Practice Golf The Right Way And Better Your Game
Many people believe that they should practice golf to swing identical to their favorite pros. And on the surface that seems logical. After all, they are the greatest at what they do. And if you’re not trying to be like Jack Nicklaus, you are still receiving more points than you can handle from professionals on television and in magazines.
Well it’s time for a reality check. Becoming the next Arnold Palmer may be your ambition, but for the great majority of us, that is not going to occur. Very few ever get to that level and odds are you won’t either. Improving your scores should be your really realistic goal. Yea it would be good to play like Tiger, but to emulate his game, or that of any other master, is clearly a mistake.
Keep in mind these guys don’t simply hit the course after they get off work. Their business is golf, and it is more than fourty hours a week. They get up and hit the course, putting in a tremendous amount of hours working to become better at their craft. But since normal people don’t play golf to make ends meet, they don’t have the amount of time free that the professionals do. So what you have to do is work within the time constraints that life has given you.
We’ve all watched our favorite pros hit a beautifully lofted shot that stops dead on the green a couple of feet from the hole, or maybe one that rolls back towards the pin. We could spend months working on this, but as a weekend golfer, there are more productive ways to spend our time that will result in lower scores. But we are better served to work within our style and stick to the fundamentals.
So let’s analyze how we do our golf practice. If you are like most golfers, you go to the driving range and spend a large majority of your time blasting away drives. But exactly how many drives do you hit while playing a round of golf? Certainly it’s an important club, but others are more critical. What you truly should be practicing the majority of the time is your short game.
We understand it’s difficult to get charged up about practicing the short game, but it will be easy to get emotional about the lower scores you will be posting. Ask any touring pro how much time they spend on this aspect of their game and they’ll probably say about 80% of their practice time is dedicated to this. There are numerous different things to work on here, and the professionals will practice them all from every possible angle. And while we don’t want you to imitate their swing, it’s likely a smart idea to concentrate your practice in the same areas as they do.
This may describe you. You have the farthest and straightest drive among the golfers you play with, but your scores are still 90 or higher. The problem is clearly with your short game and this is where you should concentrate your practice efforts. Improve here, and see your scores go down dramatically.
So the next time you get off your job and want to travel to the driving range to blast a few drives, modify your plan. Work on your putting. Put some extra effort into your pitches, chips, shots from the sand trap as well as your wedge shots up to 75 yards.
If you don’t think this is a smart idea than think about this. Did you know that during a typical round, more than half of your strokes are from closer than 75 yards. This includes putts, chips, etc. Logic dictates that you should therefore spend at least 50% of your practice time working on them. If you’re still shooting in the 90′s, less than 20% of your strokes are with a driver off the tee. If you are truthful with yourself, you will understand that this is where you need to practice most.
Sure hitting drives on the range is fun, but it’s not nearly as much fun as watching your scores fall by as many as 10 strokes per round.
The optimum way to practice at home is by getting a golf practice net. You can read more golf tips similar to this, as well as read course and golf equipment reviews and information by visiting http://www.AllThingsGolfBlog.com.