Instruction
How to avoid the learning plateau
You’ve started playing better golf and you’re on the verge of achieving your goals. You’re hitting more fairways and greens. Your handicap is dropping quickly. Your buddies are asking whether you’ve been taking lessons. More importantly, you feel confident and content on the course. Then the plateau arrives, and your development grinds to a screeching halt.
After a period of improvement, progress naturally slows. The final stretch is always the hardest. And when you’ve become accustomed to improvement, a plateau can feel like a brick wall you’ll never break through.
Happily, this isn’t the end. Here’s how to push past the plateau and take your game to the next level.
Get a Coach and Develop a Plan
If you’re seriously committed to getting better, the first step is to work with a qualified instructor. If you’re already working with one, continue to do so. If not, get started as soon as possible.
Apart from the obvious benefits of having a coach (swing tips, real-time feedback, advice on strategy), a key advantage of working with an instructor is the chance to formulate a personalized improvement plan that you can follow in your own time. Your plan should include basic drills for ball striking, short game and putting which, if performed properly and often, will turbocharge your development as a player.
Your improvement plan should form the foundation of your training routine, but don’t get too regimented or obsessive with it. Your training routine should be in a constant state of evolution, with an emphasis on addressing longstanding weaknesses and solving current problems.
Once you have a plan in place, follow it closely and check in with your instructor every few weeks to monitor your progress and make any necessary adjustments. Sessions with your instructor will not only keep your swing on track, but they’ll also keep you accountable and serve as important milestones along your journey to becoming a better player.
Stay the Course
Understand that progress takes time. The reality is that you won’t shave five strokes off your handicap by next week, but you might shave 0.05 strokes off in that time, and then another 0.05 the week after that if you do the work.
It is easy to become bored, frustrated and impatient when you’re training hard and not seeing any improvement. It is even easier to question whether your training routine is working, or to deviate from that routine, especially if your game regresses (which it is likely to do if you’re making big changes). These urges must be resisted if you want to get past the plateau and continue to improve.
In the words of Tiger Woods, trust the process. Some improvements might be invisible to the naked eye, but they are real and they add up over time. Remember that each round is different, and a few bad rounds don’t mean that you’re suddenly a bad golfer.
Increase the Intensity of Your Practice Routine
Plateaus occur when we fail to adapt to changing circumstances.
Take a body builder, for example. In order to grow his chest, he bench presses 200 pounds for three sets of eight reps. The workout is desperately hard, but it makes his chest muscles grow significantly. Eventually his chest muscles adapt, the workout becomes easy and his growth slows. If he wants to continue to grow, he needs to increase the intensity of the workout by adding weight, increasing the number of sets or increasing the number of reps (or a combination of the above).
The same principles apply to golf. The drills that helped you drop from a 10 handicap to a 5 handicap won’t necessarily get you from a 5 handicap to a scratch unless you increase their intensity.
There are three main ways of increasing the intensity of golf training.
- The first is to make your target more difficult to hit.
If you hit range balls toward a target (say, a green 150 yards away), you should limit your target to a certain half of that green, or perhaps hit toward a longer target (say, a green 180 yards away).
- The second is to increase your repetitions by setting a goal of hitting your target multiple times in a row.
If you previously accepted hitting the target once, aim to hit it three times in a row before allowing yourself to aim at another target. Once you consistently hit the target three times in a row, aim to hit it five times in a row.
- The third (and probably the most fun) is to use different clubs or different shots.
Instead of hitting a straight 8 iron to that green 150 yards away, try hitting it with your 7 iron. Better still, try to hit it with a low fade or a high draw. Challenge yourself to hit different shots on the range and you’ll soon become more adept at controlling your golf ball on the course.
Never allow yourself to settle into a comfort zone. To get maximum improvement, all drills should be difficult but achievable.
Compete
Compete on the course and off it. Keep records of all your rounds and try to reach specific goals or beat previous records. If your best score at your home course is 75, aim for 74 every time you tee it up and reward yourself when you get there.
Similarly, keep logs of your training drills and try to beat previous records. If your standard short putting drill is making 10 in a row from 3 feet, then next time you get to 10, keep going and see how many you can make in a row. Eventually your standard drill should grow to 15 or 20 in a row from 4 or 5 feet.
