Mark Twain once said that “golf is a good walk spoiled”, and this sentiment has entered into common usage in the golf world, including the excellent golf book A Good Walk Spoiled by acclaimed golf writer John Feinstein. Twain’s quote refers to the fact that golf should be a relaxing affair. You’re out in nature, walking (you aren’t puttering around in a cart are you?) around a beautiful expanse of land, and yet the experience is mostly ruined by the atrocities of the average player’s golf game. How enjoyable can that walk be when you’ve just made a 12 on the last hole, lost a $5 ball in the water, and spent 15 minutes looking for another one in a thicket (which may or may not have been home to a golf ball eating chipmunk)?

While golf may prove to spoil most good walks on the majority of occasions, you can take steps to improve your game to the point that those walks aren’t quite as hair-pullingly, club-tossingly, curse-shoutingly aggravating. With the use of golf swing training aids, you can force your swing to develop new and more positive habits.

The biggest issue holding most players back is that they simply aren’t practicing properly. You can hit golf balls from sun up till sun down on the range, but if you’re not actively working to correct the flaws in your swing, that practice time is all for naught. In fact the more practice time you spend repeating the same bad habits will make it all the more difficult to break out of them.

Golf swing training aids are there to help, forcing you to break out of those nasty swing habits that could be all but impossible to do on your own. These devices often restrict you in multiple ways, forcing your swing plane and bodily movements to follow a designed path, with the goal of that motion eventually becoming ingrained and first nature to you. Other aids will help you with seemingly simpler problems, but ones that also plague the common golfer, such as alignment issues and head movement.

Of course, like routine practice itself, all the golf swing training aids in the world won’t do you much good if you’re not using the ones which will be of the most benefit to you. To this end you need an analysis of your swing done by a golf teaching pro, or by a trusted friend or family member who has some knowledge of the golf swing. You could also record yourself taking shots with a camera and try to spot the problems yourself.

Once you’ve identified your key areas of weakness, you’ll be free to pick up the golf swing training aids which will do the most good. Golf may always spoil a good walk, but with the proper swing training, it should do so far less often.