Is Your Practice Routine Sound?

I’ve got some good news / bad news for you. Practice can make you a better golfer. In fact practice can make you a great golfer. Unfortunately, even amateurs who do practice don’t get much out of it. Where did I get this brilliant analysis from? John Paul Newport’s ‘Golf Journal’ in the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal. Read the article for yourself here.

Mr. Newport gets his information from two recent business books; “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell and “Talent Overrated” by Geoff Colvin. Here’s the bottom line: scientific study shows that most all prodigies have a couple of things in common – starting at a very early age (think 2 years old like Tiger), work with a competent teacher who guides and gives accurate feedback (Earl Woods) and, lastly, about 10,000 hours of ‘correct’ practice over 10 years.

So what does any of this mean to us amateur golfers who are out of diapers? If we want to get better, we have to practice – a lot – and practice in the correct way. Just banging balls may be fun, but doesn’t do much of anything for lowering scores. For those who want to improve, go find a good teacher or read some of the excellent instruction books out there and figure out what good practice means.

Here’s a couple of ‘good practice’ tips that I gleemed from John Paul Newport’s article. Trying swinging in slow motion so that it takes 30 seconds per swing. You read that right, that’s 30 seconds per swing. This tip comes from Anika Sorenstam’s coach Pia Nilsson. It can produce great results by improving club awareness through the entire swing. However, she adds that most amateurs can’t stand the drill and won’t do it!  How about one more drill you’ll hate, but will do wonders for your game? Practice lag putting by closing your eyes right after contact and try to predict where your ball ends up – long, short, right or left. After 3 minutes you’ll hate this drill, but Oh how your putting will improve.

Bad News: No one ever said being a better golfer would be easy!  Good News: But it’s not impossible!

Related posts:

1. “Digging It Out of the Dirt” and the Lonely Art of Practice
2. Perfect Your Swing With Position Practice
3. Are You Biomechanically Sound?

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