What Are the Most Common Mistakes Amateur Golfers Make?

Every golfer, from the weekend warrior to the player grinding to break 80, wants to find a way to cut strokes and play with more consistency. The good news is that you don't need a picture-perfect swing to play good golf. Most of the time, high scores aren't caused by a dozen different problems but by a few common mistakes that derail entire holes. This guide will walk you through the most a handful of frequent errors holding amateur golfers back and provide clear, actionable advice to help you fix them for good.

Mistake #1: A Bad Setup Before the Swing Even Starts

More swing faults are born from a poor setup than from any other single issue. If you aren't in a good position before you take the club back, your body has to invent a series of complicated adjustments during the swing just to make contact. This kills any chance of being consistent. A solid, repeatable setup is the foundation of a good golf shot.

How to Fix Your Setup:

• Perfect Your Posture: Instead of slouching or standing too tall, think "athletic." Stand with your feet about shoulder-width apart for a mid-iron. The key move is to bend from your hips, not your waist. Stick your bottom out slightly and tilt your upper body forward until your arms can hang comfortably and naturally below your shoulders. This creates space for your body to turn.
• Neutralize Your Grip: Your grip is the steering wheel for the clubface. A common mistake is a "strong" grip (right hand too far underneath) which can cause hooks, or a "weak" grip (left hand too far underneath) which often leads to slices. Find a neutral hold. As you place your top hand (left hand for righties) on the club, you should be able to see the first two knuckles. The "V" formed by your thumb and index finger should point roughly toward your right shoulder. The bottom hand should fit neatly over the top, with its palm also facing your target. Don't squeeze the life out of it, think of it like holding a tube of toothpaste - firm enough not to let go, but not hard enough to squeeze anything out.
• Get Your Alignment Right: Simply aiming your feet at the target is one of the most common alignment errors. A proper setup means having your feet, hips, and shoulders positioned parallel to your target line. Imagine a set of railroad tracks. Your ball and clubface are on the right rail, pointing directly at the target. Your feet, knees, hips, and shoulders are on the left rail. A great way to practice this is to place an alignment stick (or another club) on the ground pointing at your target, and another just inside it, parallel, to align your body to.

Mistake #2: Trying to "Lift" the Ball into the Air

This is perhaps the most universal misunderstanding among new and high-handicap golfers. It’s the intuitive belief that you need to get under the ball to make it go up. This leads to a “scooping” motion with the hands and wrists at impact, causing the club to rise up too early. The result? Thin shots that scream across the green or fat shots where you hit the ground first and the ball goes nowhere.

How to Fix Scooping:

• Trust the Loft: The golf club is brilliantly designed. The angle of the face (the loft) is what makes the ball get airborne. Your job is not to help it up. Your job is to strike the ball with a descending blow. Think "ball first, then turf." A clean iron shot hits the ball and then takes a shallow divot in front of where the ball was.
• Shift Your Weight Forward: The key to hitting down on the ball starts at the top of your backswing. As you begin your downswing, the very first move should be a slight shift of your weight and hips toward the target. This moves the bottom of your swing arc forward, in front of the ball, which means you'll naturally hit the ball on a downward angle. At impact, you should feel that most of your weight is on your lead foot.
• The "Tee Drill": This is a simple but fantastic way to feel the correct motion. Place your ball on the ground as you normally would. Now, place a tee in the ground about two inches in front of it. Your goal is simple: hit the ball and then clip the tee out of the ground with your follow-through. This forces you to keep the club head moving down and through the ball, teaching you the feeling of proper compression.

Mistake #3: The "Over the Top" Swing Path

Ahh, the infamous slice. For millions of golfers, it's the shot that ruins a round. While there can be a few causes, the most common culprit is a swing path that comes "over the top." This means that on the downswing, your arms and shoulders throw the club outside the correct swing plane, creating an outside-to-in path that cuts across the ball, putting slice spin on it.

How to Fix The Slice:

• Sequence the Downswing Correctly: An over-the-top move is a sequencing problem. It happens when golfers start their downswing by aggressively turning their shoulders or throwing their hands at the ball. The correct sequence starts from the ground up. Once you complete your backswing, the first move should be a subtle bump of your hips toward the target. This allows your arms and the club to drop down from the inside before your upper body rotates.
• The Headcover Drill: Get another classic-but-effective drill. Place an empty headcover (or a small towel) on the ground about a foot outside and a few inches behind your ball. If you come over the top, you'll hit the headcover on your downswing. The task is to swing without touching it. This forces you to drop the club into the "slot" from the inside, promoting an in-to-out swing path.
• Feel the Rotation: As we discussed in the summary, the swing is a rotational action. Too many slicing golfers see it as an "up and down" chopping motion. Focus on the idea of turning your torso back, and then unwinding your torso through the ball. Keeping the swing connected to your body's a big turn helps prevent the arms from taking over and throwing the club over the top.

Mistake #4: Awful Course Management

You can have a decent swing and still shoot high scores if you make poor decisions on the course. Course management is about playing smarter, not just swinging better. Amateurs consistently cost themselves strokes by choosing the wrong club, aiming at impossible targets, and compounding one mistake with another.

How to Fix Your On-Course Strategy:

• Forget the Flag, Love the Green: The pin is often tucked in a difficult spot - behind a bunker or near the edge of the green. This is a "sucker pin." Instead of aiming for the flag, aim for the fentre or fattest part of the green. This gives you the largest margin for error. A 25-foot putt from the middle of the green is almost always better than a tough chip from a bunker.
• Take Your Medicine: You hit a bad drive and you're in the trees. The amateur golfer immediately looks for the miraculous one-in-a-million shot through a tiny gap to the green. The smart golfer sees the situation for what it is. They take out a wedge and punch the ball sideways back into the fairway. This turns a potential 8 into a certain 5 or 6. Don't follow one mistake with a heroic - and usually foolish - decision.
• Know Your Actual Distances: Most amateurs overestimate how far they hit each club. Go to a driving range with distance markers and find out your true carry distance (how far the ball flies in the air) for each iron, not just the one perfect shot you hit. When you're on the course, choose the club that will carry the trouble, not just roll up to it.

Final Thoughts

Breaking bad habits and lowering your scores comes down to focusing on the right things. By correcting these common faults in your setup, swing mechanics, and on-course decisions, you will build a much more reliable and enjoyable golf game without needing to chase a "perfect" looking swing.

For those moments on the course when you're facing a tough decision and aren't sure of the right play - like navigating trouble or choosing a strategy on a new hole - we built Caddie AI. It acts as your personal on-demand coach, giving you shot strategy and course management advice right when you need it. You can even take a picture of a difficult lie, and we’ll give you a simple recommendation on how to play it, helping you avoid those big mistakes that lead to blow-up holes.