Golf guides

Every guide answers one question completely, so you are not stitching an answer together from four half-pages. Start anywhere, or pick your level on the home page.

Beginner

Your First Round of Golf: How the Day Actually Goes

Almost nobody is nervous about their first round because of the golf. They are nervous because nobody has told them the shape of the day.

10 min read

Intermediate

Losing Distance in Golf: Why It Happens and What to Do

You are playing the same clubs off the same tees and coming up a club shorter than you did three seasons ago. Distance loss is rarely one thing, and it is almost never the thing golfers assume.

11 min read

Beginner

What's in a Golf Bag: The Contents That Earn Their Place

The clubs are the part everyone thinks about and the part that changes least. The other twenty items are where a bag becomes either organised or a rummage on every tee.

11 min read

Beginner

What to Wear Golfing: Dress Codes Without the Guesswork

There is no single golf dress code. There is a common core that almost every course accepts, and a set of local rules on top of it that nobody publishes in one place.

10 min read

Beginner

What Clubs Does a Beginner Actually Need to Start?

Nobody needs fourteen clubs in their first year. Half a bag will cover every shot you can currently hit, and the clubs you skip are the ones that punish you hardest.

11 min read

Intermediate

Weight Shift in the Golf Swing: Pressure, Timing, Drills

Most golfers who are told to shift their weight try to move their body sideways. That is not what the good ones are doing, and it creates a second fault on top of the first.

12 min read

Intermediate

Wedge Distance Control: Build a Chart You Can Trust

Most golfers can repeat a wedge swing. Very few can tell you what it carries. That gap between a reliable action and a known number is where the shots go.

12 min read

Beginner

Unplayable Lie Rule: Your Three Options Under Rule 19

An unplayable ball is the one penalty in golf you choose to take, and the golfer who knows the three options usually pays less for a bad lie than the one who hacks at it twice.

10 min read

Intermediate

Uneven Lies in Golf: Uphill, Downhill and Sidehill

A flat lie is a driving range invention. Almost every shot you play from a fairway sits on some sort of slope, and the slope changes the club in your hands before you have swung it.

11 min read

Beginner

Stableford Scoring: The Points Table and How It Works

Stableford is the format most weekend club golf is actually played under, and it is built around a single mercy: a hole you have wrecked scores nothing rather than everything.

9 min read

Beginner

Does the Golf Swing Change by Club? What Actually Differs

New golfers are told they only need one swing, then watch a professional hit up on a driver and down on a wedge and conclude they were lied to. Both things are true, and the reason is simpler than it looks.

10 min read

Beginner

Rangefinder vs GPS: Which Golf Distance Device to Buy

One measures the distance to a thing you can see. The other reads your position against a map. Almost every argument about which is better skips that difference.

10 min read

Beginner

Putting Stroke: The Pendulum, Path and Face Explained

The putting stroke is the smallest movement in golf and the one golfers overthink most. Almost all of the argument is about path, and almost all of the result comes from the face.

12 min read

Beginner

Putting Stance and Setup: Eyes, Ball Position, Posture

Almost every putting fault that looks like a stroke problem is a setup problem that had nowhere else to go. Fix the address position and half the stroke work disappears.

11 min read

Beginner

Putting Grip Styles: Conventional, Claw and Left Hand Low

A putting grip is not a smaller version of your full swing grip. It is built to do the opposite job, and most golfers have never been told what that job is.

11 min read

Beginner

Putting Drills: Six Sessions, With Reps and Frequency

Most putting practice is rolling balls at a hole until it is time to tee off. A drill needs a rule, a score and a dose, or it is just fidgeting with a putter.

12 min read

Intermediate

Putting Distance Control: How to Stop Three-Putting

Nobody holes long putts, including the people who are good at putting. The difference between a good lag putter and a poor one is entirely in where the ball stops.

12 min read

Intermediate

Golf Pre Shot Routine: Build One That Holds Up

A routine is not a superstition. It is the order you assemble a setup in, and it is the only thing that makes the same swing available on the first tee as on the range.

11 min read

Beginner

How to Practise Golf at Home: What Actually Transfers

Home practice has one enormous advantage over the range and one serious blind spot. Knowing which skills fall on each side of that line is the whole game.

