Well I did call it something different at the time

There was this normally awkward green with a route to the pin wide open to me, quite a bit of green to catch the ball and a bank at the back to act as as safety net as well. All I needed was to use one of my most reliable clubs (the one coaches always seem to ask beginners to start with), drop the ball onto the green and walk away with a par or even a birdie.

Ended up with a bogie :-/

Here. Note the lone tree that sticks out from the pack. Most of the time the pin seems to be centre or right of green so awkward to get to unless you've kept left on the fairway. This time it was left and at the back. A juicy target for the taking

I do have a video from the front I will upload when I can.

I don't really have any problems with head movement and my weight transfer is fine. My main problems are coming down slightly steep and inside and also stopping rotating my body and arms a bit prematurely. Not really big problems though.

I'm going for a hit with a guy off +2 later today so see if he can help me iron them out.

I had the opposite a couple of years ago, playing an old boy and he was stroking at every hole. He could only hit it around 150 off the tee but he was down the middle all the time. at the 4 par three's I had 3 pars and a birdie and lost 3 of them and halved the other.

Longer holes were a different story though, anything approaching 400 yards and over he was running up doubles and higher. Luckily it was a par 72 course, if it had been a short par 65 or so with numerous par 3's I would have had no chance.

Been doing a bit of range practice the last week or so. Went for a range session earlier today.

My main problem seems to be getting "through" the ball properly. Sometimes, I seem to just not quite "go for it" enough and end up taking a big chunk out the ground, or shanking it, or whatever. But when I do get it right, which isn't often enough () I strike it beautifully. I can just feel it as I do it - it all feels right!

So hard to put my finger on exactly what I'm doing right or wrong! But I found a little trick today on the range that seemed to help. I found that when I did get right "through" the ball I was finishing in a nice catalgoue golf swing pose, with my arms up high - almost kissing my right bicep! Whereas when I did a crap shot, I was finishing all over the place, weight shifted, often off balance.

So I was concentrating on forcing myself to finish in that nice pose and it seemed to help. Maybe this is nuts and is the wrong thing to be doing, but it seemed to help me anyway!

Andrue, I uploaded one from the front for you to look at - https://youtu.be/D0w-4ZJPHyY

The light's not great unfortunately.

Yeah, there's something odd to my mind about your back leg. It seems to straighten at the top of the backswing. It's quite visible in the first video. But quite a few pro golfers do that as well and anyway it might just be down to viewing angle.

http://www.golfwrx.com/forums/topic/...-of-backswing/

I think it might be the angle as I have a few other videos and it's not happening in any of them. Thank you for your input.

It would be good if others could upload swing videos and get assistance with any problems they have.

It's not nuts
It's a basic that my pro picks up on in every shot in every lesson - the stance you are in after you've completed your strike.
When I swing badly I finish with my weight on my right foot leaning back and my head came up on impact.
Classic poor technique - and it creeps back if you aren't concentrating enough.

This is true of me too. Sometimes I'll finish up having stepped away, or backwards, or trying to regain my balance! Think I'll work on this finishing stance thing, going to the range again later today.

When I've had lessons, each shot I make the pro tells me what I did right or wrong. For someone at my level, when I'm alone on the range and play a bad shot I don't necessarily know what the error is! Rather prophetically, just above the driving bay I was in yesterday was a sign advertising lessons saying something along the lines of "Don't practice your errors, get a lesson with the pro!"

I played a decent course today, pretty tough and can play long. On the front 9 I hit every green and somehow managed to take 20 putts and turn in +2.

Came off after the 13th and spent a while on the practice green. 20 years ago I was a very good putter but right now it's pretty poor and irritating when you aren't converting good ball striking into good scores often enough.

My putting has got better recently. The trick of doing a proper follow through has worked wonders. I did the front 9 at my course only 4 over (a personal best) on Thursday night and was looking forward to breaking 9. But then I came up behind two two balls. The front pair were taking a stupidly long time to prepare shots and on the green. The pair I was behind were annoyed but were letting them get away with it. They also didn't offer to let me through. By the time I had a chance to get past I was properly wound up so I packed it in on the 12th.

Very irritating. Normally people in the evening don't hang about.

Sheesh. Failed at Silverstone again. That's one tough course. 102 this time. I think part of the problem is the way they mow the fairway. They don't stay central between the boundaries but instead meander left and right. It means you can't just let it rip because even a 'straight down the middle' flight could leave you in the rough. And the rough is nasty stuff.

If you can't shape your shots it means laying up is the only safe option but that's very difficult on what seems from the tee to be a straight forward hole :-/

2 simple things about putting

you mention a good follow through, thats all to do with making sure the putter head doesn't decelerate through the ball.

make sure you dont break your wrists when putting. imagine a triangle formed by your arms and across the top of the shoulders. that triangle should stay intact when you putt and move as a whole.

hope that makes sense.

Think I've mentioned this before on this thread but one of the best things I did for my golf game was to get a putting lesson. When I turned up and told the pro I wanted to work on putting, his face visibly lit up! He said it was far and away the easiest thing to teach and the easiest thing to learn. Sure enough, by the end of 45 minutes my putting was about three times better!

a good short game can make up for so much in the rest of your game

i was never the greatest iron player but i was a pretty good scrambler

i would average 28-29 putts per round, not because i was a great putter but i missed alot of greens and was able to pitch close so had alot of single putts

I had another lesson at the weekend. He picked up that my grip was still off, I wasn't turning my hip enough and that I lifting the club vertically rather than swinging it round my back. Quite a lot to work through but I hit the range today and started the practice drills to fix it. It's amazing to think how I spent so many years playing with completely the wrong technique and was surprised that I never improved.

