Someone on your regular Saturday group has told you to keep your head down. Probably more than once. They meant well. They were also wrong.
The amateur ranks are full of tips passed from one well-meaning golfer to another. Some of them have been circulating so long that nobody questions them anymore. After years of teaching, I’ve noticed that the same five myths show up in almost every lesson I give. And every one of them is doing real damage to real golfers.
Let’s go through them.
Myth 5: Keep Your Head Down to Hit the Ball Solid
This is the most common piece of on-course advice in golf. It’s also one of the most misunderstood.
Keeping your head down puts your chin into your chest, which blocks your shoulder turn. Your body can’t rotate properly through the impact zone, and your posture suffers for it. What you actually want is to keep your head still, with your chin up enough that your shoulders can pass freely through the swing.
That’s a very different thing. Still versus down. One helps your rotation. The other kills it.
The next time a playing partner offers this tip, nod politely and make a note. It came from the right place. The advice didn’t.
Myth 4: You Need to Wear a Glove
Gloves are common. They are not required.
A lot of golfers reach for one out of habit because that’s how they learned the game. But your clubs already have grips on them. In normal conditions, those grips are designed to do the job without any help from a glove.
Rain and high humidity change the equation. In those conditions, a glove or a quality rain glove genuinely helps. But on a dry afternoon with decent grips on your clubs, wearing a glove is a personal preference. It has no bearing on whether you’ll hit the ball well.
Some of the best ball-strikers in history played without one. Fred Couples never wore a glove. The glove is a tool, not a requirement.
Myth 3: Custom Fit Clubs Are Only for Skilled Players
This one actually costs amateur golfers money, because they keep buying off-the-shelf equipment that doesn’t fit their swing.
If you’ve been playing for more than a year, custom fit clubs will help you. The two variables that matter most to beginners and mid-handicappers are shaft length and shaft flex. Getting those right gives you a fighting chance to make a consistent swing. Getting them wrong means you’re working against your own equipment on every shot.
Off-the-shelf clubs are built around a mythical average golfer. Most people don’t match that profile closely enough for it to matter. A fitting session is worth the time and cost well before you start shooting in the 80s. You don’t have to play well to benefit from equipment that suits you. You have to play enough to have a repeatable swing, which happens faster than most people think.
Myth 2: Your 3-Wood Is More Accurate Than Your Driver
Amateurs believe this because they experience it. The 3-wood goes in play, the driver doesn’t. What they’re missing is why.
Most recreational golfers unconsciously swing the driver harder and more erratically than they swing any other club. The length of the club, the expectation of distance, and years of watching Tour players bomb it all add up to a swing that’s faster and sloppier than their 3-wood swing. The problem is the approach, not the club.
If you can control your 3-wood, you can control your driver. The mechanics that produce a straight 3-wood shot are the same ones that produce a straight drive. Pay attention to your tempo with the driver. If your 3-wood swing feels smooth and your driver swing feels like you’re trying to win a long drive contest, you’ve found the issue.
A few good golf driver tips go a long way here. The fix is usually simpler than people expect once they realize the club isn’t the culprit.
Myth 1: All Putts Break Toward the Water
This one has enough truth in it to make it dangerous.
Water does influence green slope on some courses. Grain can too. But on well-maintained courses with real drainage design, the grain direction is the dominant factor in how a putt breaks, and grain doesn’t always point toward water. Applying the water rule to every putt you face is how you end up misreading greens all round long.
What actually determines break is the slope of the green, the grain direction, and the speed of the surface. Those three things need to be evaluated independently for each putt. A solid routine for reading greens is worth developing early, because this is where most amateur handicaps bleed strokes without anyone noticing.
Blanket rules feel useful because they reduce mental load. On the greens, they cost you putts.
Why These Myths Survive
None of the five are random. They all carry a kernel of logic, which is what makes them sticky. Head movement can hurt your ball-striking, which gets simplified to “keep your head down.” Water does affect some putts, which becomes “all putts break toward water.”
The problem is that a partial truth applied universally becomes a full-time bad habit. And in golf, bad habits are stubborn.
The good news is that these are fixable, usually faster than golfers expect once they know what they’re actually working on. If you heard any of these myths on a lesson tee, at a range, or from someone who genuinely loves the game and wanted to help, you’re not alone. Now you have the corrected version.
Let me know in the comments which one you’ve heard the most. If I missed one that’s been following you around, I’ll put together a Part 2.
Clint is PGA-certified and was a Head Teaching Professional at one of Toronto's busiest golf academies. He was also featured on Canada's National Golf TV program, "Score Golf Canada," twice. He graduated with a degree in Golf Management from the College of the Desert in California and studied under Callaway's co-founder, Tony Manzoni. He has a handicap index of 6.2 and spends the winters near Oaxaca, Mexico, where he plays twice a month at the Club de Golf Vista Hermosa. He's written over 100 articles at GolfSpan since 2021. You can connect with Clint at LinkedIn, FB, his website, or Clintcpga@gmail.com.
