Golf technique, explained by the people who teach and study it.

Golf instruction is full of confident advice that contradicts other confident advice. This section takes a different approach. Each page collects what named sources actually say: major champions talking about their own games, teaching professionals from GOLF Magazine's Top 100 Teachers and the PGA, and researchers who have measured golfers in laboratories and on the course. Each principle is credited to the person or study behind it, so you can weigh it yourself and take it to your coach.

How to read these pages

• Principles, not prescriptions. What suits one golfer can be wrong for another. Bill Hulbert of the PGA, writing on grips, makes the point that "neutral" varies a great deal between individuals. A qualified professional can watch you swing. A web page cannot.
• Disagreements are shown, not hidden. Coaches disagree about where to play the ball when chipping, where to hit the sand in a bunker and how the putter should travel. Where they do, you will find each view and who holds it.
• Studies come with names and years. When a page cites research, it gives the authors, the year and, where it matters, how many golfers were tested. Small studies are described as small.
• Some claims could not be confirmed. Where a widely repeated figure could only be found second-hand, we either leave it out or say plainly that it is unconfirmed.

What the research says in broad strokes

A 2005 review in Sports Medicine by Patria Hume, Justin Keogh and Duncan Reid describes golf biomechanics as applying mechanics to the golfer's body to improve technique and performance. A later review by Keogh and Hume (Sports Biomechanics, 2012) lists factors that may raise clubhead speed, from better segment sequencing and weight transfer to physical conditioning, and concludes that golfers improved more when they focused on the outcome of the swing or the movement of the clubhead than on specific body movements. That second finding, about where to put your attention, comes up again on the practice page.

On the health side, the 2018 International Consensus Statement on Golf and Health, led by Andrew Murray in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, agreed that regular golf is associated with longevity and can provide moderate-intensity aerobic activity. On injuries, a 2024 meta-analysis by Ilari Kuitunen and Ville Ponkilainen estimated 2.5 injuries per 1,000 rounds, a rate the authors call low.

The pages in this section

Grip and setup

How Padraig Harrington and PGA professionals describe the grip, posture, ball position and aim.

The full swing

Takeaway checkpoints, the X-factor, the kinematic sequence and what decides where the ball starts.

Driving

Attack angle, tour averages and what a magazine experiment found about tee height.

Iron play

Compression, shaft lean, reading divots, and hybrids versus long irons.

Chipping and pitching

The difference between the two shots, the forward-weight debate and Dave Pelz's clock system.

Bunker play

Nick Faldo and Matt McLean on sand shots, and what Rule 12 lets you touch.

Putting

Setup, stroke shape, tempo, quiet-eye research, tour make rates and the yips.

Green reading

Speed, the hole's effective size, AimPoint and why downhill putts drop more often.

Course management

Strokes gained, DECADE and practical choices on the tee and into greens.

Practice

Focus of attention, varied practice, and how elite juniors actually developed.

Fitness

Golf and health, warm-ups, stretching studies and the body-swing connection.

Injuries

What the studies say about how often golfers get hurt, and where.

Juniors and seniors

Development pathways, junior club fitting, tee selection and swing changes for older golfers.

Left-handed golf

Left-handed major champions, choosing a side, and learning as a lefty.

If you are brand new to the game, the Learn section explains how a round works before any of this matters, and getting started sets out the routes into the game.