Reverse spine angle is the No.1 cause of lower back pain in golf - according to PGA Fellow Professional, Ben Emerson.

As his game changer clinic column outlines below, even low-handicap golfers can struggle with this harmful movement - irrespective of your golf fitness, flexibility or mobility.

The impact isn't limited to your long-term participation in the game, however, as reverse spine angle can also be catastrophic for your ball striking consistency.

In this article, the Top 50 Coach and Author of one of our top-12 best golf books, Strike It Pure, shares how you can identify reverse spine angle in your own swing and take steps to improve your ball striking and protect your back in 2026...

Check Your Golf Swing For The No.1 Cause Of Lower Back Pain

The Problem

A reverse spine angle is the number-one cause of lower back pain in golf, and while I could see this was causing single-figure golfer Benjamin some issues now, this was nothing compared to the pain he might be letting himself in for down the line if we didn't fix it.

Benjamin is a fit and healthy individual who plays off single figures, so he can (and is) getting away with that reverse spine angle to an extent.

However, when he naturally loses flexibility and mobility, this will cause significant issues with his performance on the course and the health of his lower back.

It's fairly simple to identify in the golf swing, too. In your next driving range session, record your swing face-on and stop the video at the top of the backswing.

If you drew a line from your belt buckle through the top of your head, the line should point away from the target. If it points towards the target, you've likely fallen into the reverse spine angle trap.

Amateur golfers who exhibit a reverse spine angle in the golf swing often have to make serious compensations to actually make contact with the ball at impact, so consistency of strike can be a real issue for them.

The Solution

To fix this, I placed a large blue foam roller just outside Ben's trail foot and asked him to rotate himself over the top of it imagining he was holding a heavy ball.

Once he had correctly managed the movement, I added a medicine ball to his hands to help pull him over and away from the target – in complete contrast to the direction he was moving previously.

If he performed his reverse spine angle backswing and dropped the ball, it would hit him on the trail foot. However, with the new movement, the dropped ball would hit the floor beyond his trail side.

We also used a band under his lead foot to train the feeling that he was pulling out and then up towards the trail side in the backswing.

It would feel weird to pull the band straight up above his head when starting the backswing, but that is what he would have been doing with the reverse spine angle movement that he came to me with.

Missing a short putt on the golf course is one of the most infuriating experiences for any player - regardless of ability or experience within the game.

There are plenty of great tips and drills on how to hole out more often from short range in our ultimate putting improvement guide, or our tailored high-handicapper's putting manual, but many amateurs don't realise they are stifling their potential due to a common misconception.

According to putting expert James Jankowksi, who has helped more than 3000 golfers to improve on the greens, the idea that you should never aim outside the hole for a short putt is misleading.

Below, James explains why and shares his top tips to help you hole more short putts on the course...

This Common Short Putting Misconception Is Holding You Back

Before we start, let's look at the latest Shot Scope data to see what sort of success rate you should be looking for from 0-3ft.

Benchmarking yourself against the average amateur in your handicap index bracket is a great exercise to help you understand your starting point, which you can then build on with James' expert tips below.

Short Putt Success Rate (0-3ft)

Percentage of putts holed from 0-3ft by amateur golfers in different handicap index brackets

% Putts Made (0-3ft)

0-handicap

98

5-handicap

96

10-handicap

96

15-handicap

93

20-handicap

90

25-handicap

88

0255075100

% Putts Made (0-3ft) Data

Product	Value
0-handicap	98
5-handicap	96
10-handicap	96
15-handicap	93
20-handicap	90
25-handicap	88

Common Misconception (Short Putts)

Many amateurs try to take the break out of short putts. Sometimes this can be effective but it often leads to under-reading and lip-outs.

There's a common idea that you should never aim outside the hole on short putts. That's misleading as short putts still break.

This also introduces the idea of an effective centre or entry point. For example, on a left-to-right putt as here, the effective centre of the cup shifts slightly to the left of the physical centre.

Visualising where the ball is most likely to enter helps clarify the intended start line and improves spatial awareness relative to that entry point. Start picturing and feeling that entry point.

The Role Of The Hands

Short putts are a different motor task to longer putts. A 3-footer is not a scaled-down 40-footer – it is a fine motor movement.

Longer putts rely on a larger, more rhythmic motion from the shoulders and torso to generate energy, but intricate movements are typically felt through the hands, even though the stroke is coordinated through the whole body.

On short putts, the hands provide the sensory ‘read' for the movement, helping to organise timing and face control without excessive motion. Feel the smooth motion in the hands and putter, and the rest will often follow.

Entry Speed

Even on short putts, entry speed matters. The ball needs enough momentum to hold a true roll but not so much that the hole effectively shrinks.

‘Capture size' is the effective opening of the hole at different speeds.

The more speed, the smaller the hole effectively becomes and the less ability to drop the ball has. But at around 0.95mph or below, the ball's roll loses stability, with more chance of it wobbling or drifting offline late on.

Aim for it to enter the hole with some momentum, not dribbling in the front or ramming into the back.

We all head onto the course with the intention of playing and scoring as well as we can, but so many of us make avoidable mistakes that cost us silly shots. It’s so easy to fall into bad habits and make bad decisions, but the good news is, it’s also simple to prevent these blunders if you know what you’re looking for and how to fix the issues.

Thanks to the fantastic data and analysis from Shot Scope, we’re highlighted five key mistakes. In this article and video, Top 50 Coach Adam Harnett explains what they are and shares his tips and strategies to ensure you avoid these errors and play better golf.

1. Using too much loft around the greens

The Scot Scope data tells us that the average 15-handicapper reaches for a wedge 70% of the time around the greens, which gives them a 21% chance of getting up-and-down. But using a less lofted club increases that to 27% and it jumps significantly to 59% if you can use a putter. Develop a reliable chip and run with a short iron and your short game will improve.

Too much loft reduces your margin for error in terms of landing the ball on the correct spot to get it releasing to the hole, and means you need a bigger swing, which is harder to control. A simple chip and run with an 8 or 9-iron is a much safer and more predictable shot.

Set up standing a little closer to the ball, with a narrow stance with the feet one clubhead width apart, the ball position slightly back in your stance, and the handle of the club slightly ahead of the ball. From there, you want to take the rests out of the shot and finish with the same shape with the arms and club as you had at address.

With a 9-iron, you’re looking for the ball to carry 20-25% of the distance in the air and 75-80% with roll. As the ball is going to be on the ground more than it’s in the air, it’s important to read the shot like a putt and aim accordingly.

2. Not taking enough club

The Shot Scope data shows that all standards of golfer come up short with their approach shots far more often than they should. For the average 25-handicapper it’s 69% of the time, for the average 15-handicapper it’s 54%, and for the average five-handicapper it’s 39%.

A lot of golfers make the mistake of looking at the yardage to the front of the green and think ‘what can I hit to get it there’, so they’re always erring on the shorter side. That doesn’t allow for poor strikes either. I encourage players to get the yardage to the back of the green and play to the window between the flag and the back.

You need to take the weather conditions into account too. If you’re downwind I’m not going to change from my normal club for the yardage to the pin because I want the wind to help me get it past the flag. Into the wind is more tricky because most people think they hit the ball further than they do and they try and hit the ball hard, which actually creates more spin and holds the ball up in the air even more.

Try taking an extra club to what you think it is. The time of year and temperature is also important, and I think there’s a two-club difference between the peak of summer and into winter.

3. Hitting three-wood rather than driver off the tee

It’s a strategy that a lot players use for a safer tee shot, but the data shows that three-wood only leads to 1-3% more fairways hit for any given handicap. You’re losing distance as well, so it’s having a negative impact on your scoring ability. Increasing your accuracy with the driver is the route to better scoring.

The set-up with driver is really important. You want a nice wide stance to build a stable base because the driver swing is fast. The ball position should be just inside the left heel to encourage you to hit the ball with the clubhead moving slightly on the up at impact.

Tilting your spine away from the target will also help this, but it’s important to do this before you grip the club. Take your address position but hover your right hand (for right-handers) next to the top of the grip. Then slide your hand down to take your grip and that will create that position while ensuring your shoulders and forearms stay square to the target.

Rhythm and tempo are especially important with the drivers. A lot of golfers are putting in effort because they think that equals speed, but the speed needs to be down at the bottom where you hit the ball. So I’m thinking about a smooth transition and then adding the speed at the bottom of the swing.

4. Not knowing your carry distances

We already know that we’re coming up short too often, and misses like that can start become very expensive when it brings hazards and penalty areas into play. The data highlights that missing in a greenside bunker costs half a shot, and finding water short – or anywhere around the green – can be a real card wrecker. Getting the right club in your hands more often is an incredibly simple way to save shots.

It’s super-important to know your carry distances so you can pick the right club, especially on approach shots. You can work it out using launch monitors like the Shot Scope LM1 and lots of driving ranges these days have launch monitors. You should also record your yardages when you’re playing, making notes of the shots you’ve hit and how far they go in different conditions.

5. Playing it too safe with your second shot on par-5s

Conventional wisdom said you should lay-up to a full swing yardage that you’re comfortable with, but the Shot Scope data shows that isn’t the best strategy to improve your scoring.

The simple truth is that the closer you hit it to the green, the fewer shots on average it will take you to get the ball in the hole. Taking the average 15-handicapper, it’s 3.30 shots from 60 yards, 3.14 from 40 yards and 2.42 from 20 yards, so get the ball down there as far as you can with your second shot. Being confident with your fairway woods will help you do that.

A fairway wood off the ground is one of the hardest shots because it’s a long club and there isn’t that much loft. The thing that’s most important is getting a good angle of attack at the golf ball. You want the ball a couple of inches inside your left heel, and you don’t want the upper body tilt that you have for the driver, because we still need a slight downward angle into the ball.

The best fairway wood players often take a little divot, so you want to make sure you’re making contact with the ground just after the strike. Make a practice swing next to the ball and really feel like you’re making contact with the ground slight forward of the ball. A really common mistake is not shifting your weight and hanging back to try and help the ball in the air. Make sure you transfer your weight forwards.

Hitting a pull or a slice is never fun, but not understanding what causes them to happen can be ever more maddening.

If you want to shoot lower scores and cut your handicap in 2026, you can't be standing on the tee box with a crippling fear that a pull or slice is about to rear its ugly head.

It's a common mistake that plagues the game of amateurs everywhere, but it doesn't have to - enter, Top 50 Coach Keith Wood and his simple drill to fix it.

Keith Wood has been coaching for more than 30 years, working with golfers across the ability spectrum from elite professionals to complete beginners and helping them to play better golf.

Below, Keith explains what causes a pull or slice with driver and how you can fix the problem with a simple drill...

Why You Pull Or Slice Your Driver (And A Simple Drill To Fix)

What Causes A Pull And A Slice?

The pull and slice are very common shot outcomes, especially with the longer clubs, and generally happen when you deliver the club on an out-to-in path across the ball, travelling to the left.

The clubface angle at impact will dictate which direction the ball goes in. A club swung across the target line with an open face will produce a slice, while a closed clubface can deliver a pull or even a pull hook.

There are multiple possible outcomes depending on club path versus clubface angle, but let's try to combat this issue without getting too technical and make some changes in the least invasive way.

How To Fix A Pull And A Slice

In the image below, the club is outside the ball coming into impact and can only make contact if it travels across the target line.

This is generally caused by starting your downswing more with your upper body and shoulders, sending the club out too much in front of you and resulting in an exit into the follow-through that is low and way left of your target.

Casting, or an over-the-top move, is associated with both pulls and slices. Potential causes can be as simple as your body alignment aiming left at address, too weak a grip or not turning sufficiently in the backswing.

This is a great drill to practice on the driving range.

Learn how to swing the club in the opposite direction – in to out and away from you.

Don't be afraid to exaggerate this in practice by feeling the club working from behind you and travelling well right of target.

Picture the path it's working on through impact and pick a target for your clubhead to swing out to, way to the right. In the image above, I've allowed the club to work more from the inside before extending to the right of target.

I thought I'd seen everything at the Open Championship, but Wyndham Clark's coat hanger was not on my bingo card.

Many of you will likely have seen this and be wondering what Wyndham Clark was doing with a coat hanger at The Open, but this unique training aid has been used by top coaches for decades and is a great ball striking drill for amateurs to try if they struggle with clubface control.

Essentially, the coat hanger helps to maintain a better wrist angle throughout the swing - helping you to control the clubface through impact with instant feedback provided.

In the interest of finding out more details on how it helps to improve your game and provide a step-by-step guide for you to try the coat hanger drill for yourself, I reached out to Top 50 Coach Ged Walters who provided his expert guidance on the matter...

Wyndham Clark's Coat Hanger At The Open 2026 Explained

For those of you who prefer to see instruction tips on a video, with visual examples from a top PGA pro, I've got just the thing for you.

In the video below, Ged Walters explains the reason why Wyndham Clark is using a coat hanger at The Open and how it could help your ball striking- plus if you stay to the end you can see me use Ged's tips to give it a go myself.

Why Is Wyndham Clark Using A Coat Hanger?

The coat hanger drill has been around for decades, but it's still just as effective today as when it was first used.

The purpose of the drill is to provide instant feedback and a deeper understanding of how to control the clubface.

Lots of people say it's just to fix a slice, but that's not true as it can help to solve many common amateur faults that stem from not being able to control the clubface.

In his press conference ahead of the Open Championship this week, Wyndham Clark said:

"Mondays are my technical days. You won't see me doing a bunch of that stuff the rest of the week.

"My swing's gotten a little off. I kind of hit it kind of crappy, especially on Sunday - or just yesterday. The coat hanger is for wrist angle, trying to get a little more inflection in my left wrist so I can square the face more. That's just what it is".

How To Try The Coat Hanger Drill

In the video above, I am using a plastic hanger as it's easier to grip with the club.

Place the hanger on top of the grip and take your normal grip. Your hand should be in the middle of the hanger and the butt end of the hanger should rest against the lead forearm.

The idea is to maintain connection between the hanger and the forearm throughout the golf swing, as this keeps the wrist in a more neutral position and promotes better clubface control through impact.

If you start to swing out-to-in, or increase the loft by slicing across the ball, the hanger is likely to have disconnected away from the forearm at some point during the golf swing.

This is one of the best golf drills because it gives instant visual feedback, but it's also so easy to set up and carry out when you practice on the driving range.

You can also work on this at home, without hitting any golf balls, focusing on keeping that hanger in contact with the lead forearm throughout the entire swing.

If you have a mirror or you record your swing, you will see the wrist and the clubface are in a much more neutral position at the top which will ultimately help you to find a centred strike with your irons more often.

How Did Baz Get On?

After listening to Ged tell me all about the drill, and after seeing Wyndham Clark putting coat hangers on the map at The Open, I decided to head straight to the range to try it for myself.

After warming up, I hit five balls without the hanger. The pattern, as you can see in the video, detailed my usual left-to-right wipey slice.

However, after adding the coat hanger I striped one with a little baby fade on my first attempt. The drill takes some getting used to, so I won't lie and say they were all perfect, but that feeling of connection definitely helped me to feel the clubface and strike the ball with a nicer shape.

I'm going to commit to further practice with this interesting training aid, so stay tuned for updates (if you care about my awful golf game).

Why not try it yourself? Let me know how you get on in the comments below - I am more interested in your game than you are in mine!

I've always had a love-hate relationship with putting. As a high-handicap golfer, it's often been the source of much frustration, but the feeling of holing a putt is incredibly addictive.

My putting improved dramatically over the course of a recent winter golf rebuild and I am now playing off my lowest every handicap (20).

I wanted to share some of the best lessons and resources that have helped me along the way, from Top 50 Coaches and PGA pros, in the hope that they can also help you to improve your putting and cut your handicap in 2026.

This is by no means a comprehensive plan for everything you could ever need to work on, but of these eight great examples that I have tried in my own game, there will certainly be something in here that can help any high-handicap player.

Whether you prefer step-by-step guides, instructional videos or simple drills - we have something for you in this one-stop shop for firing up the flat stick.

8 Ways To Improve Your Putting As A High-Handicap Golfer

High-Handicapper Putting Data Analysis

Driving improvement in any area of the game is difficult if you don't assess your starting point. The latest Shot Scope data for 2026 is a great place to start, as it highlights the average performance indicators for 20- and 25-handicap golfers.

Comparing yourself against this baseline, and the ambitious target set by 10 and 15-handicappers, will help you to understand exactly what you need to work on, informing your journey through this guide to ensure you find the most suitable advice and guidance for your game personally.

The graphics below break down average putts per round, number of 3-putts per round, distance to the hole after your first putt and make percentages from different distances.

Baz used this data to determine his own pathway to progress, including a focus on putts from inside 6ft, but you can also use the stats to personalise your own journey.

Putting Fundamentals Lesson

Let's start with the essentials. If you can nail your fundamentals, you are well on your way to better performances with the putter.

Utilising the expertise of putting expert James Jankowski, as part of our article on the 7 things every golfer can do to putt better, this step-by-step guide is a great starting point for a better setup when putting:

• Isolate your lower body: Position yourself to disassociate your legs, core, and head, allowing only your shoulders, arms, and torso to control the putting motion.
• Adopt a relaxed, rounded posture: Fall slightly forward and round your upper body into the posture rather than rigidly bending at the hips. Keep your spine and shoulders soft, avoiding traditional "good posture" which creates too much muscular tension.
• Let your arms hang naturally: Keep your arms free of tension and let them hang down naturally. Without a putter in your hands, your fingers should comfortably brush somewhere around your knees.
• Keep your weight slightly toe-side: Avoid placing too much weight on your heels, as this will activate your legs. Instead, position your weight slightly toe-side on the balls of your feet to encourage your legs to stay quiet during the stroke.
• Focus on soft muscles: Ensure your shoulders, lats, and upper back stay completely soft and relaxed, giving them the freedom to move smoothly without restrictions.

8 Things Great Putters Do (That We Don't)

If you want to be a great putter, it makes sense to learn from the best... right?

Well, Jamie Donaldson certainly knows his stuff when it comes to navigating the greens, and his advice in this instructional video on the 8 things great putters do will inspire you, as it did me, to work on key aspects of your putting.

Putting Grip Case Study

As a high-handicap golfer myself, I decided to try out the claw grip. The reason I have suggested it as part of this ultimate guide to putting for high-handicappers is that the results were very interesting - despite early concerns about it's effectiveness.

Below is a case study of my investigation, but you can also watch the full procedure on the video below.

Background After a barren spell on the greens and feeling like I hadn’t holed anything of note for ages, I decided to switch things up and try something new. Flitting between multiple grips, I couldn’t settle on a contender, so I headed to Sand Moor Golf Club to put the final decision in the hands of the data.

Methodology Armed with my putter and five golf balls, I conducted a simple experiment to gather data. I hit 60 putts from six feet, broken down into 20 putts per grip. All putts were hit from the same spot on a sloping left-to-right six-footer to carefully consider the variables.

Results

The Conventional Grip: Starting with this old faithful, I was surprised by how it performed admirably. The grip felt confident, helping me hole 14 of 20 putts.

Left Hand Low Grip: Proceeding in a positive fashion, I found the bottom of the cup 13 out of 20 times. This style efficiently squared my shoulders along the target line and left me feeling pleased, meaning I didn't totally discount it.

The Claw Grip: Despite an encouraging start, a dry spell during the third set of five balls meant the fashionable claw grip only converted 9 of 20 putts. Shelved for now.

At the time, I moved away from using the claw grip as it actually produced the worst results out of the three methods tried. However, over the first ten balls the success rate was huge, so I decided to give it some time on the course to flesh out the data.

The results showed that, with some practice, this method removed much of the unwanted manipulation from my trail hand and yielded better results. My handicap has since dropped by five shots, albeit not exclusively because of the claw grip, but it has certainly been a positive factor in that improvement.

As with any putting grip, the decision is pretty personal and unique to the individual. Exploring options in practice could provide the solution to your putting woes, and like me you could soon be adopting the claw on the greens.

Step-By-Step Guide: The Claw Grip

Step 1 - The Left Hand Placement

Take your normal putting stance and using your left hand (for a right-handed golfer) grip the putter in the lifelines on the palm of your hand.

When using the claw grip for putting, the left hand is towards the top of the grip, as opposed to the lower position seen in a left-hand low putting grip. The back of your left hand should point towards the target.

Step 2 - The Right Hand Placement

Using your right hand, make a 'claw' shape using the space between your thumb and your index finger. For comfort and stability, you can press your four fingers together to form one pincer of the claw (think of a crab's claw), with the thumb forming the other.

Place your newly formed claw onto the grip of the putter underneath your left hand, with your fingers pointing towards the target side and the grip cradled in the crease.

Step 3 - The Stroke

I like to feel as though my left elbow is more tucked into my side and the stroke is really instigated from my left wrist.

The claw grip for putting is designed to take the right hand out of play, so while it's in contact with the club it shouldn't really be influencing the stroke too much.

The grip pressure is stronger in the left hand, with the right sitting more as a guide than anything else.

When certain golfers suffer are searching for how to cure the putting yips, this technique is popular antidote to administer as it limits the role of an over-dominant right hand when putting.

While the claw grip won't solve all of your putting woes, especially if you are struggling with how to read greens, it will help you to create a reliable stroke that you feel comfortable with - and that's huge!

Best Putters 2026

Having the right equipment is just as important as finding the right putting grip or improving your technique on the greens. Finding the right putter for you again comes down to personal preference, with many styles to choose from.

I switched a few years ago from a blade to a mallet putter and I've never looked back.

You only have to look at the success of the TaylorMade Spider X on the PGA Tour this season to see why the model is so popular.

I love it and couldn't imagine rolling the ball with anything else. Confidence on the greens is so important, which is why it has stayed in my bag for so long.

The video below breaks down the best putters on the market in 2026, reviewed by our expert testers under rigorous conditions, to help point you in the right direction when looking to find your next flat stick...

Line and Pace Putting Drill

This drill is super simple to set up. Grab your putter, a golf ball and three tees - then head to the practice green. The instructions are explained clearly in a step-by-step format within the video, so try it for yourself.

The idea is to increase comfort with holing putts at different speeds for different breaks. If you find this too easy or you want an additional challenge, increase the length of putt or find one with a little more slope!

Green Reading Practice

For this drill, I want you to completely take the hole out of your mind and focus instead on the start line.

So many amateurs will aim straight at the hole every time and then wonder why they are missing the putt by six feet or more. If we can read the high point of the putt correctly, and identify the start line, a challenging putt will become a lot easier.

Identifying the high point of the putt is essentially understanding where the putt will reach it's highest point and start to break most. You can do this with your feet by walking along the line with your feet straddled and feeling where the slope is most severe.

Set up a gate around three foot from your ball, measured at around one putter head's width, which is aiming directly at that high point. This is a great putting drill using tees - something every golfer has in their bag.

In the image below, I have used white markers to visualise the break of the putt. If you don't have access to these, you could use a tee or a ball marker to highlight the high point of the putt.

The aim is to practice hitting the start line effectively, allowing the ball to travel on your intended line and complete it's journey by cosying up to the hole (or going in - of course).

Pick different breaking putts, with varying severity, and you will be able to master slopes in no time at all.

Testing Yourself On The Green

As part of my winter golf rebuild, I took part in some baseline testing with PGA Pro Alex James to determine my skillset and starting point.

This gate drill was frustratingly difficult at first, but by the end I wanted to carry on setting gates up across the practice green to test my start line in different (and increasingly more difficult) circumstances.

Anyone can do this with a putter, a golf ball and a few tees, but working on your start line and marrying up the pace with that read is a great investment for any high-handicap golfer.

“Where were you actually aiming?” As a high-handicap golfer I think that this is one of the daftest questions my playing partners ask me after I’ve missed the target by several fairways (regular occurrence) or landed an approach shot on the green (twice, maybe!).

