Jonathan Yarwood has noticed a disturbing pattern.
Yarwood is one of GOLF’s Top 100 Teachers Alpine Country Club in northern New Jersey, and he has an impressive resume. He has taught many major winners, USGA champions and top-level amateurs throughout his decorated career. These days, however, he spends most of his time inside a studio teaching recreational players. And recently a curious topic has appeared.
“A new phenomenon,” says Yarwood. “About 90 percent of amateur players now come in saying, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I’ve consumed so much golf content, I’m completely confused.”
“It’s an epidemic.”
In some ways this should come as no surprise. The social media movement has become a default pastime, perhaps THE default timeout. More and more, our free moments are instinctively filled by surrendering to our phones and letting the algorithm take the wheel as we mindlessly consume content tailored specifically to our interests.
To me, and maybe to you, that means golf. Specifically, swing tips and tricks.
But lately I can’t escape the feeling that this corner of the internet feels massively oversaturated. Any golf swing sufferer can open their application and see what I mean.
Fix your back bend in 40 seconds
The secret to a square face every time
The best swing advice you’ll ever hear
Scroll a little further and you can even see two back-to-back videos offering conflicting advice (in fairness, the content of written instructions is sometimes guilty of the same thing), each with hundreds of thousands of views.
It’s easy to understand the appeal of this type of content. Videos are short and digestible. They are simple, smooth and promise quick results. Best of all, the “expert” advice is free. And, yes, there IS a chance they will help you. Unless they leave you lost in the desert.
Golf is a game that can never be perfected, but that hasn’t stopped generations of players from pursuing improvement. You don’t even have to! There’s nothing quite like firing up an iron, posting a personal best, or birdieing. The game is endlessly addictive and has a way of capturing the mind like nothing else.
So when a social media video promises to help in that pursuit, it acts as a cat to golf’s soul. But when every video offers a fix, a more important question arises: How do you know if the move is helping your game. . . or hurting him?
A new era of golf instruction
Like so much else in the modern era, golf instruction has evolved along with technology.
There used to be limited options when it came to finding quality golf advice. You could go to a PGA professional at a local club who, if you were lucky, would have a proven track record of turning out successful students. Or you can rely on the written word, burying your nose in golf instructional classics like Ben Hogan’s “Five Lessons” or Harvey Penick’s “Little Red Book” or picking up the latest issue of GOLF magazine.
But as society has become increasingly connected to phones and screens, you’re more likely to find your guidance from a well-packaged tip on social media.
Today, if you want a little fix, you can find hundreds of options in seconds, each of which promises to guide you. The same goes for a stubborn hook, scratches or lack of power. Whatever ails your game is just a quick Google search – or a few scrolls – away from a promised cure.
On the surface, this change looks like an overwhelming positive. Learning to golf has long been expensive, and the Internet has lowered that barrier to entry significantly. But accessibility does not necessarily equate to quality.
“I actually think the players are more educated now,” says Tony Ruggiero, a GOLF Top 100 Teachers who splits time between Alabama and Florida. “They understand the terminology better and look at more guidelines than ever. But they’re no better at understanding what’s actually causing their swing problems. They go after effects instead of causes, and then go down rabbit holes.”
There are different incentives at work here. Social media rewards simple explanations and promises quick results – but content creators don’t have much pressure to deliver results to an individual. Effective training requires the right diagnosis and context and focuses on the important part: results. When these elements are missing, even well-intentioned advice can send golfers looking for answers in all the wrong places.
More harm than good?
Yarwood, who heads south to teach during the winter, says his concerns about the saturation of wavering thoughts are validated every time a distracted player walks through his door. “You get coaches who can theorize and look great online,” he says. “But like social media in general, you’re only seeing the highlight reel. They have very little story, very little application.”
Ruggiero has noticed a similar pattern during his days in the teaching group at Montgomery Country Club in Alabama and Old Palm Golf Club in South Florida.
“It’s changed a lot,” Ruggiero said. “If you’d asked me that three, four, five years ago, I would have said, ‘Yeah, sometimes I get it.’ But now, it’s almost every lesson.”
Herein lies one of the biggest problems with golf instruction on social media: the lack of personalization. There is no guarantee that the tip presented is the one you in fact they need it.
