5 Reflections From Having A Golf Lesson

Coaching yourself golf is like trying to cut your own hair. It doesn’t matter how good you are, you can’t see the same as someone looking at you.

I recently had a golf lesson and I wanted to share five reflections. I hope it provides some value for you in your golfing journey. I’m going to cover a bit of a back story and lesson goals, then jump into my reflection six weeks after having the lesson.

Backstory

I turned pro at 19 and began playing and coaching. I loved both, and although I was good enough to turn pro I was a long way off earning money from playing. I was certainly a better coach than player, but I’ve always believed that trying to push my own game helps me as a coach. Both developing my understanding of golf performance and better relating to the challenges players feel as they work to improve.

Over the past few years, a string of injuries has stopped me from practicing and playing. A dislocated shoulder, a torn shoulder tendon and a torn muscle in my back, to name a few.

I’ve also been busy – a self-funded 6-year PhD, lecturing, heading up the golf at Exeter University, building Golf Insider, Break X Golf and attempting to have a life.

This is all to say, my golf has not been up to scratch.

However, 2024 has become slightly more balanced, I’m now 38, injury-free-ish and have my golfing fundamentals roughly back in order (grip, posture and backswing).

So I wanted to get back to improving as a player, both for fun and to continue to become a better coach.

This year my goal is to have fun, shoot five rounds under par in strokeplay conditions (not matchplay or solo rounds) and not get injured again…

Golf this year

I’ve been lucky enough to play some cool places so far, with mixed results…

Course	Score	Format
Woodbridge GC	0	Matchplay
Seacroft GC	-2	Matchplay
North Berwick GC	-3	Strokeplay
LadyBank GC	5	Strokeplay
Royal Norwich GC	8	Matchplay
Brancaster GC	-1	Matchplay
Moortown GC	10	Strokeplay
Alwoodly GC	11	Strokeplay

I reached out to a golf coach I’ve known for many years but have never had a lesson with – Rob Joyce in Suffolk. He’s a wonderful guy, and has a wealth of coaching experience and I wanted to get some insight on how to improve my long-game.

Lesson goals

It’s important to head into a lesson with clear goals. Most golfers say ‘I want to be more consistent’. However, you need to drill down deeper, more consistent in what? Strike, distance, accuracy…what clubs are most affecting your scores?

Goals

My goal was to improve my accuracy, specifically reduce the hook, which tends to be my bad shot. As a result, I hit a big push now and again. Both shots can be very destructive and mean I struggle to shoot lower scores.

Below is an example ‘hooky’ drive on a lovely spring round of golf in April at Alwoodly GC with a few of my friends. It was a good hit, started just left, curved further left, clipped a tree and I lost the ball. One or two of these shots each round are very costly on demanding golf courses.

These poor shots affect me most with my driver, long irons and short irons and I know the main culprit is a shut club face at impact, but I also see that my swing path numbers vary too much for someone trying to hit the ball more accurately.

My analysis

As mentioned at the start of the article, I felt okay with my grip, posture and backswing. Still, when I looked at my downswing….there were so many areas I felt were not right and might be contributing to the variation in club face angle and swing path angle through impact.

• Lose posture angles
• Unsynced body & arm swing
• Lead leg slides
• Club face rotating too much through impact

As a golf coach, I know I don’t need to change all of these, instead, there will be 1-2 root issues causing all of these compensations.

Golf lesson experience

I’ve known Rob for many years and was very excited to get his thoughts. However, what surprised me was how nervous I was hitting those first few shots in a lesson.

Having your performance evaluated is a great way to evoke some nerves. As a result, I hit a couple of heavy iron shots, something I never really do in play or practice.

Rob’s approach was great, with lots of question-asking and videoing from different angles. I don’t video many players from behind, but watching Rob use this approach was one learning I’ll take away as a coach as it gives you some new insight into how the body segments are stacked and how they move.

Changes

I loved the simplicity of Rob’s diagnosis. There was one posture tweak so I could better rotate and shift my weight, but the key focus was on my right arm.

In Rob’s analysis, my right arm is the cause of my poor club face control through impact.

The right arm comes away from my body and gets behind me in my backswing, with my shoulder blade retracting and depressing at the top of my swing.