Don’t get me wrong, my partners aren’t stupid for asking, and the question is a perfectly reasonable one. The daftness rests firmly with me because, although I’d likely answer ‘somewhere in the vague direction of the fairway/green/flag’, it doesn’t matter.

Right now, the idea of actually aiming my golf shot and expecting it to get close to that place is anathema to me. You’d be better off asking me to predict this week’s winning lottery numbers.

Fortunately, Top 50 Coach Josh Mayo was on hand to help me with how to aim in the most recent of my three golf lessons with him... using something called the Parallax Paradox.

A Parallax Paradox Lesson Solved My Golf Alignment Issue

This is why I snort/laughed when my coach Josh Mayo asked me exactly the above early on in my third lesson at Windmill Leisure and Golf in Bristol, England.

I’d, yet again, unleashed a glorious hook from the tee box. The right-to-left flight of so many of my balls is something that Josh and I worked on in my last lesson, when he tried to address my strong grip with the help of a $10 training aid.

To give Josh credit, the learnings and subsequent practice following that lesson have seen an improvement but, as many of you other high-handicappers out there will know, one good shot can be followed by at least four absolute stinkers. Luckily, today Josh has a plan.

“Ball flight and direction are determined by four key factors: where you aim - pre-swing, and then the angle of the club face at impact, the path the club travels through the ball and the strike location,” says Josh.

“In the last lesson we looked at the club face angle, so you already know that you need to work on that, but I’ve got a great exercise to help with your aim.”

Josh tells me that my target is to hit over a black box on a pole out on the range. (As this is one of the reassuringly expensive Trackman radars I assume he’s confident my aim won’t improve that much in the next 30-minutes or so!).

“Show me how you’d aim at the box, and then hit a shot.” I address the ball, take a couple of looks at the target, swing, miss. A couple more goes and the Trackman radar is unthreatened.

Josh grabs a yellow alignment stick attached to a metal base and places it at the edge of the tee platform.

“Stand behind the yellow stick and tell me where to move it so that it’s in line with the target.” After a few left a bits, right a bits, I’m happy with my aim and Josh places a ball in line with the stick.

“Right, now address the ball and look at the stick. Is it still in line with the target?” Erm, absolutely not.

When I address the ball, look at the stick and then the target, the radar box has moved to the left. “That’s all down to parallax error,” explains Josh with the help of a diagram.

I get a bit excited here because, as a keen amateur photographer I'm aware of parallax from using rangefinder style cameras. No, they're not like golf rangefinders...

Put simply, when addressing the ball and then looking at your target, you’re looking at it from an angle and no longer straight on.

So, you need to adjust your aim to account for this difference, otherwise you'll likely find that you ball doesn't head quite where you want it to..

“So, I want you to stand with your body aligned parallel to the yellow stick and not the radar box and aim at the stick.” Says Josh.

I look at the stick. “Hit the yellow stick, go!” And what do you know? I hit the thin yellow stick at the first time of asking and the ball heads in the direction of the target. Even better, Josh was filming me (video below) and my glory has been captured for posterity!

Of course, my elation was short-lived, as I never hit the stick again. Even after Josh added a thick section of foam swimming noodle to create his (possibly) patent pending ‘noodle stick’.

“Adding the ‘noodle’ will help you better visualise what side you miss,” says Josh. “And align your body parallel to the target line rather than directly at the target.

This will force you to focus on where the club face is pointing and how the club path is moving to get to the target.”

“This drill will help build a physical ‘feel’ and routine for your aim,” adds Josh. “It’ll also encourage you to have a more structured approach at the range.

Try practicing with the same club and target to establish your routine. And then change clubs and targets which will help readjust your brain and aim, which is how you’ll need to play on the course.’

On the course, the routine obviously needs to be different. I’ll stand behind the ball and look at the ultimate target and then pick a much closer target like a different coloured patch of fairway or divot mark that also lines up with the green/flag/not-the-bunker.

That’s what I’ll then aim at when I address the ball. Or I might just stick a swimming noodle in my bag – that’s allowed in the rules right?

Swaying in the golf swing is a common issue for amateur golfers, but it's also a direct cause of inconsistent ball striking.

If you want to shoot lower scores and cut your handicap in 2026, identifying and addressing a sway in the golf swing is super important.

Ben Emerson is a PGA Fellow Professional who has more than two decades of experience coaching amateurs and professionals to play better golf, specialising in the fundamentals of movement and how to build an efficient golf swing from the ground up.

In this article and instructional video, Ben helps one of our readers to stop swaying in the golf swing with a great golf lesson that centres around the best ball striking tips...

Swaying In The Golf Swing

Single-figure golfer Neil visited our Game-Changer Clinic after suffering with inconsistent strikes.

It's a problem that plagues the games of many amateur golfers, irrespective of their ability level, but it's often caused by ineffective footwork in the golf swing.

After watching Neil in the studio, Ben quickly identified the fault and provided an actionable plan to fix it – one you can also use to improve the consistency of your strike via better footwork.

Swaying: What Is It?

Swaying – the fault Neil arrived with – is when the trail hip moves away from the ball instead of turning behind you in the backswing.

It's not the upper body moving, it's the lower half. Specifically for Neil, it was his right hip moving up.

If you move away from the ball (sway), you have to move back again to make good contact. This creates far too many moving parts for club golfers to achieve any degree of consistency in the strike.

How To Identify A Sway

Any amateur can identify this fault by recording their swing face-on - which something every golfers should do at the driving range. Stop the video at the top and draw a line along your spine.

If your spine angle (and your head) have tilted towards the target as you seek to retain balance after shifting your centre of gravity laterally, instead of remaining loaded directly above the hips, you've likely swayed off the ball.

How To Fix A Sway

To fix the issue, I needed to stabilise Neil's trail foot in the backswing. We achieved this by placing a force pedal (or you can use a tennis ball cut in half) under that foot.

I encouraged Neil to squeeze into the pedal as he swung back to help him get off that foot and push towards the target side in the downswing, when the weight shift occurs.

To stop moving away from the target in the backswing, we needed to create a blocker, and the best way for Neil to do this was to push hard into the inside of his trail foot.

Another way to try to prevent a sway is to imagine you're swinging with your feet and legs inside a barrel.

You want that rotation in the backswing to exist within the perimeters of the barrel, without your trail hip bumping into the wood. Another drill we tried was for me to loop a band around Neil's waist and pull.

Any hint of swaying rather than rotating would allow me to pull Neil over towards me. A big lateral movement in the backswing is not good for controlling the low point, which impacts strike location and consistency.

A consistently good short game requires more than a 'one size fits all' approach.

A stock shot around the green is great to have, but being able to vary your flight with wedges is a great way to shoot lower scores and cut your handicap in 2026.

In this short game clinic, Top 50 Coach Alex Buckner shares a simple system for altering trajectory when pitching and chipping - which centres on simple setup changes that any golfer can make at address.

Alex coaches top tour players, like three-time DP World Tour winner Marco Penge, but he also helped countless amateurs to improve their short game - now, it's your turn!

A lot of club players don't understand why they launch their wedges a certain way. Often, it's inconsistency in their setup.

Here, you can see the ball is forward in my stance, my weight is stacked on my trail side and I'm tilted to my right. There is no shaft lean.

These are all elements that launch the ball high. If you launch it high and come up short, you may want to change a few things. In the wind, especially, it's not usually the right shot, as it's harder to control.

Most club players struggle to launch their wedges low, which is what I'm set up to do here. I've adopted a steeper position with my body, my weight is slightly forward, and I'm not tilted behind the ball.

In fact, my body has a slight tilt towards the target. The ball is back in my stance, and my hands are forward. Note the shaft lean here.

By making these few changes to the address position, I'm altering the attack angle and moving the low point forward so the ball launches low.

Depending on the scenario, you may want to launch it high or low. For example, picture a front flag, downwind on a hard green, versus playing into the wind to a back flag.

The former scenario best suits a higher trajectory, and the latter a lower one.

The best pitchers can hit their yardages in multiple ways. Practise hitting from 50-100 yards with two different flights to help you master your distance control and learn how to adapt your trajectory.

Matt Fitzpatrick is a Major Champion and a 5-time PGA Tour winner, but he also has the best short game on the planet in 2026.

The Englishman ranks 1st for Strokes Gained: Around The Green over the past twelve months and he uses a very interesting method to achieve that success - cross-handed chipping.

So, if the world's best is blazing a trail with this lesser-seen technique, surely it can help you to sharpen up around the greens, right?

According to PGA pro Ged Walters, who has more than three decades of experience coaching golfers of all abilities, many amateur golfers would benefit from trying cross-handed chipping.

Improving your short game is a key way to shoot lower scores and cut your handicap in 2026, so Ged has broken down the technique and provided a simple to follow guide which can help you follow in Fitzpatrick's footsteps.

I even tried cross-handed chipping for myself, which you can see in the video below, and I loved the results...

Cross-Handed Chipping: PGA Pro Guide

Cross-handed chipping is a great way to prevent the trail hand taking over, which is a common amateur fault that leads to a scoopy action when using a conventional grip.

Many golfers try to help the ball in the air when chipping, but the reality is the club is designed to do all the hard work for you.

In the image here, I'm having to chip over a bunker to the green and this would scare some club golfers into stabbing at the ball to get it airborne.

But the cross-handed chipping method helps to keep everything connected and stable throughout the swing, often leading to better results for players who struggle with their short game.

To try cross-handed chipping, place your left hand below your right on the grip and stand closer to the ball, with the shaft more upright and your stance fairly narrow.

Place 70% of your weight onto your lead foot at address and keep it there throughout the swing.

Take the club away on what feels like a straight line, even though there will be a natural arc to it, and deliver it back on the same line in the downswing.

Allow a small amount of chest rotation throughout the downswing, maintaining connection between arms and chest as you move into impact and through to the finish.

A great drill when practising cross-handed chipping is to use your shirt to maintain connection. Tuck it under your lead armpit at address and focus on maintaining pressure there throughout the swing.

If you release your shirt from under your arm, you have lost connection and increased the risk of topping or thinning your chips.

You could also use a headcover or glove in practice, which can give you instant visual feedback, as the training aid will drop to the ground if you lose connection.

We all want to get better and lower our scores, and while practising any part of your game is going to help, it’s important to know how you can make the greatest improvements in the quickest time, so you can deliver your focus there and work more efficiently.

If you’ve only got a limited amount of time to work on your game, you want to spend it targeting something that’s going to have the biggest possible positive impact on your scoring.

Thanks to the data and insights provided by Shot Scope, we’ve pinpointed five types of shot where you will see the biggest rewards from your hard work and commitment to get better and knock shots off your scores.

1. Fairway-finder off the tee

It all starts with hitting the fairway off the tee. The Shot Scope stats tell us that hitting the short grass compared to a fairway bunker saves half a shot, and the gains are even bigger if you’re avoiding tee shots heading out of bounds or into penalty areas.

Having a consistent shot with the driver that you can rely on hitting accurately will set you up for the rest of the hole.

We need to make some changes from a normal driver set-up. First, tee the ball down lower. I would normally have about half the ball above the top of the clubhead, but for this shot I want the top of the ball in line with the top of the clubhead or just a fraction higher.

From there, narrow the stance a little to naturally reduce the length of the backswing and grip down a little to gain a bit more control. I want to swing at 75% because we’re going for control rather than power. The ball flight will naturally come down, which gets the ball on the ground and running a bit quicker, which is easier to control and keep in play.

2. The Long Approach Shot

It’s very obvious that if you hit more greens in regulation then your scores are going to come down, and this distance where a lot of handicap golfers will be hitting long irons and hybrids makes a big difference. A typical 15-handicapper will hit the green 15% of the time from 150-200 yards, while that doubles to 30% for a five-handicapper.

I see a lot of golfers trying to help the ball up in the air with long irons because they’re looking down at a pretty flat clubface, which means their weight stays back. You want to get your weight moving forward through the shot, so you’re hitting down and striking ball then turf.

I like to use a drill where you get a feel for shifting your weight back and through by stepping your left foot back towards your right foot as you swing back and stepping towards the target with your left and then right foot as you swing down and through (vice versa for left-handers).

This is an exaggerated version to build the right feelings. Then you can just lift your front foot as you swing back and lift your back foot as you swing through. For your actual swing while hitting shots, you want to feel the pressure transfer into your back foot as you take the club away, then once the club goes out of view you start moving your weight back to the target to really get through the ball.

There are also clubs that can help you. Hybrids and lofted fairway woods are more forgiving and produce a higher ball flight than long irons. I think most golfers would benefit from using these clubs for this type of shot, but you still need to get your weight forward. Anything that makes the game easier is a good thing.

3. Pitch shots inside 75 yards

These are the types of shots you’ll face a lot – whether it’s attacking for birdie on par 5s and shorter par 4s, or scrambling for par on long par 4s or if you’ve been out of position – and the difference to your score between a good or bad pitch can often be two strokes or more.

The Shot Scope data reveals that the average 20-handicapper only hits the green 49% of the time from 50-75 yards. You’re usually missing greens from this kind of range because of a poor strike.

I have a system to help with distance control and strike. For a standard pitch, I want the ball to be relatively central in my stance, and my feet relatively narrow, with the hands slightly forwards.

If I want to change the length and trajectory of the shot, I put the ball a bit further forward for a higher shot and a bit further back for a lower shot. As I want to hit the ball a bit further for each ball position, I would increase the width of my stance to allow me to make a slightly bigger swing.

You can build your feel and calibrate your distances to each of these different set-ups by doing a ladder drill where you use one swing length and gradually increase the width of your stance to hit the ball slightly further each time. Do this with the three different ball positions and you’ll have a wide range of different pitch shots that you can hit simply and consistently.

4. Long approach putts

Reducing three-putts is vital for saving shots. The average 25-handicapper has 5.8 three-putts in a round, while that’s 3.5 for 15-handicappers and just 1.5 for five-handicappers. A big part of avoiding three-putts is lagging long-range putts to easy tap-in range, and distance control is key to that.

Speed is so crucial when putting. We want a constant and consistent swinging clubhead to control speed. The last thing we want is a swing that’s too short and accelerating through the ball, or too long and decelerating. I like to use the leapfrog drill.

Give yourself a long putt and try to hit one ball a third of the way, the second ball two thirds and the final ball all the way to the hole. You do that by keeping the same tempo but changing the length of the stroke. Consistency and control also come from striking the putt out the center of the face – and that gets harder as the putt and the stroke gets longer.

A good drill for this is to use a tee gate just slightly wider that your putter head. Hit puts with the ball in the middle of the gate and if your clubhead passes through then you’ll strike the ball out the middle.

5. Holing-out inside six feet

The shots saved and lost here are more obvious than anywhere else, because we’re all expecting to hole them and one shot has definitely slipped away if you don’t. Shot Scope data shows that from 3-6 feet a 20-handicapper is only holing 55% of their putts, a 10-handicapper is 65%, and it’s still what most people would consider a surprisingly low 76% for scratch players. You’re not going to hole them all, but you want drain more than your fair share.

It’s all about alignment. As we get closer to the hole, alignment becomes more important. I took my son to the BMW PGA Championship. He got some balls from the players and every single one of them had a line on it. The idea of the line is to aim it where you want your ball to start, and then you align the putter head to the line on the ball.

If you hit the ball squarely then that ball will start on-line, roll end over end and go in the hole if you’ve aimed it in the right place. This also gives you great feedback because a wobbly line shows you haven’t struck it squarely and a miss with your intended start line and good speed indicates a misread, which you can learn from.

Amateur golfers often wonder how best to use their time before a round or organise their practice in general.

Turning up and machine-gunning through a bucket of balls is something you should never do on the driving range, but sadly so many amateur golfers totally neglect their short game in favour of more time with big stick in hand.

But, if you want to cut your handicap in 2026, you need to flip the script. Our short game clinic and ultimate putting improvement guide are a great place to start, as they provide top tips from expert coaches, but you still need a clear routine to follow.

In order to help you put together a consistent and effective 30-minute short-game practice routine, we reached out to a Top 50 Coach with more than 30 years of experience helping golfers to shoot lower scores.

Below, Keith shares how committing to half an hour of practice time can seriously sharpen up your short game...

30-Minute Short Game Practice Routine

Short Putting

When faced with a short putt, focus on a specific point at the back of the hole, commit to a ‘followthrough and hold' position and be more conscious of where your follow-through ends.

It's a bit like a full swing – if you focus on where it needs to finish, the journey can take care of itself. Avoid anything too technical just before you play.

A simple drill to narrow your focus is to reduce the size of the hole with tee pegs to get you really focused on the centre of the hole – two at the front, just wide enough to get the ball through, and one at the back as a target.

Instead of trying to hit the hole, which is just over 4ins wide, focus centrally on something as small as the stem of a tee peg. You then have 2ins either side in case you pull or push it.

Here, our intention is to hit the back of the hole. So, hold the follow-through and be aware of where the putter finishes. You will find you accelerate to that point, which will help you to keep the putter face on line and squarer for longer.

Long Putts

In preparation for your round, and assuming that you are comfortable with the mechanics of your putting stroke, you need to create a feel for, and rapport with, your target.

A great drill for long putts is to look at the hole while swinging the putter backwards and forwards in your practice strokes.

This builds your natural awareness of the distance to the hole through your eyes and is more effective than staring down at the ball with an occasional look.

Our eyes are pivotal when it comes to aiming and judging distance. If you're throwing a dart or rolling a ball on a bowling green, your eyes are the most important thing. We all have an in-built skill to judge distance through our eyes.

Try and get away from worrying about the length of your stroke too much. Instead, stare at that target and build up a visual for what a 40ft putt requires. When you take your practice swings, stare at the hole and swing the putter.

You're not actually analysing how you're swinging that club. Rather, you are analysing subconsciously through your eyes how far away the hole is. So, establish a rapport with the target and then step straight in and execute.

Ball Above Your Feet

It's important that you don't just practise your chipping from perfect lies, as you'll get all sorts of lies out on the golf course. It's therefore important to learn how to manage slopes.

When the ball is above your feet, keep it simple. Stand a bit further away as it becomes a slightly flatter action, and get right down to the bottom of the grip to naturally shorten the club.

Now you've factored in that the ball is a few inches above you. Also, lower your hands slightly so the toe doesn't dig into the slope.

Now, just make the usual move with the torso as you've taken care of impact by gripping down. Favour the balls of your feet with your weight as it's easy to sit into your heels due to the slope. Finally, allow for the ball to move a little left.

As with any awkward lie, focus on maintaining stability for a decent contact. Be realistic with expectations and what constitutes a good shot from this lie.

Ball Below Your Feet

This lie is quite awkward. You don't want to put your weight on your toes because it will feel like you're toppling down the hill, so people generally sit in their heels, which straightens the spine angle.

It's almost impossible to get the club back to the ball properly then. Instead, tilt a bit more from your hips to lower yourself a little and hold the grip at full length.

You need to get the shaft as tall as possible to avoid the heel making contact with the slope, as this can flip the toe of the club over.

Lob Shot

This is a risky shot as it involves additional moving parts. You can stand slightly open or square if you're more comfortable.

Many golfers tend to complicate things and, if you're a bit worried about a shank, opening yourself up means an across-the-line hit, which increases the risk.

This is one of the few shots where you don't want the club releasing via rotation of your forearms.

Try and keep your glove's logo pointing skywards so it stays above the other hand. This will keep loft on the clubface.

Hinge your wrists to get the club steeper in the backswing and to create an aggressive angle of attack for added height and flight.

Push down on the butt of the club with your gloved hand to promote the hinge motion. It's a longer swing, so commit through the ball and keep the upper body rotating into a full-ish finish.

Greenside Bunker Shot

The only interaction you have with the sand as you prepare to play from a bunker is through your feet, and this will give you your first impression of what that sand is like.

Then it's about securing your stance – it's a longer swing than a standard chip and you don't want to slip. How much you lower yourself into the sand with your feet (top left photo) will automatically set your divot's depth – the low point of your swing.

I would then recommend the line drill, which is all about whether or not you can direct the club onto the desired point of impact in the sand behind the ball. Can you hit that spot with a bit of energy and keep the energy going?

You won't get any better feedback than this. If you hit one fat, it will be behind the line. If you don't hit the line at all, you know you've thinned it.

The depth of divot will also highlight how you are swinging it. So, practise your ability to hit a certain point by drawing a line in the practice bunker and trying to make contact as close to it as possible.

Chip And Release

This is all about ‘collecting' the ball, with the follow-through and finish position crucial.

Stand tall with the toe of the club more in contact with the ground than the heel. Adopt a narrow stance with weight favouring your lead leg, ball slightly back and hands down the grip.

Take enough loft to carry any fringe or obstacle, but with the strength of loft to give you your desired roll/release. Then rock your shoulders, with hands and arms simply moving with the shoulders.

Having the toe down minimises contact with the ground. It won't impact your follow-through unless you decelerate, hence why rocking the shoulders is pivotal.

Not everybody can ‘get' the feeling of the shoulders going up and down, so think about moving the V of your forearms. It's all about getting your forearms going backwards and forwards in that V, with minimal hand/wrist action.

Improved ball striking can be often be achieved by focusing on the fundamentals, in particular the preparatory aspects that occur before you even start the golf swing.

This was the advice that Golf Monthly's instruction lead, Baz Plummer, received during a golf lesson with Former World No.1 Lee Westwood, but it's also a common theme shared by the best PGA Professionals around the world.

Some of the best ball striking lessons talk about the importance of the perfect golf grip, but this is often the root cause of common faults for amateur golfers.

The transformational impact that a neutral golf grip can have on your ball flight is amazing, as realised by Golf Monthly's content director Rob Spedding in a recent golf lesson.

As Rob explains below, a simple $10 training aid used by World No.1 Scottie Scheffler, that was leant to him by his coach in a recent lesson, had an immediate impact and improved the quality of his ball striking...

Improving My Ball Striking One Lesson At A Time

“Look at that – that’s going to fly!’ My coach, Joshua Mayo, is filming as I swing at the start of my lesson and he sounds mildly impressed. I have to admit I am too, as I’ve just flushed a seven iron 150 yards in almost the right direction.

‘‘I can see that you’ve taken on board what we talked about in the first lesson, trusted what I told you and have been putting it into practice,” he says. “Your posture is way better and your swing is smoother. Not bad.”

Golf completed for Mr Spedding? Of course not. This is just my second session with Golf Monthly Top-50 coach Joshua – based at Windmill Leisure Golf Centre near Bristol, UK – and truth-be-told this fleeting moment is probably as good as it’s going to get today.

Due to a number of reasons too mundane to go into here, I’ve left almost two months between lessons one and two. Which is way too long.

In between that I have been semi-regularly hitting both the range and trees, bunkers and the deep rough on the left-hand side of Lansdown Golf Club in Bath. And while Joshua says he can see improvement, I am much less sure of this than he is.

The Lesson

As a quick recap, that first golf lesson delivered a few home truths. It started with Joshua taking a look at me on set up and quickly diagnosing that I was going to have to work on my hunched, tense and, as a result, wildly inefficient posture.

He also got me to work on my rotation on the backswing – providing me with drills to do at home and when I’m practising.

I’d love to say that I’ve been sitting with a golf club across my chest and rotating whilst watching Widow’s Bay on Apple, but I haven’t. Like physio prescribed exercises for chronic Achilles problems and flossing, drills at home are optional right?

The posture tips, though, I have taken on board and have tried to be far more mindful about how I hold myself before striking the ball.

Of course as any high-handicapper knows, thinking and doing are two different things and, usually, the thinking means the doing goes to pot, especially out on the course..

Which brings me back to the mildly impressive strike at the start. The next hit is wild, and the next, I bring it back, and then it’s a hook, followed by a topped hook, then a hook off the toe… If there’s one thing I’m currently consistent with then it’s inconsistency. Although I am at least consistently hooking.