At the moment by aim is to just improve enough to the level that you could actually tell I play golf occasionally At the moment I can go on the course and get beaten by people who have barely lifted a club before.

'Swinging it around your back' - that made me smile. You should see me with a driver. My club head barely makes it above the level of my waist. But that means a straight left wrist and a ball that heads off down the middle of the fairway and ends 200 yards away. It's an excellent start to a hole at most courses. Silverstone being an exception :-/

I've seen loads of 'mature' players at the course with really short swings (almost a swipe) that manage to get the ball straight a good distance. It goes to show that you don't have to follow the 'proper' technique if you're able to develop your style, though I guess there's a limit to what you'll achieve. Driving 200 yards is fine if you are happy regularly getting to the green in 3 (which I would be very happy with).

I struggled again at the course today - 134. That's 12 higher than when I played the same course two weeks ago and 20 higher than the first attempt a couple of months ago. My game has just completely gone to pot since i started having lessons, haven't hit under 120 in a month.

I suppose I just have to keep at it. My aim is just to get to the point where I can start concentrating on course management and specific types of shot rather than just hitting the ball cleanly every time.

Have you tried playing a different format of golf than stroke play? Against an opponent? For example, match play, skins or Stableford?

At your level, stroke play is clearly demoralising you. Playing a different format would allow you to largely forget the really bad holes, whereas stroke play won't. I've never done a round of proper stroke play to be honest! I'll always play against someone in one format or another. It's a far more interesting and exciting way to play in my opinion. Much better for the higher handicapper.

As an addition to what I wrote above - I found this as well, bizarrely! Had a series of lessons a couple of years back and the pro basically altered my whole set up and stance, which I'd been doing incorrectly for a long time. It felt totally alien to me, because I'd been doing the wrong thing for so long. As a result, I was playing badly for a long time before things slotted more into place. He warned me this would happen actually and drummed it into me that I had to stick at it or I would never improve.

Not saying I'm amazing of course! Far from it. But I'm in a far better place now than I was before then.

And I re-iterate my last post as well - stroke play is likely really demoralising you. If you don't have anyone to play match play or skins against and are playing on your own, just play Stableford. That way you can instantly forget the bad holes and will come away with a score you can compare future rounds to.

gotta agree with hugh , doesn't matter how good you are if you try to make some fairly big changes to the technical side of your game then it will get worse before it gets better

not sure if this makes any sense but if you do come to the game when you are a bit older then it might be worth asking yourself what are you looking to get out of the game, do you want to get into competition golf or are you just looking to play as a hobby. sometimes pros will try to change too many things at once and it can demoralise you, when just focussing on one area, fixing that and waiting til you get comfortable with that one thing before moving on to the next "fix" can be a better way to go.

my grip was wrong when i was in my early teens, i had never had a lesson and got invited to some free coaching by my county. the pro tried to change my grip and the end result was that had a knock-on effect to other aspects of my game as i was compensating for the "wrong" grip and as soon as i fixed that i had to wait for the rest of my swing to adjust to the fact i was now gripping the club differently.

Thanks for the above advice.

When I take a step back and think about it it's obvious that changing your game is going to make you struggle at first. I've actually been playing regularly with two guys that only started playing last year - and that's depressing because i've gone from easily beating them by 30 strokes every game to them now beating me.

I am just playing for fun; i'm not bothered about tournaments or anything. But there needs to be a sense of achievement, i've always seen the 28 handicap as a indication of someone that has at least learnt the basics of the game.

Golf is just so frustrating. A few years ago I starting playing pool on a semi-regular basis, maybe once or twice a week, and I noticeably improved. I didn't need lessons or special equipment or hours of practice, I just got slightly better each week I played. It didn't take long before I could easily beat friends down the pub who only played occasionally. Now golf is a much more complex game than pool but you would hope that after so much practice and everything else that you actually improved and were able to beat people who only bring the clubs out a couple of times at summer.

I can empathise with this. When I first took up golf, I was a "hacker" and stayed that way for a couple of years. I always played (and still do) with mates who were much lower handicappers than me and I never took it seriously. For me, having a good laugh was the main point of playing and I didn't really get concerned that I wasn't improving - I just thought that I would at some point in the future! Always just played off 28 with no thoughts of it coming down.

Then another of our friends started playing too and he improved very quickly. Within a year or so, he'd been cut to the low 20s. This really put my nose out of joint. Outwardly, I'm not competitive. But inside I was fuming! I then started to take it much more seriously, got lessons and have improved. In the meantime, he hasn't improved much and the lads have actually advised him to up his handicap by a couple of shots. We are of roughly equal ability and both play off the same now. Aspects of my game are better than his and vice versa.

But yes, I feel your pain at having that feeling of having taken backward steps! Stick with it, weather the storm. It will get better.

What are your thoughts on avoiding stroke play for a while and sticking to a different format?

I know exactly how you feel with that one! When we first started playing together they were both hacking round and I was getting my 110-115 scores and winning easily. I was annoyed that I couldn't get down to 100 but I felt good that at least it was obvious who the long term player was. Now that i've slipped to hitting 120+ and they are getting closer to 120 i'm getting beat every now and again and it's just so upsetting - like all those years of golf were for nothing.

I think that going to match play would be a good idea as all three of us tend to fall apart after a few bad holes end any chance of a reasonable score. Though I do worry that it will stop us focusing on recovering from bad positions; I know that for me the difference between a 'good' round and 'bad' one is when I keep the poor holes to triple bogeys rather than a maximum 11.