10 min read

Advanced

Plugged Lie Bunker Shot: How to Escape a Fried Egg

A plugged lie is the one bunker shot where every instinct you have built is wrong. The open face and shallow splash that works from a clean lie will leave the ball exactly where it is.

10 min read

Beginner

Penalty Area Rules: Red vs Yellow Stakes

Water hazards stopped existing in 2019. What replaced them is wider, more generous and marked in two colours that mean genuinely different things.

10 min read

Beginner

Out of Bounds Rule: Stroke and Distance Explained

Out of bounds is the most expensive ruling in golf and the one amateurs get wrong most often, usually by dropping a ball where they should be walking back to the tee.

9 min read

Beginner

Match Play vs Stroke Play: How the Two Formats Differ

The two formats share almost all of the same rules, then differ on the handful that decide how a bad hole, a missed short putt and a penalty are actually paid for.

10 min read

Beginner

Lost Ball Rule: Three Minutes, and the Provisional

Almost every argument about a lost ball is really an argument about the clock: when it started, whether it ever stopped, and whether the ball was ever lost at all.

10 min read

Beginner

Left Handed Golf Tips: Reading Right-Handed Advice

Almost all golf instruction, including most of this site, is written for right-handers. Translating it is mechanical once you know the rule, apart from the handful of cases where mirroring gives you the wrong answer.

10 min read

Intermediate

Launch Monitor Numbers Explained: Every Parameter

A launch monitor screen shows twelve numbers and most golfers can name three of them. Here is what each one measures and what actually moves it.

11 min read

Intermediate

Lag in the Golf Swing: What It Is and How to Keep It

Lag is the most photographed position in golf and the most misunderstood one. It is a result of something else, and golfers who chase it directly usually end up with tight forearms and a block to the right.

11 min read

Beginner

Is Golf Good Exercise? What the Research Shows

Golf spends a lot of time defending itself as a sport. As exercise it has a better case than most golfers realise, and it rests almost entirely on one decision made in the car park.

11 min read

Intermediate

Intermediate Golf: The Complete Guide

The golfer who shoots 94 does not need a new swing. They need to stop turning three bad decisions and one loose wedge into a card full of sixes.

19 min read

Intermediate

Inconsistent Golf Ball Striking: Why and How to Fix It

You hit one out of the middle and spend the next four holes trying to work out what you did. Inconsistent striking is rarely a broken swing. It is usually one variable moving around while everything else stays fine.

12 min read

Beginner

Golf Warm Up: A 10 Minute Plan and a 40 Minute One

The advice assumes you arrived an hour early. You arrived twelve minutes before the tee time with a coffee, and there is still a right way to spend them.

10 min read

Beginner

How to Take a Drop in Golf: Rule 14 Step by Step

Every relief option in golf, free or penalty, ends in the same procedure. Getting the height right is the easy part, and the relief area is where the strokes actually go.

10 min read

Beginner

Whiffing the Golf Ball: Why You Miss It Completely

Missing the ball entirely is the most humiliating shot in golf and one of the least serious. It has two causes, both mechanical, and it responds faster than almost any other fault.

9 min read

Beginner

How to Stop Topping the Golf Ball and Hitting It Thin

Nobody tops the ball because they lack strength or talent. They top it because the club head is higher off the ground at the ball than it was at address.

11 min read

Intermediate

How to Stop Skying the Driver: Pop-Ups Fixed

The ball climbs almost vertically, lands 90 yards ahead, and there is a fresh white scuff on the top of a driver you paid a lot of money for. The mark is not damage. It is a diagnosis.

11 min read

Beginner

How to Stop Hitting Fat Shots and Chunking the Ball

Hitting the ground first is not clumsiness. It is a swing whose lowest point sits behind the ball, and the ground is simply the first thing in the way.

11 min read

Intermediate

How to Stop Coming Over the Top: Fix the Transition

Coming over the top is not a mistake the arms make. It is the body doing exactly what instinct asks of it, in the wrong order, at the one moment in the swing where order is everything.

12 min read

Beginner

How to Stop Chunking Chip Shots: The Chili Dip Fix

The club thuds into the ground, the ball dribbles four feet, and you are still forty yards from the pin. A chunked chip is the most demoralising shot in golf and one of the most mechanical to fix.

