Connor Stirling Peterson argues that weekly swing lessons don't work because they ignore what actually costs golfers strokes: mental errors, poor course management, and bad decisions on par-5s. Fixing your swing won't help if you're hitting into trees and three-putting.
I know a lot of you guys watching this video, you guys are actually taking this seriously enough to watch YouTube videos on this exact subject, right? Probably with a— working with a coach probably like once a week. And I would bet that there's some level in your brain where you look at those lessons and you're like, I feel like we're kind of going over the same stuff every single lesson. I feel like we're not really like moving the needle. I feel like we're just doing this to do it. And, you know, good on you for actually like making that investment, first of all. But second of all, I just want to validate that, that That's almost certainly the case. It's probably not moving the needle that much. The problem with swing coaching as a default method— I get arrows for this, but it's the reality— is the incentive structure is screwed up, right? For going in there to tweak the golf swing, you guys know at this level of golf that getting the golf swing a little bit better or more consistent is not what is actually going to get them over the hump, right? You see them making mistakes on the golf course where they add these compound mistakes, right? They hit in the trees and they you know, instead of pitching out, they, you know, make a mental error, hit a tree trunk, make triple, right? You see them 3-putting, you see them chunking their shots around the greens maybe, um, or just making bad strategic choices on par 5s. Those are all things that are going to come out and they're going to hurt them. And it's not because their golf swing is not good enough, it's not because they haven't figured it out yet, it's, it's because that's all they're working on is just their golf swing mechanics. And they get into a tournament and they get kind of, you know, psyched out, they have a spiral, they have a few holes where they can't figure it out. Um, you know, it's like having more lessons isn't going to change that, right?