“The trick for new golfers is to not be hard on yourself,” explains Joshua.

“Improving really really does take time as there are so many elements to work on. Here at the range during a lesson we can work on, among other things, swing dynamics, posture, alignment, ball striking, your grip and aim.”

“And out on the course it’s getting it off the tee consistently, distance control with different clubs, chipping, putting, bunkers and, of course, game management and controlling your emotions. To be honest that can add up to at least 18-months of lessons!”

The Grip Fix

I mean, I’m pretty sure I’m in this game for the long run so that sounds fine (if a little expensive!) and there are clearly no quick fixes. But how about a quick fix Joshua?

“Let’s take a look at your grip, tell me how you set that up.”

I tell Joshua that I use an interlocking grip and try to position my left hand so that I can only see a couple of my knuckles. So far, so good, but when I set up Joshua notices a problem straight away.

“Two knuckles is good, but you have a strong grip, which leads to an closed club face on ball strike and partly explains why many of your balls are heading left," he explains.

Of course, strong doesn’t mean ‘good strong’ in this context. (Although I do still have a tendency to throttle my club to death.)

Rather, as a right-hander, my hands are too far to the right when gripping the club. (A weak grip would mean my hands were too far to the left.) The goal is a neutral grip.

Joshua reaches into his bag and grabs something that he thinks will help. It’s a training grip favoured by no lesser talent than our very own Joe Ferguson. Oh, and it's also used in every practice session by world number one Scottie Scheffler!

“A neutral grip means that you're holding the club primarily through your fingers, with the line between your thumb and forefinger on both hands pointing towards your right shoulder, and as you said, just two left knuckles visible. And relax – pressure should be about six-out-of-ten,” says Joshua.

“Using one of these grip trainers can help set your hands in the right position and, hopefully, starts to help build muscle memory so that it’ll eventually become natural without the training aid.”

With the training grip attached I start to hit balls. Surprisingly, a reasonable proportion of them head in a much straighter, less left, direction than earlier.

“That’s exactly how I’d script it for a golfer going from a strong to neutral grip,” beams Joshua.

On the Trackman screen he shows me some of the data that’s been collected during the lesson – my strong gripped shots show closed club face angles – facing to the left at anywhere between five and 25 degrees.

With the neutral grip, the higher angles decrease. A couple even get close to, gulp, zero and the ball flight looks decent.

“Establishing a neutral grip is foundational,” says Joshua. “It’ll help to remove over-compensations in other areas of your swing and help simplify your swing substantially.”

I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t already been aware of some of the information Joshua has imparted to me over the last 45-minutes. (I do read stuff on this site and watch our videos, honest).

I am surprised, though, to find myself so in awe at how much practicing with advice from someone who really knows their onions appears to yield real-time improvements.

Like the game itself, the learning is becoming addictive. Obviously, I book my next lesson before I leave Windmill Leisure and order a grip training aid from Amazon as soon as I’m in the car.

Going to practice without a plan and machine-gunning through golf balls are examples of things you should never do at the driving range, but sadly so many fall foul of these common mistakes.

Golf Monthly's instruction lead, Baz Plummer, recently had a golf lesson with Former World No.1 Lee Westwood, who explained that he would take at least three times longer than the average amateur to hit 50 balls in practice - simply because he has a clear plan and process.

If you want to cut your handicap in 2026 and shoot lower scores on the golf course, it's time to ditch the rapid 100-ball range session - but what should you do instead?

PGA Pro James Jankowski has coached more than 3000 golfers and helped them to improve their game, so trying his trio of 5-minute fixes would be a great place to start.

As James explains below, three simple drills (continuous step, trail arm only and putting separation) can help you to improve your long and short game in time for the business end of the golf season...

James Jankowski: My 5-Minute Fixes

Fix 1: Continuous Step Drill

The ‘continuous step' drill aims to improve swing sequencing, coordination and rhythm by linking multiple swings together without stopping.

Start the swing by stepping to the trail side (above), then step toward the target before the backswing is complete to initiate transition and pressure shift (below).

Continue stepping through into the finish (below), then flow immediately into the next swing.

Performing four or five swings in a row trains the body to move in sequence without manipulation or hesitation.

You can do this with practice swings or by hitting balls consecutively. It develops a more athletic motion by synchronising feet, lower body, torso and arms while improving balance, timing and flow.

Fix 2: Trail Arm Only Drill

The ‘trail arm only' drill helps organise the structure and motion of the trail arm as you swing.

At the top, the trail arm naturally works into external rotation to help support the mass of the club and position the arm for a stronger, more functional delivery. This creates better structure without excessive tension or lifting.

From here, you learn to synchronise the arm swing with the body pivot, rather than throwing the arm independently from the top.

Because the trail arm is supporting the club on its own, poor sequencing is immediately exposed.

The drill promotes better timing between the arms and torso, improving transition, delivery and overall strike consistency.

Fix 3: Putting Separation Drill

When you putt, the goal is not to keep the head perfectly still but to separate shoulder motion from head motion so the head remains fairly stable during the stroke.

This demands the right blend of shoulder tilt (up and down) and shoulder turn (rotation around the spine).

Too much turn tends to move the head laterally; too much tilt causes the head to rise or dip.

Getting these two movements right improves strike consistency and clubface control.

A good way to train the correct motion is using an alignment stick across the shoulders, focusing on moving the torso while the head stays centred and quiet.

Gianfranco Zola was a hero of mine growing up. As a huge football fan, I was in awe of his skill, finesse and ability to terrorise defences - which is quite something considering I am not a Chelsea fan.

As a fanboy of the Italian star, I have always been stunned by his limited World Cup footprint and saddened by the unfortunate circumstances that restricted his playing time for the Azzurri in the biggest competition on the planet.

At the World Cup in 1994, the last time the tournament was hosted in the United States, Zola was substituted on for Italy in a knockout match against Nigeria.

Sadly, he lasted just 10 minutes due to being sent off for a foul on Augustine Eguavoen - on his 28th birthday no less.

He never represented Italy in the World Cup again and thus one of the greatest footballers in Premier League history failed to realise his full potential on the greatest stage in the sport.

When flicking through the Golf Monthly magazine archive recently, I was pleased to find a 1999 'star lesson' featuring Zola himself - which allowed me to embark on a nostalgic journey while also learning a thing or two that could improve my game.

As we head back to the United States for the 2026 World Cup, it seems like a fitting time to share the article in all its glory - unedited and unfiltered to capture the true nostalgia of a football legend being helped with his golf game in just the same way as you and I.

These tips from the December 1999 issue of Golf Monthly magazine, which were given by PGA Pro Gavin Ryan at the London Club, certainly stand the test of time and can still help other amateur golfers to shoot lower scores and cut their handicap in 2026...

Gianfranco Zola's Retro Golf Lesson – December 1999

To the majority of Golf Monthly readers, Italian superstar striker Gianfranco Zola will need little or no introduction.

Since moving from Italian side Parma to join Chelsea in November 1996, he has set Stamford Bridge and the Premiership alight with his silky skills, fancy footwork, dazzling array of free kicks and his sheer passion for the game.

And who could forget his spectacular winner for Italy against England at Wembley two years ago?

In his first full season in England Zola was voted Player of the Year, and another highlight was scoring the winning goal for Chelsea in the 1998 European Cup Winners' Cup final against Stuttgart.

So, all in all, you could say that he has adapted reasonably well to playing football in England.

Gavin Ryan's Pre-Swing Analysis

The first thing which struck me upon meeting Gianfranco Zola was how physically fit and flexible he is.

He is not a tall man, but he is incredibly strong – built like a bull, all muscle and not a millimetre of fat in sight.

He is also incredibly supple, which is one reason why, although he is a 13-handicap, he has huge potential.

Despite some idiosyncrasies in his swing, he is a decent ball-striker and putts well. And although he isn't as sharp around the greens as he is around the edge of the penalty area, it's only feel which is lacking.

As you would expect from a top athlete, Gianfranco's set-up is well balanced and very good, in general, although there are several minor flaws present.

For a start his hands are a little too far behind the ball at address and his feet and toes are just a little too square. Ideally, I'd like to see his feet splayed by about 10 degrees or so to help him turn back and through.

Gianfranco allows his left arm to bend too much on his backswing and as he starts his downswing, he tends to slide too far forward with his hips before overcompensating by hanging back on his right side through the ball.

The result is an incomplete finish position and leaked shots to the right.

Gianfranco Zola's Lesson

1. Splaying left foot at address provides room to turn

My first change to Gianfranco's set-up was to flare out his left toe at address, so that instead of, aiming at, say, 12 o'clock on a clockface, it now aims at 1 o'clock.

The purpose of this minor adjustment is to make it easier for him to turn through the ball.

One reason why his hips slide too much at the start of the downswing is because they cannot rotate.

Simply by turning his left toe towards the target by a couple of inches, he will be able to clear his hips far more effectively.

2. Hands level with ball creates power at impact

As I mentioned in my initial analysis, Zola's hands are a little behind the ball at address. This causes a couple of problems.

Firstly, it makes it difficult for him to create a wide, one-piece takeaway on the correct plane and, secondly, it makes it extremely difficult for him to return the hands ahead of the ball at impact in order to exert pressure and power.

3. Repairing a broken spoke – adding width to the swing

I explained to Gianfranco how important it is to retain the width in his left arm during the backswing in terms of creating power and consistency.

Because of his flexibility, he was able to feel the "stretch" in his backswing as I asked him to focus on keeping his left arm extended as he swings the club away.

The end result is a shorter, more compact, but much more solid, position at the top of his swing.

4. Creating more pressure at impact

Because of faults earlier in his swing, Gianfranco has a tendency to fall back on his right foot through impact and "flick" at the ball with his hands and wrists to get it moving forwards.

To help him feel the sensations associated with a more powerful impact – one where the weight is on the left side and with the hands slightly ahead of the ball to apply more pressure – I physically manipulated him into position and simply asked him to recreate it at impact for real.

The end result is much more power and leverage through the ball.

Gavin Ryan's Post-Lesson Summary

As I expected, the amendments to Gianfranco's set-up had a knock-on effect to the rest of his game in the form of a wider takeaway, better weight transference back and through and a vastly improved impact position, where his weight now moves with the direction of the ball, not against it.

Obviously, it helps if you are as fit and flexible as Gianfranco, but acknowledging the importance of the basic fundamentals is a good lesson for anyone to learn.

Looking at this swing sequence now, it's clear that Gianfranco has the potential to be a really solid single-figure player, especially as he's just as common a sight on the golf course these days as he is at Stamford Bridge!

If he commits to the changes, he can go low very quickly, indeed.

The Golf Monthly archive is a gold mine of brilliant reads, documenting a journey through the history of golf dating back to our first issue in 1911. Take advantage of over 100 years of invaluable tips from the best tour professionals and coaches in world golf, by subscribing to the online Golf Monthly Archive.

Increasing distance is a goal for many amateur golfers, perhaps because the data tells us that hitting the golf ball farther is one of the most effective ways to cut your handicap in 2026.

However, adding distance off the tee is not a straightforward task. The best driving tips can help, of course, but there is also a key movement that golfers need to make that is linked to increased power and boosted clubhead speed.

Coiling in the backswing is crucial for generating energy to then release it in the downswing - and any golfer can learn how to do it.

If you can master this you are on the path to unlocking huge distance gains, so we asked Top 50 Coach and PGA professional Andrew Jones to break it all down for you.

Below, Andrew uses decades of experience to boil down a complex topic into simple and actionable tips that will make a difference to your game right now...

How To Coil In The Backswing For Huge Distance Gains In 2026

To coil effectively, there has to be resistance. First, you need a nice stable base to turn from, then it’s about resistance between your shoulder and hip turn, represented by the two alignment sticks in the image above.

As you turn, you’re looking for a ballpark figure of about 45° rotation in the hips and around 90° of rotation in the shoulders.

Another key to coiling and storing power is keeping the right leg braced and loaded. Straightening it as you turn back can be a real power leak.

You will create resistance by keeping the right leg flexed to turn against in the backswing. This restricts hip rotation to help create the difference between shoulder and hip turn, which generates coil and power.

Your arms are important, too. The triceps in your left arm should be nicely loaded at the top.

Another power leak is allowing the left arm to bend or collapse so you lose that tension.

It’s important to retain that left arm tension by maintaining a straight left arm as you rotate back, as your muscles will then be ready to contract and unwind to release all that stored energy back into the ball.

A very big shoulder turn isn’t necessarily a sign of power. If there’s no resistance, perhaps as a result of the left leg coming off the ground too much and the left knee moving across too far, you could turn beyond 90° but generate little coil and power.

Jon Rahm is a great example of a shorter but really powerful and loaded-up backswing.

Remember, we’re not all made the same and some of us are more flexible than others. Take care not to try and find positions beyond your body’s range of movement.

It's not everyday that an average high-handicap golfer gets the chance to receive a golf lesson from a former World No.1 and Ryder Cup legend, but that was the fortunate position I found myself in at Close House recently - when Lee Westwood agreed to help me with my game.

I benefited hugely from a winter golf rebuild that allowed me to utilise the off-season, with some pretty impressive results, but there is still plenty to do in order to cut my handicap in 2026.

Golf gym exercises helped me to gain a 106% power boost, while swing work and custom fit golf clubs have given me the tools to break 90 for the first time - but I was excited to hear what advice Lee Westwood could give me to supercharge my progress.

The tips in this video and article are absolute gold for high-handicappers, shared by one of the greatest European golfers in history.

His simple strategies and solutions to common faults could help you to shoot lower scores this season... they certainly did the trick for me!

5 Things I Learned From My Golf Lesson With Lee Westwood

1. Preventing A Slice

Like most high-handicap golfers, I struggle with a slice off the tee.

This doesn't always occur, as evidenced in the video of my lesson where I flushed one down the middle, but when the common fault rears its ugly head the results can be rather unpleasant.

As Lee Westwood explained, there are a few red flags that can cause a slice for an amateur golfer.

"They often don't get behind it enough in the backswing and then they try to pull the club through.

"That means they are always continuously holding the face open and never allow it to square by releasing the club".

I asked the Former World No.1 if he could share any advice for amateurs who wanted to banish a slice, either through practice on the range or on the course, and he gave a brilliant answer that will help many to achieve just that.

"I normally think about it as synchronising the arms with the body on the way down. Most people go with their body too fast, so wait a little bit at the top (of the swing) and allow your arms to come down before your body starts doing anything.

"The hardest thing in the golf swing is that your arms separate from your body on the way up, so at some point you have to reconnect on the way down. The easiest time to do that is in the first part of the downswing. Just let them reconnect and then turn.

"Most people get to the top and then go with their body, which leaves their arms way behind and means the club never squares up. The result is a shot that starts right and goes right".

2. Alignment

After finding the middle of the fairway I had 145-yards in to the flag on the 1st at Close House.

With Westwood watching on, I was hoping a little adrenaline was going to help me penetrate the wind and find the putting surface - but once again an old foe fought back and I never started it on the right line.

Alignment is a bit of an achilles heel for me, and other high-handicap golfers, but Lee Westwood gave a couple of great tips to improve in this key area.

"A problem with the modern game is that most people won't hit on a grass range. They might hit from a mat, or in a golf simulator, but that means you can't learn from your divots. It's a bit of a lost art, reading your divot to tell you what your swing is doing".

My divot was slightly from the inside and pointing a bit to the right, but it was square as opposed to thin. That meant that I had squared the face, but my alignment was slightly off. That's a problem that I can fix before I even touch the ball, as Lee explained.

"If you make a mistake in the first part, to do with your posture, setup or alignment, you have to make compensations somewhere else in the golf swing - then you've got two mistakes rather than one.

"The best way is to pick something on the ground about three or four feet in front of you. This can be a blade of grass or an old divot.

"It starts on the range. Most people will go and hit a bucket of 50 balls, pulling each across and hitting it. I will never do that.

"I would put the ball on the ground, stand behind it, line up, walk in and set up to it. All the time I'm grooving it and drilling myself, but it might take me three or four times longer to hit 50 balls than it would an amateur".

3. Bunker Play

When I have previously had lessons on how to hit shots from the sand, like a particularly poignant example of tuition in a deep revetted bunker at Turnberry Golf Club, the key points were getting a good wrist hinge early and committing through the sand.

The general premise of that lesson aligned with the tips that the Majesticks GC Co-Captain gave me in a greenside bunker on the Lee Westwood Colt Course, but I also needed to address a couple of other issues.

"It starts off with the setup. You want your weight more in your lead side and you want your ball position further forward because you've bumped your weight forward. You also need to open the clubface".

After two attempts, I barely got out of the sand. That was no reflection on Lee's tips, because as he correctly pointed out there was another significant issue with my entry point into the sand.

"If it drops off the face (and barely gets out of the bunker) it's likely that you pulled the club face across - taking all the speed out of the clubhead.

You will see in the video that the divot left in the sand by my shot, compared with the one next to it from Lee's shot, are completely different - and he expertly explained why.

"You see I've made a big splash. You leant, pulled across and your divot was very narrow and thin. Mine is big, like a dinner plate. When you use the bounce on the club it will prevent it digging.

"See how it's stayed shallow, but I've taken a lot of sand because I've used the characteristics of the club as they were meant to be used".

4. To Putt Or Not To Putt?

I think we could describe my short game as inconsistent - at best. The shots that worry me the most are often the ones that look the easiest, with no danger and plenty of green to work with.

In that scenario, like the one I found myself in at Close House in the video above, I question myself over and over again about which club to take, what style of shot to play and how I might execute it.

This results in a lot of indecision and usually a poor effort regardless - so I asked Lee Westwood to help me with some pro advice.

"I would putt it, so I'd also advise you to putt it - there's nothing in your way. If you take out a sand wedge or a lob wedge, you have to factor in spin and what it's going to do when it lands on the green.

"There are more variables if you are going to chip it, whereas you know what it's going to do if you putt it".

Once we had determined that putting was the best course of action, the 25-time European Tour winner talked me through an important point about speed and break.

"When you hit the putt, the fastest it's moving is at the start and it doesn't swing as much when it's moving fast. All the curving will be done as it slows down".

After picking my start line and highlighting the point where it will start to break more on the green, I hit a putt that got me closer to the hole than any chip I could reasonably have produced. Result!

5. Fundamentals

One of the biggest takeaways from my golf lesson with Lee Westwood was that I needed to seriously focus on the fundamentals.

These are simple changes - like using an alignment stick to practice on the range, ensuring my setup position is more athletic and my stance is a little wider, or that my shoulders are not wide open at address - but they take work to become habit.

Making adjustments to the elements I can control, like all of those examples before I have even touched the golf ball, will help me to cut my handicap and shoot lower scores - and I am certain they will also help you to do the same.

You might not even know you are doing this, but one simple posture mistake could be killing your ability to consistently strike the golf ball out of the middle of the clubface.

Grooving the correct posture is just as important as ensuring you have the perfect golf grip or a straight left arm in the golf swing - but so many golfers neglect this crucial aspect of the set up position.

As Top 50 Coach Russell Covey expertly explains below, so many amateur golfers head out onto the golf course or arrive for lessons with their PGA Pro with common posture faults - many of which centre around an incorrect chin and shoulder position.

Thankfully, the fix is fairly simple. With the guidance of Russell and his decades of experience coaching golfers of all abilities - you can make strides in this criminally overlooked area of the golf swing and cut your handicap in 2026...

This Posture Mistake Could Be Game Over For Your Golf Swing

This is a typical, very common hunched position I see, where the shoulders are drooping over the ball, along with the chin, which has sagged down.

From here, it's incredibly hard to rotate the torso and create the necessary range of motion for a powerful, centred strike.

If you're concerned you've slipped into bad habits with your posture, get someone to take a photo of you addressing the ball from down the line - this will really help with identifying the issue.

With most golfers, we're looking for a 90˚shoulder turn. If your chin is too far down and your shoulders are drooping over the ball, it makes it very hard to work your lead shoulder beneath your chin, which is a good way to think about it.

In the image above, I'm addressing the ball properly through the upper spine with good setup fundamentals.

There is clear space for me to rotate correctly and engage all those big muscle groups, allowing the levers of my arms to stretch out and create a nice, wide motion.

Think of a goalkeeper trying to save a penalty. He or she would adopt this very dynamic, very athletic position, like they're ready to pounce.

In the goalkeeping position feel the sensation of how springy you are on the balls of your feet. This will help you to stop getting trapped on either end of your feet, i.e., your toes or heels.

You may want to try feeling this position, as it can really help with your golf swing. If you can get used to achieving this athletic posture – as shown in the image above – you will develop a more consistent and more powerful motion.

Many golfers fail to give putting the full attention it deserves. They might receive conflicting advice on putting improvement, leading them to focus on the wrong things or overcomplicate what should be fairly simple.

I've coached more than 3000 golfers in my career, helping them to improve their putting, but there is not single 'perfect' way to putt.

So, in this article, I share the 7 key concepts I consistently see in great putters – ideas around set-up, movement, green-reading, speed control, aim and the mental process that will help you better understand what really drives performance...

7 Things Every Golfer Can Do To Putt Better On The Course

1. Set-up essentials

In the putting stroke, ideally I want to disassociate the legs, core and head, leaving the shoulders, arms and torso to create the motion. My set-up should help to make this as easy as possible.

I let myself fall slightly forwards, almost rounding into posture, rather than simply bending at the hips.

I relax the spine and shoulders with no arm tension. We will all look different due to body proportions but I aim for the arms to hang naturally. Without a putter, my hands should brush somewhere around the knees.

You don't need your weight to be on the balls of your feet necessarily because you're not shifting pressure around in your feet.

If you have it slightly toe-side, that will encourage the legs to stay pretty quiet. If weight shifts towards my heels, the legs tend to become more active.

My fellow PGA coach David Orr has a great expression: “Putting posture is not good posture.”

Traditional ‘good posture' creates too much muscular tension in the shoulders, lats and upper back, whereas in putting I want those areas to stay soft and free to move.

2. Understanding movement

The putting stroke is a coordinated movement, not a robotic one. Robots often have one degree of freedom while humans have over 200!

I don't want to isolate movement to one or two joints – I want the upper torso, chest, shoulders, arms and hands to work together. The arms should swing in sync with the pivot of the upper body. There is no need to lock the arms to the body.

I see many golfers trying to create connection through muscular tension. This is not what great putters do – they appear ‘connected' through impeccable coordination and timing but it is often not connection in the literal sense.

A good putting drill to feel this is to get into a relaxed posture without a putter and let the arms hang. Face your palms towards each other and attempt to maintain the space between them while keeping the palms opposing.

This requires coordination of the arm swing and pivot. You may benefit from placing an object between your hands to feel how to maintain that spacing. Avoiding tension is key.

Rocking the shoulders doesn't mean isolating them, it means everything moves together. The arms swing, the torso tilts and turns, and the shoulders respond as part of that motion.

3. Work on speed control

The key concept here is simple: to hit a putt further, the putter requires more speed at impact. I am not just trying to make a longer stroke, I am making a faster one.

The speed of the stroke determines its length. So, rather than thinking about how far I take the putter back, I focus on the pace of the stroke.

On both longer putts and shorter putts, I look to control pace rather than trying to create a specific stroke length. The further I want the ball to travel, the more speed I need at impact, so the entire stroke must be faster.

This starts in the backstroke. The faster the putter moves away, the further it will travel (a longer backstroke) and the more speed it will generate.

Across different putts, your tempo should remain reasonably similar. A consistent stroke time across varying putt lengths and green speeds is a basic theory that can certainly help you.

However, this is not rigidly true as stroke times do show some variance in great putters, but the key idea is that the pace of your putting stroke should dictate the speed of the ball.