10 min read

Beginner

How to Regrip Golf Clubs: The Whole Job, Step by Step

Regripping is the one piece of club work an amateur can genuinely do at home. It is also the one with a knife, a heat gun and a flammable solvent in it, which is why the order of operations matters.

11 min read

Intermediate

How to Read Greens: Slope, Speed, Grain and Break

Break is not a property of the putt. It is a property of the putt at the pace you choose to hit it, which is why two good players can read the same green differently and both be right.

12 min read

Beginner

How to Putt: Grip, Setup, Stroke and Distance Control

Putting is the largest single block of strokes in a round and the one almost nobody practises. It is also the part of golf where a beginner can reach a genuinely good standard fastest.

13 min read

Intermediate

How to Practice Golf Effectively: A Real Plan

Most range sessions are a warm-up repeated sixty times. The practice that changes your scorecard looks worse while you are doing it and holds up when it matters.

11 min read

Beginner

Your First Golf Tournament: What Changes in Competition

A competition round is the same golf course and a different set of obligations. Most of what catches first-timers out is paperwork and procedure rather than pressure.

12 min read

Intermediate

How to Play Golf in the Wind: Into, Down and Across

Wind does not simply push the ball sideways. It exaggerates every bit of spin you put on it, which is why a good player loses far less to a gale than a high handicapper does.

10 min read

Beginner

How to Play Golf in the Rain and Actually Score

Most rounds are lost to rain before the first tee, in a bag with no towel and one glove. The technique adjustments are small. The preparation ones decide the day.

10 min read

Intermediate

How to Play a Par 5: The Strategy the Data Supports

A par 5 hands you a spare shot and then asks for two long ones to earn it. It is the hole where the widest gap in amateur golf shows up, in both directions.

11 min read

Intermediate

How to Pitch a Golf Ball: The 20 to 60 Yard Shot

The half wedge is the most uncomfortable shot in golf: too long for a chip, too short for a full swing, and no obvious way to measure it. Here is how to make it a repeatable shot rather than a guess.

12 min read

Intermediate

How to Measure Swing Speed: Five Ways, and What It Costs

Almost every equipment decision in golf runs off a number most golfers have never actually had measured, and guessing it wrong costs more than measuring it.

10 min read

Intermediate

How to Make Short Putts: The Three to Six Foot Fix

Nothing in golf costs more confidence per yard than a missed three-footer. The good news is that the gap between you and a tour player is smaller here than anywhere else in the game, and most of it is not technique.

11 min read

Intermediate

How to Increase Swing Speed: The Four Things That Work

Swinging harder is not the same as swinging faster, and most golfers who try to add speed add effort instead. The four things that actually change club head speed are all slower and less exciting than that.

12 min read

Intermediate

How to Hit Your Driver Further: Strike, Launch and Spin

Speed is the lever everybody reaches for and the slowest one to move. The three that respond faster are where the ball meets the face, which way the club is travelling, and whether the club in your hands suits either.

11 min read

Intermediate

How to Hit Out of the Rough: Read the Lie, Then Choose

The rough is not one shot. A ball sitting up on top of the grass and a ball buried down in it need opposite clubs and opposite expectations, and picking the wrong one is what turns a missed fairway into a double.

12 min read

Intermediate

How to Hit Out of a Bunker: The Greenside Sand Shot

It is the only shot in golf where hitting the ball is the mistake. That single fact is why so many golfers stand in a bunker with no idea what they are supposed to be doing.

12 min read

Advanced

How to Hit Off a Tight Lie: Hardpan and Bare Ground

There is no grass under the ball, the ground is like a pavement, and the shot you normally play has nowhere to go. A tight lie punishes exactly one thing, and it punishes it completely.

10 min read

Beginner

How to Hit Irons Pure: Ball First, Then Turf

Every clean iron shot has the same signature. The ball is struck first and the ground second, and the divot starts on the far side of where the ball was sitting.

11 min read

Intermediate

How to Hit a Punch Shot: Low, Under Trees and Into Wind

The punch is the only shot in golf whose whole job is to be boring. It gets you back to grass you can play from, and it is the shot that turns a wrecked hole into a bogey.

