* Your stance should be about shoulder width apart and your feet should be pointing slightly out but not too much!
* Let your arms hang naturally down from your body and place the club behind the ball. If your shoulders hunch or you have tension in your arms, you are probably too close to the ball. Stand back a little bit.
* Place about 70 percent of your body weight on your back leg.
* Straighten your spine and have a bit of bend in your knees.
* Keep your eye on the ball during your entire swing
* Grip the club as if you are holding a small, delicate bird. You want to keep the bird in your hands, but you dont want to crush it either. Thats how you should hold your club.
* A good golf swing will be a fluid, easy motion with your shoulders turning slightly in the backswing and your follow-through complete.
* Make sure you keep your feet planted and slow down in your backswing. Most problems with a golf swing are cause by swinging too quickly in the back swing and then not accelerating through the ball.
* You will want to hit the ball in the sweet spot or the center of the club. Hitting it anyplace else will cause your ball to travel in directions that you really dont want it to go in.
* Then grip it and rip it!

It might help for you to take a lesson or two on the golf swing or even watch the way the pros do it on television. There are numerous articles that exist on the Internet that can help you with your golf swing, so always look for information and take as much advice as you can get.

Learning to swing a golf club takes years of practice as any avid golfer will tell you. There are a hundred things to know and they all have to be working in exactly the right ways at exactly the right time to a have a good, consistent golf swing. Sometimes this just doesnt happen, but when it does, it certainly is a great feeling!

Think of everything involved in a golf swing itself.  You need the right clubs at the right height and weight for you.  You need to grip them properly.  Your backswing and your follow-through need to be aligned right.  There are many, many details of which you need to be aware and which may need some tweaking.  You’re also fighting your natural tendencies to just get up and whack at the ball or to hold the club a certain way.  You may also be fighting the natural tendencies you’ve learned over the years when it comes to your stance, your grip, and your swing.  All of these things are very difficult and don’t usually come easily for anyone.

One thing to remember is that golf is supposed to be a relaxing, enjoyable game.  It’s not a game of speed or power.  There’s no need to rush through the game itself and rushing through the learning process will simply be counterproductive.  So learn patience and it will definitely pay off in the end.

There is no substitute for actually hitting a golf ball but this doesn’t mean that practicing your swing with a club in your hand is pointless.  You need to practice your grip, your backswing, your follow through, and everything else.  You can certainly do this at home when not on the course.

Remember too that for many, the off season lasts several months which means you can easily become physically stiff and lose that rhythm that’s needed to maintain a good game.  On the other hand, if you keep up a good routine even in the winter months you’ll be physically looser and will be able to work out some of those major points of your swing that will then help you when you are ready to actually start hitting real balls again.

Think seriously about where you wind up after your swing.  Your entire body should move in a position that is around and not to one side or another.  If you wind up off balance then you’re moving sideways and not in a circular motion.

Everything about golf is smooth and steady, not forceful and powerful.  If you’re winding up sideways then you may be trying to overpower your swing.  Hitting the ball hard really isn’t going to give it the distance it needs.  The way that a ball gets distance is through the momentum of the club not through the actual strength or power you put into it.  This is borne out by the fact that many seniors and yes, even women can get as much distance on their ball as the strongest of men!  While you do need some strength behind your swing, too much will throw your body off balance and this is usually how you wind up sideways.

An overly upright swing will also knock you sideways.  Be mindful of your arms especially in the backswing.  Many have a tendency to “jerk” their swing around behind their heads which puts the club too far above them.  Remember the illustration of being inside a barrel and try to keep your swing in a round, circular motion.  This will mean your entire body comes around and won’t wind up off balance or off center.

It’s good to remember too that when your swing is done, your belly button should be pointing at the direction where you want your ball to go.  When you’re knocked sideways by an overly upright swing or one that is too powerful, you will probably be twisted around and your navel will wind up off to one side.  This is an indication that your swing is not coming around the way it should.

The arms need to swing in a plane so that there is a clear path where the club can move freely around the body and without being blocked.

The proper swing has more of a round component than many people realize and than what many people use.  Perhaps because they’re aiming for the ball and so see it as a direct path, their swing too often has hard angles which result in a jerky motion and a poor coil and uncoil movement.  The tendency to want to smack a ball with force and power is very difficult to overcome, but the way the body coils and uncoils is very important.

A barrel roll is often encouraged in golf; this doesn’t mean turning the entire body around the way it does with swimming.  Instead it means imagining that you’re swinging inside a large barrel and are following the curved lines.  This will help the body to coil properly as you twist gently around and then to uncoil as well since you’re still following that curve with your follow-through.

