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Practice

Back to List   Author: Doug Pike

Practice is really very simple to understand but all too often I see players just banging golf ball after golf ball at their local range with what appears to be a pass or fail mentality. What I mean is after each shot they simply say it "passed" relative to where it landed or it "failed". This is the main reason that I see players that do all of the right things (trips to the range, a few golf lessons and dozens of annual golf rounds) and still fail to show improvement. If the player is unhappy with their "grades" (meaning they hit a lot of bad shots) their immediate response is to turn to the most devastating self correction option in existence "mental overload with swing thoughts". At this moment they begin recalling every swing tip, article, and lesson they have ever heard and the complete mental and physical lockdown has settled in. This cycle repeats itself until by pure odds the player catches a hot streak on the range and says to himself "I got it figured out. All I have to do is think of Head down, right elbow tucked weight place over the toes a slight hesitation at the top, fire the hips, Rotate my torso, release the right hand over the left follow thru with my hands high over my shoulder." Sound repeatable in a 1.5 second swing???? Huh!!!!!

What happens next is the player goes out to play or comes back for more practice later and tries to repeat their thoughts and sure enough after a very short time failure ensues and the search for the right thoughts at the right time begins again. These desperate attempts for success are warranted but not conducive. Training with a qualified Golf Professional and a strong communicator is where the intense swing thoughts should live, not here!

Learning what to focus on and what to take from practice will have a more profound effect on your score than any of the other two major components Training and Playing. In fact most of us don't have the time to train and even if we did we wouldn't chose to do so anyway.

Your first step is practicing with a purpose and while your purpose may change on occasion the most elementary purpose will suffice. This focused practice will immediately help you improve your game and will keep you away from being "that guy" mentioned above. Now what to do?? Simple; you will want to put your emphasis on the accumulation of many shots and their trajectories good and bad so Pass or Fail just isn't enough information. The main goal is to identify your effortless or thoughtless shot pattern and store that information for application on the golf course(remember we aren't training at this point so swing change ideas will be at best a very temporary and unreliable path to take). Specifically, you want to mentally or even physically chart your golf shots to see the initial start line (direction that the ball took off from in its first 40 yards of flight) and then from that point how far did it curve right or left from there. This information is vital for your playing strategy and very valuable to you. Now you might be wondering then "what do I do if I am unsatisfied with my shots?" My suggestion is that you learn a little more about the effects of clubface rotation in your swing.

Swing changes are made while training and minor adjustments are made by experiencing the effects of more or less clubface rotation (Timing). Understanding clubface rotation enables you to slightly modify your pattern to what you would like it to be without having to make those major swing overhauls. Furthermore if you have been a student of mine in the past I think you will remember hearing me say that when you go to the range I want you to be able to hit the ball both directions (curve to the right, curve to the left) intentionally. What I am describing here is the "feel" required to fine tune and "own" your golf swing. This is where the "steering wheel" is placed into your hands and you can learn to alter your patterns without the "mental overload". Remember you want to establish an effortless and reliable pattern before you go out and play.



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