11 min read

Beginner

How to Hit a Hybrid: Play It Like an Iron, Not a Wood

Most golfers buy a hybrid to replace a 4 iron and then set up to it as though it were a small fairway wood. That one substitution is why the club feels no easier than the iron it replaced.

11 min read

Advanced

How to Hit a Flop Shot: Technique, Risk and When to Use It

The flop shot is the most watched and least necessary shot in amateur golf. Here is how it works, why it goes wrong so violently, and the short list of situations where nothing else will do.

11 min read

Intermediate

How to Hit a Fairway Wood Off the Deck and Off a Tee

A fairway wood asks for a different low point from every iron in the bag, and most golfers never make the change. They stand over a 3 wood using a 7 iron setup and wonder why it comes out along the ground.

11 min read

Intermediate

How to Hit a Fade: The Controlled Left-to-Right Shot

A fade takes one side of the hole out of play and lands softly at the other end. The price is a few yards, and for most golfers that is the cheapest insurance in the bag.

12 min read

Beginner

How to Hit a Driver: Setup, Strike and Staying in Play

Almost every driver fault is a setup that still belongs to a 7 iron. Change what happens before the swing starts and the strike changes with it.

11 min read

Intermediate

How to Hit a Draw: Start It Right, Turn It Back

A draw is not a hook that behaved itself. It is a chosen start line and a gap small enough to be worth having, and both of those are decisions you make before the swing.

12 min read

Beginner

How to Get a Golf Handicap and Post Your First Scores

A handicap is not awarded for being good enough. It is issued to anyone who joins the right kind of club and posts a few scores, and most golfers wait years longer than they need to.

10 min read

Advanced

Putting Yips: What They Are and How to Get Rid of Them

The stroke is fine in your hands until the ball is there, and then something takes over that you did not ask for. The yips are real, they are documented, and they are not a character flaw.

11 min read

Beginner

How to Fix a Slice: What Causes It and How to Stop

A slice is not one fault. It is two numbers that disagree with each other, and until you know which of them is yours, every tip you try is a guess.

12 min read

Intermediate

How to Fix a Shank: Why the Ball Squirts Sideways

A shank is the only miss in golf that arrives with no warning and no curve. The ball does not bend away from the target, it leaves at almost a right angle to it, and nothing in the swing felt wrong.

12 min read

Intermediate

How to Fix a Push and a Pull in Golf

The ball flew beautifully. It just flew at the wrong target. A push and a pull are the two misses that come with no curve at all, which makes them the hardest to read and the easiest to fix once you know what you are looking at.

11 min read

Intermediate

How to Fix a Hook: Why the Ball Dives Left and How to Stop

A hook is the miss that arrives once you can actually release the club, which is why it is so demoralising. The ball is being struck well and finishing in the trees.

12 min read

Beginner

How to Chip a Golf Ball: Setup, Stroke and Club Choice

Most golfers lose more shots inside 30 yards than they do off the tee, and almost all of it comes from one decision made at address. Here is how to build a chipping action that survives a bad lie and a fast green.

11 min read

Beginner

How to Check a Used Golf Club Before You Buy It

A used club can look perfect in five photographs and still be the wrong buy. Here is the check that catches what a listing cannot show you, in the order that actually matters.

10 min read

Intermediate

How to Calculate a Golf Handicap: The Actual Arithmetic

Every app does this for you, and every golfer still wants to know where the number came from. Four calculations sit between a card in your hand and the figure on your phone.

9 min read

Intermediate

How to Break 90 in Golf: Kill the Double Bogeys

You already hit enough good shots to break 90. What you also hit is two or three holes a round that cost three shots each, and those holes have a pattern.

16 min read

Advanced

How to Break 80: Scrambling and Wedge Precision

Everything that got you into the 80s stops being enough here. You cannot break 80 by avoiding disasters, because you have already stopped having them.

16 min read

Beginner

How to Break 100 in Golf: What Actually Has to Change

Nobody shoots 99 by hitting better shots. They shoot 99 by hitting fewer terrible ones, and the tracked data is unusually clear about which terrible ones matter.

11 min read

Beginner

How to Book a Tee Time: What to Say and When to Book

Booking a round of golf is the one part of the game nobody explains, and it is where most first-timers quietly give up before they have swung a club.

