Golf isn’t just a difficult, game it’s also a complicated one. The swing, the clubs, the rules, the conditions, the courses; there’s a lot to think, all of which serves to make golf quite complicated. There is, simply put, too much information out there, and it presents a trap that golfers of all levels, from the PGA Tour down through the recreational ranks, often fall into.
That’s what Hall of Fame teacher Butch Harmon discussed on the most recent episode of his son, Claude Harmon III’s GOLF.com “Off Course.”
“We’ve got too damn many coaches. A driver coach, an iron coach, a wedge coach, a putting coach. They have too much of that going on.” Butch says, which you can watch above. “Sometime too much information can be a bad thing. It clogs up your brain.”
Butch takes a moment it’s not the information itself that’s bad — indeed, information there’s more, better information than ever before, Butch says. Rather, taking on-board too much of it that presents a problem. It’s why he says golfers need to focus on making things as simple as possible and focus on the really important stuff.
Butch says: Copy the players that are most consistent
“Consistency is a big thing. You look at the guys who stay consistent, those are the guys you should copy,” he says. “But golf is still just a simple game. You’re just trying to put a number in a box, and there are no pictures on the scorecard.
Luke Kerr-Dineen is the Game Improvement Editor at GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. In his role he oversees the brand’s game improvement content spanning instruction, equipment, health and fitness, across all of GOLF’s multimedia platforms.
An alumni of the International Junior Golf Academy and the University of South Carolina–Beaufort golf team, where he helped them to No. 1 in the national NAIA rankings, Luke moved to New York in 2012 to pursue his Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University. His work has also appeared in USA Today, Golf Digest, Newsweek and The Daily Beast.