But it was going so well on the range ….

With so many uncertainties in the world right now I strongly believe that focusing on the things we can control is something we could all benefit from. I am currently writing this from my flat, which has been great to Pip and Myself over the last four years. For those of you who don’t know, Pip is my fiancé who is without a doubt my better half.

With the current state of the world we are all confined to life indoors. For Me this does somewhat inhibit my ability to swing a club. This got me thinking about how people practice in general, whether it be indoors or outdoors. Something I often hear as a coach is that people often struggle to take their Tiger like performance on the driving range to the first tee. This is due to one simple fact, your training environment doesn’t match your competitive environment, read that last bit again.

For all you football fans out there it’s safe to say we are somewhat familiar with how their behaviour in training goes, you would typically see a group of people running around shouting and communicating continually for a period of time, obviously teams will develop set pieces within their training that are specifically relevant. If you look at a football team in a competitive environment you would see something very similar.

Your typical golfer in a competitive environment will stand on the first tee, perhaps feeling excited about the round ahead, with perhaps slight feelings of trepidation about that pesky bunker on the right side of the fairway, hoping that the next four hours will provide you with the opportunity to show yourself what you thought you were capable of.

What then follows is a pretty standard routine of hitting an occasional shot in between walking and talking dealing with the mental and physical challenges of each shot. It’s safe to say however, that if you walk onto any driving range you will see most with a basket of balls and a few clubs trying to perfect a movement that resembles that of Adam Scott. Something that I think we can all agree on is a tricky thing to resemble.

When you look at how most people train their golf games it starts to become clear why we struggle. Try and split your practice into three parts -

Block Practice

You wouldn’t walk into the Forrest to chop down trees without checking your axe was sharp, cheesy metaphor I know, but there is sense in this. Block practice is an opportunity to check your basic fundamentals are where you need them to be, grip, posture, alignment etc, you get the idea. This shouldn’t be your main focus, merely an opportunity to check your axe is sharp.

Random practice

Random practice is exactly how it sounds, every shot should have a changing variable, whether It be the target, club choice, lie, or your intention. This is an opportunity to really learn what you can do and have some fun.

Pressure game

The last part of your training is to create pressure, the more the better. If you genuinely feel nervous while doing it you are on to a winner. Think about it, what’s the difference between the driving range and the first tee of your monthly medal. It’s the fact that you only get one chance!

The pressure game you create should only allow you one chance to achieve a task, just like your competitive environment, and make sure you incorporate a forfeit if you don’t meet your goal, run an extra mile in the gym, play against a friend for a beer, it doesn’t matter what you play for but create some pressure and learn to love it!