The Wost 10 Golf Myths Still Hurting Your Game

Golf myths every player needs to stop believing! Mark Crossfield exposes 10 of the most damaging golf swing myths ruining golfers’ scores and explains what you should do instead.

Are you still falling for these golf swing myths that are quietly destroying your game? In this video, PGA professional Mark Crossfield breaks down 10 common golf myths that golfers still believe — and explains why they’re keeping you from improving. From “keep your head down” to “putting is the secret to lower scores,” these outdated ideas are holding golfers back more than they help.
You’ll learn:

✅ Why “good players only use blades” is a marketing myth
✅ Why “keep your head down” kills your golf swing power and strike
✅ Why you don’t swing too fast (and how slow tempo hurts you)
✅ The truth about “distance doesn’t matter” and what data really shows
✅ Why a “new driver” won’t fix your slice — and what actually will
✅ Why putting alone isn’t the secret to lower scores

If you’ve ever been told one of these classic golf tips, this video will help you separate fact from fiction and finally play better golf.
Comment below which golf myths you still believe — or which ones you’ve learned the hard way aren’t true!
Watch next: HOW TO HIT FROM THE INSIDE EVERYTIME https://youtu.be/Q6_jjZUPfJ4

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Welcome to the Mark Crossfield Golf channel, your ultimate destination for all things golf! Whether you’re a beginner just learning how to swing a golf club or a seasoned golfer aiming to refine your golf swing, this channel is here to help you master every aspect of your golf swing. With a blend of expert golf instruction, golf tips, practical golf lessons and honest equipment reviews, Mark Crossfield provides you with everything you need to play your best golf.

10 golf myths that golfers are still falling for. They’re still hurting their game by following these ideas. I want to know out of these 10, which ones have you learned are wrong? Which ones do you still believe are correct, and that they’re not myths at all? And also, what ones am I missing off this list? Remember to like and subscribe the video if you want more free golf content. Good players only really play bladed irons. This is not true. You go on tour ranges. I’ve been on tour ranges for years and you see a mixture of a few blades predominantly kind of cavitybacked irons going into real game improvements and we’re even seeing even bigger game improvement irons from kind of six, five, four, three irons if they hold those irons in their bag. The idea of going to blades is a romantic professional idea where we see better players back in the day using blades. But as knowledge has improved and the idea of performance is getting more and more built around actual performance rather than truth is in some dirt somewhere and you got to look a certain way. What we’re seeing is players move much more towards easier to hit golf clubs. Golf clubs that suit their patterns. Now if you’re a high handicapper and you like the more slender irons, that’s also something that can work subject to what you bring to the table. Just because your handicap isn’t low, that doesn’t mean you might bring certain amounts of quality of strike and speed to the table, meaning you might benefit from certain launches and feels off a golf club. Getting golf clubs that fit the player best is the answer. Just thinking that good players only use those better player irons is a total myth. one that’s pushed towards you a little bit in marketing from golf companies where they say, “Yeah, we need to tell them that those irons are for low handicappers, those ones are for mid, and those ones are for higher handicappers.” Definitely, it’s a simple way for them to get a message across that obviously sticks. It’s a myth. It’s not true. Play the irons that are best for you. And we see less and less blades in tour players bags now than ever before. Even to the state where the manufacturers aren’t even updating their bladed sets every year or two years anymore cuz they realize golfers just don’t need them. You don’t need a straight lead arm at the top of your back swing. Such a common belief that lead arm has to be straight. Now where you might see some golfers who are quite straight, you see plenty who are comfortably straight. Meaning if I just relax my arms down my by my body, the bend in my arm here is kind of about the bend that we see at the top of the back swing. What we do see from golfers who hyper extend that lead arm is often a lack of speed, a lack of control, very rigid kind of actions. Comfortably straight is a good rule of thumb. Nice and relaxed with this arm. Make sure you get some stretch, but make sure you’re getting plenty of body turn in there as well. Let’s get rid of the bolt bolt hyper