how long would it take to get good?

the groutch

swung my first club in about 5 years recently
mainly played pitch & putt/par 3 before and was okay but not brilliant
if I was to have a proper go at getting good at golf (putting in time on the range, lessons, etc), how long do you think it would take to get to a point that I could play full length without embarrassing myself

richardbradley

no time if u have some natural ability. Get lessons before you in grain bad habits rather than after and practice the short stuff too not just range. 8 wks will do it if u put the effort in. Good luck

Jimdagym

the groutch wrote: »

swung my first club in about 5 years recently
mainly played pitch & putt/par 3 before and was okay but not brilliant
if I was to have a proper go at getting good at golf (putting in time on the range, lessons, etc), how long do you think it would take to get to a point that I could play full length without embarrassing myself

Forget about embarrassing yourself. Get that out of your head. The beauty of the game (imo) is that you can go round in 200, but hit one great shot that makes you want to go straight back out there and start all over.

the groutch

Jimdagym wrote: »

Forget about embarrassing yourself. Get that out of your head. The beauty of the game (imo) is that you can go round in 200, but hit one great shot that makes you want to go straight back out there and start all over.

yeah, that's what got me thinking about wanting to give more time to it, inbetween the duffers I hit a few beauties the other day

thegen

Go for it!!!! Never had a lesson and playing off 6. Just go out and swing it.

LostPassword

Remember that the best professionals in the world from time to time hit shots that would embarass a weekend hacker. Harrington, Rose and Pavin all hit duffs when on top of the leaderboard last weekend. The lesson is that hitting bad shots shouldn't embarrass anybody. The more that you manage the very difficult task of turning that from pop-psychology into how you actually feel on the course after you top a drive into a pond in front of a group of strangers, the more chance you have of improving quickly.

How quickly it is possible to improve, probably depends on natural ability. But, there is probably a minimum number of practice hours that you have to do before you get to any particular standard, regardless of how talented you are. Golf swings are very precise high-speed coordinated movements that involve a great many of your body's muscles. They have to be programmed into your sub-conscious and that takes time. What's more, the consciousness can only really push the sub-consciousness's motion control in subtle and limited ways, so you can only really work on one or two aspects of the swing at once and your body will revert to its old ways easily if you cease to concentrate on them. Hence the importance of swing thoughts and understanding which aspects of the swing you need to work on.

Without time to practice, you won't be able to get very good as nobody's sub-consciousness has the golf-swing programmed into it a priori. However, practice by itself doesn't always lead to improvement as it's not at all easy to figure out which muscle movements contribute to which changes in the golf shot.

The easiest, but most expensive route, is to hire an expert to analyse your swing for you and tell you which bits you need to work on and give you drills and ideas on how to programme your sub-consciousness to improve them. If the professional is any good, this should make your practice most effective. However, to be really effective, you need to visit the professional frequently, to make sure that you haven't lapsed into old habits and this can be expensive. A cheaper, but less personalised alternative is to watch videos on youtube - some are very good.

A good idea is to regularly video your practice sessions and analyse your swing on video regularly - compare it to professional swings and see what your body is actually doing. One of the big problems of golf is that there is often a huge gap between what it feels like you are doing and what you are actually doing.

You can do it all yourself though - loads of professional golfers have weird looking swings that they must have learned themselves. I guess you can just find a swing that works and try to repeat it and not care too much about how correct it is. I'd say that route takes more practice on average though.

The time it takes to get good depends on the time you have to devote to it, the quality of the analysis and practice that you do and your willingness to embarrass yourself. Improving your swing always requires you to get worse for a period before you improve and you will need to put up with periods when you can't hit the ball out of your way and look like a total eejit because you are changing your grip, or some other aspect of your swing.

To put numbers on it, I'd say that if you were willing to devote, say about 8 hours a week to it consistently and practiced effectively and were willing to go through the pain you'd probably be an above average golfer on most courses within 18 months or so.

sweetswing

just go out and enjoy the game.
the more you put in the more you get out, but this will also depend on your own natural ability, hand eye coordination, and what i think is the most important, your ability to controll your emotions.
i know people who are playing 20 years and are off handicaps of 20 plus.
and i know one guy who plays off 4 and is only playing 3 years.

alxmorgan

LostPassword wrote: »

A good idea is to regularly video your practice sessions and analyse your swing on video regularly - compare it to professional swings and see what your body is actually doing. One of the big problems of golf is that there is often a huge gap between what it feels like you are doing and what you are actually doing.

I second this. Firstly you have to know what to look for of course but you'll be amazed when you see what you actually do -at least I was.

Was watching Michael Breed on the Golf fix do an episode about over the top swings and went out and videoed myself. 2 seconds into watching it back I could tell I was way over the top as I had seen on his show.

thelongfellow

Anyone see the blog that was advertised on the GUI site a few weeks ago?

It had a guy playing once a week, going to the range once a week and getting one lesson a week for the next year and he was going to give regular updates on his progress.

Can't remember the blogsite it was on...

heavyballs

don't know where you live but just find your local public course,mine is Stepaside,there's lots of hackers and some decent players too,it's nice and wide in general,like the other lads said just go out and enjoy

try to avoid weekends if you're worried about holding others up

alternatively a step up from pitch and putt for eg Glenmill in Wicklow which btw is top class might be a good starting point,

jimjo

Much like the other lad, the main thing is to enjoy it.

I reckon with a lot of practice I dont think it takes that long to be a good golfer, I'm talking about a proper single figure handicapper.

Never get too bogged down with bad days, there'll be days when you play brilliant but get unlucky and score poorly and than days when you play poor but score well, enjoy!

thelongfellow

You can follow someone who is also trying 'to get good' here. Might pick up a few pointers along the way.

http://guiacademy.wordpress.com/