The hidden dangers of golf instruction on social media: ‘An epidemic’

Jonathan Yarwood has noticed a troubling pattern.

Yarwood is a GOLF Top 100 Teacher at Alpine Country Club in northern New Jersey, and he’s got an impressive resume. He’s taught multiple major winners, USGA champions and high-level amateurs throughout his decorated career. These days, however, most of his time is spent inside a lesson studio with recreational golfers. And lately, a curious theme has emerged.

“A new phenomenon,” Yarwood says. “About 90 percent of amateur players now come in saying, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I’ve consumed so much golf content, I’m completely confused.’

“It’s an epidemic.”

In some ways this should come as no surprise. Social-media scrolling has become a default pastime, perhaps the default pastime. Increasingly, our spare moments are instinctively filled by reaching for our phones and letting the algorithm take the wheel as we mindlessly consume content tailored specifically to our interests.

For me, and perhaps for you, that means golf. Specifically, swing tips and tricks.

But lately I can’t escape the feeling that corner of the internet feels massively oversaturated. Any golf-swing sicko can open their go-to app and see what I mean.

Fix your backswing in 40 seconds
The secret to a square clubface every time
The best swing tip you’ll ever hear

Scroll a little longer and you might even see two consecutive videos offering conflicting advice (in fairness, written instruction content is at times guilty of the same thing), each with hundreds of thousands of views.

It’s easy to understand the appeal of this sort of content. The videos are short and digestible. They’re simple, polished and promise quick results. Best of all, the “expert” tips are free. And, yes, there is a chance they’ll help you. If they don’t leave you lost in the wilderness.

Golf is a game that can never be perfected, but that hasn’t stopped generations of players from chasing improvement. Nor should it! There’s nothing quite like flushing an iron, posting a personal best or carding a birdie. The game is endlessly addictive, and it has a way of occupying the mind like nothing else.

So when a social-media video promises to help in that pursuit, it acts as catnip for the golfing soul. But when every video is offering a fix, a more important question emerges: How do you know if scrolling is helping your game . . . or hurting it?

A new era of golf instruction

Like so much else in the modern era, golf instruction has evolved alongside technology.

There used to be limited options when it came to finding quality golf tips. You could go to a PGA pro at a local club who, if you were lucky, had a proven track record of turning out successful students. Or you could rely on the written word, burying your nose in golf-instruction classics like Ben Hogan’s “Five Lessons” or Harvey Penick’s “Little Red Book” or picking up the latest issue of GOLF Magazine.

But as society has become increasingly tethered to phones and screens, you’re more likely finding your instruction from a well-packaged tip on social media.

Today, if you want a slice fix you can find hundreds of options in seconds, each promising to straighten you out. Same goes for a stubborn hook, the chipping yips or a lack of power. Whatever ails your game is only a quick Google search — or a few scrolls — away from a promised cure.

On the surface, this shift seems like an overwhelming positive. Golf instruction has long been expensive, and the internet has significantly lowered that barrier to entry. But accessibility doesn’t necessarily equate to quality.

“I actually think golfers are more educated now,” says Tony Ruggiero, a GOLF Top 100 Teacher who splits time between Alabama and Florida. “They understand terminology better and watch more instruction than ever. But they’re not any better at understanding what’s actually causing their swing issues. They chase effects instead of causes, and then they go down rabbit holes.”

There are different incentives at work here. Social media rewards simple explanations and promises quick results — but content creators don’t have much pressure to actually deliver results to any one individual. Effective coaching requires proper diagnosis and context, and it focuses on the important part: results. When those elements are missing, even well-meaning advice can send golfers searching for answers in all the wrong places.

More harm than good?

Yarwood, who heads south to teach during the winter, says his concerns about swing-thought saturation are validated every time a perplexed player walks through his door. “You get coaches who can theorize and look great online,” he says. “But like social media in general, you’re only seeing the highlight reel. They have very little history, very little application.”

Ruggiero has noticed a similar pattern during his days on the lesson tee at Montgomery Country Club in Alabama and Old Palm Golf Club in South Florida.

“It’s changed a lot,” Ruggiero said. “If you’d asked me that three, four, five years ago, I’d have said, ‘Yeah, I get it sometimes.’ But now, it’s almost every lesson.”

Therein lies one of the biggest problems with social-media golf instruction: the lack of personalization. There’s no guarantee that the tip being presented is the one you actually need.

