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Hello, My wife and I have both just recently started playing golf. This is the middle of our second season. During our first season we took a lesson ever week. During the off-season we also took a weekly lesson at an indoor facility. As the new season approached we felt that we were going to be ready to reduce the number of lessons we were taking to once or twice a month to give us more time out on the course. What has been our problem this season is a dreadful lack of consistency in our ball striking ability (which obviously leads to a dramatic difference in score my current low score for nine holes on a course rated a 63.4 is a 41 and my wife's is a 46). What typically happens is we will have a stretch of time around one to three weeks where we will be striking the ball excellently. Then what will happen is either our instructor will make tweak in our swing to correct something that we are struggling with (for me a push with my driver for my wife hitting behind the ball) or a tweak to help power etc. and/or something happens sub-consciously and we begin a steady decline to the point that we feel we need to go back to the beginning and learn the swing all over again. These slumps tend to take two to three weeks to recover from and are very frustrating because each time we think we are going to be able to start seeing some real improvement in our games another slump begins. What am I wondering is, is this normal and if so what are some tips, drills and/or training techniques that can help to make our ball striking more consistent and reliable. So that our slumps are less dramatic and easier to recover from.

I just watched some clinic that Vijay and Rocco put on and one thing that Vijay said is do not take to many lessons, maybe once a month. Go into your instructor for a lesson, then really take what he said to heart and just concentrate on practicing that one or two things that he said for the next month or until it becomes natural for you. then go back in for another lesson to fix something else. What happens is if you take to many lessons you will just get overwhelmed.

Don't take swing changes on to the course until you have PRACTICED them enough that you are confident in them. If your instructor changes something, don't go play that week, instead throw in a bunch of practice session to incorporate the change into your game. Or if you HAVE to play, don't try the changes while on the course. (If you changed your driver swing, just don't hit your driver when you play)

Too many beginners take their lessons onto the course before they are confident in their new swing. It is self-defeating; they thing the new change isn't working because they are getting bad results right now, so they end up not practicing the change later on.

You definitely have to watch for information overload and to avoid it. As the one posted above stated, work on one thing and ingrain that until you're ready to move onto the next.

You will have to make the "leap of faith" one day and trust what you've worked on at the range or home...it's inevitable, but be prepared to take steps backwards when doing this, a wise thing to do is not take a scorecard along with you when you're working on the transition of something new to your swing to the course...you don't need to see a score (good or bad) result from this or that change.

Worry about the effort you put into making the change, were you honest with yourself in attempting to do this or that? How did it feel? Kind of grade it as Satisfactory or Un-satisfactory and keep things simple....above all means DO NOT GET DOWN ON YOURSELF...

One lesson a month is plenty. It takes at least 4 or 5 sessions at the range to incorporate any swing change.