Finally, your practice strokes should match the feel required for the putt that you are about to hit.

4. Become more adaptable

Simply put, speed is distance over time. You can learn to visualise this with the following drill.

Place two alignment sticks down, one at the top of a slope and the other at the bottom. The distance between them can vary – perhaps start at 10ft and then move to 20 or 30.

You now have one fast putt and one slow putt. Many speed drills for putting involve hitting similar-length or similar-direction putts, which does not reflect the demands of real on-course play.

Start with a downhill putt and try to stop the ball at the opposite stick. Before you execute the stroke, try to picture how long the ball will take to arrive at its destination.

Downhill, the ball should take longer because it is travelling more slowly. As you begin to understand this, you should be able to adjust the pace of your stroke accordingly.

Next, move onto the bottom stick and make an uphill putt, back towards the other stick.

Again, picture the time it will take to reach its destination. Uphill, the ball will arrive in less time and travel faster. You should adjust things here via a faster-paced practice stroke appropriate to the putt, and then execute.

You'll quickly begin to understand the difference in time it takes for the ball to reach its target, thus developing your adaptability.

5. How is your aim?

The first element of consistent, accurate direction is aim. There are many ways to aim the putter well and it is not one-size-fits-all.

Rather than telling you how to aim, I'll give you a few ideas here.

First, try using a lined ball versus a blank ball to see which gives you the best results. Be empirical, this does not have to be the same for every putt.

Another option is what I call a perpendicular aim, simply asking if the face is square rather than trying to point a line at your target.

For some, that's a much clearer way to aim. I would encourage you to trust your spatial awareness; aim is not always about matching line upon line.

I like to line the ball up from behind then match the leading edge square to that line. Think of it like aiming a gun. You align it in the same plane you're looking from, not across yourself, as that is far harder.

6. Green reading

Green-reading is about interpreting slope and understanding how it will influence the ball's roll.

Everyone visualises putts differently. I might focus on the entry point and work backwards or see the entire path. Others visualise forward or in reverse, identify key points along the route, or picture the whole putt.

Generally, you'll be able to work out a slope by looking at it from beneath it. Now you need to picture the curve.

The key part is creating a clear picture of it to predict the start line. Most golfers can visualise reasonably well but often have a poor concept of the start line relative to that curve and hit the putt differently.

It's interesting how few club golfers will actually use any training aids on the putting green while elite amateurs and pros use them all the time – it doesn't have to be too technical but I would strongly recommend practising with feedback tools such as ghost holes (circular discs) or string lines as they are very effective.

7. The mental part

Clarity is the starting point. Before you do anything, you need a clear picture of the shot – how the ball starts, breaks and finishes.

Once you've created a picture, your focus and attention move entirely to the task. Stand behind the ball and visualise its journey.

Then make a few practice strokes to match the pace and build a feel for the movement, picking up any key kinaesthetic sensations.

During this phase, you should have a strong interaction with the target and a clear sense of how the ball should roll.

For these few seconds, this putt has your undivided attention, rather than the consequences of it or what other players are doing.

As for practice strokes, these can be next to the ball, behind it or, for some, even unnecessary – whatever works best for you. I know what works best for me.

Once you step into the ball, take a final look at the target, bring your focus back to the ball and let the stroke happen with no manipulation, no overthinking and no fear of the outcome – trust in the process and commit to the picture you created.

I recently attended the PGA North tournament at Sand Moor Golf Club and saw the top professionals put on a short game clinic.

Not only did they execute greenside bunker shots exceptionally well but it almost looked as though they had their golf ball on a piece of string.

The check and grab was impressive in itself, but seeing the ball zoom back three or four feet to nestle up to the side of the hole inspired me to learn how to generate spin out bunkers.

So, in a bid to improve my horrific short game, I reached out to Top 50 Coach Keith Wood for the sort of expert advice you can only get from someone who has coached at the highest level of the game for more than three decades... and it was pure gold!

You don't have to be a scratch golfer to achieve more spin either. If my typical high-handicap short game can improve with Keith's tips (and it has), then I am sure there is also hope for you to start zipping the golf ball around the green...

How To Generate Spin Out Of Bunkers

1. Better Wrist Hinge

There are many dynamics required to deliver a successful greenside bunker shot but creating more spin on the ball starts with the steepness of your takeaway.

Don't be afraid to really hinge your wrists – think of both thumbs up as you take the club back.

You need a steep angle of attack into the sand to not only create spin on the ball but also height on the shot, which is essential for any high-faced traps.

2. Simple Line Drill

A simple drill to really improve impact is to draw a line in the sand and practise hitting the line, initially without a ball.

This tells you if you're in control of your impact point. Remember, from bunkers you are not aiming to hit the ball but a point behind it, so just practise thumping the line. You want the club to enter the sand on the line – that's the start of your divot.

3. Speed And Commitment

Through impact and into the follow-through you need commitment and speed.

Don't stop at impact. You need an element of smooth speed through the ball and on into a purposeful follow-through. The sand will impact and resist the club's speed so you have to combat that.

This is key... you need speed to generate backspin. The important part is where the speed comes from. It has to be a combined effort, mainly through a rotation of your upper body.

You'll see in the image above that my arms haven't travelled to a normal full-swing follow-through as I have held the clubface open, but my upper body is committed and faces the target.

Shanking the golf ball is one of the most emotionally draining and fury-inducing experiences on the golf course, but it happens to all amateur golfers at one time or another.

Struggling with a persistent shank isn't something you should tolerate, however, as Top 50 Coach Ged Walters has a simple drill that can eradicate this annoying issue from your game.

Ged Walters has over two decades of experience as a top PGA professional, coaching amateurs and professionals to shoot lower scores and now he can help you cut your handicap in 2026 with something most golfers have in their bag - a water bottle.

In this article, Ged explains the cause of a shank (knowledge is the key to mastery) and how to carry out the simple drill that has helped so many amateurs to improve their ball striking confidence...

What Is A Shank In Golf?

A shank occurs when the golf ball hits the part of the clubface where the shaft meets the head. This is called the ‘hosel’ of the club. As the loft increases, a larger gap protrudes forward alongside the leading edge.

This can cause a very unpredictable ball flight, with some shots pinging off at a 45 degree angle and others, while not necessarily significantly off line, don’t travel very far at all.

This is a common problem for high-handicap and beginner golfers, but this can be avoided by understanding a few simple aspects that occur before the strike.

Why Am I Shanking The Golf Ball?

In the image above you can see that the head of the club is behind the hands and it almost looks like the butt of the grip is going to hit me on the leg as I swing the club through.

The hands are too close to the body and the club is being delivered too much from the inside, which means the path is ultimately too much from in-to-out.

That presents the hosel towards the golf ball and can lead to a shank.

It’s a common misconception that a shank only occurs when the path moves from out to in, as this evidence highlights the opposite can also be troublesome.

Fix Your Shank: Water Bottle Drill

To fix an out-to-in path, which can lead to a shank, often amateurs go too far the other way and produce the same fault with an in-to-out path.

This is one of the best golf drills for those who suffer with a re-occurring shank - and it' super simple. I have used with hundreds of golfers over the years and it always produces positive results.

Set up a water bottle next to your golf ball, on the right hand side, then set up as you normally would to hit a shot.

The task is simple, don’t hit the water bottle.

By having an external task, your brain is distracted from the path issues and instead focuses on delivering the club correctly on the inside of the water bottle.

The body is moving in a much better fashion at this impact position (image above).

The weight is moving forward and there is an appropriate amount of rotation. The hands are more on the correct path, not moving too much in-to-out or out-to-in.

When trying this drill some amateurs tend to over-do it and hit off the toe, so get a few reps.

Practicing with a plan such as this helps you to avoid one of the seven things you should never do at the driving range, allowing you to make use of the instant visual feedback provided by the water bottle and say goodbye to that horrid shank for good.

I recently had the pleasure of playing 18 holes at the magnificent Moortown Golf Club, with Top 50 Coach and PGA Professional Ged Walters... who taught me an invaluable lesson about strategy on the golf course.

I found the middle of the fairway and was ready to attack the pin. I puffed my chest out, grabbed the club from my bag and set off striding towards my golf ball. After all - I had just gained a 106% power boost thanks to winter golf training that had helped me shoot my best ever score.

Thankfully, Ged stopped me in my tracks and shared a few home truths about why being aggressive is never the play, regardless of recent triumphs.

Ged has decades of experience coaching amateurs and professionals to improve their golf game, but this simple lesson is one he has given over and over again to high-handicap golfers just like me.

With a much clearer (and more sensible) plan in my mind, I actually made a par - so I asked Ged to share the invaluable lesson in order to help you shoot lower scores in 2026...

You only have to look at the latest Shot Scope data to see that the average 20-handicap golfer hits around 14% of greens in regulation, which equates to less than three per round.

I currently play off a handicap index of 20.8 - so it turns out that taking on the pin from 160+ yards would not have been the most sensible strategy in order to build a good score.

However, despite the likelihood of high-handicappers even finding the green from the middle of the fairway being pretty slim, many don't have a Top 50 Coach in their ear on the golf course and therefore get suckered into taking dead aim.

On most golf courses, greenkeepers will tuck pins behind bunkers, close to hazards or in the proximity of run-off areas in order to provide a little protection to the greens - so an aggressive approach (particular when it's misguided) can lead to big scores and plenty of frustration.

As I referenced earlier, as evidenced in the image above, Ged and I encountered that exact scenario during our round at Moortown Golf Club in Leeds.

The pin is tucked just behind that front greenside bunker, potentially creating an almost impossible short sided shot should we find the sand.

The latest Shot Scope data also tells us that a high-handicap golfer comes up short of the green between 59% (20-handicapper) and 69% (25-handicapper) of the time with their approach shots - which makes the danger of that particular bunker all the more real.

So, with 163 yards to the middle of the green... what's the correct strategy to play the next shot? Top 50 Coach Ged Walters was on hand to guide me through it and now shares his decades of expertise with you!

The task here is simple - just hit the green. Forget about the pin position and focus on the shot needed to hit a specific yardage.

If you can find the middle to back of the green, and leave yourself two putts for a par, you will finally be able to cut your handicap in 2026.

As you can see in the image above, I am aiming away from the danger. The left side of the green is fine, because if I come up short, long or left I will be leaving myself an easy enough chip shot.

I've used the alignment stick in the image to reference my adjustment, but the clear message is that right is dead. You must avoid that at all costs, but you aren't going to do that by being terrified of hitting it there.

Pick a safe line and target, know your number and commit positively to the shot. There is NEVER a time to be aggressive on the golf course, especially as you are not a tour player who is playing for big checks on tour.

The percentage play should always be your strategy, as minimizing errors throughout your round will be far more valuable than the odd flukey birdie because you landed it one yard past the trap and rolled up towards the hole.

To be honest, some of you might not even have the length to reach the green from 163 yards. In that case, you'd be better working out where to leave the golf ball so that you don't have to even consider the bunker on your chip shot that will come next.

Baz's watch told him he had 182 yards to the back, so I advised him to take enough club to hit that number. We know that amateurs, particularly high handicappers, often come up short.

If he hits the number, he is on the back of the green. If he is short, he might be in the middle of the green - but whatever happens he should be looking to play towards the left side of the putting surface.

The reality is this - if you find that bunker you could be making a seven or eight. If you avoid it in the right place, the worst you should make is a five - so get the idea of flighting one in close to the flag out of your brain (for good)!

Whether you are a beginner or a more experienced golfer, I'd wager that most of us have suffered with a slice at some point - and many will still be fighting that extreme left to right shot shape today.

There are many drills to cure an over the top swing and banish a slice, but this one really resonated with me as it uses an item I've got packs and packs of underneath my kitchen sink.

In fact, I'm fairly confident most of you could fetch a couple from your homes right now and head to the driving range to practice this one for yourself.

So, what are you waiting for? By listening to the expert advice of Top 50 Coach John Jacobs, who has coached as a PGA Professional for more than three decades, you will quickly neutralize your slice, helping you to cut your handicap and shoot lower scores in 2026...

The image above shows a common pre-impact slice position. It's a common mistake that plagues your golf game – caused by that ‘over the top' movement we often talk about.

You can see how the swing path is working too far left, and my attack angle has become very steep.

My shoulders have effectively beaten the rest of my body to impact, and I'm going to end up using them to drag my arms across the ball, hitting that yellow pad and producing a horrible heel strike as a result.

The shape will be strong left-to-right – which is a very weak shot with high spin.

You can groove a better swing path with this simple drill, however, using an everyday kitchen item found in homes all around the world.

Pop a couple of sponge pads down to create a channel. Notice, in the image above, how you can see more of my left side, with the right side still comfortably tucked in.

My pelvis has opened, but my shoulders are still a little closed. There's a misconception that the shoulders need to be square at impact to produce a centred strike with driver.

They don't. In fact, that would be rare in a top player. Think of the lower body as leading the order into the downswing. The club is inside the green pad here on approach.

My exit line in the image below is perfect. The extension is good, with the left side of my body clearing through impact.

I've also maintained a perfect posture in the golf swing, so that it's similar here to what it would have been at address.

There may be other reasons behind your slice, but this simple drill could provide the fix and help you to achieve a stronger and far more penetrating ball flight.

A useful ‘feel'

This is one of the best ball striking lessons for amateurs. The downswing is a bit like a race.

Try to feel as if your lower body starts the race from the top, using your hips to shift and turn and leaving the shoulders behind. Then it's the job of the hands and forearms to square the face at impact.

Bernd Wiesberger demonstrated incredible patience and resilience to claim a ninth DP World Tour title at the 2026 Volvo China Open recently, five years on from his last professional win.

The Austrian pro, who represented Team Europe at Whistling Straits in the 2021 Ryder Cup, dominated the Volvo China Open field with his expert short game, ranking 1st for Strokes Gained: Around The Green, and also ranked 2nd for Strokes Gained: Tee To Green in China.

In order to help you play better golf in 2026, we asked the serial DP World Tour winner to share his best practice tips or habits that can slash your handicap and help amateurs to shoot lower scores (especially in medal competitions).

1. PRACTISE EFFICIENTLY

I won't generally hit balls for longer than half an hour. At some point you get an overload and then it's actually detrimental to your progress, so I try to break it up into different segments (a plan that helps you avoid one of the seven things never to do at the driving range).

It's fine if you work on technical things, but then I want to bring some kind of challenge into it or break it up completely and go and do some short game to reset my brain.

If the sessions get too long, you'll lose focus and then you're also losing the ability to improve.

So try and add some structure to your practice. My game certainly improved when I approached it with little tasks and a lot of variation, with the bottom line of trying to improve what I wanted to achieve on the course.

2. MEDAL PLAY

It's a game and the freer you are in your approach, the more relaxed you'll be.

Obviously, there's always that aspect of being focused on what you want to do, but you can't be focused for four-and-a-half hours, so you need to detach a little bit in between shots.

Again, I think practice can help you to break it up into segments. You want to start working a bit more towards how it would actually work better in competition play and bring that into your practice.

I like to work on my ball flights, all sorts of shapes. In the short game, I don't want to stand over six-footers for too long.

Don't make it too one-dimensional. Have fun combining the whole aspect of the game into practice sessions and that will transfer into making stroke play more enjoyable.

3. THE WARM-UP

Club golfers can try and do too much just before a round.

You're not going to learn anything more about your game or improve your technique in the 20 minutes before your tee time.

I will hit a set number of balls towards certain targets. I won't have an alignment stick down as that's something I do on Tuesdays and maybe Wednesday mornings.

I'll start with the shorter clubs, progress to the longer ones and will always finish with the tee shot I want to hit on the 1st – I will picture a target and the shape I want to hit.

Everything on the day is purely in preparation for tournament golf and there is nothing more on the technical aspects.

In the last ten to 20 minutes, even if you sit down with a cup of tea or coffee and just try to relax, that's fine. Maybe set yourself some goals for that day, hit a few putts to get some touch and then head off.

4. WORK ON THE OBVIOUS

It's no secret that the biggest chance to improve for any golfer, pros or amateurs, is 150 yards and in.

If you get really good around the greens, especially as an amateur, get a good feel for your putting and actually spend some proper time on it, there's so much room for improvement there.

And be honest with your yardages. We work endlessly to discover how far the ball is travelling on a certain week, but club golfers consistently come up well short of not just the pin but also the green.

Be more realistic about your distances and what you can achieve with each club.

5. LEARN FROM THE BEST

I will often watch videos of players who I love seeing swing the club – for example, Ernie Els and Freddie Couples.

If I struggle with my strike, I focus on two things. First, it's rhythm, especially in my transition, so I will try to hit big slices and big hooks and then tighten it down. That helps me with my strike.

I want to be able to move it both ways and, if I have a target, especially on a particular flight, that helps me to commit to the shot a lot better.

It feels like a lot of younger players have gone too one-dimensional in the way they see their shots.

I would say it is beneficial to practise being able to bring your flight up or down and shape it towards certain flags. That also helps me keep my strike tight, especially with the irons.

There are many situations on the golf course where club golfers rely on their iron play to find the right position on the fairway, set up scoring opportunities or escape trouble – but often they come unstuck by making poor decisions or being imprecise in their execution.

Flushing an iron from the middle of the fairway is a great skill, and one that will help you cut your handicap, but being able to hit a range of different iron shots can actually help you to shoot lower scores in 2026.

Most high-handicappers like myself, trying to break 90 for the first time, will fall foul of the same common mistakes - so I reached out to a top PGA pro with more than two decades of experience for his expert advice.

In order to help you and I reach that elusive milestone, Top 50 Coach Ged Walters shared 7 shots every high-handicapper needs to master and offered a crucial reality-checking tip that can help you to avoid a common scorecard killer...

1. Safety shot off the tee

If you are planning to hit a safety shot off the tee with an iron, you need to commit to achieving this via a centred strike.

So often, amateurs intend to use this shot as a fairway-finder only to then miss the fairway and leave themselves a long and difficult second shot into the green.

Your weight should slightly favour your lead side at address, with ball position just forward of centre for a mid-iron and below your collarbone for a long-iron.

Your tempo should be committed but not too aggressive, focusing more on a centred strike and finding the correct landing zone than distance.

Setting a tee in the ground ahead of the ball is a great way to practise a ball-then-turf strike. You're aiming to smash the tee out of the turf instead of thinking about making contact with the ball.

2. Taking your medicine

For the majority of players, there will be times when they put themselves in positions out on the golf course where they really don't want to be.

Here, I am blocked out by the trees, which are obscuring my route to the flag and interfering with my swing. Instead of being a hero and taking it on over the water, the sensible shot is to play out and try to get up and down from a better spot.

Playing the hero shot is foolish, especially for high-handicappers, as it rarely pays off and often brings a scorecard killing number into play.

This play helps to take a potentially big number off the cards, so pick a line that allows you to see the green for your next shot and from a yardage that you like.

Your lie in this situation will dictate the type of shot you play and the club you select. The correct strategy is to avoid as much of the danger as possible, limit the damage and trust your short game to bail you out.

3. Ball above or below feet

When the ball is below your feet a common mistake is to simply adopt your normal set-up position.

This causes you to lose balance and lean forwards, which then leads to excess body movement as you desperately try to rescue the shot and get the clubhead down to the ball.

To make consistently good strikes from this kind of lie, you need to bend your knees more to lower your centre. You can also widen your stance and feel like the handle is closer to your legs at set-up, with the resulting shot likely to have a fade shape to it.

When the ball is above your feet, people often end up hitting the ground well before the ball. To address this, stand taller and ensure you grip down lower.

The shot is more likely to have a draw shape to it, so adjust your aim to suit. Maintaining posture throughout is really important whether the ball is above or below your feet, as without this your chance of a solid strike is slimmer.

4. Downslopes and upslopes

When playing a shot from a downslope, it's important to match your shoulders, hips, knees and feet to the angle of the slope as much as possible.

The alignment stick shows how everything matches up to the slope, creating a solid, stable base from which to swing the club.

Widen your stance to help you retain balance and move the ball back towards the trail foot to encourage ball-first contact. You will also require more loft as the ball is going to launch lower off the face.

You need to match the slope and adopt a wider stance on upslopes too, but your weight will naturally favour the trail side more.

Ball position can return to centre, or slightly forward with woods, and the natural launch pad created by the ground means you can take less loft.

5. Low punch shot

Shot selection is all about conditions, but when the wind is up and into your face, the last thing you want is to send the ball up high as it will almost certainly stall and fall.

The low punch helps you to manage the trajectory and spin, allowing you to achieve a good carry distance without sacrificing control.

To hit this shot, use a three-quarter backswing and around a half-length follow-through, maintaining pressure in the lead foot as much as possible throughout.

Take a little loft off by getting the hands forward, and move the ball slightly further back in your stance.

6. Fairway bunker shot

In terms of body position and weight distribution, this is going to feel very similar to a typical iron shot, but the key difference is the unstable surface.

To create the best possible conditions for a solid strike, shuffle your feet into the sand a little to help boost stability through impact. Don't dig in as you might for a greenside bunker shot as you don't want to lower your centre too much.

This can cause you to hit the sand first, whereas, just as from the fairway, you want ball-first contact in a fairway bunker.

Grip down slightly and set 70% of your weight distribution on your lead side, retaining a stable head position throughout the swing. The lip of the bunker will determine what club you hit, but don't be too greedy and risk leaving the ball in the sand.

7. Pitch-and-run shot

Yes, this is more of a short-game wedge shot, but it can still be played with an iron.

At set-up everything is much closer to the ball than for a full shot. The handle of the club is higher, my feet are closer together and weight distribution is 70% in favour of my lead side.

Control is the focus here, because you are attempting to flight the ball around half to two-thirds of the distance required before it pitches and releases onto the green.

You would only play this shot if you had good ground conditions in front of you, as a wet or uneven surface can lead to unpredictable results. If you aren't confident enough to play a flighted wedge, this shot is a great alternative.

There could be a multitude of reasons why your ball striking is not as consistent as you would like, but having a poor posture is almost certainly towards the top of the list for many amateurs.

Often, the issues that result in poor contact start before hitting the golf ball - but by making a few simple alterations you can play better golf in 2026.

With the help of PGA professional and Top 50 Coach Keith Wood, who has taught golfers for more than 30 years, you can identify your posture problems and address them (pardon the pun) with actionable tips that will help you cut your handicap...

How To Perfect Your Posture In The Golf Swing

Think of posture as the axle to a wheel – or the centre to your swing. Get it wrong and the swing becomes inefficient and challenging.

This image (below) shows a good posture - the optimum back angle supported by enough knee flex to counter the tilt. This is good for balance and stability, and allows you to make the best use of the ground through your legs.

A good tilt also produces good arm hang, directly under the shoulders. Get this right and it will have a positive effect on the mechanics of your backswing.

My arms are hanging roughly vertically and the club comes out at an angle through the hands. This automatically sets my wrists in a position where they can create some angle in the backswing by hinging.

See how complicated poor posture looks in the image below.

The spine angle is too upright, my arms are hanging too close to my legs with minimal wrist angle and my weight has shifted into my heels, creating a sitting position – hardly a dynamic base from which to prepare for an athletic move like the golf swing.

Problems at impact often stem from a bad start at set-up. In the image (below), you can see a poor impact position with the pelvis tucking under and moving towards the ball.

There is no body rotation through the ball and the hands are too high at impact, which makes it extremely difficult to square the clubface.

Balance would also be challenged in this kind of move as the whole body shifts towards the ball and onto the toes of the feet. Achieving a centred strike is almost impossible and the dreaded shank becomes highly possible.

The final image from an aerial view is a simple visual of where your weight should be when addressing the golf ball.

If you have the correct tilt from your spine angle, and the optimum knee flex to balance that tiIt, as in the first image at the top of the article, then your balancing point will be where I have laid my golf club on the ground.