Take it high swing, for example. It’s one of the most common ailments among recreational players—and, not coincidentally, one of the most popular “fixes” offered by social media coaches. But here’s the catch: not every bullish move is caused by the same fundamental error.
For example, often the cause of a high swing is an open arm face caused by a bad grip. But if that’s the case and you start making changes to move more in and out, you’re going to hit it even worse. What you really need to do is adjust your grip and face, which in turn will naturally improve your club path and allow you to swing more on the inside.
Most golfers don’t understand this – or at least are willing to roll the dice with whatever video they see next that promises to cure the problem they’re dealing with. Unfortunately, often the fix that is described has little to do with the defect.
“If you’re not diagnosing the cause, you can make things worse,” Ruggiero said. “There are many different causes of something like an excessive swing. The information may be accurate, but it is not always useful for YOUR problem.”
It’s a vicious circle. A new feel makes things worse, so the golfer looks for another solution. This fix may help temporarily, but it can also lead to more problems, so they look for another solution. Before long, the brain is overloaded with information and the oscillations are in a pretzel.
“It’s like walking into a Walgreens,” Ruggiero said. “Everything there can help you – whether it’s really about dealing with what’s wrong with you. But if you get one thing from each line, you will end up in the hospital. That’s what golfers are doing. They’re getting a little bit of everything, even though most of it has nothing to do with their current problem.”
Don’t confuse popularity with pedigree
One of the subtler dangers of online golf instruction is that visibility is often mistaken for expertise. Put another way, social media is a different skill set than golf coaching. Algorithms reward engagement, but they don’t always (or ever?) verify that the information comes from a trusted source. As a result, some of the most popular online traffic advice comes from instructors with little history of producing measurable results with real students.
“Watching these videos can be harmful because many people self-proclaim themselves as experts when they really aren’t,” says Yarwood. “If you’re going to look online, you should be looking for people with real stories — people who can show results, not staged content, not bravado.”
In traditional training environments, credibility is built over time. A coach’s reputation is tied to the players they have developed, the success of those players, and the improvements they sustain over time. Online that responsibility largely disappears. A swing type can garner millions of views without the coach ever having developed any significant players or even lowering the hurdles.
This disconnect can be frustrating for teaching professionals and especially dangerous for casual recreational players. An instructor who “looks the part” and speaks with authority can be mistaken for an expert, even if their real-world teaching resume is thin.
This does not mean that all online instruction should be discarded. Far from it, actually. Many of the world’s most accomplished coaches – those who teach the great champions and elite amateurs — regularly share thoughtful, high-quality content digitally. Heck, you can even find great tutorials directly from the great champions, such as Bryson DeChambeau AND Padraig Harrington.
But it’s important that consumers go through a vetting process. Before adopting a swing style, golfers should ask a few simple questions: Does this coach have a track record of developing players? Have their students excelled in competitive golf? Do they explain WHO a tip is for, rather than pretending it’s a fix for all? The answers to these questions matter far more than the number of followers or views.
“If you’re asking for help, you have to ask, ‘Who is this person? What’s their story?'” says Ruggiero. “It’s no different than medical advice. You can get it online from someone who’s not a doctor, but you don’t really know.”
Ultimately, the platform is not the problem. The problem is confusing achievement with results – and confusing popularity with pedigree.
The right way to improve online
Social media itself is not the problem. Neither is the search for learning through online content.
For golfers, social platforms have lowered the barrier to entry, providing access to some of the brightest minds in the sport. For instructors, these platforms provide a way to share ideas, demonstrate expertise, and reach players who may never set foot in their teaching thesis. Much of that content is thoughtful, credible, and genuinely helpful.
However, the key is to use these tools responsibly. This means resisting the urge to move mindlessly from peak to peak, absorbing each new idea as if it were just as accurate and just as applicable to the one before it. Improvement does not come from collecting fluctuating thoughts. It comes from understanding what the advice is for YOUR game.
“Leading doesn’t have to be fun,” says Yarwood. “Watch the PGA Tour if you want entertainment. The directions aren’t like Spotify. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a lot of swinging thoughts, like putting your music library in the mix.”
In a game where progression is based on dedication, the smartest players aren’t the ones who follow every new fix. They are the ones who know which voices to trust – and when to stop moving and start practicing.