One of the best ways of getting over a plateau is to play with better players. Try to find a partner who plays at a slightly higher level than you and challenge yourself to beat him or her in a match or a certain statistical category (you don’t even have to tell them that you’re competing). Even if you don’t win, you might pick up some handy hints that will serve you well in your quest to get better.
Change It Up
An actively engaged player will improve faster than a bored one, so train creatively.
Visit a different driving range, play a new course and find a new short game area. Practice in the morning instead of the afternoon. Try a new drill you read about in a magazine. You’d be surprised at the big difference a small change can make to your mental state.
A key benefit of changing your surroundings is that it can introduce new challenges that expand your skillset. A different practice green will require you to brush up on your green reading skills and test your distance control. A different range will have different targets, which could help you improve with clubs you don’t often use. A different short game area might allow you to play shots you don’t often try.
Working on new skills in a new environment is unquestionably one of the keys to getting past a plateau. Best of all, a change of venue might introduce you to some new people, and who couldn’t use a new golf buddy?
Look For Improvements Away From the Range
One of the worst things about hitting a plateau is that no matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to improve. However, if you look closely, you’ll identify opportunities for incremental improvements everywhere that don’t include swinging the club.
You can probably find another few hundredths of a stroke per round by improving your body through enhanced nutrition and hydration, or engaging in golf-specific strength, flexibility or endurance exercises.
Most players can benefit from additional course research prior to each round (Google Earth is a great tool, as are course websites and traditional yardage books), or advanced statistical analysis of recent rounds to identify the areas which are holding you back.
Maybe it’s time to invest in new or properly fitted clubs, or to clean the grips on the clubs you’ve got. Are you using the correct balls for your game? Do you know your exact distances for each club? Do you know if you tend to play better in a cart or walking? Do you miss more putts short, left or right? Do you have a good pre-round warm-up routine? Do you engage in any mental training or reading about the game?
Regardless of your expertise, there is almost always something you can do to get a little bit better that doesn’t require you to hit more balls.
Play
Perhaps the most important aspect of any golfer’s improvement plan is playing the game. Practice is only valuable if you can apply the lessons on the course. Play as often as your schedule will allow so that you can gauge the state of your game and know what areas of your game require the most work.
Chances are, if you’re practicing hard away from the course, the plateau is actually just another phase in the cycle of improvement, and you’ll soon be shooting lower scores once again. But if you truly are stuck in a rut, adopt some or all of the tips listed here and you’ll be back on track in no time.
There may be no more painful affliction in golf than the “yips” – those uncontrollable and maddening little nervous twitches that prevent you from making a decent stroke on short putts. If you’ve never had them, consider yourself very fortunate (or possibly just very young). But I can assure you that when your most treacherous and feared golf shot is not the 195 yard approach over water with a quartering headwind…not the extra tight fairway with water left and sand right…not the soft bunker shot to a downhill pin with water on the other side…No, when your most feared shot is the remaining 2- 4-foot putt after hitting a great approach, recovery or lag putt, it makes the game almost painful.
And I’ve been fighting the yips (again) for a while now. It’s a recurring nightmare that has haunted me most of my adult life. I even had the yips when I was in my 20s, but I’ve beat them into submission off and on most of my adult life. But just recently, that nasty virus came to life once again. My lag putting has been very good, but when I get over one of those “you should make this” length putts, the entire nervous system seems to go haywire. I make great practice strokes, and then the most pitiful short-stroke or jab at the ball you can imagine. Sheesh.
But I’m a traditionalist, and do not look toward the long putter, belly putter, cross-hand, claw or other variation as the solution. My approach is to beat those damn yips into submission some other way. Here’s what I’m doing that is working pretty well, and I offer it to all of you who might have a similar affliction on the greens.
When you are over a short putt, forget the practice strokes…you want your natural eye-hand coordination to be unhindered by mechanics. Address your putt and take a good look at the hole, and back to the putter to ensure good alignment. Lighten your right hand grip on the putter and make sure that only the fingertips are in contact with the grip, to prevent you from getting to tight.
Then, take a long, long look at the hole to fill your entire mind and senses with the target. When you bring your head/eyes back to the ball, try to make a smooth, immediate move right into your backstroke — not even a second pause — and then let your hands and putter track right back together right back to where you were looking — the HOLE! Seeing the putter make contact with the ball, preferably even the forward edge of the ball – the side near the hole.
For me, this is working, but I am asking all of you to chime in with your own “home remedies” for the most aggravating and senseless of all golf maladies. It never hurts to have more to fall back on!
