How to play a golf practice round for maximum game improvement
Tip #31 from my book, “Break 80! 52 Ways To Lower Your Golf Score Without Practice”
is about taking a typical thing that golfers do to help improve their game, hit 2 or more balls in a practice round, and supercharging it using the power of the mind.
Every golfer knows the difference between how they feel approaching a shot in a practice round vs. how they feel in a competitive round. If I had a dollar for every golfer who plays amazing in practice but can’t bring it to the course, I’d be rich. Overcoming this is one of the holy grails of golf, right?
A typical tip given for this is to inject pressure into your practice and that helps… but what if you could inject your calm practice round swing/putting stroke into your competitive swing/stroke? This would train your unconscious mind, through repetition, to come to some kind of mix of a pressured swing and a practice swing that would show up whether you are in practice or competition, just the same! Hmmmm….Check it out:
31. Double your green fee golf value
Purposely schedule yourself a round when you know the course is uncrowded.
You want to do this in order to allow yourself to play 2 balls on the course. But instead of the typical golfer who does this with a lackadaisical attitude and carefree swing, you want to do it with purpose and INTENTION.
What you want to do is play your first ball with the same intensity and pressure that you might have when playing the final round of the club championship.
I recommend putting a bet on it with a buddy and play strictly to the rules.
Do everything you can to put pressure on yourself with this ball.
With your second ball, you want to drop it in places where you need the most work such as in the rough, under a tree, behind an obstruction, with a bad lie, etc.
You will be alternating shots without fail.
Notice how you take yourself from pressure to relaxed…pressure to relaxed….pressure to relaxed. At some point, you will realize things about yourself that will give you the belief that you are in control of your state.
This is the magic for you!
And, you will be giving yourself a fabulous opportunity to work on the shots that you never work on while blurring the mental lines between pressure and relaxed.
If you go out and do this exercise with a blank mind, you won’t get much out of it.
This is what most golfers do when I see them playing 2 balls.
If you follow my advice, you will be improving your game WHILE still enjoying the challenge of shooting for a good score.
How To Clear Mistakes And Get Over Bad Shots
Tip #6 from my book, “Break 80! 52 Ways To Lower Your Golf Score Without Practice”
is about continuing to learn how to golf with your unconscious (subconscious) mind and fully utilize it’s power. It controls your body, right? Last time I checked, you golf with your body. My foundational formula that I build everything off for performing in anything is:
Performance = Potential – Interference.
When you make mistakes and choke on shots, you literally create like a tiny “injury” to your psyche and it is literally “stored” in the wiring of the nervous system – your unconscious mind. This is some of what we are calling “Interference.” These things build up just like a volcano. The tip below may seem a little “out there” I know, but trust me, it works, even if you don’t believe it will work. But if you BELIEVE it will work to improve your performance, well then, it works even faster and more efficiently. So, what would you like, faster or slower results from using the tips below? It’s your choice. Whatever you do, you must eliminate the interference.
Greens and Fairways,
Craig
6. Clear your past misses and chokes, unleash your potential!
You see, your body stores these misses in it’s cellular memory. The emotion you felt from those misses encodes the thoughts you have about the chokes literally right into your tissues.
Over time, these build up and your nervous system automatically re-runs the disappointment, anger, frustration and pain that you felt over the years every time you now have a putter in your hand facing a must-make putt.
Eventually, for some of us, this can turn into “The Yips” where the golfer literally shakes or jabs during the putt or shot. Here’s how to unleash your potential by clearing your failures: Start with a few moments of FOCUS and conscious breathing as described earlier.
Then spend a few moments or minutes quickly rehashing your mistakes in your mind. Bring them all up and then imagine throwing them into a trash can, sending them out into space or, you can actually write them down on paper and burn the paper.
You can also write them on a chalkboard of your mind and then erase the chalkboard to start the next round fresh and clean just like a school teacher at the end of the day of class.
You can and should do this for individual misses and mistakes while on the course. It takes 5-10 seconds and you can do it in between shots.
Objectifying or personifying the mistake activates and engages the unconscious mind to physically release the stuck negative energy and you can enjoy that lighter feeling and freer movement.
A Course Management Strategy Tip You’ve Never Heard Before
Tip #23 from my book, “Break 80! 52 Ways To Lower Your Golf Score Without Practice” is about reconfiguring your brain out of that small thinking box that says “I have to hit it as far as I can every shot.”
If you play this game with any regularity, you have doubtless had many rounds where a blow up hole ruined your score and it started by hitting the ball out of bounds or out of play off the tee.
Well, what if you could start a round virtually guaranteeing yourself that you would finish the round with nothing out of bounds and everything in play from your 2nd tee shot?
Let that sink in for a moment before you go on to the actual tip and then think about rounds you can remember where JUST ONE tee shot (or probably more) was the thing that killed your score. If you’re like me, this has happened too many times to count and the REAL cause of it is NOT because you had a bad swing that shot off tee.
The real cause is you haven’t mentally bought into the concept of playing conservative golf when it’s appropriate. You have an automatic habit to just bring out the driver, or whatever is the longest club you can hit, and mindlessly swing away without thinking.
Time to turn that around with this tee game strategy you can program your mind to.
Greens and Fairways,
Craig
p.s. Want all 52 Ways To Lower Your Score Without Practice? Sign up for these emails. https://break80golf.com/
23. The second most powerful advice
Once a season, go out to a full-sized course and play a round with nothing longer than your longest iron.
Now, this advice is primarily for golfers who hit the ball 200 yards or more with their driver and won’t be as powerful for shorter hitters. In fact, us longer hitters are going to emulate shorter hitters with this strategy in order to train ourselves in real playing conditions to expand our options and adaptability.
Because you are doing this on the course while still having the intention to score lower, you will learn at the cellular level the following:
- The value of keeping the ball in play and playing conservatively. It’s so easy to always break out the driver off the tee and go for it but many times, it’s much smarter strategy-wise to play the odds and keep it in play. Our ego tends to get in the way of this and you will now come away with a new appreciation for strategy. Living this lesson is 100 times more powerful than just the head knowledge.
- Learn to trust and even rely on your short game to get you up and down. You get a mental shift in attitude about your wedges because you are going to have more short approaches in
his round. You will be “practicing” your up and downs with a different mindset that expands your confidence. - You will use your long irons a lot more than you ever have and make huge gains in this area from the play/practice you do. The first time I did this I scored the same as I always do on that course and I was shocked. My first sub-par round came a month after.
Get ready, get set, go low…