The 3 Things Every New Golfer Should Learn Before Worrying About Swing Mechanics

Let’s start with the recognition that there is only one thing, one very high-level thing, that you as a new golfer need to know: Your goal is to control your golf ball. 

With that as your ultimate goal, here are three things that you need to know and understand as if your (golfing) life depends on them (because it does). 

These three things fall under the heading: What Does The Ball Actually Care About? 

Your golf ball is very lazy. It just sits there. And it will keep sitting there until you give it instructions on how to move. And even then it will never go the extra mile, it will never work to exceed your expectations. It will do only what it is told. 

How do you tell the ball what to do? You do that through the clubhead. 

During those microseconds that the club makes contact with the ball, it gets everything it needs: 

If that’s all that the ball cares about, then that is all you should care about! It’s all your coach should care about. Anything you learn, do, change, practice has to speak to one of those four things. 

Here are the three things you should learn before you worry about swing mechanics:

The ball launches in the direction that the face is pointing

The ball understands if the face is pointing outside your target line (a push), inside your target line (a pull), or down your target line. You need to control your clubface so that the ball launches in the direction you want it to. You control your clubface through how you hold the club and what/any movements your hands make. Very often, if there is a ball flight error, the first thing to fix is the clubface at impact.

Your ball curves as a result of your Face:Path relationship 

If you’ve played tennis, ping-pong, pickleball, or something like that you are already familiar with how to make a ball curve after it has been hit. In golf, the Face:Path relationship determines the spin axis of the ball, which is why the ball curves the way it does. 

I won’t go into a detailed ball flight law explanation here. But you do need to know, really know, that a face that is open to the path creates a slice/fade ball flight, while a face that is closed to the path creates a hook/draw ball flight. You must know what those Face:Path combinations look like and what they feel like in your imagination before you can use that information to create a swing. 

The loft of the club at impact (called dynamic loft) tells the ball its launch angle

Less loft = lower launch angle, more loft = higher launch angle. You can change the loft through club selection or through elbow, forearm, wrist, and finger movements. Many new golfers misunderstand how the loft of the clubhead works and so they use their body movements to “get the ball into the air.” These movements make the dynamic loft largely unusable and the result is spotty contact and weak, off-target shots. 

Here’s an important question: Of all the things I would or could want a new golfer to know before they start learning to hit a ball, why did I choose these three? After all, the three things you’ll hear from almost 100% of golf instruction are Grip, Aim, Setup. So why didn’t I start there? 

Because, almost universally, the swing errors I fix are: 

And usually the student has all of these errors since they are all interrelated.

If you can understand face at impact, Face:Path relationship, and dynamic loft you, will choose to swing better. 

Here are some videos to help you to internalize this information, including how to start hitting a ball so that you avoid common mistakes.