PGA Pro Emma Booth: 5 Questions Golfers Should Stop Asking

Katie Dawkins coaching — (Image credit: Katie Dawkins)

There’s a quote often attributed to Albert Einstein: If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would spend the first 55 minutes deciding what question to ask.

While golf isn’t life and death, although it can feel like that sometimes, the principle of this quote is spot on. After thousands of hours in a coaching bay with golfers of every level, you might expect I hear a huge variety of questions and requests for what golfers would like to improve, but alas, the reality is I tend to hear the same questions over and over again. How can I be more consistent? How can I hit the ball further?

On the surface, these are perfectly reasonable questions, but if it’s real lasting improvement you're after, you are looking in the wrong places. Essentially you are too focused on treating symptoms rather than the causes. This is like putting duct tape over an engine warning light on your car. You might no longer see the light flashing, but the engine is still overheating.

This might help reduce their slice in the short-term, but the underlying clubface-to-path relationship hasn’t changed. The slice hasn’t been fixed, it has been somewhat disguised and basically you’ve put duct tape on it!

How Can I Be More Consistent?

This is the question coaches hear more than any other, and in truth, it is meaningless. Inconsistency isn’t a root problem, it is the label we give to fluctuating strike and distance control. Until you clearly identify exactly what is the biggest variable in your shots you cannot properly train it.

Better Question: What is changing from shot to shot; strike, distance, direction?

How Can I Stop Three Putting?

A common theme that emerges with golfers looking to reduce their three putts is to only work on the short putts, but successful two putting is a game of two halves. If the real issue is distance control, the missed three-footer isn’t the cause, it’s the consequence.

Better Question: What part of putting do I struggle with the most? How confidently can I read greens? Do my approach shots need improving?

Forward press can help you smoothly roll the ball

Why Can’t I Hit The Ball On The Course The Way I Do On The Range?

When golfers hit thirty 7-irons on the range and feel many of them are good, it is all too easy to mentally box off that club as being one you can hit well. In reality, on the course you only get one chance to hit a nice shot, hole the pressure 4-foot putt, or hit a tee shot down a tight tree-lined fairway.

Better Question: What am I doing differently on the course? How can I make my practice more like playing?

Improvement in golf isn’t built on quick fixes or cosmetic changes, it’s built on clarity. Clarity about patterns and what is changing from shot to shot. Clarity about what skills you need to develop. So, challenge yourself this year to start asking better questions and enjoy receiving better answers through your results.

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Emma has worked in the golf industry for more than 20 years. After a successful amateur career, she decided to pursue her true golfing passion of coaching and became a qualified PGA Professional in 2009. In 2015, alongside her husband Gary, who is also a PGA Professional, they set up and now run Winchester Golf Academy, a bespoke 24 bay practice facility offering not only all the latest technology but a highly regarded bistro. Emma is happy coaching all golfing abilities but particularly enjoys getting people into the game and developing programs to help women and juniors start and improve. Her 2022 Get into Golf program saw more than 60 women take up the game.

Emma is a member of TaylorMade’s Women’s Advisory Board, which works to shape the product offering and marketing strategy with the goal of making it the number one brand in golf for women. When not changing lives one swing tweak at a time Emma can be found enjoying life raising her three daughters and when time allows in the gym.

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