This balancing point should be under the balls of your feet (not in the heels or toes) and in an athletic position from which you can perform efficiently.

As amateur golfers, we often fall foul of common mistakes on the golf course that cost us precious shots... and putting is no exception, according to PGA Pro and putting guru, James Jankowski.

James Jankowski has coached more than 3000 golfers in his career, helping amateurs and top professionals to improve their putting and shoot lower scores.

James also contributed to our expertly-curated putting improvement guide, which is a great resource if you are looking to fire up the flat stick and cut your handicap in 2026.

In this article, James shares three common putting mistakes that he sees time and time again from amateur golfers and offers an actionable strategy to banish them from your game for good...

Mistake 1: Set-up

There are plenty of things we can control before hitting a putt, like selecting the best method for how to grip a putter or mastering a solid and dependable set-up.

A good set-up allows the upper body to move independently from the lower body and core.

When golfers sit too much into their address position, with too upright a posture and too much tension, that separation becomes difficult and you can overuse your hands and arms through the putting stroke.

How to fix it:

Instead, try tilting forward more from the hips – more than with any other club in the bag – and allow your arms to hang naturally underneath your shoulders with plenty of space.

This should be relatively free from tension, with a relaxed posture, almost like you're falling/rounding forward. From this position it becomes much easier to disassociate the torso from the lower body, core and head.

A sound putting stroke relies on synchronisation and co-ordination, not on locking everything together through muscular tension.

Mistake 2: Synchronisation

Synchronisation is encouraged through proper acceleration and timing. When the handle and clubhead move together, the wrists remain relatively quiet, which stabilises the stroke.

Again, it is not about locking the wrists through tension, but about quieting flexion/extension through co-ordination. If the acceleration is too harsh or late/early, separation between the handle and clubhead increases.

How to fix it:

Try this synchronisation drill to co-ordinate your stroke. Take your normal grip but lift both thumbs off the club so the handle rests in the fingers at the back of the grip.

Now swing the putter back and forth, keeping the thumbs off. Now learn to co-ordinate the motion; keep the handle and putter head moving together without too much separation.

Mistake 3: The Backstroke

Many golfers fail to create enough speed in the backstroke.

As a result, the stroke becomes too short and they try to compensate with late acceleration and an exaggerated followthrough. Impact in golf is not a hit, it’s a collision.

How to fix it:

To produce consistent strikes, build speed through the putting stroke and use the club's momentum through impact.

Speed begins in the backstroke. If the backstroke is too slow or too short, creating speed during the transition and using momentum in the strike becomes difficult.

Focus on making the backstroke quick enough so that it becomes long enough and simply transfer that speed smoothly in the transition and cruise through impact.

Getting better at golf as an amateur takes a lot practice, perseverance and resilience - but there are also a number of steps high-handicappers must take to improve their scoring (that many currently ignore).

As the golf season starts, you will surely be looking for ways to cut your handicap in 2026 - but did you know that much of that success (or failure) will come down to what you do before you hit the golf ball?

Ged Walters is a PGA professional and Top 50 Coach with more than two decades of experience coaching golfers just like you to improve their golf game.

After teaching countless lessons and witnessing the common mistakes that plague high-handicappers, Ged decided to share his wisdom in order to help you foster better habits that will slash your handicap this year...

1. Assess The Lie

The lie is the most important thing that amateurs should check before hitting every shot. It's what dictates whether or not you can select your 150 club from 150 - or not.

Lots of amateurs play the same golf course over and over and they will walk up to their ball with a club already in their hand or an idea of what they are going to hit in their mind before they get there.

The tendency is to think you should play the same shot you might have played from a similar spot or distance on that hole before, without even assessing the lie, and that error can be very costly.

So, if you've got lie ‘A’, which is the perfect lie on a lovely tight piece of turf, then you have scope to choose whichever shot you want.

If you have type ‘B’, where the ball is sitting up in the first cut or short rough like a gooseberry, you don't actually know how much grass is underneath that golf ball.

We don't know how high it is off the soil. So in an ideal world, you would go somewhere reasonably close by where you didn't disturb the golf ball and put your golf club on the ground to see how far up the face the grass reaches. You then get an idea of what you’ve got underneath it.

Once you've got that information, you can adjust your ball position accordingly.

If the ball is sitting up I would generally suggest putting the ball position a little further back in the stance, with weight more forwards on the lead side, allowing you to catch the ball earlier in the swing arc and increase your chance of a centred strike with irons.

When you've got lie ‘C’, the sort of in-between scabby one, you need to do a little investigating. As long as you're not in a depression, you're okay to choose your normal club because you can get full contact on the golf ball.

Most high handicappers have chosen their club 20 yards from the ball. They're pulling their club out of their bag while they're pushing a trolley.

Very few put their bag down and stop to answer the questions the golf course is asking - but by assessing the lie you can save yourself crucial shots.

2. Test The Conditions

The next thing all high-handicappers should do before hitting the golf ball, which they often do not, is testing the conditions.

Wind strength and direction both have a significant impact on the flight of the golf ball, so you should definitely be calculating distances in the wind with the help of some basic information.

As a ballpark formula, one mile an hour of wind into your face will hurt your distance by one yard. So, if it's a 15 mph wind into your face, then you will likely come up at least 15 yards short if you do not factor that into your club selection.

If it's downwind, one mile an hour helps half a yard. So, a 20mph helping wind would help you to hit the golf ball 10 yards longer than normal.

You can work out the direction and of the wind by throwing up some grass, and while you can’t check your weather app during competition you can check the forecast before you go out to give a rough indication of wind strength.

While on the course, you should also use other methods to gather this information - particularly if you are in a sheltered location or playing a course that is heavily tree-lined.

Focus your attention on the treetops, because as the ball reaches peak height it will likely be affected by whatever is going on up above that treeline.

Lot’s of people just look at the flag, but this can be misleading. Use all the available information to do some basic calculations before hitting your shot and you will notice much more consistent results.

3. Check Your Grip

This is the only point of contact with the club, so nailing your golf grip is a great way to improve your ball striking. A lot of high-handicapped golfers don't have a functional grip.

The reason I say functional is that I don’t believe there is a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ grip, it’s about matching it to your swing profile and technique.

The textbook would tell you that Jim Furyk's grip was ‘bad’. But it was functional.

When you are working on your grip on the range, it doesn't have to be 'textbook' looking. But if you're hitting really poor shots, changing your grip is a way to see significant improvements in your ball striking.

I would advise seeing your local PGA pro for some advice on this aspect, as it’s very individual and extremely important, but once you have done that, take a few seconds before each shot on the course to check you have nailed the fundamentals of your ‘functional’ grip.

4. Be Precise With Your Aim

If you think about the one thing that moves the golf ball, it is the club face - which is why finding a centred strike with irons is so important.

If we aim the club face in a position that is not relative to our target, then the chances of us hitting the golf ball in that direction are drastically reduced.

Lot’s of high-handicappers will step into their shot, place their feet shoulder width apart, look over the shoulder at their target and think they have aimed correctly.

The thing is, when you look over your shoulder, your shoulders turn. Therefore, when you return to look at the ball, you are miles off where you think you are aiming.

That leads to amateurs questioning why they are hitting it off to the right, but in reality they are actually aiming that way.

A better routine is to place the club behind the ball, pointing the face towards your target, before you step in to take your stance.

You can also use a blemish on the ground, an old divot or a particular blade of grass in front of you that is on your intended line to help you align effectively.

This small change in your routine will save you shots around the golf course by actually allowing you to hit the golf ball where you intend too.

5. Flare The Feet

The knee joint is a hinge, so it only works in one way. Relative to how flexible the individual is, having your feet square at setup can restrict how much hip rotation they can achieve.

This often leads to swaying and a lack of stability of the body, which then becomes a variable in whether or not you're going to hit the ground way behind the ball as you struggle to control your low point with any consistency.

Flaring the feet out slightly sets the knee joint on an angle, allowing the hip to rotate with greater freedom.

This makes it easier for you to stay more stable and keep your weight forward for longer in the backswing, helping you to move the weight forward in the downswing rather than having that sway and timing issue.

By simple adjusting the position of your feet before you hit the golf ball, you’ve mechanically given yourself a much better chance of getting into the right positions in the golf swing - and ultimately improved your chances of hitting better golf shots.

Creating good habits as an amateur golfer can help you to see long-lasting improvement, according to a tour coach with decades of experience at the highest levels of the game.

Nick Bradley is a renowned tour coach who has worked with an impressive list of pros including Justin Rose and Sir Nick Faldo. He also expertly analysed the top players in the game and shared things amateur golfers can copy from Scheffler, McIlroy and others - helping you to improve your game this season.

As an expert in the golf instruction field, Nick describes how collecting data, holding your teacher to account and making no excuses with your practice sessions are three great habits that can deliver the gains that many amateurs miss out on.

Many amateurs fail due to not following through on the third habit, sometimes falling foul of seven things never to do at the driving range, but by following this process you can shoot lower scores and cut your handicap in 2026.

Below, Nick Bradley explains each habit and how it can help your game, while I share how I have adopted the process as part of my winter golf rebuild...

Habit 1: Collect Data

Learn to take basic statistics when you play or get some of the apps that do it for you. I think without the feedback on your golf and how you actually play the game, it then makes my second point more difficult to do, which is to know what to work on.

You should be noting down things like the number of fairways hit/missed, and where you missed them (left/right), but also the number of three-putts and putts missed from inside 4-feet - as these things will start to highlight useful patterns.

Understanding what aspect to work on without collecting the data is difficult as you've got nothing to point towards. Once that data has informed you, go and find a golf teacher with a good reputation.

Now, I'm going to put a caveat on that, which is, and this is where I think amateurs do go wrong, you need to remember the golf teacher is a consultant.

They are there to improve your condition, but make sure you go to them with at least six rounds of data to steer your tuition in the right direction.

How has Baz applied habit 1 throughout his winter golf rebuild...

I have collected basic data in each round throughout my winter golf rebuild and shared the findings with my coach, head pro at Sand Moor Golf Club Alex James.

This helped to inform our lessons and the direction of travel with regards to my improvement plan, but it also helped me to track progress and set goals throughout the process.

Habit 2: Hold Your Teacher Accountable

Start by asking how many lessons it will take for you to get to the target you have set.

Roughly, I mean, we won't be holding a gun to their head, but an idea of a realistic timeframe to achieve the goal.

Amateur golfers are really poor at holding teachers' feet to the fire. You're paying the money.

If you go have your wall done by a bricklayer, you're not going to accept, "Oh, just do it the way you want to in whatever timeframe you want, mate. No problem."

Go to a golf teacher with a good reputation and then say, "Look, this is what I want to improve upon. Can you do it? And, how long do you think it will take in your experience?

Then, it’s easier to say, "Ok, I'll pay for three lessons now. Let's go."

How has Baz applied habit 2 throughout his winter golf rebuild...

Since I started working with my coach, Alex James, I have always felt a strong partnership and an investment, on his part, to help me improve as a golfer.

Alex was very clear what he felt was achievable, based on a certain level of commitment from me over the winter, and he duly delivered the results - helping my to hit driver over 240 yards (as a 22-handicapper) and shoot personal best scores on the course.

By having an open and honest dialogue throughout, I have certainly improved as a golfer due to the positive professional relationship I have developed with my coach.

Habit 3: Make No Excuses

If you've got the information, work hard and diligently at it.

You need to go back to the golf instructor after each lesson with it almost overdone.

It's far easier to bring someone back if they've overdone something because it was their inherent pattern anyway.

But, if they never get close to the thing, you haven't got there. So, my point would be, whatever you're told to do, go back with it slightly overdone and then the learning has happened.

How has Baz applied habit 3 throughout his winter golf rebuild...

As you can see in the video above, I made a commitment to put in the hard yards on the range. This had been missing in my pursuit of progress in recent years and I often wondered why I wasn't getting better - but in truth I wasn't working smartly.

Many amateurs fall at this hurdle. They will have lessons and then not actually follow-up and practice the key teachings, so see limited progress.

By going back to Alex with updates on how my practice had developed in the week between our lessons, this helped to personalise drills and differentiate the plan moving forwards.

After working with a vast array of PGA Professionals to curate the ultimate short game clinic, one thing became clear... keeping it simple is always the best approach.

Mastering the fundamentals can help you avoid the 7 most common mistakes amateurs make around the green (which you can see in the video below) and will give you a great plan to use in practice - also avoiding one of the 7 things you should never do at the range.

Ged Walters is a top PGA Professional and Top 50 Coach who has helped amateurs and professionals to improve as golfers over a two decade long career, but he stills sees far too many players overcomplicating the short game.

In this article, Ged shares his expertly crafted no-nonsense approach to short game fundamentals, focusing on three key but simple aspects, which aim to demystify the chip shot technique and help you to get up and down more often from around the green...

1. Controlling Tempo

A solid short game is all about controlling tempo, maintaining structure and nailing the fundamentals. Your arms move in a straight line in the backswing, keeping the body as quiet as possible with minimal rotation.

Then, in the downswing, the chest turns through as the arms keep swinging down the line of the white cane in the ground here. Don't speed up as it's hard to control distance then. Rather, keep a nice fluid motion and focus on controlling tempo.

In terms of the perfect grip, ensure the hands are slightly turned in and the arms hang naturally. The left hand should sit more on top with the grip running through the middle joint of the index finger and the base of the little finger.

The right hand mirrors this, with the left thumb under the pad of the right thumb when both hands are on the club. Don't grip tightly as this kills greenside control.

2. Setup

Ideally you want a narrow stance for a short-game shot, as you aren't looking to generate tons of power. Your weight distribution should favour the lead side, with around 70% of the pressure going into that lead foot.

It should remain there throughout the swing. For a standard chip, the perfect ball position should be central in your stance, but this can vary depending on the type of shot you're looking to play.

If the ball position is further forward, the clubhead will come into impact with more dynamic loft; if the ball position is further back, it will have less loft and a lower launch.

3. Maintaining Structure

Maintaining structure with the arms is key to keeping width in the radius of the swing. If your radius breaks down, tops, thins or fats will come into play. Keeping the connection between the arms is crucial throughout the swing.

As you can see, I am using two alignment sticks here to create an ‘X' shape, crossing over near my wrists and running up my arms and under my armpits.

This is the correct arm structure that you need to maintain, focusing on keeping that triangle between the arms and shoulders consistent throughout the swing.

Use this alignment stick drill in practice to bed in good habits around the green.

What I Learned From Playing A Round Of Golf With Ged Walters...

I've had the pleasure to play a number of rounds of golf with Ged Walters, frequently leaning on his extensive coaching experience and expertise to improve my own game.

In our most recent visit to the course, Ged gave me some great advice about a transformational short game shot I never knew I needed. This lesson drastically improved my ability to get up and down and improved my historically disgusting chipping technique.

Essentially, this shot required me to be a little bit more brave in trusting the loft on the golf club, but once I had practiced it I found I was able to change the club I was using to alter the shot trajectory without needing to alter my technique!

I've broken the technique down, below, into a step-by-step guide for you to try yourself...

• Take your most lofted club
• Stand slightly taller and closer to the ball than for a normal shot
• Set up with a narrow stance and weight 70% on your lead side
• Open the clubface a fraction but keep the shaft in a neutral position (minimal shaft lean)
• Take the clubhead straight back and through, similar to a putting stroke, committing with speed through impact

The science behind the perfect driver launch angle isn't a 'one-size-fits-all' formula, but spending time getting it right for your game can lead to a significant increase in distance and it's a great way to cut your handicap in 2026.

Perfecting your launch angle is a common theme among the 20 best driving tips and drills for amateurs, but there are many variables to consider including clubhead speed, driver loft and, of course, your technique when swinging the golf club.

So, in order to help you understand the formula a little better, we asked expert PGA Pro James Jankowski for his advice on this important topic.

James has coached over 3000 golfers, helping amateurs and professionals to improve their game and shoot lower scores, so follow his tips and drills below to add distance off the tee (even as a high-handicapper)...

Formula For The Perfect Driver Launch Angle

With the driver, the ball should be teed up so the club travels upwards at impact. This upward angle of attack creates a good launch with controlled spin to generate maximum distance.

The formula is simple... the slower the clubhead speed, the more loft and spin you need to keep the ball in the air long enough to carry a good distance.

This is why a 90mph swing speed will struggle to launch an 8° driver.

Similarly, many hit their 5-wood further than their 3-wood as the extra loft keeps the ball in the air longer. With driver, use the loft built into the club to launch the ball.

Many golfers try to help the ball into the air by leaning back, which causes problems with consistency and strike quality.

Instead, the right shoulder should move down towards the right hip early in the downswing.

How To Achieve It: The Drill

Try this drill to produce the right move. Swing to the top, then rehearse the halfway-down position (right side image - above) where the right shoulder lowers towards the hip, the right elbow stays flexed and moves in front of the torso, and the clubhead is inside the hands.

Repeat a few times, then return to the top and swing through at about 80% speed. This shallows the club and sets the ideal delivery for a high-launch.

To understand where the swing's low point occurs, place a scorecard 4-8ins behind the ball.

The goal is to feel the club brush the scorecard, then rise into the ball, creating the low point behind the ball to generate an upward strike. This gives you a clear sense of the correct launch conditions.

You may also notice that many good players’ heads move slightly back through impact—this simply helps counter the club’s direction of travel and is not a conscious move.

Getting your launch angle right isn’t about chasing a number, it’s about matching your technique and equipment to your speed.

Focus on creating an upward strike, use the loft available to you and practice the correct movement. Do that, and you’ll start to see more carry, more consistency and better results off the tee.

Chunking chip shots... we've all been there. You step up to the golf ball with a clear plan in your head, but the same soul-destroying fault strikes again. Your ball has travelled a matter of feet, if you're lucky, and your pride has taken a bit of a beating.

Improving your short game is a great way to cut your handicap in 2026, so let's start with this common mistake that plagues the game of high-handicap golfers.

In this article, Top 50 Coach Alex Buckner delivers a short game clinic that focuses on improving your contact with the golf ball around the greens, helping you to get up and down more often.

Alex currently coaches PGA Tour player Marco Penge, who ranks among the top-40 golfers in the world according to the Official World Golf Rankings, so is the perfect person to help you sharpen up your short game...

Golfers who ‘chunk' their chips – the dreaded heavy contact – have a tendency to get their low point too deep.

I see many poor chippers hunched over the ball; they become very low and ‘push' their arms, legs and body down, moving the low point into the ground.

When players adopt this very low and bent position, it's often because they think it gives them greater control, but in reality, it simply makes it easier for the club to enter deeper into the turf.

By standing higher at address, you will prevent yourself from reaching down into the ground and it becomes much easier to clip the ball away cleanly.

Note, in the image below, how my arms are straighter with my hands pointing down. Because of this, you can stand a little closer to the ball.

Notice also, in the image below, how tall I've remained throughout the shot, returning the shaft at the same height and angle.

To achieve this, make sure you don't lose height in the backswing and then push from the ground up on the downswing. Keep your thumbs pointing to the ground at impact.

If you grip down, as many top players do to improve feel and control, don't bend too low when doing so. Bend too low and you're back to square one, making it easy to push the low point too deep into the ground.

What Does 'Chunking' Mean In Golf?

Chunking in golf is when you strike the ground significantly before the golf ball. This can also be referred to as 'fat' or 'heavy' contact, usually leading to the ball travelling a very short distance and not reaching your intended target.

Hitting chip shots fat is a fault you have to get rid of if you want to improve your handicap and scoring, so following Alex's expert advice is a must in the 2026 season.

Sometimes as amateur golfers we feel like the best players in the world are totally unrelatable, with little chance of us replicating their elite talent on the golf course.

While elements of that might be true, there are certain realistic lessons that amateur golfers can learn from the best players in the world - you just need the help of an expert tour coach to break it down for you.

Whether it’s avoiding one of the 7 things you should never do at the driving range or understanding how to achieve a centred strike with driver, finding the invaluable teachings in the games of top tour professionals (that you can actually use as an amateur) is not an impossible task.

So, in order to help you find 5 ways to cut your handicap in 2026, we reached out to tour coach Nick Bradley for his expert guidance on the matter.

Nick Bradley has worked with some true legends of the game, like Justin Rose and Sir Nick Faldo, but has also supported countless amateurs to play better golf in his decades long career.

Below, Nick analyses five modern day giants in the game of golf and shares one thing that he loves about each of their games.

He doesn't just stop there, however, as he also explains how any amateur golfer can learn from that specific example - improving your chances of shooting lower scores and improving on the course…

1. Scottie Scheffler

There is no mystery behind why Scottie Scheffler is so dominant. His club face stability through the golf swing is exemplary.

His swing is very up and down, so his face is going to be so stable for much of the golf swing and avoiding the deviation that can creep in with a swing that is more around the body.

You see him on the driving range with his grip training aid, making sure the left and right hand fit together for the perfect golf grip which leads to the face being in a good position.

We know based on the latest data that 85% of the golf ball’s orientation is determined by the face position at impact, so it would make sense for amateur golfers to spend the majority of their practice time working on controlling the clubface and improving the quality of their ball striking to achieve a centred strike with irons.

Scheffler is so good because he works diligently on the fundamentals - something amateur golfers can sometimes neglect.

2. Rory McIlroy

The first thing I like about Rory McIlroy is that he is incredibly mobile and flexible, almost hyper-mobile in fact.

For most amateurs, improving flexibility and mobility is a great way to preserve your golf swing over time. If they are sitting at their desk in the office all week or aren’t particularly mindful of flexibility and mobility, they can tend to lock up a bit which doesn’t actually help the golf swing.

Secondly, I believe McIlroy to be a better driver of the golf ball than a wedge player, which in my opinion is down to his grip and the way he sets the club on the way back relative to plane.

If amateurs wanted to drive the ball better, they would do well to look at McIlroy’s position at the top of the backswing.

His radius bone, his forearm and his wrist are in a straight line. If amateur golfers could match that 45 degree angle, all of a sudden they will say goodbye to that weak club face and start to square the driver better at impact.

3. Jason Day

Jason Day is playing some really nice golf this year, but it’s his pitching action that I really love - It’s a ‘no fuss’ technique.

Jason Day’s setup when pitching really embodies that ‘less is more’ attitude. If you add too many variables, like too long of a backswing, too much wrist set or steepness in the plane, most amateurs sadly don’t have the skills to make that work.

Instead, copying Jason’s example, amateurs would benefit from placing pressure on the left side, not allowing too much shaft lean and using their torso as the engine.

What I mean by this is that the torso moves back and through, with the arms just going along for the ride.

This helps to promote a shallow strike through the ball, an increased spin rate and much better short game shots as a result.

4. Tommy Fleetwood

Tommy Fleetwood isn’t an incredibly big guy but his efficiency of club movement is excellent.

His swing sets beautifully on plane, which is not coincidence as he is an incredibly hard worker on the range and in practice. He always has the sticks in the ground representing plane when working on his swing.

But, many amateurs make a common mistake when setting up this type of practice drill because they don’t create the right angle for the alignment stick.

The correct angle is representative of the lie angle of the club you are practicing with. So, if you are using a club that is 61 degrees, you need to mirror that with the training aid.

Tommy’s action is a small, fast circle - bang, bang. But, that comes from repetitive and disciplined practice and amateur golfers could take a leaf out of his book in that regard.

5. Bryson DeChambeau

We’ve already covered a number of technical elements above, but the thing I love most about Bryson’s game is actually psychological - his sheer optimism.

Nick Faldo told me that when he was competing, his only contract that he held with himself was that no matter what happened with the last shot he would just keep visualising great shots for the next one.

In my teaching, I have something called counter imaging.

We are all guilty of being on the golf course and seeing a bad picture. If short right is a water hazard we obsess over that, but instead you should be seeing long and left as the goal with a re-framed positive attitude.

