As a PGA Professional and Coach with nearly two decades of teaching experience, I have seen hundreds of golfers take their first swings and either fall in love with the game or become disillusioned and quit within six months.
What is the difference between these two results? It’s rarely talent. It almost always comes down to what they focused on in the first place.
Most new players start by trying to build a “proper swing.” They watch videos on YouTube about shoulder roll, lag, and airplane pitch. They buy exercise equipment. They obsess over grip pressure and whether their left arm is straight enough at the top. Six weeks later, they’re hitting it worse than when they started, and golf looks like an engineering problem they can’t solve.
Here’s what I tell every newbie who walks my range: forget swinging for now. Build these five habits first and swings will come easier than you think.
1. Develop one pre-shoot routine (Even if your swing is terrible)
Tournament players don’t look at the ball for 11 seconds and then swing just because they’re superstitious. They do this because consistency in process creates consistency in result, even when your technique isn’t perfect yet.
Your pre-shot routine can be simple: stand behind the ball, pick your target, take a practice swing, set up and go. What matters is not the specific steps. What matters is doing the same thing before every single shot, whether you’re on the first ball or hitting your 20th on the range.
This habit does something psychologically that young players desperately need: it turns golf from a random series of attempts into a repeatable process. You will start to notice patterns. You will build a sense of rhythm. And when something goes wrong, you’ll have a base to fall back on instead of trying new things every move.
2. Learn to target your bodynot just the face of the club
I can’t count how many lessons I’ve taught where a student is frustrated about slicing and when I stand behind them, they head 40 yards to the right of their target. They think they are aiming for the target, but their body is aiming for the cart’s path.
Here’s the trick: Every time you putt, pick an intermediate target about three feet in front of your ball that’s in your target line: a divot, a patch of bleached grass, anything. Align your clubface to that spot, then place your feet, hips, and shoulders parallel to that line.
Do this on every shot, even chips and shots. Especially the shots. New golfers who build this habit from Day One avoid years of compensation that comes from trying to swing the ball to a target they’re not actually aiming for.
3. End up breaking even every time
I don’t care if you put it in water. I don’t care if you made it 20 meters. Finish each swing on your front leg, standing tall, with the strap facing the target and hold that finish until the ball stops moving.
This habit teaches your body more about proper alignment, weight shift and spin than a hundred thoughts ever wavered. If you can’t end up in balance, something went wrong earlier in the movement. Your body knows this, even if your brain doesn’t yet.
Young golfers who commit to balanced swings develop faster because their swings naturally begin to organize themselves around stability. The ones that swing hard and stumble back or hang on their back leg? They are building up compensations that they will have to undo later.
4. Play More, Practice Less (Really!)
This sounds backwards, but hear me out. New golfers spend hours on the range digging out a swing that breaks down the second they step on the green because the range has no consequences and no variables.
Get to the course early. Play nine holes in two hours at dusk. You will learn how to hit uneven lies, how to manage your emotions after a bad shot, how to choose clubs and how to read the greens. You will learn that golf is not about perfect swings; it’s about getting the ball into the hole with the least amount of effort.
I have seen six-month-old golfers who play twice a week score better than two-year-old warriors who have never played more than three holes at a time. The course teaches you things that the range can’t.
5. Keep a simple scorecard stat tracker
You don’t need expensive apps or launch monitors. Simply track three things after each round: fairway putts, greens in regulation and total shots.
This habit builds awareness. You’ll discover that you’re actually not terrible at driving; you are only three-putting six times a round. Or that your irons are strong but you miss every green because you’re choosing the wrong club. The data takes the emotion out of it and shows you where improvement will actually lower your score.
Most importantly, tracking stats gives you small wins to celebrate. You might shoot 112, but, hey, you only hit twice today instead of five. That’s progress, and progress keeps you coming back.
The real secret that no one tells you
These five habits have nothing to do with swing mechanics, and that’s the point. Young players think that golf is all about moving their bodies correctly. It is not. Golf is about building systems that make good shots more repeatable and bad shots less devastating.
Build these habits first. The swing will follow, I promise. And when you’re ready to work on the technique, you’ll have a foundation that makes everything else click faster.
Trust me. I’ve been doing this for a long time and the students who start here are the ones who are still playing five years later.
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