10 min read

Intermediate

How to Avoid Big Numbers in Golf: Damage Control

One bad shot costs one shot. It becomes a seven when the next decision tries to win the whole thing back at once, which is the part that is genuinely fixable.

11 min read

Beginner

How Much Does Golf Cost? A Realistic UK Breakdown

Golf has a reputation for being expensive, and about half of that reputation is earned. The half that is not comes from people pricing the version of golf they saw on television.

12 min read

Intermediate

Average Putts Per Round: What Good Putting Looks Like

Putts per round is the most quoted statistic in amateur golf and one of the most misleading, because it punishes you for hitting greens and rewards you for chipping close.

10 min read

Beginner

How Many Clubs in a Golf Bag? The 14 Club Rule

Fourteen is a ceiling, not a target, and the golfers who count their clubs on the first tee are the ones who never get the two-stroke penalty.

10 min read

Beginner

How Long Does It Take to Get Good at Golf? An Honest Look

Every answer to this question online is a number somebody made up. What can be described honestly is the order things improve in, and which of the variables are yours to control.

11 min read

Beginner

How Long Does a Round of Golf Take? The Real Maths

A round of golf takes as long as the tee sheet allows. The governing body publishes per-hole timings that add up to under four hours, and almost nobody plays in that, for reasons that have very little to do with how fast you walk.

11 min read

Intermediate

Hip Rotation in the Golf Swing: Turn, Clear, Stay Down

Hip rotation is the most talked-about and least understood part of the lower body. Almost everyone who is told to turn their hips does something else entirely.

11 min read

Beginner

Golfer's Elbow: What It Is and When to See a Doctor

Elbow pain after a heavy week of practice is common in golf and easy to guess wrong about. What an article can usefully do is describe the condition and tell you when to stop guessing.

10 min read

Intermediate

Golf Wedge Lofts: How to Gap the Bottom of Your Bag

Most golfers pick wedges by name and end up with a fourteen degree hole in the middle of their scoring clubs. The fix is arithmetic, and it starts one club higher than people expect.

12 min read

Intermediate

Golf Tournament Formats: What Each One Actually Means

A club fixture list mixes formats written into the Rules of Golf with formats somebody made up in a bar, and nothing on the sheet tells you which is which.

9 min read

Intermediate

Golf Swing Thoughts: What to Think About, and When

The swing lasts about a second and a half. Conscious instruction arrives too late to change any of it, which is why the golfer with three swing thoughts plays worse than the one with none.

10 min read

Intermediate

Golf Swing Tempo: The 3 to 1 Ratio and How to Train It

Everyone gets told they swing too fast. Almost nobody does. The problem is nearly always the change of direction, and that is a different fix entirely.

11 min read

Intermediate

How to Stop Swaying in the Golf Swing

Turning and sliding feel almost identical from the inside, which is why swaying survives years of practice. From outside, they look nothing alike and they produce completely different strikes.

11 min read

Intermediate

Golf Swing Plane: On Plane, Flat vs Upright, and Drills

Almost every argument about swing plane is two people using the same word for different things. Sort out which plane is being discussed and most of the confusion disappears.

12 min read

Intermediate

Golf Swing Drills: Takeaway to Impact, With Reps

There are more golf drills on the internet than there are golfers, and most of them are missing the only two things that make a drill work: a fault it addresses and a number attached.

11 min read

Beginner

Golf Swing Basics: How to Swing a Golf Club

A golf swing has one job, and it is not looking good on video. Learn what the club has to do at impact and the rest of the motion stops being a list of positions to memorise.

14 min read

Beginner

Golf Stretches: Move Before, Hold After

Golfers are told to stretch, rarely told when, and almost never told that the injury-prevention case for holding a stretch is a lot thinner than it sounds.

10 min read

Intermediate

Golf Strength Training: What the Evidence Supports

Most golf gym programmes are built from what looks like a golf swing rather than from what the research associates with speed. Those two lists are not the same list.

12 min read

Intermediate

Golf Stance: Width, Foot Flare and Weight by Club

Stance is the cheapest part of the swing to change and the easiest to get subtly wrong. Width, flare and weight decide what the rest of the motion is physically allowed to do.

11 min read

Intermediate

Golf Spin Rate Explained: Backspin, Axis Tilt and Control

A golf ball leaves the face spinning about a single axis. Almost everything golfers believe about spin follows from getting that one sentence right.

