Jon Sherman occupies a unique, and useful, space in the golf world.
He's a high-level amateur golfer himself, a mental coach to PGA Tour player Mackenzie Hughes, and an author of two golf books who, more recently, started his own YouTube channel.
Sherman's varied background means he comes at golf from an interesting perspective. He's a golf swing minimalist who instead goes deep on the different strategies that help you play better golf: from practicing, to the mental side, to course management.
So with spring inching closer, I called him up for a little advice ahead of the new golf season. Here's what he said...
1. No one cares as much as you do
Whether you like to admit it or not, a primary motivator for so many golfers is how we appear to other golfers. It makes sense, after all. Nobody wants to look stupid, which is why golf can be a pretty embarrassing game when you hit bad shots. Worse, that embarrassment can leak into your next shots. It puts you into a downward spiral, Jon says, which can last not just the rest of the round, but future rounds, too.
Luckily, he has some good advice:
"Psychologists called the Spotlight Effect," Sherman says. "We're always worried about what other golfers think of our game more than the reality of how much they're actually paying attention. People are never paying attention to you as much as you think."
Yes, you will embarrass yourself. But Sherman says to accept that, know you'll get through it, and remember that much like your fantasy team, nobody cares as much about your game as you think they do.
2. Slower is not better
If you watch Ludvig Aberg hit a golf ball, you'll see the same thing every time. A man who steps up to the ball, takes a quick look at the target, waggles once, then swings. It's a pacey pre-shot routine, but it's still got a nice rhythm to it. Sherman loves it—and says the rest of us can learn a lot from it.
"Ludvig has got the most beautiful trigger I've maybe ever seen in golf, and it's the same every time," he says. "It just goes to show that slower is not better. The more time you give them before a shot, the more indecisive you're going to get. I bet most golfers would play just as well if they worked on quickening play as they would if they had taken four practice swings. Yeah, I bet they'd actually play better."
3. The minimum improvement guidelines
If you want to get better at golf, you need to play more golf. That much is obvious. But we all have lives and jobs and other things that we're busy balancing. So what's the minimum you need to play or practice before making some adjustments to your improvement expectations?
"My line in the sand is usually playing once a week," Sherman says. "If you can play once a week, I think then you've got a good chance at getting better. But if it's less than that, you got to be a bit more patient with yourself, and understand that your improvement is going to come much slower."
4. Make your practice work harder
Jon is a big proponent of practicing smarter. Using the time to let golf swing mechanics take a back seat, and instead, focusing on how you hit the ball. One method he uses is what he terms the fighting fire-with-fire method. If you're hitting hooks, try hitting slices. If you're hitting chunks, try topping the ball.
Simply the act of trying this stuff will help your brain understand where your golf swing's guardrails are.
"Don't go searching on YouTube for the swing fix. I think you're going to make it much harder for yourself," he says. "I would always defer to the skill-based practice stuff. Tracking impact location, doing the fight fire with fire method. Make that stuff your bread and butter."
Tony Ding/Icon Sportswire
5. A smarter way to make swing changes
As Jon says, the worst way of making swing changes is to float around YouTube, find something that you think sounds good, and try to do that. Yes, there'll be times you need to work on your swing. When the time comes, Jon says to get specific.
"Say you want to change your swing, the mechanics of it, what are you changing and why?" he says. "You've got to be really specific on what the ball flight fault is that you're seeing, and what you want to see. You should work with a coach who can help you explain very clearly what change you are making and why."
