Opinion & Analysis
The Wedge Guy: Top 4 reasons why most golfers don’t get better
A couple of years ago, I attended a symposium put on by Golf Digest’s research department. They explored the typical responses as to why people quit or don’t play more – too much time, too expensive, etc. But the magazine’s research department uncovered the real fact – by a large margin, the number one reason people give up the game is that they don’t get better!
So, with all that’s published and all the teaching pros available to help us learn, why is that? I have my rationale, so put on your steel toe work boots, because I’m probably going to step on some toes here.
The Top 4 Reasons Golfers Don’t Improve
- Most golfers don’t really understand the golf swing. You watch golf and you practice and you play, but you don’t really understand the dynamics of what is really happening at 100 mph during the golf swing. There are dozens of good books on the subject – my favorite is Ben Hogan’s “Five Lessons – The Modern Fundamentals of Golf.” But pick any good one and READ IT. LEARN IT. It will help you immensely if you understand what the swing is really all about. Use a full length mirror to pose in key positions in the swing to match the drawings and photos. All the practice in the world will not help if you are not building a sound fundamental golf swing.
- Learning golf doesn’t start in the middle. A sound golf swing is built like a house. First the foundation, then the framing, roof, exterior walls, interior, paint, and trim. You can’t do one before the other. In golf, it all starts with the grip. If you do not hold the club properly, you’ll never accomplish a sound golf swing. Then you learn good posture and setup. If you don’t start in a good position, the body can’t perform the swing motion properly. With a good grip and a sound setup posture, I believe anyone can learn a functional golf swing pretty easily. But if those two foundations are not sound, the walls and roof will never be reliable.
- Most bad shots are ordained before the swing ever begins. I am rarely surprised by a bad shot, or a good one, actually. The golf swing is not a very forgiving thing. If you are too close to the ball or too far, if it’s too far forward or backward, if you are aligned right or left of your intended line, your chances of success are diminished quickly and significantly. The ball is 1.68 inches in diameter, and the functional striking area on a golf club is about 1.5-inches wide. If you vary in your setup by even 3/4 inch, you have imposed a serious obstacle to success. If you do nothing else to improve your golf game, learn how to set up the same way every time.
- Learn to “swing” the club, not “hit” the ball. This sounds simple, but the golf swing is not a hitting action: it’s a swinging action. The baseball hitter is just that, because the ball is in a different place every time – high, low, inside, outside, curve. He has to rely on quick eye-hand coordination. In contrast, the golf swing is just that – a swing of the club. You have total control over where the ball is going to be so that you can be quite precise in the relationship between your body and the ball and the target line. You can swing when you want to at the pace you find comfortable. And you can take your time to make sure the ball will be precisely in the way of that swing.
Learning the golf swing doesn’t require a driving range at all. In fact, your backyard presents a much better learning environment because the ball is not in the way to give you false feedback. Your goal is only the swing itself.
Understand that you can make a great swing, and often do, but the shot doesn’t work out because it was in the wrong place, maybe by only 1/4 inch or so. Take time to learn and practice your swing, focusing on a good top-of-backswing position and a sound rotating release through impact. Learn the proper body turn and weight shift. Slow-motion is your friend. So is “posing” and repeating segments of the swing to really learn them. Learn the swing at home, refine your ball striking on the range and play golf on the course!
So, there you have my four reasons golfers don’t get better. We all have our own little “personalization” in our golf swing, but these sound fundamentals apply to everyone who’s ever tried to move a little white ball a quarter-mile into a four-inch hole. Working on these basics will make that task much easier!
As the editor-in-chief of this website and an observer of the GolfWRX forums and other online golf equipment discourse for over a decade, I’m pretty well attuned to the grunts and grumbles of a significant portion of the golf equipment purchasing spectrum. And before you accuse me of lording above all in some digital ivory tower, I’d like to offer that I worked at golf courses (public and private) for years prior to picking up my pen, so I’m well-versed in the non-degenerate golf equipment consumers out there. I touched (green)grass (retail)!
Complaints about the ills of and related to the OEMs usually follow some version of: Product cycles are too short for real innovation, tour equipment isn’t the same as retail (which is largely not true, by the way), too much is invested in marketing and not enough in R&D, top staffer X hasn’t even put the new driver in play, so it’s obviously not superior to the previous generation, prices are too high, and on and on.
