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The More I Practice The Worse I Get If you’re anything like me, practicing is somewhere near the bottom of my To Do list. Sure it’s important, but the vast majority of amateur golfers aren’t actually doing much at the range except wearing out their golf glove, and they’d probably be better off spending a night out trying to bust a few moves on Harmony Thomas look-a-likes. Am I telling you not to practice? Err…well, despite the fact that most great players say something along the lines of, “the more I practice the better I get”, I actually got better the less I practiced and the more I just played. (Perhaps that’s why they call me the “The White Tee Wonder” these days). So yeah, I’m telling you (I’m a control freak) there’s not much use practicing unless you know how to use the time effectively. Why Are You There? Next time you’re at the range, look down the long line of golfers and count how many players have got the dog bowl out and are letting the big dog eat. Now count how many players have got their wedge out (not counting those warming up) hitting shots inside 100 yards. And I know I don’t need to tell you how many shots are played with your driver in a round, and how many shots are played from within 100 yards. Hitting five buckets of balls with your driver isn’t practicing, that’s just having fun. If you really want to practice, you’ve got to have some kind of goal in mind, and/or be working on something to improve your game. When Less is More You’d think some players think hitting 18 buckets within a one-hour session will somehow increase their chances of winning the lottery. The only thing that does is makes the driving range owner really happy and makes you smell bad. Part of the reason why practicing is not much use to most players is that there is no consequence of hitting a bad shot. There are no hazards, no Out of Bounds, and more importantly, if you throw the club after a bad shot, you have to wait until the next day to go get it. If you hit fewer balls, you’ll be much more conscious of making every shot count, which leads to my next piece of advice… Recreate Course Conditions One of the keys to practicing is to try to simulate what happens out on the golf course. Laying down a bucket of balls and hitting them all at one target isn’t the way to do that. Presuming you’re Nigel no-friends and are practicing by yourself, you’ve got to get serious and set yourself some targets. When I was competing as an amateur, I used to play games with myself and I don’t mean Solitaire. I’d set myself a goal of making 100 consecutive three-footers and promised I’d never leave the putting green until I’d achieved that goal. Apart from making your back really sore, this does two things. Firstly, it makes you nervous. When you get up to about 90, and it’s your 3rd attempt, you’d be surprised at the tension that creeps into your stroke. The other thing this type of drill does is install confidence. When you go out on the course and are faced with a 3 footer, you almost feel like you can’t miss. And always one for a happy ending, I used this method to good effect when I defeated the 1997 Canadian Amateur Senior Matchplay Champion in a Play-off to win my local Club Championship. Those were the days…sigh. Know When To Practice Part of the reason why our handicap hasn’t gone down in 30 years is that players haven’t discovered that the range is for practice and the golf course is for playing. I take that back. The range isn’t for practice when you’re using it to warm up for the round either. You won’t fix any 30-yard slices 30 minutes before your tee time, and you definitely won’t fix it on the golf course. Once you learn to play with what the Golf Gods gave you that day and play within your abilities, you’ll become a much better player and shoot lower scores. Gratuitous Sales Pitch That Hopefully The Editors Won’t Notice If you happen to be taking lessons, ask your Pro what to work on when you go to the range. My company offers personal performance enhancement analyses to all our students in the form of a WAP page, which can be viewed from most mobile phones. When I’m not with them, they can open their page on their mobile phone and get a review of what to work on. Kinda like a golf Pro version of mini-me. As well as my monthly newsletter, I’ve taken the invasion of privacy issue to a whole new level and send out weekly SMS golf tips to all my students. If your Pro’s not into the tech thing, at the very least, after a lesson you should go away with a clear understanding of what you need to do to improve. If you happen to be a Pro reading this and want to find out more about the whole mobile technology for golf teaching, visit www.mobilevisionasia.com or write me an email. It takes the learning experience beyond lesson hours and is a great way to accelerate the improvement process. On your next visit to the range, put some thought into the above and hopefully you’ll get a whole lot more out of your practice sessions and a lot more enjoyment from playing the game better! |
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