extend. It’s not helping you. Remember, if I’m missing any myths or there’s ones you don’t agree with, hit the comments up. Let’s have a discussion. Push back. I want to be pushed back on these. I’d love to hear your comments. Never up, never in. Trying to get those putts always to and beyond the hole. The idea of not leaving putt short. It’s just such a crazy idea that I still see golfers thinking is the way you’re meant to putt. Think about it this way. If I hit 10 putts, I’ll do it here. Watch. They’re going to disperse. They’re not all going to finish on top of each other. They’re going to finish in a dispersed pattern. I want you to tell me where do you want the hole. Do you want it in position one, position two, or position three? Yeah. Position two. You’re going to want to center the hole over your dispersed pattern of putts to have more chance of then holeing the next putt. The idea of trying to move them all past the hole would give you that first position, meaning some of them are going to be further away, meaning you got more chances of free putting. Why would you want to play golf and give yourself more chances of free putting? We already putt far too many times on the golf course and have too many free putts. The AROS data clearly shows us that from all handicap brackets. Next time you’re out on the putting green, try hitting not to holes, but just hitting a test the ball out to three different distances and then see how tight you can make that dispersion around those three different distances. Trying to make sure you mix up the target on each one to keep you guessing of those distances a bit. Getting your dispersion pattern tight is what’s going to allow you to center that over the hole and get less putts on the course and lower those scores. You swung too fast. That’s why you hit the bad shot. The fast swing. It was just too fast. Few points here to think about. So, you don’t swing too fast. There’s I don’t know any amateur golfers who swing too fast. None of them hit the ball too far. In fact, you all hit the golf ball not far enough to be honest. So, you could all swing way faster. And with this idea, I get people think, well, look at Ernie Al, the famous golfer. Long and slow swing but hits the ball mile, effortless power. No, no. He is swinging very, very fast. It’s the only way he’s going to get the distance he is getting. It just doesn’t look like it is in his massive frame and with his tempo. But the club is moving super quick. Which moves us on to that idea of swing tempo. Oh, my tempo was too fast. Then, just so we’re clear, and I can show you this now, time and time again, amateur golfers take far too long to swing. They take far too long to complete their back swing. They take far too long to then complete their down swing. Their tempos are generally way way slower, take longer to swing than better players. Better players are pretty brisk with their tempo. Amateurs are really slow and deliberate. Loses club head speed, meaning they swing too slow. It makes controlling club path and face harder. Also, you don’t swing too fast. And I know it’s a great get out of jail when your friend’s at a bad shot and no one knows what to say and everyone’s feeling a bit awkward. Oh, sorry John. Sorry Jane. You bit quick on that one. Oh, damn. Was too fast, wasn’t it? Just a little quick. Yikes. But it’s not true. And it holds so many golfers back. It’s a complete myth. Keep your head down. Such a bad piece of advice. I see golfers paralyzed their swings with heads fixated on the ball. Got to watch the ball. Got to watch the ball. Got to watch the ball. Restricts turns, restricts power, restricts strike, makes duffing really easy. We don’t want duffing to be easy. Watch a good player’s head movement. This is the same for most tour players. You’ll see me move up and back. Look at the turn in my head as well. So, my nose now is pointing more kind of back here. And then as I move down into the ball here on my option, you can see I drop down try and get forwards. Look where my nose is now pointing. This my nose is turning my neck. My head is turning to then come up and forwards. My head does not stay down. Having a good array of movement in your neck and your shoulders is what actually allows us to move and turn and create better strikes. Trying to restrict that down. If anyone’s ever played golf with a sore neck, it’s really hard because you don’t have the range of movement. So, making sure your head is rotating a little bit as you rotate. So this way and this way and following the ball as well as having some drops and lifts is a great way to make sure your strikes powerful and strong and consistent more often. Head down. Let’s get that gone. You hit your seven iron 150 yards. Where does this come from? So many golfers when I ask how far you hit your seven iron, they say, “Oh, about 