like probably some people would say that’s not good. I think scoring is scoring and you have to learn to score.

“You know, shooting 61 from the forward tees is still really hard. You still have to golf your ball. I would encourage him to go to a tee box where he feels like he can attain that and steadily move back and keep challenging yourself that way.”

Ruoning Yin 

My 16-year-old nephew is trying to break 80 for the first time. What’s one tip you would give him?

“Break 80? Practice your short game and putting,” Ruoning Yin said, “because that’s what you spend most of the time on the golf course. Let’s say 62-stroke course. You’re probably going to spend half on putting.

“If you want to break 80, I would say spend time on your putting.”

Angel Yin 

One golf instruction question I had. So my 16-year-old nephew is trying to break 80 and get onto his high school varsity team next year. What’s one tip you’d give him?

“Hit through the ball and not at the ball. It’s simple,” Angel Yin said. “I think a lot of people try to hit at the ball because it’s the one ballgame you play that the ball is really stationary and you have to go after it. In football, they’re throwing it at you; tennis, the ball is coming at you — you’re reacting. Where this one, you have to, I don’t know, go after the ball. It’s a little bit different. You have to make the ball move.” 

Jenno Thitikul 

(Editor’s note: Jeeno Thitikul was this year’s winner of the Aon Risk-Reward Challenge — so I asked her a risk-reward question.) 

If you were talking to a higher handicap player, how would you advise them about going for a risk or playing it safe?

“Well, for me it’s hard,” Thitikul said. “I know golf is so hard. It’s like a really — there’s the ball and the club is like this big. I think sometimes it needs confidence. You need confidence and not afraid to make a mistake if you’re going to go to a risk. I think that’s the big key, when you have a really challenging hole, a really risk hole, water or something that you have to carry. I think confidence is the most important.”