…so I dropped her off at the mall and went to the driving range about a half mile down the road with my pitching wedge and two putters.

I got a bucket of about 60 balls and hit pitches in the 90- to 40-yard range. Not only does that instill sensitivity to those distances, but it instills the proper action though impact.

The last 20 balls were used to work on my swing. I took a half swing, and made four swings that were gradually larger until I got to a full swing. Then I hit the ball, but the important point is, with a pitching motion, just a big one. Extending your pitching swing is a wonderful way to develop a full swing.

After the balls were gone, I went to the putting green and practiced 1-, 2-, and 3-foot putts with a Wilson Billy Casper mallet, and approach putts from 15 to 35 feet with an Acushnet Bullseye.

I put my car keys on the green and putted at them, instead of a hole. That’s especially important with the short ones. I never saw the ball go past an empty hole. That’s not an image I want to put in my mind.

Good session. Find a way to say Yes when your wife asks if you want to go shopping.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

No, not how I react to good shots and bad ones, but how I make good shots and why I make bad ones.

All the technique you read about and try out gets reduced to a feeling. Actually, any physical skill you learn is the same way. You have to learn, step-by-step, the right thing to do, and work from there to (a) repeat it, and (b) attach a reliable feeling to it, so when you feel X, you know that means you’re doing it right.

One of the problems with trying to find the feeling too soon is that as you adapt and get used to the right movement, the feeling changes. As you learn to perform the movement more reliably, the feeling is quite different from the one you had when you first started.

I have many examples from my own investigations in golf, but my current one is getting a flat left wrist at the top of my backswing. I’ve been working on it for about six weeks now. At first, it felt like the left wrist was curled over, but that was a reaction to my habit of the wrist being severely cupped. Now, if I put that same feeling in the left wrist at the top, it is curled over. The feeling of doing the movement correctly is now more subtle.

The final step in getting the feeling right is to have done the movement correctly so many times that it feels like the natural thing to do and you don’t have to check on it anymore. You can rely on it always being right.

That, of course, takes many thousands of repetitions. And that doesn’t take skill, it takes perseverance. but that’s another post.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

I read an article last year that said Lorena Ochoa would work on a new shot for three weeks to learn the mechanics, then use it for three weeks in practice rounds, before she took it into competition.

Let’s keep this in mind when we’re learning something new. One good day at the range doesn’t mean you got it down. It needs to be done over and over and over before it’s ready.

Why? Because it has to be installed in your subconscious mind and well as in your hands.

When we play we revert to what we believe in, what we know we can do, even if that isn’t very good. It takes a lot of repetitions to come to believe in a new habit.

So when you’re working on something new, work on it every time you go to the range, find a way to work on it at home, to get those repetitions.

You’ll know the new shot, or the swing fix, is ready when you go to the range and start hitting the shot and feel like you own it instead of you’re learning it.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.