150 yards.” It’s like the go-to number for your 7. Think about it this way. So, I hit my 7 iron anything from 195 at a push down to about 160 yards with gaps in between. I hit my 7 iron a number of distances. The other thing that you really see clearly from amateur golfers is yes, they hit their seven iron, say 170 yards on a certain hole, but there is slope, there is bounce, it’s a particularly soft green or particularly a hard green. There’s no force carry. Do you carry your 7 150 yards or whatever number you say you hit your 7 iron? And that’s the main point here, being more accurate with how far you carry all of your irons carry with awareness of roll out as well as how far you hit them when you hit them hard, medium, and soft is going to be a much better way of lowering your scores rather than just thinking the answer to how far do you hit your seven iron is one number. You ask any good player, any tour player, how far they hit a certain club, they’ll probably ask other questions around it. Well, do you mean medium or flat out or soft or some of them might have even numbers between hard, medium, and soft? Cuz they’re being more precise. It will never stop surprising me how when I get amateurs in for lessons and I ask them how far they hit certain clubs, they often don’t hit the club that distance. Can they? Yes. Do they on average and and time and time again? No. which is why loads of golfers come up short, costing them shots, leaving them shortsided, hitting the front bunker or the front water hazard, and coming off the golf course frustrated and often not understanding why. Work out how far you actually hit your irons. It’s such an asset on the golf course. Golf dress codes are needed. Now, look, I do believe that certain ideas around what you might have on your feet are important. For instance, if you play in the UK where you slip a lot and you come and play on my public course, I need to make some precautions for insurance purposes to make sure you’re safe on my land on my golf course. So, I might then ask that you do wear spiked shoes, shoes with some kind of dimples or spikes in the bottom. So, there are times where dress rules absolutely make sense, but dress rules just for the idea of what is smart and what is not smart, in my opinion, are absolutely not needed. And people will say, “But standards, we’ve got to keep the standards up.” I don’t relate what I wear to my standards, how I present myself in life. They’re just not connected for me, and they shouldn’t be for more and more people. If you’re connecting standards purely to what people are wearing, then that is an easy way to trick standards, which we kind of see from politicians, don’t we? I hear your question, but what I would like to say is that it’s that group of people and it’s not us the super rich at all that cause any of the problem. Their standards obviously not always that great, but they’re dressed brilliantly. Like we see and are tricked as everyday people by this idea, yet we embrace it on a golf course. I’ve played at golf courses where there are no dress rules. The standards were fine and good. People were just having fun. Now, if the dress rules in golf disappeared tomorrow, does that mean I wouldn’t wear my clothes I wear for golf? No. I think I would keep wearing them because I wouldn’t want my civilian clothes, the ones I wear with my family, not connected to golf, to maybe cross with what I wear on the golf course, which might get dirty and I sweat in, and there’s a practical use. But having the choice is fine. The fact that golf standards are dictated by what we’re wearing on a golf course for me is a myth that too many of us buy into. I know this one’s going to produce some comments. Come on, let’s hear you push back. I’m wrong. I know. Let me know. Distance doesn’t matter when it comes to scoring cuz I play with Bob at the weekend and he’s way past me and he’s always in the trees and I beat him. You’ll be amazed how much we hear this. That doesn’t mean if Bob was longer he wouldn’t be a bit better. And it doesn’t mean that if you were longer, you wouldn’t be a bit better. It just means that you hit the ball shorter than Bob and you’re better than Bob. So, you’re just a better player than Bob, but it doesn’t mean that if you got longer, your scores wouldn’t come down. We see it time and time again in all the evidence from the PGA Tour where we see actual benefits in real shots for extra distance to even from the Aros data for everyday amateur golfers with billions of golf shots hit. We see the same patterns for distance where it just helps players. Not only do they hit the ball closer the closer they are to the hole. So the further you hit it down the hole, every handicap range of golfers has a better chance of hitting the ball then onto the green or closer to the hole if they’re closer to the