When you look at Bryson DeChambeau, the bottle isn’t half full - it’s positively brimming.

His optimism is a great example in a game where we fail far more than we win, even at the top level. Your mindset is something you can control and Bryson’s attitude is a good one to replicate.

Putting a score together takes practice and its own strategy – it doesn't just happen of its own accord.

Avoiding the 8 common mistakes plaguing your game can help you cut your handicap in 2026, but as well as technical alterations you also need to think and play smarter.

By utilising a different approach, like the pro scoring shot strategy to calculate the appropriate lay up on a par-5 to ensure you have a shot that you have practiced and feel dialled in on over a risky long-iron into the green, you can lower your scores.

It's all well and good boosting your clubhead speed over the winter, so that you can bomb it off the tee, but on certain holes a more strategic approach will always win.

In this article, Top 50 Coach and PGA professional Keith Wood utilises more than 30 years of coaching experience to help amateur golfers understand how to build a better score on the golf course.

Keith has worked with some of the top names in the game, including Major Champions Seve Ballesteros and Sir Nick Faldo, so he is the perfect person to educate us on what it takes to shoot lower scores.

As well as sharing how Keith would strategically play an example par-5 hole at Salgados Golf Club in Portugal, he also explains how the scoring shot strategy can help amateur golfers immensely to play to their strengths with a wedge in hand...

1. Eliminate Pressure

The hole in the image is a par 5, but I've already decided to use three shots to reach the green.

Why? Well, there's a bunker down the left at 250 yards and, as the hole turns to the left, it narrows with a river running up the left and a lake to the right.

I would be mad to try and thread a driver through the tight section of fairway, bringing the bunker and water into play.

It's great to have a simple formula for hitting long drives, but it's equally as impressive to know when it's appropriate to use that skill (or not).

Most club players will reach for the driver as the hole's par-5 status suggests distance is a must, and therefore they need to try and smash it as far as possible.

In our heads, a 500-yard par 5 is very tempting. You picture yourself hitting a fairway wood in from 240 yards before two-putting for birdie. Be honest, though – how often does that really happen?

Instead, I've taken the pressure off by hitting a safer fairway wood or hybrid off the tee to get me to the largest area of fairway. From here, I then have options...

2. Be Realistic

I'm in a perfect position now, with options to still go for the green in two, if tempted, or to lay up to a perfect wedge distance. The green may just be in reach but the hole continues to narrow in, with the lake close to the right side of the green.

Par-5 greens are often smaller, as here, and don't tend to receive a long club too well.

Therefore, this is a simple decision for me, and one which I made on the tee anyway! I haven't changed my strategy and am hitting a mid- to long-iron into position for an easy wedge into that small green.

I can practice getting dialled in from inside 100 yards with this club on the range, so why not use it?

Think about it – which is your favourite wedge and the distance from which you are confident to play?

Of all the clubs in your bag, there is no excuse for not knowing how far your wedges carry.

We all have a rough idea of how far our 7-iron travels, but you need to be very precise on how far your wedges carry. Knowing your wedge distances will save you lots of shots.

3. Be Smart

Even if I had hit it in the fairway bunker off the tee, all is not lost. There's not much of a lip to clear and you can still play out for position, but choose your club carefully.

Don't just reach for a hybrid to get as much distance as you can or, at the other end of the spectrum, take a sand iron just because you're in a bunker, then leave yourself too far back.

You need to choose a high enough loft to easily clear the lip but a strong enough loft to leave you your desired distance into the green for your next shot.

Practise your fairway bunker shots so you know how they differ from greenside ones and how much the resistance of the sand will take off your distances.

There are other adjustments that you need to factor in, too, such as swinging a little smoother to maintain your footing and balance.

Laying up requires just as much skill and concentration as any other shot. I often see golfers being careless and rushing their lay-ups because it doesn't involve playing to the target of a green, thus costing them the opportunity to save a shot or two.

4. The Scoring Shot Strategy

Can you hit a precise wedge shot? This is what the hole now looks like (below) after playing well within yourself and without attempting any spectacular shots.

If you had taken on the green or just hit it as far down there as possible, the likelihood is that you would leave yourself a fiddly chip or bunker shot or even put one in the water.

Even for the elite player, it's hard to control a shot from 200+ yards. All the trouble on this hole is generally left and right and you've now taken that out of play.

There will be par 5s where you can take it on and give it a go without getting into too much trouble, and I'm not saying that you shouldn't get the driver out, especially if it's a big strength of yours.

But this way, you are giving yourself the best chance to walk off with a par – or maybe even to hole a putt for a four by mastering the scoring zone.

Work your way back from the hole and lay up to the yardage that you prefer with your wedge. Most of us won't want that ‘in between' pitch shot, so think about your favourite wedge and what yardage a full shot with that club looks like.

5. Open Your Eyes

Stop guessing and start paying attention when preparing to putt!

When you're approaching the green, study the contours. You will get a great perspective of the slopes and run-offs as you walk towards the putting surface, which will differ from your view once you're standing on it.

It's amazing how our brains quickly forget, so use your walk wisely to have a look at your putt from both sides and to see where the low point is. You can have a very good idea of what your putt is going to do before you even get your putter out.

This sounds obvious but you can help yourself by paying more attention on your approach shot – don't short-side yourself!

Whatever shot you are playing into the green, there are flags to go for and ones where the middle of the green is the smart play, even if you finish 25ft away from the hole.

You're certainly good enough to get down in two on a 25-30ft putt, but is that the case when you are chipping across three different grades of rough?

6. Refine Your Game

If you play the same course often, stand at the back of the green and look back down the hole. It gives you a completely different perspective and often opens up a clearer visual of hazards, elevations, safe areas, contours etc.

It's not always about playing safe as it's also exciting to pull off shots that you dream of.

There are holes to play safe, tough ones with little margin for error where you need to stop forcing it from 150 yards, and easier ones you can attack.

If you're going to take holes and shots on, you need to know you can pull that shot off, that you've practised it and it's not your first attempt!

And don't obsess over par. If you play off 18, you can add one shot to every hole. Imagine if you started a par 5 and told yourself it's a par 6. The pressure's off and I believe you'll then make more gross pars.

The latest Shot Scope data tells us that anyone from a 15-handicap or higher averages a six or worse on a par-5, so making smarter decisions could help you to rapidly improve your handicap index.

7. Know Your Strengths And Weaknesses

If you took a drone view of your game what would it highlight? What is your consistent shot shape or your favourite fairway-finding club off the tee? What shot do you fear the most? How is your short game? Are there areas of your game where you are strong or weaknesses to build on? How's your strategy? Do you have one?

The best players in the world know their strengths and weaknesses, sometimes playing to them, managing them and, above all, developing and improving those weaknesses.

You can do this too! If you're not a long hitter then you can play smarter, sharpen your short game with the our short game clinic or become a better putter with the ultimate putting improvement guide – there are a multitude of ways you can improve and shoot lower scores if you know your game well.

Next time you play ask yourself over every shot, for the whole round, have I played this shot before and can I pull it off? What's the probability of success? Have I practised this intended shot before?

Be honest with yourself. If you have doubts, then make sure you have a plan B; a safer, more reliable option. It's not negative or boring, it's just smart. Try it next time you're on the course and you might be surprised at the results.

Let me start by saying that I am a relative newcomer to the game and desperate to reduce my high handicap - but can some home truths from a Top 50 coach stop me being, well, crap?

I’m clearly stating the obvious when I say that golf is hard. You all know this – whether you’ve been playing for decades or have only recently picked up a package set you’ll find the game fantastic and frustrating in equal measure. Quite often in two consecutive shots.

For me – a man who sits bang on the average age for a golfer in England at 53 – I think the ‘hardness’ of golf is exacerbated by the company I keep.

The people who furnish Golf Monthly with words. They are all good golfers. Some are quite simply brilliant players and at least one, I’m sure, was born in a clubhouse and raised by a pack of feral club members.

Even the GM team members who claim that they’re terrible are way, way better than me. My handicap – which I’ve had for just around a year now – is at least 20 points behind the next worst golfer.

When I play a round with them I watch in awe as they do things like hit a ball a long way. And straight.

Many of them have even got better recently. Social Media editor Johnny Percival had lessons after he lost lost 20 yards and his game fell apart, but things have since recovered for him, and Jonny Leighfield who had his first lesson in 20 years with pretty impressive results.

I could let this get me down but, of course, I know that I can do something about it which is why I’ve found myself at Windmill Leisure, on the outskirts of Bristol in south west England, with Golf Monthly Top 50 coach Joshua Mayo gripping my head. Don’t worry, it’s consensual.

Joshua Mayo is a well-respected PGA professional who has helped countless amateur golfers just like me to improve all aspects of their game. He is also recognised as one of the Top 50 Coaches in the UK, so I know I'm in safe hands... literally!

Home Truths From A Top 50 Coach Improved My Golf Swing

The head hold isn’t the first thing that happened, but is a consequence of Joshua spending a good 30-minutes assessing me in the bay.

I’ve been hitting my 8-iron as inconsistently as ever and, it won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s spent time with a decent coach, my problems start before I’ve even hit the ball.

After watching me address the ball, Joshua takes my place in the bay and replicates how I look as I prepare to hit.

It ain’t pretty – I appear to resemble the hunchback of Notre Dame trying to strangle an iron while stuck inside a box. Hopefully Joshua is exaggerating for effect…

“We definitely need to start with your posture,” explains Joshua. “The goal will be to improve your efficiency, getting your body to work with your clubs and, eventually, seeing you hit balls where you want them to go.”

So, first up is addressing my posture as I address the ball.

Like many of you I’m sure, I find myself tensing up as soon as I start thinking about hitting – my arms lock straight and my shoulders clench together - which is one of 8 common mistakes that many amateurs struggle with.

“Let your arms relax,” says Joshua, “Let them hang naturally. By thinking 'straight', you’re just adding tension.

Now, stand straight, engage your core and then soften your knees with a soft bounce. Finally, hinge forward from the hips and keep your spine neutral.”

It feels different to my usual set up but I feel more stable and, importantly, relaxed. I swing and the 8-iron sends the ball dead straight and 187 yards, Well, maybe not just yet. After a few more hits, we move onto another issue.

Years of running, and resolutely refusing to stretch, mean that I’m more Yogi Bear than yoga.

With the flexibility of freezer-stored Blu Tak my rotation into the back swing is a horror.

Which, at last, explains the head handling. As I rotate, Joshua holds my head in place so that, rather than following the club backwards, I keep looking at the ball. He then pulls the club further behind my shoulders than I thought was humanly possible.

My back and shoulder muscles complain a little, but being physically manipulated in this way does hit home how timid I usually am with my backswing. Note to self - do some of the best golf exercises to help with that.

Joshua eventually lets go of my noggin and I’m allowed to sit down. Admittedly, this is for another golf drill.

Joshua gets me to sit with a club across my shoulders as I rotate my upper body as far as possible, keeping my head still and my lower body pinned down.

This seated rotation drill, he says, isolates and engages my large torso muscles needed for a powerful swing. And, of course, I can do it at home.

Finally, Joshua gets me to swing the club backwards and forwards rapidly, aiming to clip the top of the rubber tee, all the time concentrating on my posture, keeping my head in position and really pushing the backswing.

“Carrying out this drill means that you’re practising your full swing,” explains Joshua.

“I want your swing to become a big, smooth full circle. You need to reframe your thought process to ‘swing the club well’, rather than ‘just try and hit the ball’.

Trying to control the impact point causes the errors. Trust the physics of the swing to return the club to the ball. The more we do this, you’ll move from being a timid, tap-tap-tap down the fairway golfer to a player who hits with confidence.”

After my first hour with Joshua, I feel like I’ve discovered a lot more about my golf and, of course, realised I’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of me if I’m going to improve even just a little.

I do hit a few more balls with the 8-iron and we look at the results on the Trackman screen. I catch one just right.

“Not bad, you’ve hit that two clubs further than the average club golfer,” says Joshua. I’m not sure I believe him, but obviously I’ll be going back for more as there's a lot more he's going to have to do help me improve.

The latest Shot Scope data tells us that there is a clear correlation between adding distance with driver and lowering your handicap, so this should be a priority for all amateur golfers looking to improve their game.

The average driving distance for a 20-handicapper is 222 yards - which is the closest measure to my index.

To reach my goal of playing off 15, I need to add at least 14 yards on average (234 yards) - which I managed to thanks to a golf improvement plan that helped me hit driver over 240 yards (as a 22-handicapper).

Over the winter I have been working hard on increasing my clubhead speed as part of this golf improvement plan that has delivered a 106% power boost - so I can vouch for that fact that this advice really works... especially if you are a high-handicapper.

PGA professional and Top 50 Coach Ged Walters has been coaching for more than two decades and has worked with a number of top local, national and international instructors, including Adrian Fryer and Jeff Ritter, to develop his practice as an elite coach.

With his extensive experience helping amateurs you too can cut your handicap in 2026. Below, Ged shares his wisdom on adding distance with driver... including a great tip for avoiding the biggest driver distance killer for amateur golfers.

1. Centred Strike

Let's start with the king of all power tips... ensuring a centred strike with driver.

Hitting the centre of the clubface, or very close to it, will help to optimise ball speed – a significant factor in how far you hit it. Unfortunately, a lot of club golfers have no idea of their strike location.

Sometimes, even if they think they’ve hit a good shot, it has actually come out of the heel or toe and brought the gear effect into play, with the head twisting around its centre of mass, leading to unwanted curvature.

To better understand where you’re striking it, use one of my 10 best golf drills.

Spray some dry shampoo or foot spray on the clubface. Hit a dry golf ball, then see where the mark has been left. This will help you to understand what good strikes feel like to boost your chances of added distance.

2. Grip

Remember this point... your hands release the energy in the golf swing.

You can make the best turn in the world or create incredible swing speed, but if your hands don’t release the energy, the golf club won’t flow or accelerate through impact.

Mastering the perfect golf grip is key to increasing distance.

A lot of club golfers who have a strong grip struggle to hit a driver effectively, often producing low snap-hooks, as the clubface shuts down and de-lofts the club in the downswing.

A great way to think about your grip is for your hands to be in their natural position – if you let your arms hang down, they tend to turn slightly inwards.

The hands always want to return to their natural position at impact, so if you start with them on the club in the incorrect place at set-up with a square clubface, the chances are you won’t return it square at impact.

3. Clubhead Speed

If you can measure your clubhead speed on a launch monitor, or at the driving range if it’s kitted out with the right tech, the data can really help you to track your progress.

The equation is simple; the more clubhead speed you are able to generate, the higher your ball speed is likely to be. And this will equate to more distance, providing your strike location is good.

It's a simple formula for hitting longer drives irrespective of your handicap index.

If you are struggling to ramp up your clubhead speed, you might need to opt for more loft on your driver. This will allow you to keep the ball in the air for longer, as opposed to a lower launch that might not travel as far before contact with the ground.

As your clubhead speed increases, you can reduce your loft accordingly, but many club golfers would definitely benefit from this little gear hack.

4. Set-Up

To generate more distance off the tee, I would focus on three key things at set-up: spine tilt, hip tilt and the correct ball position.

Spine tilt can be identified easily at address by the relationship between your belt buckle and the buttons on your polo shirt. Ideally, you want the buttons on the shirt to be fractionally behind your belt buckle on the trail side.

Too much spine tilt can cause you to hit the ground behind the ball, so be careful not to overdo it. A great way to get a natural spine tilt is to make sure you have the ball just inside your lead heel.

A slight hip tilt, where the trail hip is just a little lower than the lead, will also help to create the strong, athletic position you need to further your quest for more yards with your driver.

5. Spin Control

If you create too much spin, the ball will climb too high and seem to stall mid-flight, but it’s really just losing forward momentum as it’s still climbing.

Reaching peak height too soon is a distance killer, but too little spin can be just as detrimental as the ball starts to fall from the sky before reaching its peak height.

Less clubhead speed needs more spin to keep the ball in the air longer; more clubhead speed wants less spin to reach peak height at the right time. A centred strike with a square face is the ticket to better spin control.

6 . Overspeed Training

Weighted sticks are ideal for overspeed training. I use the Super Speed golf training set, which reviewed really well when tested by the experts at Golf Monthly.

Importantly, whichever of the best training aids you decide to use, the light stick should be about 20% lighter than a driver; medium around 10% lighter; and heavy about 5% heavier.

Going from light to medium to heavy, make the fastest, most aggressive swings you can to push your speed to the upper limits of your capabilities.

Try it five times with each, then switch back to your driver from the safety of the range and attempt the same speed. Faster speeds take some getting used to and direction will likely be erratic until you retrain your brain, but it will be worth it in the end.

7. Wrist Angle

Improving your wrist set can help you create the angles needed to release the speed.

The idea of this training aid is that the two brackets meet your forearms at the point when your lead arm is parallel to the ground going back.

When you reach the top, your forearms will be in the correct position if they’re still perched in the brackets.

Try to maintain connection with the training aid for as long as possible in the downswing before releasing the energy. Releasing too early will kill your distance potential.

Some of us will have used the winter to improve our golf game, while others will have put the clubs away for months on end thinking very little about the grind that is needed to get that elusive handicap cut in 2026.

I undertook a winter golf improvement plan which delivered a 106% power boost and helped me to shoot my best ever round (statistically) - but I am always looking for those little pieces of gold that top coaches offer to drive this progress further.

Many fall short in their pursuit of progress, slipping into bad habits like the 7 things you should never do at the driving range and repeating 8 common mistakes that plague your golf game, but with a little expert help you can make better decisions this season.

So, in this article, we share 5 top tips (with 5 expert tutorial videos) from The London Club's Head Professional Paul Stuart - including a great hybrid tip that will instantly improve the fortunes of high-handicappers around the green.

Paul had a successful playing career with a spell on the European Challenge Tour and has since into a highly respected coach with a proven track record for improving amateur and professional golfers.

Recognised as the 2019 PGA South Region Coach of the Year, Paul has learned from some of the best coaches in the game and now shares his wisdom with you in support of your bid to reach your lowest ever handicap this year...

Compressing Iron Shots

We all want that crisp, compressed strike at impact that helps us to flight our iron shots like the best in the game. To achieve that, you need to promote shaft lean at impact with the hands a little bit in front of the golf ball.

When I’m coaching, I often see amateurs trying to help the ball up and therefore allowing the clubhead to pass the hands and beat them to the ball at impact.

This causes the body to back up which affects the low point of the golf swing. The low point should in fact be below your lead shoulder blade.

Try this drill. Place an alignment stick on the ground in front and to the right of the golf ball, as shown in the video above, with the end of the alignment stick in a position that is roughly level with your lead shoulder blade.

In the swing, try to get your belt buckle and hands to reach that point at impact, then cover the ball with your trail shoulder as you strike through impact and up into the finish position.

If you can do this on the course, place yourself under a tree and set this drill up.

Hanging back on the ball will cause you to hit the branches, giving immediate feedback. A crisp, compressed strike will keep the start of the flight low and allow it to be flighted nicely towards your target.

Understanding your landing zones

The key to great chipping is to understand where to land the ball and how it will react when it hits the green. Many common chipping and pitching mistakes are linked to a lack of awareness and intent around landing zones.

As you can see in the video below, I have placed my golf towel down on the green to signify my landing zone, around halfway between my golf ball and the pin.

I have chosen a 56-degree wedge and three balls to try and hit my landing zone, but crucially I want to learn from how the ball reacts when it hits the green.

When you are practicing this on the short game area at your course, try varying the landing zone, pins and clubs used to ensure you can develop a sound knowledge of different types of shots and boost your confidence ready for your next visit to the course.

Use a hybrid around the green

There are certain scenarios around the green where a hybrid could be a better option than a wedge for amateur golfers.

The lie in the grass is going to tell us which club to use, so if you have a bit of sticky short rough behind the ball I’d opt for a hybrid to prevent the leading edge of the wedge digging into the ground and causing a duffed chip shot.

The sole of the hybrid helps to push the grass down through impact and provides a solid contact for a tricky short game shot.

Setup with your normal putting stance. You can stick to your normal putting grip too and the stroke is very similar to the one you'd use with the flat stick.

In fact, I’d even read the shot like a putt. Practice this on the short game area and don’t be afraid to bump one on with the hybrid when the time is right - it might even go in (as demonstrated in the video above!)

Soft landing greenside bunker shot

Being able to play the soft landing greenside bunker shot is key a great skill to possess, but it’s really all about how I can add loft to the club - giving myself the best chance of creating the height I need to get the ball out of the bunker and stop quickly on the green.

The first adjustment you will need to make is opening the clubface at address, but I also want you to lower the handle to create additional loft.

The next adjustment is to ensure your lead knee is outside the line of your lead foot, so closer to the target, and sit into a little bit of a squat at the knees.

Allow the hands to arrive slightly behind the ball at impact, staying low through impact, and throw the clubhead through the golf ball to maintain loft - as I demonstrate in the video above.

Pre-round putting drill

My go-to putting drill before a round of golf focuses on improving confidence by getting an understanding of pace and feel on the greens - and you should try it. Pace 20 feet from the edge of the green and place three balls on the ground.

Rather than putting to a hole, try instead rolling a few to the edge of the green leaving the ball as close as possible to the fringe. Then, once I have the pace locked down, I move on to something that Tiger Woods has famously used - the gate drill.

Give yourself a three foot putt, place the putter behind the ball and put a tee peg in the ground either side of your putter head, as I’ve done in the video below.

The key is to make sure you don’t touch the tee pegs through the stroke, making contact only with the golf ball.

This drill helps to promote a centred strike and builds confidence from hearing the ball fall into the cup.

In December 2025 I decided to take my progress on the golf course seriously, enlisting the help of two experts as part of an intensive golf rebuild that aimed to help me finally shake the high-handicapper tag that has stuck to me since starting in the sport.

After weekly lessons with PGA Professional Alex James, and golf-specific training with fitness expert Mark Wilson, I started noticing green shoots of improvement like the ability to finally hit driver over 240 yards (as a 22-handicapper).

These fitness exercises made me a better golfer in just 30 days, but after challenging myself to continue through the pain barrier I have noticed significant gains in my strength and mobility that have led to rapid improvements in my golf swing.

With the days getting lighter and the weather improving as we approach the 2026 golf season, I decided to get out on the course and track my progress over nine-holes at Sand Moor Golf Club.

The results were truly incredible, recording my best ever front-9 score and gaining more than four strokes on the average 20-handicapper according to the latest Shot Scope data.

Below, I run through the numbers and share how the winter golf training plan has supercharged my progress in the hope that you can utilise a similar program to improve your game...

How Winter Golf Training Helped Me Shoot My Best Score

With the time constraints of family life, a busy work schedule and a significant commitment to this winter golf training plan, I could only manage 9-holes before work last week before work.

Still, after weeks away from the course due to adverse weather, I couldn't wait to tee it up and learn a little more about how all of this hard work has shaped my game.

For reference, my previous best score on the front-nine at Sand Moor Golf Club was 8-over-par (gross), which I have previously shot twice.

For my handicap that's three-under par, but in my most recent outing I smashed through that barrier with a gross score of six-over-par (five-under-par nett).

Four pars, four bogeys and one poor double-bogey on the tough par-3 8th meant that I scored 42.

I know it's impossible to call whether I would or would not have continued that rate of scoring on the back-9 had I continued, but my best 18-hole score around Sand Moor is 95 (three times), so I would say I was on for potentially challenging that number.

According to my Shot Scope performance tracking data, I gained 4.30 strokes on the average 20-handicapper, with the highlights coming off the tee and on approach.

My two best holes, which were gross pars on the 5th and 7th at Sand Moor Golf Club, saw a 1.17 and 1.42 stroke gain on the average 20-handicapper. Interestingly, a marginal missed fairway to the left on both holes was rescued by a good approach shot and two-putts for a pair of par 4s.

