Practice with a purpose; practice like a kid

As a golf instructor the number one tip I give to my students is to “practice with a purpose”.

There is no point in going to the tennis court to hit 100 shots 3 courts over, so why is it golfers think it is okay to go to a driving range and

“hit golf balls” for hours on end? Yes, some pick a target or imagine a hole in their mind, but does that really mean they are practicing with a purpose?

What does it even mean to practice with a purpose? My definition would be, “a systematic approach that will develop long term awareness and change”. Yea, I know, what?

You have to have positive and negative outcomes for every shot you practice. There should be no gray area in practice of “good enough” shots.

So, how does this all come back to practicing like a kid?

Most children have short attention spans, especially when it comes to golf. What we do, as instructors, is develop games that will force the child to learn

or “self- discover” the technique we are trying to teach them.

For example, we may work on lag putting. It won’t do the child any good to just say, “try and hit it as close as you can.” Instead, we build a putting course with tees for out of bounds. Immediately they get the idea that they need to keep the ball from rolling 20 feet past or they go out of bounds. If we are trying to teach low bump and runs versus high

flop shots, we put a table on the edge of the green and tell them they have to hit it under or over the table.

With most of our juniors we also add an exercise as a consequence of hitting out of bounds or hitting the table. After a round or two of pushups, most of them get really good. We may also add a point system to the game for our better competitive players. I call it plus one, minus two. If you hit your chip over the table and the ball finishes within a target circle, you get plus one point. If you miss your target circle, you get mi

nus two points. If you get to ten points, you win. If you don’t, you lose. Pretty simple. By putting a little pressure on them during practice with actual consequences, it brings out the competitive nature in a golfer, and also makes for a good time. We have seen students learn the technique much quicker when we incorporate games and competition than if we were demonstrating or explaining what we want them to do over and over.

So next time you are practicing make a game of it, have fun, and maybe you’ll get better just a little faster.