Without digging into the merits of any of these claims, which I believe are mostly red herrings, I’d like to bring into view of our rangefinder what I believe to be the two primary difficulties golf equipment companies face.
One: As Terry Koehler, back when he was the CEO of Ben Hogan, told me at the time of the Ft Worth irons launch, if you can’t regularly hit the golf ball in a coin-sized area in the middle of the face, there’s not a ton that iron technology can do for you. Now, this is less true now with respect to irons than when he said it, and is less and less true by degrees as the clubs get larger (utilities, fairways, hybrids, drivers), but there remains a great deal of golf equipment truth in that statement. Think about it — which is to say, in TL;DR fashion, get lessons from a qualified instructor who will teach you about the fundamentals of repeatable impact and how the golf swing works, not just offer band-aid fixes. If you can’t repeatably deliver the golf club to the golf ball in something resembling the manner it was designed for, how can you expect to be getting the most out of the club — put another way, the maximum value from your investment?
Similarly, game improvement equipment can only improve your game if you game it. In other words, get fit for the clubs you ought to be playing rather than filling the bag with the ones you wish you could hit or used to be able to hit. Of course, don’t do this if you don’t care about performance and just want to hit a forged blade while playing off an 18 handicap. That’s absolutely fine. There were plenty of members in clubs back in the day playing Hogan Apex or Mizuno MP-32 irons who had no business doing so from a ballstriking standpoint, but they enjoyed their look, feel, and complementary qualities to their Gatsby hats and cashmere sweaters. Do what brings you a measure of joy in this maddening game.
Now, the second issue. This is not a plea for non-conforming equipment; rather, it is a statement of fact. USGA/R&A limits on every facet of golf equipment are detrimental to golf equipment manufacturers. Sure, you know this, but do you think about it as it applies to almost every element of equipment? A 500cc driver would be inherently more forgiving than a 460cc, as one with a COR measurement in excess of 0.83. 50-inch shafts. Box grooves. And on and on.
Would fewer regulations be objectively bad for the game? Would this erode its soul? Fortunately, that’s beside the point of this exercise, which is merely to point out the facts. The fact, in this case, is that equipment restrictions and regulations are the slaughterbench of an abundance of innovation in the golf equipment space. Is this for the best? Well, now I’ve asked the question twice and might as well give a partial response, I guess my answer to that would be, “It depends on what type of golf you’re playing and who you’re playing it with.”
For my part, I don’t mind embarrassing myself with vintage blades and persimmons chasing after the quasi-spiritual elevation of a well-struck shot, but that’s just me. Plenty of folks don’t give a damn if their grooves are conforming. Plenty of folks think the folks in Liberty Corner ought to add a prison to the museum for such offences. And those are just a few of the considerations for the amateur game — which doesn’t get inside the gallery ropes of the pro game…
Different strokes in the game of golf, in my humble opinion.
Anyway, I believe equipment company engineers are genuinely trying to build better equipment year over year. The marketing departments are trying to find ways to make this equipment appeal to the broadest segment of the golf market possible. All of this against (1) the backdrop of — at least for now — firm product cycles. And golfers who, with their ~15 average handicap (men), for the most part, are not striping the golf ball like Tiger in his prime and seem to have less and less time year over year to practice and improve. (2) Regulations that massively restrict what they’re able to do…
That’s the landscape as I see it and the real headwinds for golf equipment companies. No doubt, there’s more I haven’t considered, but I think the previous is a better — and better faith — point of departure when formulating any serious commentary on the golf equipment world than some of the more cynical and conspiratorial takes I hear.
Agree? Disagree? Think I’m worthy of an Adam Hadwin-esque security guard tackle? Let me know in the comments.
@golfoncbs The infamous Adam Hadwin tackle ? #golf #fyp #canada #pgatour #adamhadwin ? Ghibli-style nostalgic waltz – MaSssuguMusic
Episode #16 brings us Cliff McKinney. Cliff is the founder of Old Charlie Golf Club, a new club, and concept, to be built in the Florida panhandle. The model is quite interesting and aims to make great, private golf more affordable. We hope you enjoy the show!
Last week, I came across a reel from BBC Sport on Instagram featuring Scottie Scheffler speaking to the media ahead of The Open at Royal Portrush. In it, he shared that he often wonders what the point is of wanting to win tournaments so badly — especially when he knows, deep down, that it doesn’t lead to a truly fulfilling life.