Over the last couple of decades, golf has become much more science-based. We measure swing speed, smash factor, angle of attack, strokes gained, and many other metrics that can really help golfers improve. But I often wonder if the advancement of golf’s “hard” sciences comes at the expense of the “soft” sciences.
Take, for example, golf instruction. Good golf instruction requires understanding swing mechanics and ball flight. But let’s take that as a given for PGA instructors. The other factors that make an instructor effective can be evaluated by social science, rather than launch monitors.
If you are a recreational golfer looking for a golf instructor, here are my top three points to consider.
1. Cultural mindset
What is “cultural mindset? To social scientists, it means whether a culture of genius or a culture of learning exists. In a golf instruction context, that may mean whether the teacher communicates a message that golf ability is something innate (you either have it or you don’t), or whether golf ability is something that can be learned. You want the latter!
It may sound obvious to suggest that you find a golf instructor who thinks you can improve, but my research suggests that it isn’t a given. In a large sample study of golf instructors, I found that when it came to recreational golfers, there was a wide range of belief systems. Some instructors strongly believed recreational golfers could improve through lessons. while others strongly believed they could not. And those beliefs manifested in the instructor’s feedback given to a student and the culture created for players.
2. Coping and self-modeling can beat role-modeling
Swing analysis technology is often preloaded with swings of PGA and LPGA Tour players. The swings of elite players are intended to be used for comparative purposes with golfers taking lessons. What social science tells us is that for novice and non-expert golfers, comparing swings to tour professionals can have the opposite effect of that intended. If you fit into the novice or non-expert category of golfer, you will learn more and be more motivated to change if you see yourself making a ‘better’ swing (self-modeling) or seeing your swing compared to a similar other (a coping model). Stay away from instructors who want to compare your swing with that of a tour player.
3. Learning theory basics
It is not a sexy selling point, but learning is a process, and that process is incremental – particularly for recreational adult players. Social science helps us understand this element of golf instruction. A good instructor will take learning slowly. He or she will give you just about enough information that challenges you, but is still manageable. The artful instructor will take time to decide what that one or two learning points are before jumping in to make full-scale swing changes. If the instructor moves too fast, you will probably leave the lesson with an arm’s length of swing thoughts and not really know which to focus on.
As an instructor, I develop a priority list of changes I want to make in a player’s technique. We then patiently and gradually work through that list. Beware of instructors who give you more than you can chew.
So if you are in the market for golf instruction, I encourage you to look beyond the X’s and O’s to find the right match!
Most pros take months, even years, to win their first tournament. Lottie Woad needed exactly four days.
The 21-year-old from Surrey shot 21-under 267 at Dundonald Links to win the ISPS Handa Women’s Scottish Open by three shots — in her very first event as a professional. She’s only the third player in LPGA history to accomplish this feat, joining Rose Zhang (2023) and Beverly Hanson (1951).
But here’s what caught my attention as a coach: Woad didn’t win through miraculous putting or bombing 300-yard drives. She won through relentless precision and unshakeable composure. After watching her performance unfold, I’m convinced every golfer — from weekend warriors to scratch players — can steal pages from her playbook.
Precision Beats Power (And It’s Not Even Close)
Forget the driving contests. Woad proved that finding greens matters more than finding distance.
What Woad did:
• Hit it straight, hit it solid, give yourself chances
• Aimed for the fat parts of greens instead of chasing pins
• Let her putting do the talking after hitting safe targets
• As she said, “Everyone was chasing me today, and managed to maintain the lead and played really nicely down the stretch and hit a lot of good shots”
Why most golfers mess this up:
• They see a pin tucked behind a bunker and grab one more club to “go right at it”
• Distance becomes more important than accuracy
• They try to be heroic instead of smart
ACTION ITEM: For your next 10 rounds, aim for the center of every green regardless of pin position. Track your greens in regulation and watch your scores drop before your swing changes.
The Putter That Stayed Cool Under Fire
Woad started the final round two shots clear and immediately applied pressure with birdies at the 2nd and 3rd holes. When South Korea’s Hyo Joo Kim mounted a charge and reached 20-under with a birdie at the 14th, Woad didn’t panic.
