Just like any newbie golf enthusiast, you’re constantly looking for the most effective golf tips for beginners to improve your game and shoot lower scores. Plus, you have to learn how to master your mental game so your mind doesn’t hold you back from greatness.
In this post, you’ll learn our very own 12 best golf tips for beginners so that you can speed up success. We believe that these methods will help you have more fun and play better golf.
Even if you’re brand new to golf, I’m sure you already know that the game is more challenging than any other sport. Not only do you have to battle the course and conditions, but you have to learn how to hit every shot imaginable.
Hopefully, this article will provide you with tips to improve your skills and create a strong foundation from the start.
12 Best Golf Tips for Beginners
Learning to play golf is easier than learning to play many other sports because golf is a closed-skill game. This means that you aren’t running, jumping or dodging balls when you’re trying to make a shot.
While it takes years to become a very good golfer, you can learn the basics faster than you think. Once you have the following golf tips for beginners, you’ll spend time on your practising what you’ve learned.
1. Play with the Right Equipment
One of the top-notch golf tips for beginners that you can learn until you become a professional player is to start playing with the right equipment. If you’re playing blades or unforgiving clubs and shooting in the 90s, you are making golf even harder on yourself.
Instead, play the right clubs for your current ability. Who cares if your friends give you grief for carrying hybrids or a 7-wood instead of long irons. At the end of the round, the only thing that matters is your score!
Don’t forget about your golf ball either. If you’re a beginner golfer, you want to make sure to play the right type of golf ball. Ideally, you want one that emphasizes more distance than spin.
As you evolve, you can try out a softer golf ball to help you spin it with your shorter clubs. Buying the right golf ball for beginners will also save you money!
2. Focus on The Fundamentals
While you might be searching for the most effective golf tips for beginners to hit your shot farther and shoot lower scores, don’t forget the fundamentals. So much happens before you ever hit the golf ball.
Make sure to double-check these checkpoints before hitting the golf ball:
Proper Stance
The first thing you need is a solid stance. Make sure that your feet are shoulder apart with your knees bent in an athletic position. For longer clubs like your driver or fairway woods, widen your stance to compensate for longer golf clubs.
Good Posture
Once your stance is solid, the next golf tip is to develop a good posture. You want to try and have your back flat, tilt your hips, bend your knees, and keep your head slightly back at address.
Find the Right Grip for You
Another important golf tip is to make sure your grip matches your swing. If you’re brand new to golf, start with a neutral grip. As your swing develops and you start to notice tendencies, you can weaken or strengthen your grip as necessary.
3. Double-Check Your Alignment
One of the biggest mistakes that so many players make is that they don’t aim square to the target. If you’re aimed right, your body will realize it and try to pull it back left. If you’re aimed left, your mind will adjust to get it back to the intended target.
Before trying to change your swing, check your aim first. Have a friend video your swing if you’re on the course or use it at the driving range. The squarer you are to the target, the more likely you will hit a better golf shot.
4. Master Your Tempo
Don’t the PGA Tour players make golf look easy? While we can’t create an article sharing all golf tips for beginners from them, we would like to share one important nugget.
If you think about it, among all the great players in golf, most of them don’t have much in common. But the one thing they all have in common is a great tempo.
They all have a 3:1 tempo. This means their backswing is three times as long as their downswing. So, if you want to mimic anything about the guys you watch on TV, make it your tempo. Regardless of if your swing speed is fast or slow, your tempo needs to match this 3:1 speed for full shots.
Otherwise, you will have difficulties with your swing, transition, and follow-through. Master your tempo early on for a life of more consistent golf.
5. Keep Your Emotions Controlled (Don’t Get Angry)
Imagine hitting a really bad shot, how do you react? Do you make it personal and get mad at yourself, as if you’re the only golfer to hit an embarrassing shot ever? Or, do you laugh it off and focus on the next shot?
If you want to become an awesome golfer you have to understand that bad shots are part of golf. Even the best of players still hit bad shots and they get paid millions of dollars to play this crazy sport.
Let go of the tension. Always remember to have fun when you’re on the course, there are a lot of worse places you could be!
6. Make Your Driver Your Best Friend
If you’re like a lot of beginning golfers, you might have a love-hate relationship with your driver. As it has the least amount of loft, it often exposes your swing flaws more than other clubs. While the misses can be scary at times, try to find a consistent swing with your driver.
Even if you don’t hit it straight all the time, don’t worry about it. As a beginner, focus on distance. If you can hit it long, you will have shorter clubs into the green which are much easier to hit than hybrids and fairway woods.
Here are a few more driver golf tips for beginners:
- Increase the loft. If you’re a beginner golfer, make sure it’s set at least 10.5 degrees or more. This will make it easier to hit and help get the ball airborne.
- Check your shaft. As a beginner, don’t make it harder to hit by playing a stiff shaft. Instead, opt for a regular or senior flex shaft, depending on your age.
7. Practice Your Short Game
While your driver should be your best friend, don’t forget to love your wedges and putter as well.
One of the easiest things you can do to improve your scores is to practice the shots around the green. Spend time on the chipping green hitting different types of flop shots, bump and runs, and bunker shots.
