What are the benefits of golf lessons? Our staffers share their experiences

Golf is a great sport. It’s also a very hard sport — and that’s true for everyone who tees it up. There is not a golfer on earth who hasn’t experienced the agony of a round gone awry or a terrible range session that leaves them searching for answers.

Sometimes, those answers can be tough to find. That’s where swing lessons come in handy. Having a professional look at your swing and analyze the flaws is crucial if you want to improve, and there’s no better remedy to a broken swing than advice from an expert.

trackman on range
Why a fact-based improvement plan is key to lowering your scores
By: Nick Clearwater, GOLFTEC VP of Instruction

Our GOLF.com staffers are no different in that regard. Although we live and breathe the sport, we’re just like the rest of the golfers out there. Some days are good, and some of them are crummy. And we’re always looking to improve.

That’s why we teamed up with our friends over at GOLFTEC. We’re all looking to lower our scores, and with their help, we’re confident we can get there. That’s why this year several of our staffers embarked on their own game-improvement journeys (myself included). We took a series of lessons over the course of the year and chronicled our journeys in our Room for Improvement series, and last week we sat down to recap our experiences.

To hear more about our journeys, check out the full video above. Or, you can read below for some snippets from our staffers on the favorite parts of their game-improvement journeys.

Swing Evaluation for GOLF.com Readers

Ready to jump in and start your GOLFTEC Journey? Fill out this form to book a swing evaluation or club fitting! A local GOLFTEC Coach will contact you to discuss your game and goals.

Sean Zak, senior editor

“It’s so hard to figure out what you’re doing on your own, or with your golf friends. I have become a GOLFTEC truther through the lone fact that I have someone focused on my game that isn’t me or the person that’s trying to beat me. Having someone who is an actual expert repeatedly looking at my swing was the biggest difference for me.”

Josh Berhow, managing editor

“After taking consistent lessons, I can tell you that one-off lessons aren’t gonna do it. Especially for someone like me who entered as a 17 handicap. You need that consistent help. You can’t just expect to go to the range and not really practice what you’re working on at GOLFTEC and all of the sudden get better. You need to see someone every other week and work on the little things, because there’s a good chance that you’re going to go back and see some bad habits.”

Jessica Marksbury, multimedia editor

“For my entire golf career, I haven’t had consistent lessons and I have felt when things do go sideways on the course that I’m flying blind a little bit. But after my lessons, I finally had a couple of things that I can keep in my back pocket that I know will fix my misses.”

Zephyr Melton, assistant editor

“There were many things that were flawed in my swing, but we didn’t try to change them all at the same time. We started with one and fixed that and then went to another. That was a good way of not overloading myself with information where I have all of these swing thoughts over the ball. But I think the way I gauged my progress was at the end of the lesson I’d go on the portal and take a look at my swing videos from the lesson where it’s before and after. So I would always download the after swing and then whenever I went to the range later on I would get a video of my swing and compare the two. And I knew the video from GOLFTEC was where I was doing it right, so I’d try to match that up.”

Zephyr Melton

Golf.com Editor

Zephyr Melton is an assistant editor for GOLF.com where he spends his days blogging, producing and editing. Prior to joining the team at GOLF, he attended the University of Texas followed by stops with the Texas Golf Association, Team USA, the Green Bay Packers and the PGA Tour. He assists on all things instruction and covers amateur and women’s golf. He can be reached at zephyr_melton@golf.com.