Golf Lessons for Kids – Best Practice Tips

In today’s “Golf Lessons for Kids” guide I’m excited to share several tips and drills that junior golfers should focus on if they want to excel at a high level in golf at an early age. If playing college golf is a dream of yours, then realize you have a huge advantage by being young and getting into the sport of golf as a kid.

If I could go back in time and start playing golf as a kid again, there are many things I would do to set myself up for playing on the high school golf team, D1 college golf, and eventually make it to the PGA Tour.

Unfortunately, I didn’t start playing the sport until age 16. While I did make a lot of progress reaching scratch golf by age 18, I was too late for trying to be elite and go to a high level college program and then the professional tour.

If you’re a parent of a junior golfer searching Google today for golf lessons for kids or if you’re a young golfer seeking tips to help you practice smarter and get better at the sport, then you’re in the right spot.

Each of these golf tips are important to master as a junior golfer. The fundamentals and building blocks will create a base that you can grow from as you get older, stronger, and smarter about how to play this game we call golf.

Ready?

5 Best Golf Lessons for Kids

The Golf Pre-Shot Routine

One of the first things kids should learn about golf is going through a proper pre-shot routine. Everything you do before you hit the ball can impact how well you hit the ball.

Start with your alignment. Focus on getting your feet and body set up properly to your target, which a target can be the fairway for tee shots, the middle of the green for approach shots, and the hole for putts and chips.

Once you’re properly aligned with your target, all you have to do is make the swing, the chip, or the putt and see the ball go straight at your target. If the ball doesn’t go straight at the target, then now you know you have a mechanic problem in your swing.

Practice Resource: 36 Golf Practice Routines to Follow Step by Step

Take Golf Swing Lessons from an Instructor

Your pre-shot routine is something you can master and work on by yourself. It’s everything you need to do before you hit the golf ball.

But once you step up and hit the golf ball, the result is going to depend on how good your fundamental skills (take this assessment test) are including your golf swing sequence.

How well do you take the club back during the backswing?
What does your club position look like at the top of your backswing?
How well do you shift your weight on the downswing?
Are your swing path and club face angles working in sync properly to hit the ball straight?
Is your follow through being executed properly?

These are all things you can’t really see by yourself. Instead, you should hire a swing coach who can stand off to the side and watch you swing, giving you feedback on what you are doing right and wrong.

A swing coach is a very important resource for kids trying to learn the golf swing to have.

Building a strong fundamental golf swing at a young age will make the game much easier to excel at as you get older. You can start learning more advanced techniques much quicker and put more focus into your short game.

Putting Will Separate You from Other Kid’s Your Age

Do you want to be the best golfer in your age group and beat all the other junior golfers you play against in mini-tours and statewide junior golf tournaments?

If so, then spend more time practicing your putting and chipping than any other kid golfer spends. To be better than everyone else, you need to adopt the mindset of outworking them. Practice more than them!

Get very good at making putts from 3 feet away from the hole.

Lay down your putter so that one end is touching the cup on the green and the other end is marking 3 feet away from the hole. Place a tee in the ground to mark this distance and start hitting putts from it, trying to make 100 putts per day from 3 feet.

Putting Resource: Our Best Putting Drills & Training System

Once you can make more than 90 out of 100 putts from 3 feet, move back 1 foot. You can use your shoe as a measuring device, taking one step further away and marking it with a tee. Now you are 4 feet from the hole and can repeat this practice strategy of making 100 putts every day.

I’m sure you have heard of LeBron James in basketball as well as Tiger Woods in Golf. These professionals spend time working on their game from close range. LeBron James shoots over 100 jump shots every day, likely shooting more like 500-1,000 shots.

Just like in golf, Tiger Woods practices over 100 putts per day. You should too!

Side Note: You can also see if your local PGA Instructor offers putting golf lessons for kids in addition to swing lessons. Seek out instructors who have great personality and work well with kids!

Chipping Will Be Your Best Friend on the Golf Course

When you don’t make it onto the green with your irons and woods, you’re going to have to hit a chip shot. Most kids don’t spend a lot of practice time working on chipping.

But it’s one of the most important parts of your golf game and why we are focusing on it as one of the major golf lessons for kids.

A great golf drill to practice your chipping is setting up tees around the hole in a circle.

Measure each tee “one club’s distance” from the hole. In other words, you need to lay down your putter or chipping club again so that one end is touching the cup and then mark where the other end lays on the green with a tee.

Repeat this multiple times until you’ve made a circle ring that goes around the hole.

Once you’ve got your circle set up, try to chip golf balls inside the circle from different locations around the green.

If you don’t hit your chip shots hard enough, it won’t quite make it inside of this circle. If you hit chip shots too hard, the ball may roll right through the circle and out the other side which isn’t good.

Practice a lot until you develop feel and skill at chipping to within the circle, which is also within a few feet of the hole. This will leave you a very short putt that should be easy to make!

Remember this kids, when you get to the green you either get 2 putts or you get 1 chip and 1 putt but you don’t get both. If you’re chipping, you should be able to get the ball close to the hole so that it only takes you 1 putt to finish the hole.

For fun, practice your chipping where you try to make the chip shots into the hole. Don’t leave practice until you make at least one chip shot into the hole on the practice green.

Be Aware of Everything Before You Hit Your Golf Shot

Our final important golf lesson for kids to focus on is being aware of different things on the golf course that will impact your ability to hit the ball to your target.

Before hitting the ball, you should analyze the following:

What is my target I want to aim at?
How far away is my target from me?
What will impact my golf shot? How’s my lie?
Is my ball sitting flat on the ground or on a slope that will impact my swing?
Is the wind strong, weak, or calm?
Are there bunkers I should aim away from at the green?
Is there water I need to be aware of?
Is the rough too thick to hit my normal club? Should I hit a different club to pop it out of the rough?
Is there danger if I hit the ball longer than I meant to? Should I take less club to be safe?
Is there danger if I hit the ball shorter than I meant to? Should I take extra club to be safe?

Overall, these are just some of the basic lessons a junior golfer can start learning to help them get ahead of the curve and beat their competition in their age group.

Work with a swing instructor to develop a good golf swing.
Practice your putting from close range so you never have worries about missing short putts.
Outwork your competition by practicing golf more hours each week than they are.
Create a pre-shot routine that gets you ready mentally for the golf shot
Analyze everything before hitting the ball so you have full awareness of all the things that could impact the ball going straight at your target

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