10 min read

Intermediate

Golf Simulator Guide: Space, Parts and What to Plan First

A golf simulator is five separate products sold in every possible combination, and the one that decides whether the build works is the room it goes in.

11 min read

Intermediate

Golf Shaft Flex: How to Work Out Which One You Need

Shaft flex is the specification most golfers guess at and the one most likely to be wrong in a club bought online. The letters mean less than they appear to, and the fix is simpler than a fitting appointment.

11 min read

Beginner

Golf Scramble Format: How It Works and How to Win One

A scramble is the format every charity day and society outing runs, and the one the Rules of Golf never actually defines. What governs it is the sheet on the first tee.

9 min read

Beginner

Golf Scoring Explained: Par, Birdie, Bogey and the Card

Golf keeps score in a private language, and nobody explains it before you play. Par, bogey, stroke index and the little boxes on the card all mean something specific.

11 min read

Beginner

Golf Rules for Beginners: What You Actually Need

Nobody expects a beginner to know all of the Rules of Golf. A short list covers almost everything that will happen to you in a round, and knowing it is the difference between playing and guessing.

10 min read

Beginner

Golf Rules Explained: How the Rulebook Works

Most golfers never read the rulebook because they picture hundreds of pages of legalese. The structure underneath is small enough to hold in your head, and it is what turns a rules question into a thirty second lookup.

9 min read

Beginner

Practising With a Golf Net: Space, Safety and Feedback

A net is the cheapest way to swing a club every day and the only practice gear you own with a failure mode involving a ball coming back at you. Both halves of that deserve planning.

11 min read

Beginner

Golf Posture: Spine Angle, Hip Hinge and Knee Flex

Posture is the setup piece that decides whether your body can rotate at all. Get the hinge right and the spine angle, the knee flex and the arm hang mostly set themselves.

11 min read

Beginner

Golf Penalty Strokes: What Every Breach Costs

Golfers routinely take penalties they do not owe and miss free relief they are entitled to, because the penalty structure is guessed at rather than learned. It has only three levels.

9 min read

Beginner

First Tee Nerves: How to Play Golf Under Pressure

The first tee is the only shot in golf with an audience, a queue and no warm-up shot before it. The feeling is not the problem. What the feeling talks you into is.

11 min read

Intermediate

Golf Mental Game: How to Actually Stay Focused

One loose shot rarely costs a round on its own. What costs a round is the three shots that follow it, played by a golfer still arguing with the first one.

11 min read

Beginner

Golf Iron Lofts: The Chart, and Why It Keeps Moving

The number stamped on an iron used to tell you its loft. It now tells you which shelf the club came off, and two sevens from the same manufacturer can sit five degrees apart.

11 min read

Intermediate

Golf Impact Position: What Happens at the Ball

Impact is the only moment in the golf swing that touches the ball, and it is the one moment you cannot steer. What you can do is change the four things that produce it.

12 min read

Beginner

Golf Handicap Explained: What the Number Actually Means

A handicap is not your average score and it is not a label. It is a portable measure of what you are capable of, built so a 22 and a 6 can play each other a close match.

11 min read

Beginner

Golf Grip Size: How to Measure It and What It Changes

Grip size is the cheapest specification in golf to change and the one most golfers have never thought about. It is also the only part of the club you actually touch.

10 min read

Beginner

Golf for Women: Equipment, Tees and Club Culture

Most golf content aimed at women is about colour. The parts that genuinely differ are equipment fit, tee choice and the culture of the club, and none of them are decided by gender.

11 min read

Intermediate

Golf Clubs for Tall and Short Players: Length and Lie

Tall and short golfers are both told to get longer or shorter clubs, as though length were the only specification in play. It is not, and the one most people leave alone is the one that moves the ball offline.

13 min read

Intermediate

Golf Tips for Seniors: What Actually Changes

Almost everything written for senior golfers treats the reader as fragile. The useful version is narrower and more specific: speed goes, judgement arrives, and your equipment should follow both.

11 min read

Beginner

Golf for Kids: Clubs, Sessions and Starting Age

Two decisions decide whether a child sticks with golf: what they are swinging, and how long the session lasts. Almost everything else parents worry about turns out not to matter.

