5 Misconceptions That Are Preventing Golfers From Improving

One of the reasons I started Practical Golf was to help put an end to the myths and misinformation that golfers spread amongst themselves. Game improvement advice is often like a game of telephone from your childhood – by the time it reaches you, the information is not very helpful.
To be clear, I’m just as guilty as all of you. A lot of my own personal mistakes in this game are the genesis of the 350+ articles I’ve written over the past five years. While I don’t have all the answers, I’ve gotten closer to the truth of many essential concepts.
In this article, I will discuss five misconceptions that are rampant amongst golfers. These are all mistakes I’ve made over the years, and I’ll also link to other articles I’ve written to explore these thoughts further.
Practice Makes Perfect
When I first took up golf as a child, I was obsessed with practicing. I would hit 300 balls at the range until my hands bled. After school, I practiced wedge shots in the yard for hours. It helped me build many skills that are with me to this day, but it also created an unhealthy habit that robbed me of enjoying the game as much as I could have.
At the time, I assumed that all of those hours spent practicing would directly translate to better performance on the course. When I didn’t play as well as I expected, I lost my temper and spent a lot of time sulking through rounds. What I didn’t know was that golf is a lot more than just practice and that there had to be more of a balance with learning how to play on the course.
The trap I fell into is similar to what many of you experience:
- I assumed there would be a correlation between how many hours I spent working on my game and what I could expect from my scores.
- A lot of my practice time was not focused, and I was merely going through the motions.
A common theme in many of my articles is that golfers need to have healthier expectations on how much they can practice, how to spend that time efficiently, and then balance that with how much time you can spend on the golf course. Unfortunately, one doesn’t work without the other. This article helps explore that concept further.
Further Resources:
Your Practice Sessions Are Likely Missing this
How to Practice With a Launch Monitor
Cautious Golf Is Always Better Golf
For a long time, I played what I would call a version of “scared golf.” Everywhere I looked around the course, I saw trouble, and it forced me to take a very cautious approach. After learning a lot more about strategy and advanced statistics from resources like Mark Broadie and DECADE, I believe this method worked against me in certain situations, and for me in others.
For the most part, taking a very conservative strategy on approach shots is a good idea. I’ve shown that golfers don’t have as much control over the ball as they think they do. So when a player tries to take aim at the pin and make birdies, it’s usually costing them strokes, and resulting in bogeys or worse. In fact, for many of you, I recommend this simple strategy on almost all of your iron shots.
However, playing it too safe also has its consequences, particularly on tee shots. Often times, golfers will take clubs less than driver off the tee because they feel they can hit more fairways. In this test, I showed that hitting iron off the tee versus driver wasn’t actually such a winning proposition. The main problem was the loss in distance cost me strokes, and I wasn’t as accurate as I believed with an iron.
I now approach tee shots with the mentality that I want to advance the ball as far as possible while avoiding the big trouble (penalty areas, trees, bunkers). Placing too much emphasis on hitting fairways can be a misleading statistic. In other words, landing your tee shot in the rough with a clear path to the green is a positive result.
Swing Smooth and Easy
Swing tempo is one of the most misunderstood topics about the golf swing. In my opinion, the concept is glossed over way too often by the teaching community. Unfortunately, when it comes to the timing of your golf swing, we are usually left with notions like “swing smooth and easy.” Phrases like that don’t give any actionable advice.
We often marvel at swings like Ernie Els and Fred Couples and comment on how effortless and smooth their swings look. What we don’t realize is that they are swinging about 30-40mph faster than a club golfer, but their impeccable timing doesn’t make it look that way. Often times, I’ll see golfers try to exaggerate a slow backswing (myself included for a long time) thinking it’s going to help them become a better ball striker because it felt smooth. Usually, this doesn’t help.
I wrote this article on swing tempo a while ago. It tells the story of how the timing of your golf swing is critical and ways you can work on it. To this day, it’s been one of the most essential concepts for my own golf swing. Additionally, many readers of the site have reached out to me with the success they have seen using these ideas in their own practice swing.
Building the proper relationship between the timing of your backswing and downswing is fundamental to becoming a better player – just trying to swing smoothly for the sake of it without any meaningful direction is not going to cut it!
Hit Down On It
Somewhere along the way, golfers spread the concept of hitting down on the ball as the best way to become a better iron player. Even I used to tell people, “you have to hit down on the ball to make it go up.”
But what does that even mean?
