Effective Practice – Full Swing

If you want to get better at this game there is only one way
to accomplish that – practice. I don’t just mean going to a driving range a
hitting a large bucket of balls with your driver with no target and no goals for
that session. That is exercise not practice. If you want to get better you need
to do regular, effective practice.

Effective practice is any practice session where before you
begin you have clearly defined what you will do in that session, how you will do
it and you will have a measure to know if you have achieved your goal. Only
once you start doing this type of practice regularly will you start to see real
improvement in your golf game. So how do you devise such a practice session?

Your first step is to assess your current full swing game
and decide what aspect of it, if improved will give you the greatest gains in
performance. Taking a golf lesson is the quickest, easiest and most accurate assessment of your swing you can get, and will be time and money well spent. Your swing be will broken down and explained where and why you are getting into trouble, before showing you practice drills to help you improve the areas of weakness. You will also be told how to assess your ball flight so you will know if you are doing the prescribed drills correctly and thus improving.

Armed with these practice drills you can now design your
effective practice session by answering the questions and guidelines below:

1. How much total time do I have for my practice session?
2. Set up an effective practice station on a quiet section of the range, with clubs on the ground for alignment and ball position.
3. There should be at least two practice swings for every ball hit.
4. Golf is a target game, so spend the  majority of your time practicing to a target.
5. Give every shot and practice swing your fullest attention – quality is more important than quantity.
6. Examine your ball flight after every shot and ask yourself if during the swing you achieved the swing change you are trying to make.
7. Based on the last swing and ball flight decide your focus for the next set of practice swing and shot. Be sure to stay focused on the goals and drills for that particular practice session. Do not allow yourself to drift into reactionary practice where all you are doing is making corrections based on the previous shot.

Follow this effective practice outline every time you work
on your full swing and coupled with regular feedback from your PGA
Professional, your improvement is all but guaranteed.