Routine practice

In an ideal world, we would all have a huge amount of spare time to devote to practicing our golf. In reality, our other commitments tend to get in the way and our golf practice drops to the bottom of the pecking order.

This week I’d like to discuss a few ideas that – when you do get the chance to practice – can make a short session very beneficial.

*Have a distinct focus

All too often, people come to the driving range with a couple of buckets of balls and proceed to smash them away with no real purpose.

Prior to your practice session, sit down for a few minutes and think about a particular area of your game that you need to work on.

Once you have decided what you are going to attempt to improve, come up with a strategy and stick to it. For example, if you are going to work on your distance control with your wedges, identify some targets on the range, pace out the yardages and work from there.

*Set yourself a challenge

Instead of saying, ‘I’m going to work on my wedge play today’, set yourself a specific challenge. For example, ‘by the end of my practice session, I will have worked out and noted down exactly how far my pitching wedge, sand wedge and lob wedge go with full swings’.

The more information you know, the more accurate you will be.

*Be accountable for your practice

I’d like to cover two aspects of accountability. Firstly, you need to make sure you know exactly where you are aiming.

Put clubs down along the floor, ensuring that your feet are parallel to your ball to target line. Also, put a club on the floor to determine your ball position. Having been to a number of tour events, I can assure you that this is how most professional golfers practice.

Secondly, towards the end of your session, set yourself a little challenge that will create a little bit of competitive pressure. For example, ‘before I leave the range, I have to land 10 balls in a row on the green at 50 yards away’.

If you miss the green, you have to start again. If you carry this out properly, you will find that your mind becomes more focused on the task and that you can start to feel a little pressure over the last couple of shots.

Learning to deal with this pressure is healthy, as you will experience it on the course.

I hope you will be able to incorporate a few of these ideas into your practice session, they will help.

For any more information on this topic or information about the golf coaching services at Awali Golf Club, call 39761873. Happy golfing!