Harrington's Golf Swing Don'ts: What You Should Unlearn

There's something deeply refreshing about a major champion telling you to forget everything you've been told. Padraig Harrington, the Irishman who claimed three major titles and has become one of the game's most thoughtful instructors, recently posted what he calls "the mega lesson of don'ts" to his YouTube channel—and it's precisely the kind of unlearning most of us desperately need.

"I'm normally a very positive person," Harrington admits at the outset, acknowledging the unusual territory he's about to explore. But sometimes the most positive thing a teacher can do is clear away the debris of bad advice that's accumulated over years of well-meaning tips.

Don't Keep Your Head Down

Let's start with the granddaddy of all golf clichés. How many times has someone standing behind you on the range offered this gem? Harrington wants you to hear something different: your head must move.

"By all means, keep an eye on the ball," he explains, "but your head is nice and relaxed. It doesn't tuck down onto your chest." For most golfers, the head will rotate slightly in the backswing, and certainly in the follow-through, it will come up to a high position. That rigid, locked-down posture you've been forcing? It's fighting your body's natural motion.

Don't Keep Your Feet Still

Here's another sacred cow heading for the slaughter. Harrington is emphatic that locked, planted feet are the enemy of good golf.

"You can create no speed, no power; you'll go offline," he says of the static-feet approach. Instead, he advocates for movement—little stepping motions that keep your feet active throughout the swing. It's why so many drills involve stepping into the shot. The ground is something you work with, not something you grip with white-knuckled determination.

Don't Stay Down Through the Shot

Harrington calls this one "nearly sacrilege," and he's right—we've all been told to stay down through impact. But watch any tour player in slow motion, and you'll see something different: they pop up.

"When you hit the golf ball, you must pop up to hit the golf ball," Harrington explains. The chest may stay somewhat down, but everything else is accelerating upward. Those legs should be jumping up through impact. You're keeping an eye on the ball, yes, but you're also using the ground to generate power—and that means moving up, not staying compressed into the turf.

Don't Swing Slowly

Here's a statistic that should make every amateur golfer pause: professional golfers swing approximately three times quicker than amateurs in the backswing. Three times. That "low and slow" mantra you've been following? It might be sabotaging your natural rhythm.

Harrington isn't advocating for reckless speed, but rather for finding your natural pace—and for most people, that's considerably faster than what they've been told is proper. "Some people will be quick, some people will be relatively slow," he notes, but whatever your rhythm is, there should be "nice speed to it."

Don't Swing Easy All the Time

There's a time and place for the smooth, controlled swing. But Harrington insists you must practice swinging as fast as you possibly can—at least some of the time. The logic is sound: if you never explore your upper limits, how can you find a comfortable 90 percent?

"There'll be some open drives where you should go flat-out," he says. The rest of the time, you're working within yourself. But that "within yourself" only has meaning if you've discovered where the boundaries actually are.

Don't Cast the Club

Finally, Harrington addresses the hands—specifically, the need to release the club fully. This isn't about manipulation or flipping; it's about allowing your hands to do what they naturally want to do through impact.

The Takeaway

What makes Harrington's lesson so valuable isn't just the specific advice—it's the permission it grants. Golf instruction has become so laden with do's and don'ts that we've forgotten the swing is, at its core, an athletic motion. Harrington is giving you license to move like an athlete again: let your head release, let your feet dance, let your body jump, let your hands fire. Stop holding back, stop staying down, stop moving in slow motion. The best golf of your life might be hiding behind the very advice you've been following most religiously.