Golf Practice Tips

Golf Practice Tips outlines key drills and techniques you should practice consistently in order to build sound fundamentals and a repetitive, dependable golf game.

Practice Setup

• a short game area with fairway, rough, chipping green and green side bunker(s)
• a shag bag holding at least 30 practice balls
• colored practice balls so your balls can be distinguished from other balls on the green (you may not be the only one practicing)
• four wedges (lob, sand, gap and pitching wedge) plus putter, seven and nine irons
• a brush to keep your grooves clean

This should be your "standard equipment" for short game practice. As a mid-to-high handicapper, short game practice should represent 70 percent of your practice time. Especially early in the season.

Short Game Tips

Let's begin with the short game. Here's a video showing some fundamental concepts for improving your chipping game.

This particular video is from the Titleist Performance Institute (TPI). Titleist's Institute is to training what their manufacturing is to production of golf equipment. The pros and training quality at TPI are very highly regarded. You can register for a personal account at the TPI website to get a "myTPI" account that enables you to tap into their expertise on a wide range of very useful practice and playing tips. I highly recommend Titleist in general as a source of quality equipment and source of golfing knowledge.

Practice Reinforcement

Practice Plans and Practice Notes are important supplements to your practice program. I've found that, extended practice sessions can be counter productive if you don't manage them carefully. So i look for ways to reinforce the gains made through practice.

You will loose the benefit gained from drills if you don't reinforce them. There are a few resources that help track and retain your good practice habits:

• The site Golf Help Tips (golfhelptips.com) is a great resource site/blog for discussion and tip lists for all aspects of your game.
• I actually write down my practice plan and try to schedule so that I know shich skills are weakest at a given time of the season so I know what and how often I've worked on a problem

The Golf Help Tips people have two reference booklets that make reminding yourself of the right thinks to focus on for any aspect of your swing or game. They call them 'Pocket Guides' and they are visual/text guides to practice drills and course management. They are laminated, high quality, pocket-sized reference guides. At about $15 each, they are available at Golf Town in Canada for sure and probably other stores as well.