Stop practicing!
Of course, I don’t mean stop practicing altogether. I mean, stop practicing in a certain way.
Maybe you’re turning up at the driving range and you’re aimlessly hammering golf balls and you think to yourself: “this is pretty good.”
The weekend rolls around and you take it to the course, and all of a sudden, you cannot replicate the great shots from the range in competitive play.
Here’s why: you were practicing without a specific target. Every single shot on the golf course, you’re going to need a specific target to send the ball where you want it to go.
So what can you do on the range instead?
Pick a specific target on the end of the range, visualise the shot, hit the shot, send it towards the target. Do this with your Driver, woods and irons. With your wedge play, keep it varied.
Make your practice fun and send it to the different targets.
When it comes to putting the little white ball in the hole…Practice HOLING putts.
What I mean by that is you want your brain to be trained to watch the ball go in the hole. You want to get used to and expect the ball to go in the hole.
The way to do that is to practice short putts. The professionals at the top level only hole 50% of eight-foot putts so why would we think we could do any better than that?
I’m talking about practicing three-foot putts. Roll one in. Roll the next one in and so on.
When it comes to practicing your longer putting (your speed and your lag putting) putt to a tee. Stick a tee in the ground and roll it to that, because of course statistically, you’re not going to roll lots of those long putts in and you’re going to get “used to missing” if you use a hole.
In summary, with your long game; get used to sending it towards a target in practice. With the wedges practice a wide variety of shots. With your putting, get used to watching the ball go in the hole, and when you’re further away practice, rolling it towards a tee.
NB: The above doesn’t apply when you’re practicing a “new move” or grooving something in from a lesson. This is the way to practice when you’re not making swing changes.
I hope this helps my friends!
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