My average driving distance was also up 11 yards, greens in regulation percentage tripled from 11% to 33% and my putting average was three strokes better than my 2025 average.

But, how did this happen? The key lies in the partnership between swing analysis/changes and fitness.

What Does A Golf Improvement Plan Look Like?

1. Baseline testing - Seek the expert analysis and advice of experts in two fields, a PGA Pro and a fitness specialist (ideally with a strong understanding of golf)
2. Create a plan - Using the data from the baseline tests, which should highlight strengths and limitations of your golf game, create a personalised plan that covers fitness sessions in the gym, a series of lessons with a PGA pro and a timetable of practice (and playing) that you can realistically commit to.
3. Put in the work - You must actually put in the hard yards. Getting all the right information then doing nothing about it is a waste of time and money. I committed to three gym sessions, one golf lesson and at least one practice session a week, but you must find your own timetable based on factors affecting your personal and work life.
4. Assess and tweak - As you move through the plan, use temperature checks like competitive rounds of golf or repeating the baseline tests to measure progress. Use this information to tweak your plan in partnership with the experts that are supporting you.
5. Accept it won't be straightforward - While completing my improvement plan I fell ill for three weeks, had a couple of trips abroad and contended with one of the wettest winters I can recall for some time. Progress certainly wasn't linear, but through perseverance, commitment and a little creativity you will see gains.
6. Have a goal - Know what you want to achieve and constantly check yourself against that target. You might fall short, you might smash through it, either way this is a process that might continue beyond your initial program end date, but that's golf. Stick to the process and you will play better golf in 2026.

Often amateur golfers will try to muddle through their on-course issues, or pop to see their local PGA pro for a one off lesson, but dedicating time and effort over the winter to a structured program can seriously pay off.

After taking part in a TPI screening at the start of my plan, which told me about some significant physical limitations that were preventing me from improving my golf swing, Mark set about creating a personalised plan to target these areas of weakness.

Through a blend of exercises that aimed to improve strength, mobility and flexibility, I was able to improve aspects like my rotation into my trail hip in the backswing and my ability to disassociate my shoulders from my hips.

This is information I would never have learned without seriously looking into the role that fitness has on improving your golf game, but fitness alone would not have been enough.

Alex put me through a set of baseline tests that similarly identified weaknesses in my game, which you can try for yourself too, but this information then informed the plan moving forward.

We set about working on key areas, but Alex also gave structure to my practice which is essential for those looking for long term improvement. After all, arriving to practice without a plan is one of the seven things you should never do at the driving range.

While my plan will look different to yours, and yours different to any other golfer, I can vouch for the impact the positive impact that a structured relationship between fitness and swing improvements can have on your game.

Those who have followed my golf rebuild journey will know that I have spent the last three months trying to improve my game, utilising the winter to find the progress that has been lacking from my game in seasons gone by… and the results have been incredible.

As well as feeling fitter and healthier, I have also developed the ability to hit driver over 240 yards (as a 22-handicapper) and learned a series of fitness exercises that made me a better golfer in the first 30 days.

Replicating this journey yourself could deliver positive results as we head into the 2026 golf season, harnessing the positive impact that a partnership between swing changes and developing physical fitness can have.

In this article, I share the latest data from my experience of this plan, comparing fitness test results from December 2025 to those repeated in March 2026, while also demonstrating how you can start you own journey towards improving your golf game.

This Golf Rebuild Gave Me A 106% Power Boost

On December 1st 2025, I visited golf fitness expert Mark Wilson to undertake a series of tests that would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of my ability to effectively swing the golf club, achieve full range mobility and generate maximum power.

The results were damning to say the least, with my TPI movement screening suggesting that there were multiple limitations that prevented me from playing my best golf.

The most significant of these was an inability to effectively load into my trail hip, restricting the potential for achieving the correct position at the top of the backswing.

This lack of strength and mobility, mainly around my glutes and hamstrings, also limited the force I was able to apply in tests designed to measure power output. As shown in the video below, this became a focus of our gym sessions following testing.

In the test measuring hip extension (prone), a significant asymmetry existed between my left and right side, with my lead side (left) measuring far stronger than my trail (right) in testing.

Without these tests, I doubt I would ever have realised that there was actually a physical limitation, and while there was clearly plenty that could be improved around my technique it was important to address this as soon as possible in order to maximise progress.

Through a series of gym exercises that were designed to return rapid improvements, which I have listed below, I started to see positive results quite quickly.

I felt more flexible and mobile, which in turn gave me greater confidence in achieving better positions throughout the golf swing - but there was still no hard proof that things were getting better.

• Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift (RDL)
• Dumbbell Split Squat
• Double Leg Seated Box Jump
• Med Ball Slam
• Three-Point Kneeling Bent Over Dumbbell Row

Other notable improvements were seen in my hip internal and external rotation (supine) and hip adduction and abduction (supine - knee) tests. In the hip IR/ER (supine), there was a 36% (left) and 38% (right) increase, and in the hip add/abd (supine) there was a 32% (left) and 35% (right) gain.

The internal and external rotation tests measure a person's ability to effectively rotate, load and shift weight in the golf swing - with limitations leading to common swing faults like swaying or loss of posture, which were definitely visible in my golf swing prior to the rebuild.

The adduction and abduction tests measure a golfer’s ability to control stability and effectively transfer weight in the golf swing, with limitations again leading to similar faults outlined above.

As well as seeing gains in each of these tests, I also feel a lot more in control throughout my golf swing and have noticed an increase in power and distance on the course.

In fact, in my most recent round measure on my Shot Scope data tracking device, I recorded an increase of 11 yards in driving distance average when compared to my 2025 data.

The most encouraging aspect of this recent round of testing is that I was successful in improving in every single one of the eight tests, and my TPI movement screening suggested that my golf fitness handicap, which was 24 in December 2025, had now dropped to a much more pleasing 11 (which is 11 shots lower than my actual handicap).

What that suggests is that my body is capable of playing to a handicap in the low teens, so with the swing changes and improvements made over the course of my three month rebuild I will be expecting to see a handicap cut once I have a card, a measured course and competition golf back on the agenda in the next few weeks.

Practical Next Steps That You Can Follow

In order to see serious long term improvements in your game, creating a plan that combines lessons with a PGA professional on your golf swing alongside golf-specific fitness work is a model I would certainly recommend.

Your plan will look different to mine, and different to the next person's, but starting with a clear assessment is an important first step.

Whether that is a TPI screening, a consultation with a fitness expert or a series of baseline tests with a PGA pro, it’s crucial to understand what you specifically need to do rather than aimlessly trying everything in the hope that it will get better.

Going to your PGA professional with data and information about limitations in your game can help them to personalise and differentiate your practice.

Head Pro at Sand Moor Golf Club Alex James has been helping me to get into a better backswing position, as you can see in the video below, but his knowledge of my limitations help to inform the way that this is built over time.

Being disciplined in your practice is another non-negotiable, as seeing professionals for help and then not following through with the hard yards and reps is a complete waste of time and money.

Arriving without a plan is one of seven things you should never do at the driving range, but by following a structured approach like the one outlined above you will feel empowered to make changes and progress.

It's simple. Do the work you are set in the gym, create time to undertake the best golf drills on the driving range and get out on the course whenever you can for mini-temperature checks.

But, crucially, you must also keep all parties up-to-date with how these sessions are going so that this fluid experience can be moulded over time as you progress and improve your game.

As amateur golfers we are all searching for a sharper short game, as quality and consistency in this area is often a key distinction between lower and higher handicap players.

Our curated list of the 20 best short game tips for amateur golfers are a great place to start, which is a resource Golf Monthly Instruction Lead Baz Plummer has used heavily as part of his successful winter golf improvement plan.

One of the most common pitching faults that amateur golfers make is linked to the 60-yard pitch shot, so understanding and improving how to control distance inside this crucial scoring zone is essential for shooting lower scores.

So, in the interest of helping you play better golf in 2026, we reached out to Top 50 Coach Keith Wood for his expert advice on how to dial in your wedges and get up and down more often...

Backswing length will dictate how far you can hit it, but we focus too much on what happens in the backswing, then react to that.

To improve from around 20 to 60 yards, think about controlling the length of your swing both ways.

Two different mid-length swings with each of three or four wedges mean six to eight different yardages. Then you just decide how far you want to swing the club, not how far you want to hit it.

We don’t have a good idea about how to control the follow-through as we’re just not moving our bodies.

We swing our arms at it and either the club stops itself so there’s no momentum, or we throw the club at it with our arms and hands.

Our backswing length may not be long enough, so we panic. Then there’s a speed change and we try and do everything in the follow-through.

Focus on just practising your body movement rather than hitting the ball a certain distance, keeping the upper body moving and your arms in sync with your torso.

Arriving to practise without a plan is one of the seven things you should never do at the driving range, and the same goes for short game tune ups.

Start with one length of swing both ways (e.g., waist to waist) then try something slightly longer and perhaps shorter.

Holding the follow-through is a great way of improving commitment and registering the length of each swing.

Whichever area of the game is preventing you from reaching your potential, the remedies can sometimes be fairly simple, often changing your fortunes radically.

PGA Professional James Jankowksi has coached more than 3000 golfers, teaching everything from putting grips to ensuring a centred strike with driver, which has allowed him to develop a clear understanding of emerging patterns in the amateur game.

Throughout all of the golf lessons that James has given in his decade long coaching career, he cites a number of common mistakes that amateur golfers make regularly, which creates a viscous cycle that he hopes to break by offering his vast expertise.

The list below outlines eight examples where amateur golfers can improve their game, and in the article below James shares his best actionable tips and advice for how to sharpen up in these areas and banish the faults that plague our game.

James Jankowski's List Of Common Amateur Mistakes

1. Hitting up on fairway woods
2. Weight distribution on pitch shots
3. Changing mechanics unneccesarily
4. Grip issues
5. Not reading the lie
6. Manipulating the face through impact
7. Not adapting to various bunker lies
8. Complicating flight control

1. HITTING UP WITH YOUR FAIRWAY WOODS

Many golfers struggle with fairway woods because they try to hit them like a driver.

Fairway woods are designed with the sweetspot sitting pretty much at the equator of the ball. Therefore, off the deck, you want the low point to be just after impact. If you hit up on it, a centred strike with irons or fairway woods becomes more difficult, or perhaps even impossible.

A good image to have is that, if there were another ball placed an inch or two in front of the one you’re hitting, you would also get that one airborne.

Hit slightly down and you should see the ball will launch better due to higher face contact.

2. WEIGHT DISTRIBUTION ON PITCH SHOTS

A common short game mistake many club golfers make when pitching is too much weight on their lead side at set-up.

Maybe they know that they need to be forward at impact, so preset this position at set-up. The problem then becomes no space to move into the lead side as they swing.

Instead, start with a fairly neutral weight distribution and allow a gentle shift onto the left side during the backswing and transition so that you can move into the ball naturally.

You want the torso moving forward and up through impact with a fluid motion. The low point is after the ball and the club is delofted at impact. If you keep that in mind and allow a small, natural shift left, your contact will improve and you will start to control distance much better.

Often, golfers who preset impact at set-up actually shift backwards during the motion. This leads to poor low-point control plus too much loft, sending the ball high with less spin.

3. CHANGING MECHANICS UNNECESSARILY

When you’re looking to change your short-shot trajectory, there’s no need to change much in the motion.

The mechanics remain largely the same. For a lower shot, the perfect ball position is slightly back in your stance with the face square and your hands in front of your lead thigh, using shaft lean to deloft the club.

For a higher shot, set the ball further forward with little shaft lean and open the clubface. From these two differing set-ups, the motion that then follows remains essentially the same.

From here, it’s all about contact and controlling the low point. Your set-up, not the swing, influences trajectory.

I’m still making the same movement to the finish, with a fairly long follow-through and no forced wrist hinge or delofting, depending on the shot.

The elbows stay soft and relaxed. Changing set-up, not motion, makes it easier to control height without losing consistency.

4. GRIP ISSUES

A perfect golf grip may be one of the most crucial parts of building a functional swing.

‘Swing around a good grip’, as my friend Biv Wadden used to say. Start with the middle of the left wrist joint right above the butt of the club.

The grip must be in the fingers and the left thumb should run long down the grip to help stabilise the club at the top. Using just your left hand, hinge the club up and down quickly a few times and the face should stay square the whole time.

The most functional right-hand grip sees the pinky overlap between the left hand’s trigger and middle fingers. The thumb should sit on the front and it should feel like you hinge the wrist to push the right thumb pad up the grip onto the left thumb.

The right thumb shortens and the trigger finger separates from the middle finger. The right thumb and upper trigger finger point at the right shoulder.

5. NOT READING THE LIE

Understanding lies around the green is a huge part of scoring well and an area where many golfers second-guess themselves. Again, it’s all about the low point.

On a basic level, if the ball is sitting up on top of the rough, you want a shallower arc and angle of attack.

This means very little shaft lean, if any, exposing a little more bounce. The ball position should be further forward and you should stand a little further away, perhaps with a slightly wider stance.

In the motion, you may want to feel a slightly wider arc – the clubhead staying further from you. This all helps to ‘pick’ the ball off the top.

If the ball is sitting down, you want to do the opposite. Stand closer with perhaps a narrower stance, move the ball back a little and lean the shaft, removing some bounce.

You may also want to feel a little more wrist hinge to narrow the arc. This helps the club cut through the turf so that the low point is below the ball.

6. MANIPULATING THE FACE THROUGH IMPACT

Many golfers believe we want to ‘control’ the face through impact, even when putting.

But the reality is we want a free release without tension. If your grip and sequencing are good, you should be able to release the club freely without manipulation.

Learn to feel the sensation of the club whooshing past your body. The club should be travelling fast past the body while the hands and body are actually slowing down to get the speed out into the clubhead before impact.

You need to think speed through the ball, not at the ball. The finish tells you everything.

In the finish position of the swing the right arm is soft and folded, the elbows are pretty close together and the back of the right hand is by the left ear. The elbows should finish quite close together.

A straight right arm is often a big red flag – what we might call an umbrella finish. Yes, you may see this from some tour players but they’re a different breed.

Practise swings with a free release without tension, the club whooshing past you and then try to repeat that with the ball.

7. NOT ADAPTING TO VARIOUS BUNKER LIES

A big part of good bunker play is adapting to the sand and distance of shot.

First, some basics. The stance should be pretty square and wide with the hands low and the ball just forward of centre. The goal is for the club to enter the sand just behind the ball. Next, it’s all about adjusting for lie and distance.

Let’s focus on the lie in the bunker. In soft sand, much like the ball sitting on top in the rough, you want a wider arc and shallower angle of attack. A simple way to achieve this is to stand a little further from the ball.

You may also want to select a club with more bounce or to expose more bounce by opening the face. In firmer sand, you need to be steeper so stand closer. Here, you need more dig, so maybe keep the face square or use your lowest-bounce wedge.

The final thing to grasp is that we want to take a similar amount of sand for every shot, no matter the consistency of sand or the distance.

Remember, in a bunker, we don’t actually hit the ball. Control distance with swing speed and club choice. Play around in the practice bunker and you’ll start seeing results.

8. COMPLICATING FLIGHT CONTROL

Many club golfers have a poor concept of how to hit a low-flighted shot. They start manipulating the swing, delofting the club too much and hitting way down on it.

In reality, hitting a low-flighted shot can be very simple, with the mechanics of the swing staying relatively similar. Trajectory is controlled mostly by set-up and club selection, not by trying to deloft the club and squeeze the ball low.

To produce a low-flighted shot, the first and simplest thing to do is reduce the loft by clubbing up. Once you have more club in your hands, grip down, narrow your stance a little and stand closer. These will all contribute to producing a lower flight, mostly by reducing the clubhead speed at impact.

Now you’re in this set-up position, the best course of action is to make your normal swing.

You’ll notice the ball fly lower with less spin. Want the flight slightly lower still? Simply feel the wrists stay more ulnar (unhinged) in the follow-through. This again reduces speed and lowers the flight.

Lower-flighted shots are simple once you know how. Club up, adapt your set-up, perhaps add the follow-through cue above and see your scores improve in the wind.

Learning from the best players in the game is an opportunity that amateur golfers rarely get, but those lessons can be the difference between another mediocre season and playing better golf in 2026.

Fortunately, we had the opportunity to sit down with multiple DP World Tour winner Grant Forrest, who kindly shared his top tour winning tips for improved mentality, strategy and better preparation on the golf course.

While absorbing the best ball striking lessons for amateurs is crucial to consistency on the course, learning how to stop forcing it and check your ego is just as important for hitting more greens and lowering your scores.

Below, Grant Forrest walks us through five ways we can think, strategise and prepare more effectively for a round of golf through his tour level insights...

LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS

If you’re a 15-handicapper you can’t expect to play like a scratch golfer. It sounds obvious but you don’t need to try to be a hero and take on near-impossible shots.

We all do it still at this level, and you don’t need to. We all turn into optimists when we get on the golf course.

Ask yourself the question, what is a good shot? For your own game, what actually is a good result?

For most amateurs, if you hit the middle of the green, that’s a great result.

A lot of club golfers could benefit from imagining there are no pins and just getting a yardage to the middle of the green and hitting that, especially if the flag is at the front as they tend to underclub.

If you’re aiming for the middle of the green and don’t catch it, it will probably be fine.

WHY IT’S CALLED A ‘SWING’

It’s called a swing for a reason. You’re basically swinging a weight on the end of the stick and you’ve got to feel the weight of the club.

I think a good way of feeling that is to start the club forward first in your practice swings, ahead of the ball, before then swinging back.

This will naturally set the club on the right path. It’s quite hard to get out of position if you swing the club forward a bit first. If you can work on that in your practice, then it can move into your normal swing and it’s going to help you.

PLAYING WITH NERVES

I’d always be worried if I wasn’t nervous. It means that you care so it’s something you have to manage and try and use to your advantage. You don’t want to be too highly strung and, when you’re on the course, you want to play from your comfort zone.

If you put me up on a stage and asked me to sing in front of people, I would absolutely be sick with nerves.

You might play every couple of weeks and in a handful of club competitions every year so it’s just about accepting nerves and knowing that they’re going to be there.

I’ve played well lots of times when I’ve been nervous – and so have you – and that’s a great thing to remember.

I think about my breathing a lot, especially in my putting. If you feel noticeably nervous or more nervous than normal – it’s going to be on an important shot or a higher-tariff shot – really focus on your breathing.

It can be as simple as taking deep and slower breaths. Everything tends to get quicker when you’re nervous so I’m always trying to do everything in slow motion when I’m feeling it.

THE MENTAL GAME

The important thing is your thought process, as part of your pre-shot routine, so do you have a clear intention on every shot? Often you don’t actually know what you’re trying to do.

Again, and this is crucial, what are you trying to achieve? Whether you execute or not, you are trying to play the right shot.

In terms of swing thoughts, most guys play with something in their head. It can vary day to day and that’s fine.

A lot of it is about reacting to how you feel on a day. Maybe you will hit a couple of shots that you really like and you have a good feel on them. If so, just try and repeat that.

THE WARM-UP

A golf warm-up is a practice session and it’s about finding that rhythm and hitting the shots that you’re going to need on the course.

One big thing is to pay attention to what you’re doing in the warm-up. If you’re hitting a draw in your warm-up, that’s the shot that’s there that day. Be comfortable with what you have.

There are so many great players out on tour and they only really stick to hitting one shot shape.

We see a lot of the great players shaping it both ways on demand but the majority of guys, especially with the driver, will have one shot. I draw it and it just suits my eye more. I’ve always played like that and I won’t play around with that too much.

As we head into the 2026 golf season, plenty of amateur golfers will be going through their preparations to tune up the swing and nail their fundamentals - but which are the commonly overlooked aspects which could hold the key to success this year?

Understanding how to get a straight left arm in your golf swing is a crucial lesson for golfers of all abilities, but many amateurs make one common mistake... failing to understand the relationship between the lead and the trail arm in the golf swing.

Some of the best ball striking lessons for amateur golfers talk about the importance of ensuring a centred strike, which is only achieved when the trail arm works effectively to allow the lead arm to maintain its extension.

In this article, Top 50 Coach and PGA Pro Ged Walters uses more than two decades of experience coaching golfers of all abilities to share his top tips for understanding and improving your trail arm positions to help you get that crucial lead arm position....

Avoid This Trail Arm Fault That Kills Your Lead Arm Position

Your lead arm will only be straight if the trail arm is folding at an appropriate rate. If the latter folds too much, the lead arm has to bend as both hands have hold of the grip.

If you imagine the lead shoulder is the centre point, the lead arm controls the swing radius.

If you fail to control the radius, and the lead arm has to extend in the downswing, you’ll lose the wrist angles early, which can lead to a number of common faults as you scramble to make decent contact.

If you keep the lead arm straighter throughout the swing, it simplifies everything down the line.

The golf grip also plays a crucial role in controlling the radius. If the club is too much in the palm of your hand, it will restrict your wrist angle and shorten your effective arm length, forcing the lead arm to bend in compensation.

The grip trainer in the image below is an inexpensive way to master this crucial area of the game by educating club golfers about the correct hand placement on the club.

Scottie Scheffler uses a very similar tool in practice. If it’s good enough for the World No.1, maybe you should give it a try.

In the image below, demonstrating an incorrect position at the top of the backswing, you can see that the wrist of my right arm is overly flexed and the lead arm is far from straight due to too much hinge in my trail elbow.

This is all linked to cause and effect, as the lead arm being bent is a result of the trail elbow position and the wrist position in this image.

If those particular areas were in a more textbook place (first image), my lead arm would have a much better chance of still being straight.

Armband Drill To Fix Your Trail Arm

This is a great drill for visual feedback. Place an inflated armband on your trail arm just above the elbow.

When you get into the backswing position, you’ll notice the forearm and bicep can’t get too close together due to the armband. This helps groove both a better position and better feel for the correct lead arm position.

Try a few swings with the armband on, then take it off and try to replicate the feeling. Go slowly at first and go back to the armband if things don’t improve.

Remember, practicing without a plan is one of seven things never to do at the driving range, so go in armed (pardon the pun) with this great drill.

To take things further, place the armband between your forearms and make a slow swing. If it falls out before impact, your forearms have separated and you haven’t achieved the correct position.

When I hear amateurs golfers talk about their over the top swing or the destructive impact that hitting a slice is having on their game, I am struck with a stress-induced flashback of being in the trenches with these issues myself.

Learning how to stop coming over the top and curing a slice is a journey I have been on for some time now, forming a common theme in my winter golf rebuild through my range sessions and golf-specific fitness exercises.

In fact, one of the big reasons I am now able to hit driver over 240 yards (as a 22-handicapper) is because I am making rapid progress towards eradicating these common faults.

But, while it's all well and good things turning around for me, how do we help you to get moving on your own pursuit of progress?

Arriving at the range without a clear plan is a waste of time - and one of the seven things never to do at the driving range - so we asked one of our experts to prescribe the perfect fix in the form of 3 simple drills that you can use straight away.

Below, PGA Pro and Top 50 Coach expertly explains how to conduct them and offers an insight into how they can help you play better golf in 2026...

3 Drills To Cure Your Over The Top Swing And Banish A Slice

1. Swing with purpose

When club golfers get too steep or come over the top, the hands come off their path, pushing the arms and clubhead outwards. The brain then tries to ‘rescue’ it, leading to some of the most common swing faults that golfers have.

This drill using a towel is a great way to get you swinging your arms with purpose, directly at your target in more of a straight line.

Do it against a wall at home (make sure you stand far enough away from the wall!), with the towel in your lead hand and your trail hand behind your back.

Start at address and focus on swinging the arm with speed, but stop quickly when your lead arm reaches the position in the image above, which is more vertical.