10 min read

Beginner

Golf for Beginners: The Complete Guide

Golf is not hard to start. It is hard to start well, because almost everything a beginner gets told first is the wrong thing to work on. This is the order that works.

18 min read

Intermediate

Golf Follow Through: Finish Position, Extension, Release

The ball is gone before the follow through happens, which is why golfers ignore it. It is also the clearest readout of everything that came before, and it is free.

11 min read

Intermediate

Golf Fitness: Mobility First, Then Strength

Most golf workouts are a general gym session with a medicine ball bolted on. What golf actually asks for is range at three specific joints and the strength to control it.

11 min read

Intermediate

Golf Exercises for Seniors: Rotation and Stability

Training advice aimed at older golfers usually assumes decline and prescribes gentleness. The data says something more specific, and more useful, about what actually goes and what does not.

12 min read

Beginner

Golf Etiquette: What Is a Rule and What Is Just Manners

Golf etiquette is mostly convention, and a small part of it is written into the Rules with a penalty attached. Knowing which is which stops you worrying about the wrong things.

12 min read

Beginner

Golf Drills: How to Pick Ones That Actually Change Something

There are thousands of golf drills and almost nobody needs more than four at a time. The problem was never the supply of drills, it was picking the right ones and sticking with them.

11 min read

Intermediate

Golf Downswing: The Transition and the Sequence

The transition is the shortest part of the golf swing and the part that separates good ball strikers from everyone else. It is also the part almost nobody practises directly.

12 min read

Beginner

Golf Course Types Explained: Links, Parkland and More

Course type is really two separate questions wearing one name: what the land is like, and who is allowed to play it. Confusing the two is how beginners end up on the wrong first tee.

11 min read

Intermediate

Golf Course Management: How to Play the Percentages

Every shot on a golf course has a price in strokes, and it is knowable. Course management is nothing more than paying attention to that price before you swing rather than afterwards.

13 min read

Beginner

Types of Golf Clubs: What Each One Is Actually For

A full bag holds fourteen clubs that mostly look alike and mostly do different jobs. Here is what separates them, and which one belongs in your hands for the shot in front of you.

11 min read

Intermediate

Golf Club Selection: How to Choose the Right Club

Most golfers choose a club from the yardage on the sprinkler head and the best shot they ever hit with it. Tracked data says both inputs are wrong, and in the same direction.

11 min read

Intermediate

Golf Club Lie Angle: The Spec Nobody Ever Checks

Every golfer knows their shaft flex and most know their lofts. Almost nobody knows their lie angle, which is a shame, because it changes where the ball starts more directly than either of them.

10 min read

Intermediate

Golf Club Fitting: What Happens, and Is It Worth It?

A fitting is an hour of measurement that decides specifications you will live with for years. Most golfers either skip it entirely or book one before their swing is stable enough to fit.

12 min read

Beginner

Golf Club Distance Chart: The Numbers That Are Real

Almost every distance chart online is invented. This one is built from tracked amateur shots, it says where each number came from, and it leaves a cell empty rather than filling it with a guess.

12 min read

Beginner

Golf Ball Position: The Chart for Every Club

Ball position is the cheapest shot-shaping tool you own and the one that drifts fastest. Here is where the ball belongs for every club, and how to tell when yours has moved.

11 min read

Intermediate

Golf Ball Layers: What 2, 3, 4 and 5 Piece Mean

Every ball on the shelf is a rubber sphere wearing about a tenth of an inch of engineering. That thin skin is where the entire two piece against five piece argument happens.

11 min read

Intermediate

Golf Ball Compression: What It Is and Who Publishes It

Compression is the most quoted number in golf balls and one of the least verifiable. Most of the figures in circulation were never issued by the company whose ball they describe.

11 min read

Intermediate

Golf Backswing: Takeaway, Halfway Back and the Top

A backswing cannot hit the ball, but it can make hitting it properly impossible. Here is what happens between address and the top, in the order it happens, and what breaks at each stage.

12 min read

Intermediate

Golf and Back Pain: When to Get It Looked At

Back pain is the most frequently reported complaint in golf, and it is also the one most often played through. The first question is not which stretch to do. It is whether this needs a professional.

