1 swing tip amateurs should ignore, according to Padraig Harrington

Getting better at golf is a life-long pursuit — and one that can be maddening at times. It’s often an exercise of two steps forward, one step back, and gains are rarely linear. There will be rounds where the game feels easy followed by days when nothing goes right. Improvement on the course is a heck of a journey.

Lowering your handicap is an addicting pursuit — but it requires a certain level of discipline. In the current age of social media, there’s an infinite wealth of swing-tip videos with promises of fixing your game. The problem is, lots of this content isn’t actually all that helpful.

If you are really serious about improvement, it’s important to listen to the best in the business. Three-time major winner Padraig Harrington is one of them. In recent years, he’s begun sharing some of his best swing tips with the masses on his YouTube channel.

Harrington has also heard his fair share of poor golf advice, and on the latest episode of The Scoop, he shared with our Claire Rogers one common swing tip he recommends amateurs ignore.

Ignore this swing advice

You’ve probably heard at some point or another that you need to keep your head still during the golf swing, but that advice shouldn’t always be followed. Being stagnant during the swing tends to rob you of athleticism and power, which will do nothing but hurt your game.

“You don’t want to lock things down,” Harrington says. “You’re trying to swing a golf club the same way you swung any stick as a kid.”

What does he mean by that? It’s all about keeping things natural.

“Get that movement going, get that speed going,” Harrington says. “And then we can tidy it up later on. If you lose that athleticism and that dynamic bit of your swing, you don’t ever get it back.”

It’s much easier to teach yourself how to hit the ball straight than it is to learn how to hit the ball far, so it’s important you keep as much athleticism in your swing as possible. If you can do that, it’ll be much easier to lower your handicap than it would be if you stayed stagnant.

Check out the entire episode of The Scoop below.