This will make the towel whip against the wall, which would translate to a better strike with the driver. If the towel flicks up softly, things have broken down somewhere, so reset and start again.

2. Bowler Drill

This drill provides a feeling of getting the arms to move around the body in a more effective way - getting your swing on plane. The majority of golfers who slice it do not move their arms correctly around their torso, which leads to a loss of energy and subsequently distance.

Pulling your trail foot back to the position shown in the image above will encourage the hands and arms to move in and around you earlier, and more behind you at the top of the backswing.

Ensure you keep your trail foot in this position throughout the swing. The good thing about the bowler drill (think ten-pin bowling) is that it takes the lower body out of it, leaving you to make a positive and committed swing with the lead arm.

3. Angle of attack

We want to promote a shallower swing that hits up on the ball at impact, as opposed to a steep or over-the-top swing.

The image below shows the ‘step drill’, which encourages an upward angle of attack and helps prevent an over-the-top action.

Too downward a strike and you will likely hit one of the two tees before the ball. This drill is perfect as it offers instant visual feedback. Focus on coming into the ball as if your club were climbing the stairs.

In my 10 best golf drills I talk a lot about the power of instant visual feedback, so this is definitely one to try.

When trying to improve our golf game, amateurs tend to get fixated on common pain points, like the position at the top of the backswing or the correct setup position, which means that learning how to release the golf club can be a bit of an afterthought.

Considering how crucial this skill is in helping you to ensure a centred strike and ward off the biggest driver distance killer in the amateur game, it's totally counterproductive to ignore it if you want to see progress.

So, in the interest of helping you to understand how to release the golf club effectively, including a common misconception and a great drill to fix it, I asked Golf Monthly Top 50 Coach and PGA Pro John Jacobs to share his expert advice...

How To Release The Golf Club

Many golfers, in an effort to keep the clubface square through impact, find themselves in a poor post-impact position.

The idea that the club needs to stay square, looking at the target through impact, typically leads to the face being held open. That’s when we see big blocks and pushes.

Improving your release will have a big impact on accuracy and improve your ability to achieve a centred strike with irons.

The image below demonstrates what we want to see: beautiful extension, a straight right forearm and the club moving away from the body with the arms connected.

We’re trying to increase the space between the butt of the club and your belt buckle.

That mental image can help you release your hands better. Note how I’ve thrown my hands at the target line here.

If you pull your trail leg back a foot or so at set-up, as I've done in the image below, and try to hit the ball, you will find it becomes difficult for your body to turn.

This is what makes this drill so effective and one you should definitely try as it will help you learn how to stop slicing the ball.

By intentionally closing off your stance like this, you’re going to teach yourself how to release the hands, as it forces you to learn how the hands and arms should pass the body through impact.

Play a few holes, a whole round even, with your trail foot back like this, hitting nice smooth swings.

Heading to practice without a plan is one of the seven things never to do at the driving range, so have this drill in your head this next time you grab a bucket of balls.

Your timing will improve and you might surprise yourself at just how sweetly and how far you can strike it.

As amateur golfers we all go through tough periods on the greens from time-to-time, but rather than tackle the problem and attempt to improve our putting, we often just get our head down and power through - which isn't really the best course of action.

Our putting improvement guide is packed with expert tips and drills, curated by some of the most well-respected coaches in the business including flatstick guru James Jankowksi, so it's usually a good place to start for guidance on the greens.

We often see tour players trying different methods for how to grip a putter, or switching between the best putters on the market, but this curiosity and thirst for improvement doesn't always translate to the amateur game.

World No.1 Scottie Scheffler switched to the claw grip for putting, which appeared to work wonders for a once relatively 'weak' area of his game, but you also see Major winners like Xander Schauffele and Jordan Spieth rocking the left-hand-low putting grip and many others sticking with the conventional method.

Putting guru James Jankowkswi has coached 3000 golfers to improve their putting, so we asked him to share his favourite putting grip, a common fault that many amateurs fall into and three other options that could help you fire up the flatstick in 2026...

Putting Expert's Grip Guide

You might think you've tried everything. You've bought one of the best putters on the market, gone through some putting drills on the practice green and even watched a few YouTube videos, but for some reason the flatstick is still not firing.

Taking a look at your grip is a great way to explore a new avenue to potential improvement, just as Golf Monthly's instruction lead Baz Plummer did when he carried out a putting experiment to see which worked best for him.

So, with a bona fide expert on our roster of Top 50 Coaches, we thought it was best to reach out to James Jankowksi so that he can guide you through this process and set us straight on a common misconception relating to his favourite grip...

My Favourite Putting Grip And A Common Misconception About It

The conventional grip is my favourite, when positioned properly. This is where many amateurs go wrong. They blame the conventional grip for their lack of face control, which is a common misconception, when really it's how they position their hands when doing it.

With a neutral, conventional grip, the hands oppose each other with the palms facing the sides of the grip. The back of the left hand points towards the target and the back of the right hand points away.

A key reference point is the intersection of the life line at the base of the hand. The left hand should see the life line run along the front left edge of the grip, with the thumb pad on the front and thumb straight down.

Once in place, remove the trigger finger for a reverse overlap and feed the right hand fingers underneath. From here the right hand should have this lifeline intersection on the knuckle or finger nail of the left hand middle finger.

Feel like you're hinging the right hand into the grip. This lengthens the trigger finger away from the middle finger and shortens the thumb. See the rectangle created by the right thumb and trigger finger below.

Again, the thumb travels down the front of the grip. The wrist joints, forearms and elbow joints should all be parallel to each other and the target.

The reverse overlap is really important, as it allows you to get the right hand (for right-handed golfers) on the putter in the right position.

Be careful not to move the fundamental low hand position as you wrap it over onto the front of the grip, which is a common misconception, but instead try to move the thumb independently as you stretch over to ensure the thumb faces down the grip.

This is the most common starting grip because most golfers are trail-hand dominant, and the lower trail hand helps to provide a strong sense of feel and awareness.

This might not suit every amateur golfer, so I have shared a few other options below for you try as you search for what feels right for you on the greens.

Lead Hand Low Grip

This is a good option for lead-hand-dominant strokes or those who prefer a more lead-side holding technique.

You will likely need a shorter putter to help you retain the same trail-arm structure as in a conventional set-up and stop the trail arm bending more and drifting along the side of the torso.

The lead arm hangs straighter than in a conventional grip, with shoulders fairly level. Keeping the lead wrist flexed in the hitting zone helps prevent the putter head from overtaking too quickly.

Claw Grip

The claw is an excellent option, especially on short putts, for golfers who struggle to coordinate face rotation and suffer from pushes or pulls.

It works by altering the trail-hand position through forearm pronation, which often stabilises the rotation of the trail arm.

To set it up, start in a conventional grip and remove the trail hand, then pronate the forearm (turn it anticlockwise for a right-hander) until the back of the hand faces away from you.

Let the trail arm hang long, with the thumb placed on the back of the grip and the trigger finger resting lightly along the front. These are your feel receptors.

Prayer Grip

The prayer grip encourages a torso-driven stroke, which may help golfers who struggle to coordinate arm motion.

Place your hands on either side of the grip in a palm-to-palm ‘prayer’ position and wrap the fingers behind – you may overlap or interlock the fingers at the back.

You will probably need a larger grip for this style. Grip and shoulder tension typically increase with the prayer grip to promote stability and a sense of connection, though this can slightly reduce feel.

Keep your tension consistent and allow your head to stay centred as you pivot through the stroke.

What Grips Have You Tried?

The putting grip is a very personal thing, but crucially important to success on the greens, so we'd love to know which method you currently use and which you have tried in the past.

Also, If you have any question for James, or you want to share your experience of how his advice has helped your game in the 2026 season, drop us a comment below and we'll get back to you!

Some golfers make a hugely successful career out of strategically outmanoeuvring the golf course, picking it apart hole-by-hole with expert precision, and legend of the game Justin Leonard certainly fits that mould.

There is plenty of room for boosting clubhead speed and hitting the gym with the 5 fitness exercises that make you a better golfer, but playing the 'Justin Leonard' way means you don't have to be the longest or fastest to play your best golf in 2026.

When winning the 1997 Open Championship, Justin Leonard opted for precision over raw power to navigate his way to a victorious 12-under-par score at Royal Troon.

By focusing on his 5 expert tips, you can transform the way you think on the course, tidying up key techniques and focusing your brain with a clear plan that will help you to avoid 7 things you should never do at the driving range when practicing.

Speaking with renowned golf reporter and presenter Garrett Johnston, Justin Leonard explains how he approaches key pillars of the game and how you can shoot lower scores in 2026...

5 Things A Major Champion Does (That You Probably Don't)

Key Takeaways

For those short on time or looking to head straight out to the range and practice Justin Leonard's expert tips, here is a quick list of key takeaways to get you started in a flash.

1. Distance Control - Study how far your shots travel in the air and practice hitting those numbers.
2. Putting - work on stroke and alignment, focusing on drills inside 20ft where the goal is holing out... to build confidence.
3. Wedges - groove a shallower angle of attack and work on flighting the ball down to control distance.
4. Chipping - Read the lie first, then focus on landing zone.
5. Bunker Shots - Keep your weight on the lead side and create a steeper angle of attack.

IRON SHOTS

My old coach, Randy Smith, always imparts great advice, and none better than when he tells me to go out and create shots with my irons.

A lot of it is responding to pin positions and dialling in my distance control. If I’m trying to take a little bit off a shot, then I will hit a straighter ball or cut the shot a little bit. It’s not always about, “Hey, this is a right pin, I have to cut it.”

You also have to ask yourself, does the number allow me to do that? So much of playing high-level golf is precise distance control and I think Scottie Scheffler is probably the best at that – knowing how far the ball is going to go in the air and being able to hit his numbers.

So that’s a lot of what I work on when I’m on the range. I also work on it when I’m at home and when I’m at tournaments early in the week and certainly in pro-ams.

PUTTING

I spend time working on stroke and alignment, and I’ve got some putting plates that I use daily to just calibrate.

I make sure my face is lined up squarely to where I want to start the ball. I also use drills like the gate drill where you’ve got to hit the ball between two tees. If I’m able to do that, I know I’m hitting my start line and I know I’m lining up correctly.

When it comes to results, if you’re outside 20 feet then getting it close is fine. I practise mostly inside 20 feet, because you want to get used to seeing the ball go in the hole.

Golf is a game of mental pictures and it’s critical to have fresh images of holing out in your mind as you go through your round.

CHIPPING

You’ve got to be able to read the lie, first and foremost – whether you’re into the grain or down grain.

Then you need to understand where you want to land the ball depending on how much spin you put on your chips, what kind of golf ball you use and how fresh your grooves are.

There are so many variables that factor in to being a good chipper. It’s hard to nail down one or two thoughts to get better right away.

I use the bounce on the club with my chips. I see a lot of guys grab their most-lofted wedge, but I would recommend trying to open up the face and using a less-lofted wedge, especially off Bermuda grass, because the bounce will help you cut through better.

WEDGE SHOTS

I feel like most of the really good wedge players come from a shallower angle of attack.

I see amateurs getting really steep with their wedges, and that becomes so hard to control because the ball goes high up in the air with a lot of spin on it.

I think the wedge players that I admire, like Zach Johnson, Steve Stricker and Scottie Scheffler, are all pretty shallow coming into the ball and they’re able to take spin off when they need to.

They’re able to flight the ball down and I think that’s vital for controlling the distance with wedge shots.

These shots are usually from inside 150 yards and you need to be deadly from that range.

So, to that point, you must know for certain how far the ball is going to go and it’s hard to do that when it’s spinning too much and going straight up in the air. It’s so important to flight the ball down low with your wedges.

BUNKER SHOTS

I think it’s important for me to get my weight forward and set into my left side. That helps me get steeper and make contact closer to the ball. Doing this produces a crisper strike and a lot more control out of the bunker.

I have a tendency to let the club shallow out too much and I can catch them heavy and produce low shots, so I’m trying to make closer contact with the ball by leaning into my left side.

As amateur golfers, we all want to start the new season strongly. But, after a long winter of the clubs hibernating in your shed or garage, that doesn't always materialise.

Whether your dream for 2026 is to boost your clubhead speed, sharpen up your short game, ensure a centred strike with driver more consistently, or literally anything else relating to improving your game - we want to hear from you... because we can help.

Ged Walters is a PGA Professional with more than two decades of coaching experience, helping countless amateurs to improve their swing and shoot lower scores - so he is the perfect person to field your questions and guide you towards progress.

On Friday 13th February, Ged offered his services to answer your golf-related queries.

Ged and I received all of your questions, which you can see below, with every single one receiving Ged's expert tips - who doesn't love free expert advice, right?

Our Q+A is now over, but you can read all of Ged's tips and ask any more questions you have in the comments box below. I will endeavour to get Ged to answer as many as I can.

Watch this space - we will be back with more experts, which means more opportunities to ask questions and more chances to improve your golf game!

I'll bet you didn't know that 2000s party hit 'Hips Don't Lie' by Shakira was about the golf swing, did you?

OK, maybe that's not true, but I can't help but feel the Colombian singer-songwriter was on to something in regards to producing a more efficient movement with golf club in hand when she uttered the words "my hips don't lie and I'm starting to feel it's right."

After one lesson with Top 50 coach, Tom Motley, I'd say 'me too, Shakira. Me too.'

The impact that lessons had on some of my colleagues this winter caught my attention, so I was optimistic heading into my first real coaching experience for 20 years and excited about playing my best golf in 2026.

Johnny Percival's game fell apart after losing 20 yards with every club, but his recent lesson swiftly got him back on track, while Baz Plummer has been using a series of lessons as part of a golf improvement plan that has helped him to hit 240 yard drives as a 22-handicapper.

Tom's tuition provided a similarly transformational impact, as one simple hip rotation drill, that any amateur golfer can try (on the course or at the range), instantly improved a fault that has plagued my game for years...

This Hip Rotation Drill Fixed My 20-Year Golf Swing Fault

As an 18-handicapper who was prone to something of a fade on a good day and a slice on a really bad one, I was very much looking forward to meeting Tom and seeing what he could do about it.

I should, at this point, admit that I hadn't enjoyed a proper lesson for possibly more than 20 years.

I wasn't all that keen on someone picking all the faults in my swing when I had progressed to a point where I could basically enjoy the game and play some OK stuff occasionally.

Yet, I walked out of The Cube at The Kendleshire Golf Club near Bristol thinking "why on earth did I not book a lesson earlier?!" It took everything in my power not to immediately head to a range to work on what I'd been taught.

The crux of my issues - as you will have hopefully realized by now - was to do with a horrible lack of mobility in this 30-something's body. Despite being born in 94, I probably had about as much movement in my hips as a 94-year-old.

My colleague Baz saw improvements in his mobility by committing to 5 fitness exercises that have helped to make him a better golfer in just 30 days, but Top 50 Coach Tom Motley assured me that there was also something I could do in the lesson to improve this.

Standing in the middle of an impressive array of golf clubs, equipment and training aids, Tom asked me to hit a few balls with a 7-iron into the screen to see what he was working with.

It took him all of about 30 seconds to diagnose one of the biggest issues, my setup, and he didn't even need to consult his Trackman launch monitor or the incredible variety of data points it offers.

I had gone to junior lessons for several years when I was very young but was not allowed to go anymore after a small meltdown which lasted several holes in a tournament at my home course around the age of 11. But that's by the by.

The point I was going to make was that while I had been taught a golfing technique at an impressionable age, I had clearly been taught some very different things to what Tom and his fellow stable of Top 50 coaches might tell students nowadays.

For example, my feet were perfectly square to the target, I had far too much flex in my knees and my golf grip featured a couple of digits almost in the wrong zip code. But other than that, it wasn't too bad.

Tom showed me how to perfect my golf swing setup fundamentals and then played a video he'd taken of me from a front-on view which showed me swaying out to my right while bringing the club back more than one of those inflatable car wash mascots you see.

Because I was producing so much lateral movement, my legs and arms had to compensate and the result is often a massively over-the-top swing which invariably leads to a slice.

The fix, as it turns out, is fairly simple. Tom told me to think about twisting my right hip "up and around" and nothing else. Let the arms follow.

In terms of a drill, this is something you can try at home in front of a mirror or at the range. Press a golf club - or something of similar shape - flat along your belt line and assume the correct set up position but stand up slightly straighter.

Then practice moving your right hip up and around so that the club points 45 degrees behind you before pushing off your right side and finishing with the club (still along your belt line) square to the target out to your left.

Be sure not to sway past the original position that your right pocket began. Effectively, you're just practicing the movement your hips would make during a full swing out on the course.

Once I put that drill into practice, the results were genuinely quite shocking to me. I'd always dreamed of hitting a lovely tight draw but felt it was quite unrealistic in my current state.

Yet, the first half-swing that we tried produced a 90-yard mild draw. Incredible. The club path had changed from being -6 to +3, simply by tidying my set-up position and thinking only about my right hip.

From there, the results were hit and miss as Tom and I ironed out the kinks of what felt like a mammoth change in my action.

Constant reminders to stand taller and push my hips or shoulders straighter proved that despite embarking on the winning trail, it will take time for these alterations to feel natural.

The next part of my journey towards hitting much straighter (and longer) shots is to practice, practice, practice.

I can now avoid one of the 7 things never to do at the driving range by actually arriving with a plan and sticking to it - which will make a big difference.

I can also complete the aforementioned drill at home, and then it will be about going to the range to check my progress as often as possible.

A GOLF LESSON CAN HELP YOU IMPROVE

As I mentioned earlier, I was hesitant to go out and have a lesson as I was worried about taking a few steps back to take more steps forward in the coming months and years.

But the instant positive feedback I witnessed, as well as the high-level coaching that Tom presented me with, made me think I'd wasted so much time not being as good as I could be.

Tom's no-nonsense approach and motto of "if you can't do what I'm telling you within 10 swings, we try it another way" gave me confidence that once we found the right strategy, it would instantly feel right. And that is exactly what happened.

If you add in the plethora of data at Tom's disposal on the computer - which he always explained to me in a way I could digest - then I have to consider this lesson one of the most valuable hours of my golfing life.

And the best part is, I will return to The Cube at some point soon and we will hopefully kick on again.

I hope that my first-person account of returning to lessons after such a long time encourages you to do the same because there really is nothing to worry about - especially when you're in the safe hands of your local PGA pro or even a Golf Monthly Top 50 coach.

The biggest driving distance killer in golf plagues the game of many amateurs, but we don't have to put up with meek efforts off the tee any longer.

With any issue related to the big stick, it's always worth consulting the 20 best driving tips and drills from expert coaches, but that's not the only way to solve the issue.

Some amateurs go down the route of trying to boost their clubhead speed and others try some of the best golf exercises.

Gym exercises can produce rapid improvements in your golf swing, while avoiding the seven things never to do at the driving range can also help as you partner increased speed with dedicated practice.

Each method is a great ways to increase driving distance, but none will deliver the results you want without addressing golf's biggest driving distance killer...

Exposing Golf's Biggest Driving Distance Killer

Golf's biggest driving distance killer revolves around strike location on the face. It's simple, if you can ensure a centred strike with driver you will maximise distance, if you can't - your potential yardage will be severely impacted.

As we know, we want to increase our ball speed to get more distance, but if we are pattering the heel, the toe, the top or the bottom of the face - we dramatically reduce our ball speed and our distance.

Below, I'm going to share something I have used to help countless amateurs to hit the ball further and play better golf - a three-point fix to help you find the centre of the face more often and increase your length of the tee.

1. Understand Your Strike Location

It's so important that amateurs monitor their strike location, helping them to understand where they tend to strike the ball on the clubface.

Often, players think they are hitting the middle when they simply are not - so try one of the best golf drills - as it will give you instant feedback.

Grab some dry shampoo and spray a generous helping onto the clubface of your driver. Take your normal driver setup position, make your typical swing and use the mark left on the clubface (due to the dry shampoo) to assess your strike location.

As you can see in the video above, I hit one out of the heel, which reduced my ball speed and distance, but that gave me instant visual feedback that I could then use moving forwards.

If you are hitting the ball too much out of the toe or the heel, you need to look at what you are doing at address.

A common issue I see with amateur golfers is to do with weight distribution in the golf swing.

If you placed the driver behind the ball (on a tee), take your normal setup and place all your weight onto your toes, you will see the heel of the club move towards the golf ball.

Equally, if I moved all my weight onto my heels the club would slide with me and expose more of the toe at address.

Both faults are going to limit my success rate in finding the middle of the clubface. To fix this, find a nice sturdy address position where you don't feel like you are in danger of falling forwards or backwards if given a light nudge.

Try this to find that athletic position. Stand up straight and lock your knees. This will help to re-centre your weight and reset everything. Then, just soften your knees a touch so that the weight sits in the balls of your feet - just in front of centre.

Make some small, slow practice swings. As you return to an impact position at that slow speed, ensure you return to a similar feeling of sturdiness to the one you started with - avoiding falling away to the front or back as this will impact strike location.

2. Tee Height And Angle Of Attack

Another common fault is to do with hitting the ball too high or too low off the clubface, which could be caused by your tee height.

If you peg it up way too high, the ball will be elevated way above the clubface, whereas if you tee it down too low a slight upward blow would cause the club to catch the ball out of the bottom section of the face.

Using a castle tee is a great way to ensure you have a consistent tee height for shots with your driver, but test the range out to see which height is correct for you.

Otherwise, a great rule of thumb is to have half of the golf ball visible above the clubface when it's on the tee.

Another thing we need to look at is your attack angle. If you were hitting an iron we would want to see a downward angle of attack, whereas with a driver we want a slight upward angle of attack as we strike the golf ball.

I'm using a great training aid in the video above, which is a wedge that mirrors those angles of attack. As you move through impact, you want to feel a gradual rise up the 'ramp' created by the wedge.

If you are someone that comes in with more of a descending blow with driver, you will notice a few signs like broken tee pegs, sky marks on your driver and even little divots after striking the ball.

By creating a slight tilt with the shoulders at address, moving your spine behind the golf ball, you should notice when carrying out some slow practice swings that the motion resembles a sweeping action upwards as you go through impact.

Be careful not to overdo it, as this can cause the club to bottom out behind the ball and lead to topping the golf ball.

You can still use the dry shampoo for this, to assess your strike location, but by practicing how to generate the correct angle of attack on the range you should notice an improvement in distance.

3. Banish The Glancing Blow

Too many amateurs deliver a glancing blow with driver. By that I mean that they either come too much from the inside-to-out with their path, or the opposite with an out-to-in swing.

If you slice the golf ball, the out-to-in path is one that you will be familiar with - but we need to change that to maximise distance.

Here is a simple fix to try in your next driving range session. Take a golf club and place it down on the ground next to your tee, pointing down your target line. Measure a grip length from the tee and another place a tee in the ground in front of your golf ball.

Do the same behind the golf ball, measuring a grip length again and placing another tee in the ground. You can see a visual demonstration of this set up in the video above.

Take the golf ball off the middle tee. We just want to feel in the swing like we have a slight arc between these tee pegs.

The middle one is where the golf ball would be, so we don't want to feel like we are travelling excessively inside or outside that back tee peg as we approach impact.

The ideal path is slightly inside the back tee peg, over the middle tee peg and slightly inside the front tee peg on the way past. This simple drill helps you to swing on a neutral arc, which is the most efficient way to swing a golf club.

Bring the golf ball back in, lower the front and back tee pegs right down so they aren't going to get in the way of the club as we swing through, then take your normal athletic setup that I referenced in point two above.

Swing through on this neutral arc and you should notice an increase in ball speed, a better strike and, ultimately, more distance.

These aren't drastic swing changes, just simple adjustments and ways of understanding your game that will help you to play your best golf this season.