View this post on Instagram
“Is it great to be able to win tournaments and to accomplish the things I have in the game of golf? Yeah, it brings tears to my eyes just to think about it because I’ve literally worked my entire life to be good at this sport,” Scheffler said. “To have that kind of sense of accomplishment, I think, is a pretty cool feeling. To get to live out your dreams is very special, but at the end of the day, I’m not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I’m not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world, because what’s the point?”
Ironically — or perhaps perfectly — he went on to win the claret jug.
That question — what’s the point of winning? — cuts straight to the heart of the human journey.
As someone who’s spent over two decades in the trenches of professional golf, and in deep study of the mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the game, I see Scottie’s inner conflict as a sign of soul evolution in motion.
I came to golf late. I wasn’t a junior standout or college All-American. At 27, I left a steady corporate job to see if I could be on the PGA Tour starting as a 14-handicap, average-length hitter. Over the years, my journey has been defined less by trophies and more by the relentless effort to navigate the deeply inequitable and gated system of professional golf — an effort that ultimately turned inward and helped me evolve as both a golfer and a person.
One perspective that helped me make sense of this inner dissonance around competition and our culture’s tendency to overvalue winning is the idea of soul evolution.
The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies has done extensive research on reincarnation, and Netflix’s Surviving Death (Episode 6) explores the topic, too. Whether you take it literally or metaphorically, the idea that we’re on a long arc of growth — from beginner to sage elder — offers a profound perspective.
If you accept the premise literally, then terms like “young soul” and “old soul” start to hold meaning. However, even if we set the word “soul” aside, it’s easy to see that different levels of life experience produce different worldviews.
Newer souls — or people in earlier stages of their development — may be curious and kind but still lack discernment or depth. There is a naivety, and they don’t yet question as deeply, tending to see things in black and white, partly because certainty feels safer than confronting the unknown.
As we gain more experience, we begin to experiment. We test limits. We chase extreme external goals — sometimes at the expense of health, relationships, or inner peace — still operating from hunger, ambition, and the fragility of the ego.
It’s a necessary stage, but often a turbulent and unfulfilling one.
David Duval fell off the map after reaching World No. 1. Bubba Watson had his own “Is this it?” moment with his caddie, Ted Scott, after winning the Masters.
In Aaron Rodgers: Enigma, reflecting on his 2011 Super Bowl win, Rodgers said:
“Now I’ve accomplished the only thing that I really, really wanted to do in my life. Now what? I was like, ‘Did I aim at the wrong thing? Did I spend too much time thinking about stuff that ultimately doesn’t give you true happiness?’”
Jim Carrey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”
Eventually, though, something shifts.
We begin to see in shades of gray. Winning, dominating, accumulating—these pursuits lose their shine. The rewards feel more fleeting. Living in a constant state of fight-or-flight makes us feel alive, yes, but not happy and joyful.
Compassion begins to replace ambition. Love, presence, and gratitude become more fulfilling than status, profits, or trophies. We crave balance over burnout. Collaboration over competition. Meaning over metrics.
Interestingly, if we zoom out, we can apply this same model to nations and cultures. Countries, like people, have a collective “soul stage” made up of the individuals within them.
Take the United States, for example. I’d place it as a mid-level soul: highly competitive and deeply driven, but still learning emotional maturity. Still uncomfortable with nuance. Still believing that more is always better. Despite its global wins, the U.S. currently ranks just 23rd in happiness (as of 2025). You might liken it to a gifted teenager—bold, eager, and ambitious, but angsty and still figuring out how to live well and in balance. As much as a parent wants to protect their child, sometimes the child has to make their own mistakes to truly grow.
So when Scottie Scheffler wonders what the point of winning is, I don’t see someone losing strength.
I see someone evolving.
He’s beginning to look beyond the leaderboard. Beyond metrics of success that carry a lower vibration. And yet, in a poetic twist, Scheffler did go on to win The Open. But that only reinforces the point: even at the pinnacle, the question remains. And if more of us in the golf and sports world — and in U.S. culture at large — started asking similar questions, we might discover that the more meaningful trophy isn’t about accumulating or beating others at all costs.
It’s about awakening and evolving to something more than winning could ever promise.
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David W Largen
Sep 5, 2021 at 1:34 pm
Fastest way to lower scores:
1. Course and Game Management
Don’t always have to hit driver.
Have a go to shot to find a fairway
Know how far you hit each club. Be realistic.
Play to center of green.
In trouble get ball back in play. Chip out.
