From the Range to the Course

One of the most baffling and frustrating stages in improvement is when a player can produce good contact and ball flight during practice, but can't get the same results on the course. The obvious problem is that when we're practing, there's no consequence for poor shots. That leads to making free, relaxed swings on the range because we really don't care if we miss our target.

Fast forward to the first tee, where there's not only obstacles such as trees, water, out of bounds, ruthless playing partners and highly critical onlookers. At that point, the smooth swing on the range is replaced with tension, fear, anxiety and the desire to make the ball to go toward the target. Not a chance.

What do we do? Well, we need to 1) Play more like we practice, and 2) practice more like we play. In order to play like we practice, the biggest element is to trust your body to do what you've trained it to do in practice. You can't play good golf and produce good shots if you're worried about the mechanics of your swing. The mentality of hitting good shots on the course is that you commit to making a good swing, and let the ball go wherever it wants to go. It will take some practice and discipline, but as Rotella puts it, "we gain control of the golf ball by giving up trying to control (guide) it." There's no limit to the number of good shots one can hit when we don't care where the ball will go. Ultimately, there's only two results from any shot: it goes to the target, or it doesn't. Either way, you're still a decent, worthwhile member of the human race (assuming you were prior to the round).

To the second point, practicing more like we play starts with the realization that there are two types of practice: practice for technique, where we work on mechanics, and competitive practice, where we work on trust. I believe strongly that trust begins with a consistent shot routine. When you approach shots the same way every time, it starts to produce a comfort zone, where we know what to do when it's our turn to play. Other than tour players, how often do you see someone going through their entire routine on the range? Not often. Spend some time not only defining your routine, then repeating it on the range. By the way, a shot routine doesn't need to be something that takes five minutes! It just needs to be simple, and repetitive.

When practicing in this mode, not only should you pick a target, but also define what is an acceptable miss, and imagining obstacles right, left, short or long. You also want to change targets and distances so you're not hitting the same club on each shot. Try playing a practice round for a specific course on the range, hitting the same clubs and shots that you'll hit during a round.

For more advanced players, try the "75% / 10%" practice. That means, for example, from 150 yards, you look for 75% of your shots to fall within a margin of 10% or less from the hole. That gives you a 15 yard circle that defines a succesful shot.

Bottom line is that you can get your swing to the course, but it will require changing both the way you practice, and your mindset when you play.

Finally, pay attention to your warm-up session before a round. If you hit 15 fades in a row with a driver, there's no reason to expect to hit a nice draw on the course (I believe that is the working definition of insanity). Hit the shot you know you can hit, not the one that you think you should be able to hit, or what Tiger would hit (Thanks Dr. Bob).

Hit it, find it, hit it again.