Practice Tip  

Good golf requires patience

Canadian great George Knudson used to deliberately drive his car under the speed limit on the way to golf tournaments. Tour Pro and swing guru Mac O'Grady was similar in that he deliberately drove in the right highway lanes behind the slowest drivers in an effort to achieve patience.

At times, we all want to rush to hit the ball. No where is this more true than on the practice range warming up before a round. Some people can rapid fire a whole bucket of 75 balls in 5 minutes. They barely warm up their muscles and achieve no level of repetition or concentration. They're not playing different shots, gauging distances, trajectories, wind factors, etc.

Unfortunately good golf cant be played in rapid fire mode. We have to walk to our ball, assess the lie and conditions, pick the right club, play different types of shots, and have a pre-shot routine. On the course golf shots are a few minutes apart, not mere seconds apart. Use your practice warm up to mirror a round of golf.

A great drill for warm up is to place a bucket of balls 20 feet away and walk to get one ball at a time and return to your hitting station to play it. Also play a different club for each shot. Practice playing the shots you may use for the first nine holes. If your first hole is a driver and 6 iron try hitting a driver then six iron. If your first hole is into the wind hit your knockdown shots as part of your practice. Play a driving range version of your round of golf and you may see those same results by the end of the actual round.

Back to Practice Tips