A lot of us take our cues from watching the pros on TV. For the most part, you’ll see the best golfers in the world taking huge divots that fly a few feet in front of them. When I was a junior golfer, I used to try and mimic them, and I would slam my irons into the artificial turf at the driving range. It didn’t make me any better.
When we refer to hitting down on the ball, we’re talking about a concept called angle of attack. The definition is the angle that the golf club approaches the ball through the impact zone. Without getting too technical, here is an image to help illustrate a negative angle of attack:

With your irons, you will either have a negative or neutral angle of attack. But where some golfers get carried away with the “hit down on it” concept is that they will get too steep. Pro golfers have tremendously fast swing speeds, so they can have very extreme negative attack angles with their irons. However, for ordinary golfers, who have more moderate swing speeds, getting too steep will rob them of distance, create problems with turf interaction (think fat shots), and harm their ability to control the ball.
The truth is that most golfers don’t actually need to hit down on it that much. You’d be better served with a very minimal angle of attack or even neutral. I rarely take divots, and I’ve been measured anywhere between a negative 2 to zero attack angle with most of my irons, which means that my irons approach the golf ball at a very shallow angle. And that’s OK; the loft of the club will primarily take care of getting the ball in the air.
Additionally, this concept also harms golfers when it comes to hitting their driver. For maximum distance, you want to have a positive angle of attack, which means the driver will be moving on an upward trajectory as it approaches the golf ball. In my guide to increasing driving distance, I explore this concept more.
To summarize:
- You don’t need a steep angle into the ball with your irons, a shallow or neutral angle will work just fine for most of you
- With your driver, hitting “down on it” is actually robbing most of you of distance
Take the Break Out of Putts
There are a lot of misunderstandings when it comes to putting. One of the biggest mistakes I used to make, was assuming that if I wanted to make a putt, that I would hit it with more speed to take the break out of it. A lot of golfers believe this is an effective strategy, especially on shorter putts.
It turns out that you’re actually making it harder for yourself to make a putt if you add more speed. While you might remove the variable of the slope, you are essentially making the hole smaller. To expand on this concept, I always recommend golfers watch this video to illustrate why hitting putts with the proper speed is still your best option:
Wrapping It Up
Hopefully, I got you pointed in the right direction on a few key topics. I’d love to hear what misconceptions about becoming a better golfer you have managed to disprove in your own journey. Feel free to comment below
Thanks for another excellent article. I’ve found your insights about practice especially true for me. Instead of beating balls on the range, last year I decided to practice with intent, and focused most of my energy on the short game. Challenging myself with games like the par 18 short game drill you describe in another article improved my touch around the greens. At the end of last season, my handicap was at it lowest point ever, mostly because I was getting up and down more often.
thanks, Kent! Glad to hear the advice is helping you out 🙂
If I understand correctly for putting, according to Scott Fawcett, I should not be following Dave Pelz’ data to putt at a speed fast enough to travel 17inches past the hole.
Intentions can be a funny thing when it comes to golf (especially putting). I believe if you’re trying to “slam” a putt in the hole from a shorter distance, let’s say inside 10 feet, you are going to reduce your chances of making them overall. That’s the main point I want to get across to anyone.
I think Scott actually talks about that in one of his videos. He says something along the lines of “that was the best advice Pelz could give with the research available to him at the time”. That being said, the information and advice was flawed as shown in the video above. Scott basically wants you to be a “die putter” and to “quit trying to make putts, just hit them with the right speed and a certain percentage will fall”. I’ve had good success with Scotts method.
Gives us (much) better ways of thinking about some of our “oldest saws’!!! Thanks Jon.
Thanks, Rich! Glad you enjoyed it
very interesting article, i recently read up on stats and suggestions provided from 000’s of shots analyzed by a distance etc watch, they said use the driver off the tee rather than 3 wood, as there was over a range of handicaps very little difference in accuracy, but the distance gained again over multiple handicaps was helping towards better scoring by simply being nearer the green! i.e 130 yards in to the centre of the green is significantly better than being 160 to 170 away! (particular for the mid range and higher handicappers.) cheers
Hey Job, I liked this article. There are so many misconceptions that are thrown around. The first one that comes to mind is keep your head down. Or, if you are downwind, your ball will go further. Not always true, as the wind can knock your ball down. Into the wind, you need a low shot. I play more club, and try to ride the thermals. It seems to work. Every aspect of the game has conflicting ideas how to play it. We all play a little bit different based on knowledge and ability. What works for you, may not necessarily work for me. Keep up these great articles, Jon, every little hit helps all of us.
Thank you, Jon. This is one of your best articles. I’m also a big fan of your podcasts. Keep them coming!