Frustration with golf

I think everyone that is trying to learn this game follows s similar path. A path filled with excitement, frustration, happiness and anger. I spoke with a fellow member in our club. Someone I see often practicing at the nets with me. His story is very similar to mine. Endless search for proper and definitive golf lessons. We are happy to pay for a good course, or get lessons, but all we get is the same old BS from the coaches and from the YouTubers. Some miracle cures, some great drills that will cut our handicap by up to 5. They actually put a number to it. Like, how the f##k did they test it to come with improvement of 5?

I am really glad that I’m on a strickter budget now otherwise I’d have a shelf of useless videos bought from internet golf gurus. The only one I subscribed to was Shawn Clement and I always go back to his method when the new one I was trying to follow turns out to be a complete BS.

It looks like there is a market for it 🙂

I abandoned the shift the weight, then whip the club method. This may be good for young people, but I am just not flexible enough to do it well. I always shifted my weight very fast and my hands with the club could not keep up. My body would be almost facing the target, but my hands have not yet struck the ball. Slice every single time. Very frustrating. Also this method seemed too mechanical. As in I have to remember positions when I hit the ball. I don’t like that. I want my golf to be more natural, intuitive. Great players don’t follow steps when they swing, do they?

Every time I get burned by the new method I find on YouTube, I go back to the basics and the one educator that I kind of trust. I should just stop watching YouTube altogether. I had no idea that there is this big industry filled with people trying to sell us the best, the last, the most effective way to learn golf. There must be a dozen of very big YouTube channels devoted to teaching golf. And I keep going there hoping to find a cure for my golf frustration.

I think I found another golf coach that I may subscribe to. Mike Malaska. I really like his approach, and his method is really not a method per se. It’s just a simple explanation what a golf swing is and how it works. Very similar to the teaching of Shawn Clement. I like this “method” because it makes the most sense to me. I am a pretty sporty person. I play tennis and table tennis and badminton at a pretty good level and all of these sports use an instrument to hit a ball.

I think I was attracted to the other methods because I wanted to learn golf as quickly as possible. I needed a shortcut as at my age, I don’t have 30 years to learn the game! I can probably shoot about 15 over, or less if I don’t use my driver, but I don’t just want to get a good score, I want to get it playing properly. This is proving to be more challenging than I thought.

I don’t think I will be a scratch golfer this month, and I am slowly getting ready to accept that the journey will be longer than I imagined. I’m going to stop searching for a magical cure and stop watching so many YouTube channels. I’ll try to learn golf like I learned badminton. By feel, not by method. I was good after a couple of years at badminton; now I’ll give myself a couple of years to get good at golf.