From this point my right arm never gets back in front of my body and by the time I reach impact my right arm is too far behind the golf ball and causes me to reach for the ball and close the club face as I try to make good contact.

There are a host of other compensations due to this, the lower body slide, and loss of posture angles are likely a result of this issue above.

He proposed I improve how my right elbow folded in my takeaway and focus on keeping my right arm more in front of my body at the top of the swing. From there the key feeling is to drive my right arm down and feel like I’m getting my right arm in front of my body through impact.

Initial practices

I was very excited. I knew in the golf lesson, that there was a real change in my ability to control the club face with just a few swings.

After the lesson, I hit lots of pitch and wedge shots. Pitch shots are a smaller version of the full swing and allow me to practice the key changes needed in my take away and into impact.

I then build up to hit more wedges, mid-irons, long irons and drivers.

The following week, I started to see a real improvement in the ball flight, with far fewer shots finishing left. There were some heely, high right shots, but the results were super consistent compared to where I was before.

It was time to hit the golf course for some practice.

Tip 1 – Pick a simple movement to practice your swing changes, focus on mastering the movements before trying to hit golf balls at 100%.

On the course

After one said practice session, flushing it on the golf range, I headed out for 9 holes on the golf course. I was feeling very confident.

I hit a slight pull with my 1st tee shot but was in the fairway and then proceeded to fat my 80-yard wedge shot 10 yards short of the green…

As the round went on things did improve. I started to hit more and more shots like the range and even hit the flagstick on a 170-yard par 3.

I tried to hit a hard drive down the last, missed the fairway right, and lost my golf ball.

Tip 2 – The golf course is just different. You need to go out on the course to drill swing changes. You also need to evaluate what shots you struggle with the most on the golf course and try to focus on these in practice.

If you want a deep dive into how to change your golf swing check out this video below.

Checking up on changes

I made a note to film my golf swing after five practice sessions to see how I was getting on. In my mind, I was grooving a golf swing that looked just like Adam Scott…

In reality, there was a very good change is the right arm during the backswing, but with so much focus on this my downswing lacked some dynamic movements and I wasn’t doing a great job of driving that right arm down and through into impact with the body.

Tip 3 – Feedback is critical for learning. Don’t get obsessed with filming your swing, but pencil in video sessions to check how your golf swing is changing in the way you think it is.

One inch can make a quantum change in performance

The video above is a video of my swing 4 weeks after the golf lesson. There is still some work to go, but it feels very different. Importantly, my levels of consistency for direction and curvature were much improved.

Tip 4 – Your golf swing doesn’t have to look wildly different for you to become a much better player. Change the fractions that count and you will be a much better golfer.

What’s next?

I’ve got many more months of work to do on this, and I’m sure I will need to revisit it from time to time. I will start adding in more varied practice. My range sessions now involve fewer technique-focused swings and more skills games like the one below from Break X Golf.

However, I really need to be more focused and obsessed with perfection in practice. This sounds really boring but when I consider how hard I’m trying to make a perfect movement in practice it’s only been a 6-7 out of 10. I’m also quite dialled in when playing skills games but I know there is room for improvement there too.

Tip 5 – 90% of the work to get better is after the golf lesson. It doesn’t matter how many golf lessons you have, what matters is how well you take action on the advice.

Summary

Tip 1 – Pick a simple movement to practice your swing changes, focus on mastering the movements before trying to hit golf balls at 100%.

Tip 2 – The golf course is just different. You need to go out on the course to drill swing changes. You also need to evaluate what shots you struggle with the most on the golf course and focus on these in practice.

Tip 3 – Feedback is critical for learning. Don’t get obsessed with filming your swing, but pencil in video sessions to check how your golf swing is changing.

Tip 4 – Your golf swing doesn’t have to look wildly different for you to become a much better player. Change the fractions that count and you will be a much better golfer.

Tip 5 – 90% of the work to get better is after your golf lesson. It doesn’t matter how many golf lessons you have, what matters is how well you take action on the advice.

This article is a little different, but I hope the takeaway points above give you useful insights you can apply to your golfing journey. Let me know if it has been useful and if you would like more updates like this in the future.

I currently have 2 – 6 hours a week to play and practice, but now I can play again, it’s been fun to have a new challenge and focus.

Happy golfing – Will @ Golf Insider.