Effective practice or how to spend the hours on the range productively

Do you spend at least 50% of your time putting? Do you spend at least 50% of the remaining time on the short game? Anything left you can spend on your long game. I bet you have heard that at some point in the golfing life, heck I may have said that to you but that method is only true in some circumstances. If you have no other information then by all means use your time as outlined above but if you have numbers that suggest a weakness in your game that is adding strokes then change your practice time percentages to reflect those changes.

Let's explore that a little further. I'll make the following assumptions.

1. You have a game plan for each round

2. That game plan maximizes your potential for example, if you can't hit the driver in the fairway then you are using a club that will do so.

3. You are keeping accurate records of your results

If these numbers show that you are making all your putts within 3 feet of the hole but putts in the 20 foot and longer range are seldom getting into that 3 foot range then don't practice your short putts practice your distance control.

If when you chip the ball you get it up and down 75% of the time then go to pitching. If it's fine then work on your sand play.

All of my current students have gone through the target drill recently. For those of you who are not my students (why aren't you :-)? ) the drill consists of finding a target at 25 yards and then giving a giving yourself a circle with a 20 diameter. Hit 10 balls and calculate your % of landing the ball in the air in the circle. The goal is at least 75%. Then go to 75 yards with a circle of 40 feet. the % should be 60. Then out to 100 yards and a circle of 50 feet and a % of at least 50%.

You will probably find that your %'s are not very close to the ones I've given you. The first reason is that your technique is not yet good enough however the 2nd and far more important reason is that instead of focusing on the target you focus on technique. Nothing messes up a golf shot faster than thinking about how to hit a shot rather than where to hit a shot. These tests and drills that I use are to get you to focus on the latter not the former.

All of this brings us to the title of this article "effective practice". I'll restate the definition

1. Practice with a specific purpose in mind

2. Get immediate feedback

3. Focus on process rather than results

Let's assume that the drill above or your scorecard from your rounds of golf suggest that at 75 yards you get 30% of your shots into the target range.

You have to analyze why.

1. If you hit the ball very poorly most of the time then you need to focus on technique so your effective practice would look like this

a. My purpose is to improve my technique

b. Is the ball flying better or worse. Am I on plane or not.

c. If my goal is to keep my chest back longer am I willing to do that even if I hit the ball poorly?

2. If you hit the ball pretty well then the practice would look like this

a. Hit more balls into the target

b. Immediate feedback is am I doing it

c. The process is am I focused on the hitting the ball into the target or am I thinking about how to swing?

Golf is not easy. It's fun if you choose to make it so. You don't have to be good to have fun but if you want to get better these concepts that I've outlined here will help.

Take care