The real key to speeding up your success after learning the basic golf tips for beginners is to just practice more. Sure, it’s not as sexy as bombing drives on the range, but if you can’t score from 125 yards and in, that’s extremely frustrating.
8. Tee It, Forward
As beginner golfers, we highly recommend teeing it forward. Don’t make the course more difficult by trying to play the tips or one back from them. This leaves you with a lot of long approach shots which will likely slow your round down and not make it a very fun experience.
Instead, tee it forward or start playing on par-three golf courses. As you evolve, keep playing different tees and new golf courses. You will have a lot more fun and probably keep the foursome behind you a lot happier as well.
9. Get Lessons Early
If you’re a brand-new golfer, you have the advantage of not having formed bad habits over years or decades like a lot of golfers. Instead of trying to learn how to play the sport on your own, hire a swing coach. Even a few lessons to work on the fundamentals will help you drastically speed up success.
A good swing coach will help you get your feet, hips, and shoulders square to the target. From there, they can help you with your takeaway, transition, and downswing. Plus, they can work with your chipping and pitching skills.
Create the right habits from the beginning to become a solid golfer. If you’re interested in learning to play golf, set up a phone call or meeting with a qualified coach before you take your first lesson to discuss a plan for learning the game.
Ask how long it will take before you’re ready to play on the course. You need to establish how often you’ll need to practice to get to that point if the facility has loaner or rental clubs and what the cost of lessons will be.
10. Create a Pre-Shot Routine
One of the last golf tips for beginners is to create a pre-shot routine. A pre-shot routine helps you stay focused during the round and help you stay consistent. That way when you’re about to break 100, 90, or even 80 for the first time, you don’t sabotage yourself.
Your pre-shot routine surely helps you pick the right club, choose a target, get square to the target, and have your mind in the right place. Practice it first on the range for a more effective practice session and it will feel effortless on the course.
11. Try to Work Backwards
The quickest way to learn how to control a golf ball and send it where you want is using the Graduated Length Method of learning. To sum up the method, this means you start close to the hole, adding more of a backswing and follow-through as you learn to control the ball.
You start on the putting green, learning the short-stroke needed to putt. As you develop a feel for club-ball interaction and learn to control the ball on the green, you move slightly off the green and practice chipping.
Notably, chipping is a short movement like a putt but requires a bit more length to the swing. Once you get the hang of chipping, you move farther away from the hole and learn how to chip, which is a ¾ swing.
After you can control your pitches, it’s time to learn and practice a full swing. Because you’ve spent time learning how to use a club while putting, chipping and pitching, learning how to hit full-swing shots only requires you to add a bit more backswing and follow through.
12. Hit the Course with a Smart Plan
When you’ve developed the ability to hit various shots (even though you can’t always control where they go!), it’s time to hit the course. Don’t be worried about holding up others behind you – you can always pick up your ball or drop another and keep playing to keep the pace moving.
Once you work on first start playing rounds of golf, you don’t have to follow all of the scoring rules you’d follow in a tournament. Your goal is to experience what it’s like to hit a drive from a tee box, find your ball in the rough, hit out of the woods and experience hitting under pressure.
You might hire a golf professional to play the first nine holes with you. Your pro will not only give you technical information to help with your swing, but will also explain the rules to you as you go, help you select the right club and shot choices based on where your ball lands, and make sure you observe proper course etiquette.
FAQs About the Golf Tips for Beginners
What is the most important golf tip for beginners ever?
Based on our experience of coaching, we would say the best golf tip for beginners ever is to master your tempo.
So many players rush their swing on the way down or on the way back. This throws everything off and makes it difficult to shoot consistently low scores.
Even if your swing isn’t perfect, if your tempo is a consistent 3:1 speed, you will often hit the ball in the middle of the club. Who doesn’t want that experience on the course?
How do you break 80 every time?
Players who often shoot in the ’70s are that much different than those in the low to mid-80s. When it comes to shooting in the 70s and eventually, you need to:
Work on your short game.
If you want to break 80 and play your best golf, work on the short shots twice as much as your long shots.
For example, if you have 90 minutes to practice, spend 30 minutes putting, 30 minutes with wedges, and 30 minutes at the range. During the range session, spend a lot of time hitting different wedge shots and drivers.
Master your mindset.
Golfers who regularly shoot in the 70s don’t get mad often. They learn that bad shots and bad breaks are part of the game. Instead of making each bad shot an entire experience.
Have a plan for every shot.
If you want to break 80, make sure you have a strategy for each hole. Don’t just swing and hope it finds the fairway or green. Instead, create a tee box strategy, approach shot strategy, try not to short side yourself, and don’t try to be a hero!
Final Thoughts on the Best Golf Tips
Ultimately, there are a lot of different components to playing a good round of golf. There isn’t one golf tip for beginners or one new club that will shoot your best score every time you go out.
Some days you’ll hit the driver perfectly and won’t have any iron game. Other days, you won’t find a fairway but still manage to card low scores, that’s just this crazy game of golf.
Instead, it’s about constantly learning along the way. Each shot is an opportunity to learn, grow, and become a better golfer.
Let’s end with this. Don’t forget to have fun. When you’re out playing golf, enjoy yourself. Hopefully, you’re with friends, family or other people who are obsessed with golf just like you. Having more fun will also lead to lower scores in the end.
