Making Practice Interesting

I have had a really great season playing in tournaments this year and I believe that my new practice habits have alot to do with why! This season I hosted a LPGA clinic with professional golfer Meaghan Francella for my lady golf members. Not only was Meaghan a wonderful speaker, she also showed us some new ways to practice our short game. Meaghan helped explain to our ladies that you need to work on things that will actually help you play better. Being an instructor and a player, I have struggled myself with making my practice useful. Many times I would go to the putting green, drop a couple of balls and roll putts at a hole. Or I would head to the range with one club and hit shots at it without much thought. I never took the time to practice how I would play. I believe as a teacher, my job is to help bridge the gap between the practice area and the golf course. I want to share with you three of the practice habits I have developed to help me to play better on the course.

1. Working on speed on the putting green: set up 15 ft and 25 ft from a hole with a tee or ball marker at those distances. Then place an alignment stick behind the hole about 3 feet behind it. Take two balls at one distance and practice rolling your putts just past the hole between the hole and the stick. After 9 putts, switch to the other distance. I use time intervals of 25 mins, with a water break for 5 mins in between. This clears your head and keeps you interested in your practice.

2. Short putts: while working on your speed putting, set up a tee about 6-8 ft from a hole near your distance putting station. This is a distance I have found to be where you can make a birdie or save par. After 3 rotations of 25 mins working on the above drill, I switch to the 6-8 ft range and work around the hole. This has helped me feel comfortable in this scoring range and much more confident in getting up and down around the greens.

3. Practicing on the range: I warm up first, then laser my closest target and begin hitting shots at it. I only hit 9 shots at a time with each club. One of the things that I have worked on this year is trying to land 3 different clubs to the same distance. So I can hit my pitching wedge, 9 iron and 8 iron all 100 yards. This I believe has helped me with feel and also to help me create different shots into greens. After every 25 mins of practice, I take a 5 min break for water then resume practicing.

Try these practicing tips the next time you are out at your course.