Par 5 second shot. 250 yards to green.
150 yard puts you 100 yards in. Much easier shot than whacking a 3 wood in the woods or ob
STAY DISCIPLINED PLAY SMART SHOTS.
Know your miss and shot pattern and play accordingly.
Jason Corro
Aug 10, 2021 at 1:46 am
My opinion is yes people don’t know enough about the golf swing, but you don’t need to know everything. Have a good understanding and then keep everything simple. The big problem people don’t get better is too much information. Now with social media, there are many people out there with a fix for everything, or a secret for whatever you want. As soon as I meet a golfer that says they get tips from YouTube or any other platform, I already know they have no idea what they are doing and their mind is a cluttered mess of incongruent ideas. Stop getting advice from 100’s of different sources on YouTube, get in shape, spend 75% of your time on short game. I guarantee you will improve.
Steve Dodds
Aug 5, 2021 at 9:45 am
I think the reason most people don’t get better at golf is the same reason most people don’t get better at other sports.
Good golf requires a level of athleticism and hand/eye co-ordination that most people simply do not have. It is easy to tell who has the potential to have a decent swing. Just watch them throw a ball.
Those who can throw a ball properly can usually swing a club (or a bat, or a racquet) properly.
Attempting to teach those without basic athleticism an athletic swing (which the vast majority of teachers try and do) is futile. None of the points in the article are applicable to golfers without basic natural ability.
Golf’s great equaliser is that it is a game of two parts. Hitting the ball, and then putting the ball in the hole.
You do have to be athletic to hit driver and irons well. You don’t to putt (or to a lesser extent chip) well.
And if you can do that, and scoring is the most important thing for you, you can enjoy golf without actually being good at it.
I’ve been playing seriously for over 30 years. But I would never have kept playing if I didn’t have the basic athleticism to hit the ball properly. I was very chuffed the other day when, at age 60, a new playing partner said my swing reminded him of Ernie Els.
Despite hating putting I’ve taught myself to be a bit better at it. And with age my misses tend to less penal than when I was younger because I don’t hit it as far. So my handicap is lower than it was when I was younger. But I don’t have a better swing.
Mind you, I have friends with awful swings who don’t know or care. They could have dozens of lessons and apply themselves like monks but they will never be able to change what their body is capable of. So no 300 yard drives. No high and soft wedges. But even though they can’t swing like a pro, every now and again they get the same result as a pro.
And that’s why they keep playing awful golf.
So most golfer’s don’t get better because they can’t get better. Although most can score better.
Donald Drumph
Aug 3, 2021 at 10:02 am
Just cheat, like me
Gordy
Aug 2, 2021 at 11:51 am
#1 reason why most golfers do not improve. Golf is hard and they give up. They do not play/practice enough either.
Drop EGO golf and you will get better. #1 on the PGA Tour for proximity to the hole is 32 ft 8 inch. Average birdies per round for PGA Tour Player is 3.65. Be happy with a shot to the green, being on the green, and walking off with a par.
geohogan
Aug 11, 2021 at 8:16 am
Golf swing is not so much difficult, but demands movment that is not natural, not genetically preprogrammed.
What is preprogammed is: Tonicity of muscle. (2) The muscle in a steady partially contracted state caused by the successive flow of nerve impulses, as in muscle tonus.
In so many ways the golf swing demands muscles work contrary to “Tonus”
Understanding which genetically preprogrammed muscle contractions need to be overridden.
Thanks to Gerry Hogan for doing the research.
author “The Hogan Manual of Human Performance: GOLF, 1991.
geohogan
Aug 2, 2021 at 9:36 am
Golf magazines and the non stop, “TIPS” perpetuates the myth that the golf swing is learned
by tips, when in fact it is a complex movement happening at too quick a speed to be controlled by conscious thought.
Rather all complex human movement are subconsciously conceived and orchestrated, triggered by a single intent.
A single intent for the golf swing? YES. Very few have uncovered that intent.
Until the proper intent is known, golfers will be doomed to follow tips , conscious movement over riding the subconscious and lead to the YIPS, perpetuated by golf instruction magazines.
Dennis
Aug 2, 2021 at 8:47 am
I don’t know. I see a lot of golfers with low scores and an ugly golf swing. Maybe face control and hitting sweet spot is more important than most Teaching Pros will ever admit.