Take the over-the-top swing, for example. It’s one of the most common ailments among recreational golfers — and, not coincidentally, one of the most popular “fixes” offered by social-media coaches. But here’s the catch: not every over-the-top move is caused by the same underlying fault.

For example, oftentimes the cause of an over-the-top swing is an open clubface caused by a bad grip. But if that’s the case and you start making changes to swing more inside-out, you’ll hit it even worse. What you really should be doing is fixing your grip and clubface, which in turn will naturally improve your club path and allow you to swing more from the inside.

Most golfers don’t realize that — or are at least willing to roll the dice with whatever video they see next promising to cure the issue they’re dealing with. Unfortunately, often the fix being prescribed has little to do with the fault.

“If you’re not diagnosing the cause, you can make things worse,” Ruggiero said. “There are many different causes of something like an over-the-top swing. The information might be correct, but it’s not always helpful for your problem.”

It’s a vicious cycle. One new feel makes things worse, so the golfer searches for another fix. That fix might help temporarily, but it could also lead to more issues, so they go searching for another fix. Before long, the brain is overloaded with information, and the swing is in a pretzel.

“It’s like going into a Walgreens,” Ruggiero said. “Everything in there can help you — if it’s really treating what’s wrong with you. But if you take one thing from every aisle, you’ll end up in the hospital. That’s what golfers are doing. They’re taking a little bit of everything, even though most of it has nothing to do with their actual problem.”

Don’t mistake popularity for pedigree

One of the more subtle dangers of online golf instruction is that visibility is often mistaken for expertise. Put differently, social media is a different skill set than golf coaching. Algorithms reward engagement, but they don’t always (or ever?) verify that the information comes from a trusted source. As a result, some of the most popular swing tips online come from instructors with little history of producing measurable results with real students.

“Watching these videos can be harmful because a lot of people self-appoint themselves as experts when they’re actually not,” Yarwood says. “If you’re going to look online, you should be looking for people with real history — people who can actually show results, not staged content, not bravado.”

In traditional coaching environments, credibility is built over time. A coach’s reputation is tied to the players they’ve developed, those players’ success and the improvements they sustain over time. Online that accountability largely disappears. A swing tip can rack up millions of views without the coach having ever developed any players of note or even lowered handicaps.

That disconnect can be frustrating for teaching pros, and especially dangerous for casual recreational golfers. An instructor who “looks the part” and speaks with authority can be mistaken for an expert, even if their real-world teaching résumé is thin.

That doesn’t mean all online instruction should be dismissed. Far from it, in fact. Many of the most accomplished coaches in the world — those who teach major champions and elite amateurs — regularly share thoughtful, high-quality content digitally. Heck, you can even find excellent instruction directly from major champions, such as Bryson DeChambeau and Padraig Harrington.

But it’s important for consumers to go through a vetting process. Before adopting a swing tip, golfers should ask a few simple questions: Does this coach have a history of developing players? Have their students succeeded in competitive golf? Do they explain who a tip is for, rather than claiming it’s a fix-all for everyone? Answers to those questions matter far more than follower counts or views.

“If you’re looking for help, you should ask: ‘Who is this person? What’s their track record?,’” Ruggiero says. “It’s no different than medical advice. You can get it online from someone who’s not a doctor, but you don’t really know.”

In the end, the platform isn’t the problem. The problem is confusing reach with results — and mistaking popularity for pedigree.

The right way to get better online

Social media itself isn’t the problem. Nor is the quest to learn via online content.

For golfers, social platforms have lowered the barrier to entry, providing access to some of the brightest minds in the sport. For instructors, these platforms offer a way to share ideas, demonstrate expertise and reach players who might never set foot on their lesson tee. Much of that content is thoughtful, credible and genuinely helpful.

The key, however, is to use these tools responsibly. That means resisting the urge to scroll thoughtlessly from tip to tip, absorbing every new idea as if it’s equally correct and equally applicable to the one before it. Improvement doesn’t come from collecting swing thoughts. It comes from understanding what advice applies to your game.

“Instruction shouldn’t be entertainment,” Yarwood says. “Watch the PGA Tour if you want entertainment. Instruction isn’t like Spotify. Otherwise, you end up with too many swing thoughts, like putting your music library on shuffle.”

In a game where progress is built on commitment, the smartest golfers aren’t the ones chasing every new fix. They’re the ones who know which voices to trust — and when to stop scrolling and start practicing.