How she responded to pressure:
• Fired back with consecutive birdies at the 13th and 14th
• Watched Kim stumble with back-to-back bogeys
• Capped it with her fifth birdie of the day at the par-5 18th
• Stayed patient when others pressed, pressed when others cracked
What amateurs do wrong:
• Get conservative when they should be aggressive
• Try to force magic when steady play would win
• Panic when someone else makes a move
ACTION ITEM: Practice your 3-6 foot putts for 15 minutes after every range session. Woad’s putting wasn’t spectacular—it was reliable. Make the putts you should make.
Course Management 101: Play Your Game, Not the Course’s Game
Woad admitted she couldn’t see many scoreboards during the final round, but it didn’t matter. She stuck to her game plan regardless of what others were doing.
Her mental approach:
• Focused on her process, not the competition
• Drew on past pressure situations (Augusta National Women’s Amateur win)
• As she said, “That was the biggest tournament I played in at the time and was kind of my big win. So definitely felt the pressure of it more there, and I felt like all those experiences helped me with this”
Her physical execution:
• 270-yard drives (nothing flashy)
• Methodical iron play
• Steady putting
• Everything effective, nothing spectacular
ACTION ITEM: Create a yardage book for your home course. Know your distances to every pin, every hazard, every landing area. Stick to your plan no matter what your playing partners are doing.
Mental Toughness Isn’t Born, It’s Built
The most impressive part of Woad’s win? She genuinely didn’t expect it: “I definitely wasn’t expecting to win my first event as a pro, but I knew I was playing well, and I was hoping to contend.”
Her winning mindset:
• Didn’t put winning pressure on herself
• Focused on playing well and contending
• Made winning a byproduct of a good process
• Built confidence through recent experiences:
- Won the Women’s Irish Open as an amateur
- Missed a playoff by one shot at the Evian Championship
- Each experience prepared her for the next
What this means for you:
• Stop trying to shoot career rounds every time you tee up
• Focus on executing your pre-shot routine
• Commit to every shot
• Stay present in the moment
ACTION ITEM: Before each round, set process goals instead of score goals. Example: “I will take three practice swings before every shot” or “I will pick a specific target for every shot.” Let your score be the result, not the focus.
The Real Lesson
Woad collected $300,000 for her first professional victory, but the real prize was proving that fundamentals still work at golf’s highest level. She didn’t reinvent the game — she simply executed the basics better than everyone else that week.
The fundamentals that won:
• Hit more fairways
• Find more greens
• Make the putts you should make
• Stay patient under pressure
That’s something every golfer can do, regardless of handicap. Lottie Woad just showed us it’s still the winning formula.
FINAL ACTION ITEM: Pick one of the four action items above and commit to it for the next month. Master one fundamental before moving to the next. That’s how champions are built.
PGA Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer. You can check out his writing work and learn more about him by visiting BEAGOLFER.golf and OneMoreRollGolf.com. Also, check out “The Starter” on RG.org each Monday.
Editor’s note: Brendon shares his nearly 30 years of experience in the game with GolfWRX readers through his ongoing tip series. He looks forward to providing valuable insights and advice to help golfers improve their game. Stay tuned for more Tips!
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JohSte
Feb 25, 2014 at 4:42 am
I feel building a very wide range of shots, executing when practicing, this intern builds confidence when having to use those shots in competition.
Alex
Feb 24, 2014 at 11:20 pm
I read this article with interest. I dropped five strokes in a month I’d taken off work. I played three local comps a week and dropped from 20 to 15 and stopped there. I thought I needed a lesson to get me to the “next stage” (i.e. hitting more to the right), but the lesson has actually unsettled me, knocked my confidence and set me back where I am struggling to play under 20 at the moment! Thankfully, I understand where I’m failing and I’m slowly getting my game back by breaking things down into small parts. I’ll now think twice before I have any more ‘lessons’!
paul
Feb 22, 2014 at 11:36 am
I always thought plateaus were normal in the sense of score. I found I was hitting balls better all the time, putting better, but my score wouldn’t change. Then My skills would get to a point where my score would change very quickly. Last year I started by shooting just around 100, then I dropped to 87-89 for 8 rounds in a row. Been playing lots of virtual golf this winter and my driving accuracy increased dramatically and so did my knowledge of distance and mental game. Hoping to start off with 90 (old plateau) and move to low 80s this season (new plateau).
paul
Feb 22, 2014 at 11:38 am
So I guess I am actually agreeing with you… And just explaining my experience.
Adrian
Feb 22, 2014 at 1:28 am
Good article !