This senior golfer went from shooting in the mid-80s to the mid-70s. Here’s how

Golf Instructor helps student with swing tip

After 18 months, this senior golfer shaved an impressive 10 strokes off his game.

Images via YouTube/TheDewsweepers

Welcome to Shaving Strokes, a GOLF.com series in which we’re sharing improvements, learnings and takeaways from amateur golfers just like you — including some of the speed bumps and challenges they faced along the way.

Shaving strokes off your golf game is a difficult thing to do no matter what your age is, but when you’re trying to make major gains as a senior golfer, it can be an even taller task.

Naturally, as we age, our bodies can’t perform like they used to. So many golfers lose the physical capabilities to rotate properly, swing hard, or simply just find the energy to routinely play a round of golf like they did when they were younger.

But that doesn’t mean every senior golfer’s just going to sit around and accept that they’re the player they currently are.

That’s what happened with a 53-year-old golfer named Fred, who decided to work with GOLF Top 100 Teacher Tony Ruggiero to improve his scores from mid-80s to mid-70s.

I recently caught up with Ruggiero to check in on Fred’s progress, and picked his brain on the steps he took to get this senior golfer to accomplish his goal. Check out how he did it below.

How this senior golfer shaved 10 strokes off his game
“When Fred first came to see me, he was like many golfers coming to a lesson. He was a golf fanatic who had struggled shooting in the low-to-mid 80s for years, and wanted to try and break 80 for the first time,” Ruggiero said.

With golf instruction so readily-available thanks to social media content, Fred dived into the depths of the Internet to try and fix his swing. Unfortunately, without a personalized plan, he continued to fall into the same bad habits, and became frustrated that he hadn’t been able to fix things.

That’s when he reached out to Ruggiero, asking him for his help.

“After a year-in-a-half together, Fred now regularly shoots in the mid-70s and has completely changed his whole game,” Ruggiero tells me. “We used a more unconventional approach, but it’s proven to work for him.”

So what was Fred’s recipe towards better golf? Ruggiero explains below.

Fix the cause, not the symptoms
Fred couldn’t stand the way his backswing looked, as he lifted his arms and bowed his wrists excessively at the top. He had tried to fix this for years without success — so we decided to attack the root cause of the problem.

First, we identified why his arms lifted and why the wrist bowed so much, since fixing the cause is key for real development. Too many students chase symptoms and try to fix things cosmetically with little results.