There are good golf tips and bad golf tips. The question is,

“how do you decide which golf tips to listen to?”

This question has been brought home to me recently because a

good friend took up golf about two years ago. He has really

caught the bug and plays several times a week. He also has

lessons and practices frequently. Whenever we play together he

is constantly asking for tips and advice about his swing.

It is my belief that you should only give a player a golf tip

if you are sure that it will fit in with the rest of his swing.

I have seen far too many players lose their swings when trying

to adopt a golf tip which simply does not fit in with

everything else that goes on when they swing the club.

OK, I know, there are certain golf tips which are universally

sound, like, “keep your head still.” But equally there are

plenty of other golf tips that can be ruinous even when given

with the best of intentions.

In particular I recall a good player with whom I'd played many

rounds who always drew the ball right to left, usually with

good control. One day when his draw was a bit exaggerated, his

partner suggested this perfectly sound golf tip: “You know, if

you were to keep your right elbow well tucked in on the

downswing you would lose that nasty hook.”

The suggestion was well meant. However, for a player who had a

well grooved habit of swinging slightly over the top of the

ball, as Arnold Palmer was wont to do, it proved to be one golf

tip too much. He became so conscious of his right elbow that it

threw the whole of the rest of his swing out of shape and it

took him months to get it back again.

The point is that the golf tip didn't fit in with the rest of

his swing.

This is a mistake that many golfers make. They listen to all

the golf tips out there and try to adopt them all in their

desperate search for a good swing. It is my belief that your

aim should be to groove a golf swing that will give you streams

of straight and long golf shots by modelling your swing on one

set of advice. Then you should develop a mind movie of that

swing so that you can reproduce it whenever you play a shot.

Think how long some of the most famous partnerships between

players and their swing coaches have lasted. Think of Jack

Nicklaus and Jack Grout, Tiger Woods and Butch Harmon, Nick

Faldo and David Leadbetter to name but a few. All these great

players relied on one coach's vision of their swing to keep

their mind movie in shape. They did not go asking for golf tips

from other players.