Pingback: The Wedge Guy: Consistent setup is key to success – GolfWRX
Mark Eting-Grifter
Jul 26, 2021 at 1:12 pm
5. Buying new equipment every year hoping that will fix it.
jgpl001
Aug 5, 2021 at 5:58 am
Does that not fix it?
OEM’s are always telling me it will
Kauaiboy
Jul 23, 2021 at 1:08 pm
I’d recommend Top Speed Golf with Pro Clay Ballard to learn all the fundamentals. I’ve been playing for over 50 years and his system got me from a 10 to a 4 index.
GN
Jul 23, 2021 at 11:39 am
The main reason golfers don’t improve is too much L.O.F.T.
GaGolfer
Aug 20, 2021 at 5:41 pm
LOL. I see what you did there. Absolutely correct. I look at some of these weekend golfers and wonder what the heck they’re doing out here. It can’t be fun hitting it that badly.
Greg McNeill
Jul 23, 2021 at 10:27 am
I think one of the worst things to do when trying to develop a sound, repeating swing is “Use a full length mirror to pose in key positions in the swing to match the drawings and photos.” A golf swing is NOT a series of static positions that you consciously attempt to emulate. The “key positions” are the “effects” of a proper swing, not the cause. For example, the tour player’s head remains well behind the ball (or even moves away from the target) at impact, not because the player is forcibly seeking to keep his head back. Rather, it is a consequence of the offsetting forces of the downswing. As the force of the swing moves to impact, there is a counterforce which keeps the head and upper body back naturally, just like a baseball player’s. Simply trying to keep your head back to match some picture of the swing will will ruin your swing.
Rascal
Jul 31, 2021 at 10:04 pm
100% correct.
Tyler Durden
Aug 9, 2021 at 9:59 pm
Ben hogan, seve among many many others practiced in front of a mirror and they were pretty good golfers
Ben Hogan
Jul 22, 2021 at 10:02 pm
Unless you have the time and patience like me the average golfer needs to get off the range. I dont know how many times people need to say this to get better practice grom 100 and in!! What wins PGA tournaments….. This is why if you give the average golfer a tour quality caddy they will shoot significantly better than they ever have. He doesnt change your swing but knows what to do when it comes to wedges and reading putts.
Also remember I use to hit HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of putts a day!! The grind is real if you want to get better
GaGolfer
Aug 21, 2021 at 1:26 pm
‘Drive for show and putt for dough’ doesn’t work for the average hacker. You aren’t putting for any dough if you’re getting to the green in 6. I have an excellent short game (around the greens it’s nearly scratch) but have too many rounds where I don’t know which side of the fairway I should aim at; and some where it doesn’t seem to matter where I aim because I’m going to be losing 3-4 balls or chipping out too many times.
I agree with you 100% that you have to put the work in, but it has to be the right work, with the right coaching. I’ve taken tons of lessons over the years (an ungodly amount, really) and at least half of the instruction wasn’t good. Not that they were wrong, but they weren’t right for what I needed to accomplish. Practicing wrong, I was historically a 10-12, and got as bad as a 17. Practicing right, with the right coaching, got me to a 7 within a year. My goal this coming year is to get to a 5, and we’ll adjust accordingly (if there’s a God, downward) once we get there – after a lot of work and patience.
Dan
Jul 22, 2021 at 8:28 pm
You focused on just the swing. Exactly where people go wrong.
The REAL reason people don’t improve is that they practice the swing, and short game is an afterthought or non thought. Just like your article.
Ollie
Jul 22, 2021 at 10:29 pm
Dan
You don’t quite “GET IT”
aziz shafi
Jul 22, 2021 at 2:39 pm
Very nicely written and well reasoned. I wish I had been able to read something like this twenty years ago…I would be a different golfer today.
geohogan
Aug 1, 2021 at 11:22 am
Golf magazines and the non stop, “TIPS” perpetuates the myth that the golf swing is learned
by tips, when in fact it is a complex movement happening at too quick a speed to be controlled by conscious thought.
Rather all complex human movement are subconsciously conceived and orchestrated, triggered by a single intent.
A single intent for the golf swing? YES. Very few have uncovered that intent.
Until the proper intent is known, golfers will be doomed to follow tips , conscious movement over riding the subconscious and lead to the YIPS, perpetuated by golf instruction magazines.
percy freeman
Jul 22, 2021 at 1:39 pm
“Learn the swing at home, refine your ball striking on the range and play golf on the course!”
Terry, this says it all.
Thanks