7 Golf Swing Mistakes That Are Quietly Destroying Your Game (And How to Fix Them)

You’ve been playing for two years. Maybe five. You’ve watched YouTube videos, read tips in Golf Digest, and spent more money on lessons than you’d like to admit to your partner.

And yet the same things keep happening. The slice. The chunk. That one hole where you somehow card an 8 and don’t even know how.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most amateur golfers aren’t making random mistakes. They’re making the same mistakes, over and over, because nobody ever stopped them early enough to point them out.

This post is that stop.

We’re going to walk through the 7 most common golf swing faults, the ones that show up in virtually every Sunday golfer’s game, and give you something practical to take to the range this weekend.

1. Gripping the club like you’re trying to crack a walnut

Ask any teaching pro what they notice first when a new student walks up, and most of them will say the same thing: the grip.

A tight grip creates tension that travels up through your forearms, locks your wrists, and kills any chance of a fluid swing. You end up muscling the ball instead of swinging through it, which leads to inconsistency at best and injury at worst.

The fix: At address, aim for a grip pressure around a 4 out of 10. You want to feel like you could squeeze harder, but you’re choosing not to. A useful drill: grip the club, then consciously relax your hands three times before you take the club back. It feels weird. It works.

2. Standing too far from the ball

This one doesn’t get talked about enough. Most golfers crowd the ball, but a surprising number set up too far away and compensate by reaching, which causes all kinds of problems through impact.

When you’re too far away, you tend to come over the top on the downswing, producing that left-to-right spin that turns a potential fairway into a trip to the trees.

The fix: At address, let your arms hang naturally from your shoulders. Your hands should be roughly a hand’s width from your thighs. If you’re reaching for the ball or feel like you need to lean forward to make contact, you’ve found your problem.

3. Lifting your head, or rather the thing causing you to lift it

Everyone’s heard “keep your head down.” And most golfers try. But here’s the thing: you’re almost never actually trying to look up early. You’re doing it because your body is out of position and your head is just following.

Usually, early head movement is caused by a reverse pivot. That means shifting your weight onto your front foot on the backswing instead of loading your back hip. Your body instinctively tries to correct this on the way down, and the head comes up as a byproduct.

The fix: On the backswing, focus on feeling your weight load into the inside of your right heel (for right-handed golfers). If you feel pressure on the outside of that foot, or your left heel is rising, you’re reverse pivoting. Fix the foundation and the head will take care of itself.

4. A backswing that’s too long

More backswing does not mean more power. It means more things that can go wrong.

When the club goes past parallel at the top, you almost always lose the connection between your left arm and your chest. The sequence falls apart, and by the time you get to impact, you’re just guessing.

Watch any elite ball-striker and you’ll notice plenty of them have a three-quarter swing. What they do have is control throughout.

The fix: Try hitting balls with your backswing stopping at the point where your left shoulder touches your chin. It’ll feel like nothing. The ball will tell you otherwise. Once you feel how much power you can generate with a compact, connected swing, going back to the long backswing feels like the wrong choice.

5. Casting, the distance killer nobody talks about at the bar

Casting is when you release the angle between your wrists and the club too early on the downswing. Instead of maintaining that lag and delivering it through impact, you throw it away before you ever get there.

The result is a weak, high ball flight, thin shots, and a swing that looks like you’re throwing a fishing line. Which is exactly where the name comes from.

This is probably the single most common fault among golfers shooting in the 90s and 100s, and it’s deeply ingrained because it feels like you’re helping the ball.

The fix: The feeling you’re after is holding the angle for as long as possible on the way down, letting it release naturally at the bottom. A good drill: stop your downswing halfway and check that the angle between your lead arm and the shaft is still sharp, not flattened out. Do this slowly, repeatedly, until it becomes a habit.

6. Sliding instead of rotating through the ball

On the downswing, the hips need to rotate, not slide toward the target. When golfers slide, the club gets stuck behind them, and they either block it right or flip their hands over to compensate, sending it left.

It’s one of those faults that looks different every time it shows up, which makes it frustrating to diagnose on your own.

The fix: Place an alignment stick or an old umbrella in the ground outside your lead hip at address. On the downswing, your goal is to rotate your hip away from it, not bump into it. Even a few practice swings with this reference point will give you a clearer picture of what your hips are actually doing.

7. Decelerating into the ball

This one might sting a little.

A lot of golfers, especially on shorter shots around the green, are so focused on not hitting it too far that they slow the club down through impact. The result is the opposite of what they want: skulled chips, duffed pitches, and a constant sense that the short game is some dark art they’ll never figure out.

Deceleration also shows up in the full swing when someone is trying to steer the ball, usually out of trouble or on a tight driving hole. The instinct makes sense. The result doesn’t.

The fix: Commit to accelerating through the ball every single time. On short shots, control distance by making a smaller swing, not a slower one through impact. The club should always be speeding up as it reaches the ball, not coasting. Trust the loft to do its job.

A final thought before you head to the range

You probably recognized yourself in at least two or three of these. That’s not a bad thing. It means you now have something specific to work on, which is worth a thousand range sessions hitting balls aimlessly.

Pick one fault. Just one. Work on it for two or three rounds before moving to the next. Real improvement in golf is almost always slower than we want it to be, but it sticks a lot better when you’re not trying to fix everything at once.

See you out there on Sunday.