Graham Averill is turning 50 this year and he’s crazy. Instead of buying a motorcycle or getting a tattoo, he’s decided to try to get really, really good at golf. He is a 13 handicap trying to get to zero in a year. Welcome to his midlife crisis.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A golfer goes to the range and buys a big bucket of balls and then proceeds to hit those balls one after the other at an alarming rate so that he can go through 130 balls in about 10 minutes. He does this religiously once or twice a week because he is convinced that “practice” will help him improve. Big bucket, 130 swing, fast as shit. And he never gets better at golf.
It’s not a joke. That’s how I approached “practice”. I’m putting that word in quotes because I don’t think what I was doing should be called practice. I’ll just hit the range for an hour or so getting a massive volume of reps with no direction. Every once in a while, I’d work on a workout I pulled from social media, but I’d quickly abandon any kind of structure once I felt too awkward.
“Does this past climb through my belt buckle make me look stupid?”
yes. Yes, yes.
I was doing a lot of reps, but I wasn’t getting any better. Sound familiar?
My approach to practice began to change when my coach broke down every element of my swing and forced me to constantly work on smaller movements. He gave me the time on the range the focus. And focus is what all good practice sessions need. Because if you’re not practicing on purpose, you’re not practicing. You are just wasting time.
I have already written how I had to do it completely change my swing at the beginning of this project and that commitment to reprocessing my own food gave me something tangible to take to the practice facility. It added intentionality to my practice sessions. I wasn’t just hitting the range with the vague notion of getting better at golf. I was hitting the range to improve on this small part of my swing that would eventually help me improve in golf.
I’ve tried to incorporate that same sense of purpose into every practice session over the past couple of months. Sure, I might work slowly with a small bucket of balls when I’m warming up before a round, but when I’m practicing, I’m focusing on one or two aspects of my game.
There are days when I’ll spend an hour off the practice green just working on starting my swing with my core on short chip shots. It’s a small detail that lays the foundation for a good swing that translates on the course regardless of the club in my hand. Or I might spend an entire session taking slow-motion swings with my driver, trying to hone in on the setup and swing that produces a draw or a fade with the big club. I’ve had entire practice sessions where I never swing at full speed because I’m working on a specific movement pattern.
Honestly, every aspect of my game needs work, so the focus of each practice session doesn’t really matter. The important thing is that I focus SOMETHING and not just hitting balls blindly.
Having a coach helps because it guides me to specific elements that need work, but you don’t need a coach to add intentionality in your practice. All you need is a camera phone.
The biggest game changer for my practice sessions has been putting my movement on video, especially slow motion video. My coach lives on the west coast of the US and I live on the east coast, so we send a lot of videos back and forth. The situation has gotten me into the habit of setting up a tripod behind my range station and rolling film. I admit that filming myself in public is a little awkward, but so far, no one has made fun of me in the eye. Honestly, we’re all out there in pursuit of a better game, and whipping out a camera phone is probably the least embarrassing thing a golfer has done during that high pursuit. (see: extension stick, belt loops, etc. above).
And watching a video of yourself hitting a golf ball is an eye opener. This will give you a greater understanding of your swing and tell you about the elements that are working and those that are missing. Even without the guidance of a coach, you’ll be able to see major problem areas. Are you rolling your wrists at the start of the backswing? Are you starting your slump with your shoulders? Everything will be there in 4K in slow motion. And once you see the gaps in your swing, you’ll have a better understanding of why the ball isn’t doing what you want it to do on the court. And then you can target those specific elements of your swing during your next practice session.
Practicing with that kind of purpose is how I’m starting to get better at golf.
Dig deeper into one golfer’s struggle to improve golf in middle age and read last week’s Scratch By 50 about Graham’s decision to join a country club.