11 min read

Beginner

Golf Apps Guide: The Five Categories Worth Your Phone

App rankings go stale faster than anything else in golf. What does not change is the five jobs a phone can usefully do on a golf course, and the two it cannot.

10 min read

Beginner

Golf Alignment: How to Aim the Club and Your Body

Aim is the only fundamental you cannot feel. It drifts silently, it is invisible from where you stand, and the swing quietly compensates for it every time.

11 min read

Intermediate

Fairway Bunker Shots: How to Pick the Ball Clean

Everything that makes a greenside bunker shot work will ruin this one. The club has to find the ball before it finds the sand, and almost every instinct built in a greenside bunker pulls the other way.

12 min read

Intermediate

Driving Range Practice Routine: How to Structure a Bucket

The default range session is sixty balls at one target with a driver, and it is the reason so much practice produces no visible change on a Saturday morning.

12 min read

Beginner

How to Use a Driving Range: A First-Timer's Guide

The hardest part of a first driving range visit is not the swing. It is walking in not knowing where to pay, which bay is yours, or what the flags in the distance actually mean.

11 min read

Intermediate

Driver Loft: Why Most Golfers Play Too Little of It

The loft on a driver is the one specification golfers choose with their ego. Nine degrees sounds like a better player's club, and for almost everybody buying one it is the wrong end of the range.

10 min read

Beginner

How Far to Stand From the Golf Ball at Address

Distance from the ball is the only setup fundamental nobody can give you a number for, because it is not something you set. It is something your posture produces.

11 min read

Beginner

Chipping vs Pitching: The Difference and When to Use Each

Two shots, played from ten yards apart, and most golfers pick the wrong one about half the time. Here is what actually separates a chip from a pitch, and how to choose without thinking about it.

11 min read

Intermediate

Chipping From Rough and Tight Lies: Reading the Lie

Most chipping advice assumes a decent lie on cut grass, which is the one lie you rarely have when you are chipping. What the ball is sitting on decides the shot before technique gets a say.

11 min read

Beginner

Chipping Drills That Actually Lower Your Score

Chipping is the cheapest place in golf to find shots, and the easiest to practise badly. A drill without a number attached is just hitting balls at a green.

10 min read

Beginner

Buying Used Golf Clubs: What Is Worth It, What Is Not

Used clubs are the best value in golf and the easiest place to buy the wrong thing. The difference is knowing which clubs age well, which ones are consumable, and what a seller's condition grade is actually promising.

11 min read

Beginner

Bump and Run: How to Play Golf's Lowest Risk Shot

The shot that gets a ball close most often is also the least interesting to watch, which is roughly why so few amateurs play it. Here is how to choose the club, read the ground, and stop reaching for a wedge.

11 min read

Intermediate

Blades vs Cavity Back Irons: An Honest Answer

Blades against cavity backs is the argument golf equipment loves most and has needed least for about twenty years. The genuinely difficult decision sits somewhere else entirely.

11 min read

Intermediate

Ball Flight Laws: Club Path vs Face Angle Explained

Two measurements decide where every golf shot finishes, and neither of them is how the swing looked. Learn to name them and the ball stops being mysterious.

12 min read

Beginner

Average Golf Score: What Golfers Actually Shoot

Most published scoring averages are one number with nothing behind it. This one is assembled from tracked par 3, par 4 and par 5 averages, and it shows the arithmetic rather than asking you to trust it.

12 min read

Beginner

Average Driver Distance: What Golfers Actually Hit

Two companies have tracked more than a billion amateur shots between them and both put the average drive close to 225 yards. Almost every number you see quoted online is higher, and none of them are measured.

12 min read

Beginner

Are Golf Lessons Worth It? An Honest Answer

Lessons are the highest-return spend in golf and the first thing people cut. They are also genuinely wasted by a large number of golfers, and the difference is entirely in how they are used.

10 min read

Advanced

Advanced Golf: The Complete Guide

Good ball strikers stall at the same place: the swing is fine, the scores are not. What is left is proximity, scrambling, and the ability to produce a specific shot when it matters.

20 min read

Beginner

How to Grip a Golf Club: The Only Guide You Need

The grip is the only part of you that touches the club, so every mistake in it shows up in the ball flight. Here is how to build one that works, and how to tell when yours has drifted.

9 min read