Junior and female swings vs amateur men

[biker74]

Not sure if this is the spot for this. Maybe have moved to junior golf section  😎. Anyways, for a few seasons I would volunteer my time helping organize junior golf programs. And even helped with new female golf programs for no particular age limits. Introducing them to this great game and getting clubs/ range time and on course training donated thru local businesses. Wasn’t involved in any teaching(s). More into setting up the different venues.

 

in my observations of watching the video analysis the pros would use with these students. The vast majority of these new golfers had positions in their swings that were textbook. The bent right arm - open hips at impact, straight left arm backswing. Etc ..etc. their contact maybe wasn’t great. But they were learning the basics. Amazing really 

 

now when it comes to the adult men learning. Why is it our motions look so jacked up? Yet so many of the females and juniors leaning this game look so good?  Never understood this. You would think a beginning male who is also new to the game wouldn’t be so uncoordinated looking. Than they (we) are just cursed with such an uncoordinated motion for their entire golf lives. Is it because adult men are too strong and over power a golf ball? Never knowing that brute strength isn’t needed in this activity? Any thoughts 

Edited July 14 by biker74

[MonteScheinblum]

Kids being taught correctly prioritize better motor patterns and ball striking comes as a result. 

 

Adults are taught impact and ball flight is all that matters and they complain every different idea feels weird.

 

 

[biker74]

1 hour ago, MonteScheinblum said:

Kids being taught correctly prioritize better motor patterns and ball striking comes as a result. 

 

Adults are taught impact and ball flight is all that matters and they complain every different idea feels weird.

 

 

That is a good excuse to use next time I play and I shoot like crap . Hahah. No , good reply Monte. Agree. Maybe the teachers need to ingrain same training they give juniors and females. 

[SNIPERBBB]

Kids generally haven't had decades of playing other sports to develop bad habits and they are more open to teaching. 

[Hawkeye77]

My wife has a pretty darn good golf swing but grew up playing a little golf, a lot of tennis.  I knew my oldest daughter would have a good golf swing when I looking at one of the photos I had of her hitting a ball in a tee ball game ---- a little over thirty years ago and, "Damn, I don't look like that" - haha.  Great hand/eye coordination and she could always smack a stationary or moving ball.

 

Some do, some don't.  

 

My observation is newer women players aren't inherently better at hitting a golf ball than men or have stylistically better looking swings just as a matter of Mother Nature, but sure, they don't go at it as hard. Plenty of women look terrible hitting a golf ball, a tennis ball, a softball, just like guys. Now, the more they haven't been coached, lol, as is often the case by a husband who thinks he knows something about the golf swing .......

 

I watched a new woman player with some obvious ability athletically at a clinic of Monte's a few weeks ago who was pretty raw - just a little tweak to setup and maybe something else I can't remember and she was hitting some darn nice golf shots.  I'd expect she'll play to a good standard and really enjoy her golf.  But I could say the same for a couple of the guys as well - others of us a little more "resistant", lol.  

 

Maybe women are more open to instruction, maybe newer women players don't bring as much mental baggage as many guys who already think they know something(s), I don't know.  I'd suggest the guys are way more likely to go fiddling around with their swings no matter what they are learning and I very, very rarely see as many women out on the range trying to change and chasing tips, so to speak (leaving better women players out of that observation, and we don't have many of those around here). So maybe long term the women stick with what they've learned.  I'd be interested in what the instructors have seen with that.

Edited July 14 by Hawkeye77

[sundaypins]

Kids will do just about anything asked of them, and will go until sundown trying to accomplish, so being careful with what's being asked is key.   Men and women are easy for the most part, men like to break things, women not so much. 

[betarhoalphadelta]

I'm not sure who it is (I think either Nels or Erky), but there is a poster here who commonly makes the statement that one of the biggest differences is that adult men have the physical strength to get away with things that juniors and women do not... And I think that many (incl. Monte) have made the statement that this is one of the problems that many men face when they start to approach "senior" years as they lose the strength they needed to get away with bad moves previously. 

 

Thus, juniors and women are forced to organize their swing in a more efficient manner because they don't have the strength to "save" a bad swing. 

 

To me it's quite a plausible argument. I can tell just looking at my swing on video that due to my issues with takeaway/backswing, I have to fight the club steepening in transition. It *does* steepen, but I have the strength to reroute it back on plane and still come in and hit the ball from the inside. I'm trying to fix it, partly because all that compensation just makes me inconsistent, but also the fact that at age 46 I'm starting to at least approach the age range where my body can no longer get away with it. 

[Ri_Redneck]

It is inherently male to try to "muscle" your way through a motion. I have been helping a work associate from India over the last year (high level Cricket player) and he has made tremendous progress with his swing. He still has old habits to break though.

 

The problem I have with my ladies (wife and daughter) is they want to guide the club through the zone and they are cheating themselves of TONS of potential. They are both athletic (wife played competitive tennis at 4.0 and daughter was nationally ranked sprinter) and strong and it breaks my heart to see them struggle with distance. I have offered to pay for lessons for both and they refuse to go. Very frustrating.

 

BT

[PedronNiall]

Most players are trying what they're taught when an instructor is right there working with them--except for Jerome--but it's a different story once one of the groups are on their own. Men have the strength to make up for bad throughout the entire backswing. They can force the club sort of into the right spot by impact, and once they learn that by intent or accident many continue down that road. Women and most juniors really don't really have the muscle to compensate in the same way, so their bad looks a bit differently while they're still trying to sort it all out. Still do come across similar saving moves done at a slower tempo on occasion, but it's not common. 

 

Besides possibly stumbling onto the path of power, men are also in general slightly less agreeable than women, and the most disagreeable men tend to be farther out on the curve than similar women, so you would statistically expect someone who thinks they've found the secret on their own, strength or otherwise, to be a man. Think about the threads on here that are full of talking against hi-res video, 3D capture, physics, calculus, detailed simulations, tens of thousands of rounds of data, tens of thousands of hours of instruction experience, and so on. How many of those instances have been carried out by the ladies? That disagreeable nature is also amped up by sunk cost fallacy and its friends that have men weighing the cost of giving up where they know their game is now--arrived at by their secret knowledge the instructor was too dumb to know, of course 😏--to maybe in an unknown amount of time get to a yet to be experienced better level of play. 

 

We also tend to encourage men in most instances to be assertive and to explore on their own in any arena, and by nature males may be more likely to work alone on something like the golf swing with no one but themselves to keep them on track. A junior male isn't going to have much choice but to mostly work on what he learned in lessons, where as an adult gets to mix that somewhat disagreeable nature/self assurance and strength into a recipe for a non-textbook swing. Junior girls and women are more likely to practice with someone else or in a group, most people around them probably aren't encouraging anything unorthodox, and unlike boys and especially unlike adult men, they probably aren't going to feel a ton of motivation to just try random things to begin with so long as they see the original source of instruction as trustworthy, so strength aside, they aren't going to trip or trial into something off that works just enough to have them thinking they figured out... the secret 😏

 

All of those fun things and probably some more go into why adult men are more often the examples of getting away with ugly in the golf swing. 

 

Thank you for coming to Tedx.

[Jayjay_theweim_guy]

On 7/13/2025 at 11:36 PM, MonteScheinblum said:

Kids being taught correctly prioritize better motor patterns and ball striking comes as a result. 

 

Adults are taught impact and ball flight is all that matters and they complain every different idea feels weird.

 

 

We so need a nodding LeBron reaction emoji...

 

I'm also in Pedro's post, and I don't like it.  

 

Edited July 26 by Jayjay_theweim_guy