If you use or are considering using a media tip to improve your game I hope the following information will be of value.

Media Golf Tips: To Use Or Not To Use?

I cannot begin to count the number of times a student brought me a golf magazine featuring a tip they wanted to try because it promised to improve their game. The primary reason golf magazines sell so well is because the bulk of their content is oriented around tips to improve the reader's game and every golfer wants to shoot lower scores. Publishers are shrewd marketers who know their target audience very well and filling that niche with tips from credible PGA pros increases revenue.

Tips and Credibility: Over the years I've probably seen every variation of the same tips delivering the same message and allure of lowering your score.  From golf magazines to "how to" books, DVDs, and most recently Youtube, everyone claims to have a new and better way to do the same thing. Whether it's striking the ball more solidly, driving it further, fading, hooking, correcting a slice, etc, the market is over saturated with advice, and therein lays the problem. For starters, whom should you believe?

Reality: The hard cold fact is that there is neither a silver bullet nor cosmic power invented by some golf pro or self anointed instructor that's going to magically work wonders on your game. The basic golf swing has been over-analyzed ad-nauseum because the folks selling tips are constantly seeking a new angle or more accurately, new terminology, for the same thing. Stack and Tilt, one and two plane swings, X- Factor, and other clever names have been created to add new sizzle to the same old steak.

The Margin For Error: Please don't think I'm aspersing tips provided by the golf media. To the contrary, I firmly believe in improving one's golf game, but know first hand that there is a right way and a wrong way to accomplish that... and the margin for error between them is enormous. My concern here is that you fully understand the following:

• The instructor's credentials and track record
• Exactly what the instructor is saying
• The specific tip might not cure your problem
• You might not implement the tip precisely as prescribed - feel and real are very different in golf
• The instructor cannot provide feed-back

Most troubling to me, however, is the lack of relationship between you and the instructor. Specifically, since the instructor giving the tip has neither met you nor analyzed your swing you're relying on hope to resolve the problem and the chances of that occurring are slim. Realistically, hoping to improve in this manner is fantasy that will likely exacerbate your problem, lead to disappointment, and create new issues.

I hope this has been beneficial.  Visit me at the range if you have any questions and want to start lowering your score the right way.

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