Many top professionals recommend that anyone who wants to improve their game should have an established plan for each practice session – whether it’s working on stance, swing, chips or putts.
- If you know you have trouble areas, work on them at practice until you feel more comfortable.
- Get out of your comfort zone. Don’t keep doing exercises that you already do well. Move to the next level by practicing how you would make a different shot or play a different lie. This way you will build on your current game and find ways to shave shots from your score.
- Use a wide variety of your clubs in practice to simulate a real game, where you confront numerous different situations. You learn more by practicing with clubs you typically struggle with, and you will become more comfortable with difficult shots.
- Vary the ways that you practice each particular skill. For example: try a different trajectory on your pitch shots. What happens when you hit the ball higher or lower? Find ways to challenge your normal game. Try shots new ways so you know what works and what doesn’t.
Set Goals
For every practice session, set goals based on where you need to improve; reduce slices or hooks, make more putts, or put a better roll on your ball for example.
Keep Records of Practices
To make your goals manageable and attainable, you’ve got to write them down and track your progress. Records will help you analyze your strengths and weakness. This is one of the most critical and easiest steps, but also the scariest step for most golfers. Measuring results implies the possibility of failure, but also increases success. If you’re like most golfers, you want to believe that any practice is good practice. Unfortunately that is just not true. Golfers should understand that there can be failure during practice. Because your goals are measurable it makes the actual analysis very easy. Keep a record of how you perform and improve based on your goals.