Some golf instructor shy away from the barrel illustration because many golfers take it too far, swinging too far back, but if you simply concentrate on the round shape of the barrel as if you’re inside of it, you’ll improve your coil and uncoil abilities.  This will give you great control and you’ll be less likely to hook or slice when you hit the ball.

Most instructors claim to be teaching a release but in reality they’re just teaching a manipulation of one form or another.  While rolling the arms and un-cocking the wrists are both important, there are better ways of approaching the ball.

Many manipulations are overdone and exaggerated so that the clubface is closed at impact; this is just as bad as when it is open at impact.  A golfer will then no doubt hook rather than slice.

~ Julius Boros, a U.S. Open and PGA champion

Obviously your success at the game of golf is going to be very dependent upon your swing.  It might seem like the pros have a natural ability when it comes to their golf swing and in some cases they do, but like so many other sports there are ways to improve your abilities.  In other words, if you know how to swing you’ll have a much better swing.  While general coordination is good and the ability to gage and “feel” the swing can help some golfers, for others it’s good to get instruction on how to actually swing and then worry about improving that swing as you learn the basics.

Typically mistakes made during the golf swing are made because the golfer hasn’t taken into account some basic laws of physics.  The golf ball is an inanimate object without a mind of its own; it will go where it’s pushed to go, and that pushing comes from the club, arms, and body of the golfer.  Understanding a few basic principles will enable anyone to improve their swing and correct where and how they push that ball forward, creating a better game.

Some golfers tend to shy away from this type of learning and understanding.  Usually they just want an instructor or pro to tell them where to put their hands and how to hold their arms when they swing, but this is somewhat shortsighted.  Everyone’s body is different, everyone’s natural swinging abilities are different, everyone’s level of physical strength is different.  An instructor that says “do this” or “don’t do that” to every student is not taking into account their natural abilities.  However, if you know what you’re trying to accomplish with a golf swing and how the many elements of that swing control the ball’s distance and direction, then you have freedom to make your own adjustments with your swing.  In other words, you can find things that work for you that might not work for another golfer, and this means your swing will improve naturally no matter what you do.  So if you understand how the different elements of a swing – the grip, the stance, the backswing, the follow-through, the curve of the shoulders and straightness of the arms – all affect the ball’s path, you can better understand how to improve that swing overall.

Let’s first go over some mistakes that many golfers make.  This is because sometimes with a golf swing, you need to eliminate the negative habits before you can bring in the positive pointers to help your swing improve.  If you don’t do this, you may be learning something wrong and making that a habit which then makes it that much more difficult to unlearn down the road.  Your swing becomes like a permanent program in your brain and every time you go through that swing, that program is becoming more deeply embedded.  So even if you learn tips and pointers for how to improve your swing in a positive way, if you don’t learn to get rid of the incorrect things you’re doing they may just become more permanent down the road.

• Every player is entitled and obliged to play the ball from the position where it has come to rest after a stroke, unless a rule allows or demands otherwise (Rule 13-1).
• A player must not accept assistance in making a stroke (Rule 14-2).  This means no one can help when the club is in your hand!
• The condition of the ground or other parts of the course may not be altered to gain an advantage, except in some cases defined in the rules.  This mean no digging little ditches between the ball and the green or swiping at high grass with your club to get it out of the way of the ball.
• A ball may only be replaced by another during play of a hole if it is destroyed (Rule 5-3), lost (Rule 27-1), or unplayable (Rule 28), or at some other time permitted by the Rules. The player may always substitute balls between the play of two holes.

There are of course many other rules set out by the USGA, many of which are not important to amateur players out with friends but which of course can disqualify a professional from a tournament if he or she does not abide by those rules.

Etiquette

Did you know that when you bowl in a league, you’re not supposed to approach your lane at the same time as the bowlers in the lanes right next to you?  This is because any movement in their peripheral vision can distract them.  While this isn’t exactly a rule that can get you disqualified from tournament play, it is part of etiquette when playing the game.

There are many guidelines governing what is called golfing etiquette and these guidelines are meant to ensure the safety of the players, the fairness of the play, the pace of play, and the care of the course.  As an example, all players are expected to replace their divots, those chunks of sod that might come out when you hit a ball off the ground.  This will keep the course in good repair but will also keep another player from tripping in such a divot as well!

Other safety guidelines that fall under the rules of etiquette include not hitting the ball until the players in front of you are out of range and alerting other players if they are in the path of an incoming golf ball.  Players should not distract other players with noise of any kind and should keep up a good pace of play so as to not interfere with players behind them.