Golfers of all ages and abilities have trouble connecting their practice to the golf course. This is mostly due the type of practice they are doing. There are lots of people who think they are great players on the practice range but feel like they can’t take it to the golf course. They main reason for it, is the nature of their practice.
Walking up and down the range on a regular basis, I see numerous golfers hitting ball after ball onto our range with no real purpose to their shots. I rarely see a player go through a full routine before hitting their shots, and almost never see any players asses their shots after they hit them. It is very important to your on course golf game that you try and mimic conditions on the driving range to that you can expect to find on the golf course. They are a few ways to help take your range skills to the course.
One of the best ways to take your game to the course is a routine. A routine is simply a series of steps you go through before you take your shot. For golfers at the highest level, a routine is something they can fall back on when the pressure of competition gets to be high. A typical routine will include a step for shot selection, a pre-shot practice, and then execution.
Something to consider for your next practice session, is a time to asses or evaluate your shots on the range on an individual shot to shot basis. It is important for learning and retention to try and limit bad golf shots and repeat our good golf shots. Using a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being poor and 10 being excellent, assign a score to your shots after you hit them. Scoring your shots allows you to put more emphasis on each individual shot and to avoid hitting an excessive amount of useless unrepeatable strokes that give you little to no feedback of what happened. If you can learn to assess each shot, you can learn to teach yourself to repeat the good shots.
My last suggestion for improving your ability to take your practice game to the course, is to actually bring the course to your practice game. What I mean, is to visualize and go through a complete mock round of golf on the driving range. Start by visualizing a hole. No think about its length and shape. Think through what club you want to use off the tee and Hit a tee shot. Based on how the tee shot went, visualise your approach and pick a range target that would be at a similar distance. Hit the approach shot, and evaluate your success. If you hit it close, go to the putting green and hit a putt from the distance you think your putt would have been from. Continue to do this for a course your familiar with, or one you are expecting to play in the near future. Play each hole as if you were out on the golf course, and be honest with your results and self assessment. It’s a great way to work out some of the issues you may have with your on course golf game.
Ultimately, whichever practice regime you decide to try keep in mind we are trying to mimic our on course experience to our practice experience, that way when we practice we can see the results on course and on our scorecards.
Book at tee time at http://www.heatherglengolf.com to try this out!
Cam Latimer CPGA Assistant Pro HeatherGlen
