If you have ever been on a driving range or played a round of golf with friends, you are sure to have heard some of the classic golf clichés.
Some of them may even have been directed at you and you have taken the advice on board with mixed results. Just because some ‘sayings’ in the world of golf are popular, it does not make them correct.
Below we have highlighted a few of the classics and you can see for yourself if they are good advice or something you should avoid.
Perhaps the most common golf cliché heard on the driving range is ‘keep your head down’. There are plenty of top professional golfers who raise their head before contacting the ball so a better thought would be to maintain your spine angle and posture.
Concentrating on keeping your head down will take you away from the mechanics of your shot, which can fall apart if you lose your posture. By all means keep your head down during the shot but do not become obsessed with it and lose your posture in the process.
Another great cliché which is heard when players are setting up on the tee is ‘tee it high and let it fly’.
This is often produced when playing on a par-5 hole and the fairway is nice and wide and there is little wind to worry about. While teeing the ball high can increase your launch angle and distance it can also lead to a lack of distance off the tee due to hitting the ball off the bottom of the club.
If you have played with a high tee many times then this can work well for you but if you rarely use a high tee, do not be tempted into doing it because someone has thrown the cliché at you half way through a round.
‘Driving for show, putting for dough’ is another great golf cliché. It basically means you should concentrate more on your putting than your driving because it is that area of your game which will have the biggest impact on your score.
However, if you have a long drive and it is gives you an advantage on the fairway compared to the rest of your group, why should you think only about your putting? If you can hit the ball long and accurately, many of your putts will probably be to win the hole or to achieve a low score.
If you are an average driver of the ball, then your score is more likely to be impacted by your putting. That still doesn’t mean you should have this cliché in your head and perhaps a better way to think about it would be to ‘never three putt’.
If you kept this thought in your mind rather than ‘driving for show, putting for dough’ you may find yourself making less putts on the green and dropping less shots.
While the three golf clichés above all have their merits, try not to take them too literally and think about the alternative ways to approach the situations to which they are referring.
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