hole. But we just see it in basic driving data as well where longer players tend to hold the lower handicappers. Now we understand that there’s going to be outliers and there are going to be people in the comments saying, “Well, I hit the ball this far and I play off this handicap.” Again, great. Really punching. you don’t hit the ball very far and you play off a super low handicap that I’m in that bracket, but that doesn’t mean if I get longer or if you get longer, I don’t play better. It means I’ve got more opportunity to play way better. If I can hit a nine iron into a green over a seven or an eight iron, I know over time, over a season, my scores will reduce. Distance is a huge factor when it comes to helping you score lower. A new driver will fix your slice. You’re looking at the new draw driver from whatever company, Stricksen, Cleveland, Tight List, Mazuno, Ping, whoever, and you’re thinking this is the answer to stopping those slice drives. Now, where a good custom fit and a well setup driver can help you and play some dividends if you have a poorly fit club already. What a draw driver or any new driver is not going to do is change your swing tendencies. It just won’t. If you hit from out to in and tend to have a face open to a path, the draw driver in the test might kind of calm it down and you’ll get sold by the idea. But guess what? We all regress to the mean. We all go back to what we want to feel, which is the face open to the path. So, in some ways, those draw drivers possibly could encourage you to do the fault even more. It’s a safety net that you use for a period of time and then it just disappears and you have to even override that safety net, resulting often in worse swings. Nothing will substitute you getting control of your movement, getting control of your club face, getting control of your club path. New drivers have their place. Certainly, if you have an old driver that’s not been fit in years and you’ve changed in age and speeds or whatever, but the answer doesn’t lie in a new driver. As much as you want it to, as much as you desire that bright new shiny thing, it’s not the answer to better golf. It is the answer for more fun for some golfers. So, buy and enjoy. But if you want to improve the shape shot you hit with your driver, you’ve got to improve you. Putting is the secret to lower scores. We definitely see the bigger issues in everyday golfers from T- shots, penalty shots, approach play shots. Do we see issues with putting? Yes. Does better putting lead to lower scores? Yes. On the PJ tour, do we see the best generalized putters of the best ball strikers that week win? Yeah, you kind of see that patterning a little bit. But as someone very wise once said, every shot counts. If people honestly believe that putting did hold the secret, and it was a secret, it wouldn’t last very long and the putting green would be full of people. The putting green isn’t full of people because what you learn very quickly is the gains in putting are really, really small. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t gain in putting big. You can if you’re rubbish at putting, which lots of golfers are. It’s a big place. You can make lots of gains, but will they outgain the other parts of your game? Probably not. Putting is absolutely important. Every shot is super important. Definitely practice your putting more, but if you’re going to dedicate all your time to putting, cuz it’s where the secret is, probably, unless you’ve perfected the other parts of the game, you’re doing yourself a disservice. It’s one of those romantic golf myths because people want that to be true. They want that more even playing field. They don’t want the people who push that narrative often don’t want the idea that being stronger, fitter than the next player, being able to hit the ball longer and straighter than the next player is actually the skill because they can’t obtain that skill and never wanted to. Take it as someone who doesn’t have that skill personally and spent a lot of time putting. Yeah, it helps you score and it helped me in a lot of ways, but it didn’t help me over the longest straighter hitters. Putting is important. It’s not the secret to lower scores. It’s part of a bigger picture of all the shots which are the secret to lower scores and the ones that cost you the most unfortunately is often your T-shots and your approach shots. So, which ones have I missed? Let me know in the comments. And which ones do you agree with and which ones do you disagree with? Let’s have a a chat down there. Push back. Let me know. I’m happy to be wrong on these and challenge. And I’m talking about distance a lot. And if you want to find out how far you should be hitting your driver, for instance, this video is going to give you all the ideas for that. And remember to subscribe if you’re not subscribed