The best way to practice your swing is to swing in slow motion. “Practice your swing” means to practice the swinging of the club, not to practice hitting golf balls with your swing.

By swinging in slow motion, the things you would not feel when you swing at your normal speed instead stand out clearly, both your errors and successes. That makes it easy to correct what went wrong and reinforce what went right.

The slow speed of the swing also gives you time to insert swing thoughts, or what I would rather call coaching, at the right moments, and consciously act on that coaching as you swing.

If you know what points are important to your swing, you can run through them in your head as the swing progresses, if the swing is slow enough, and quickly learn to get them right every time.

Hundreds of slow, self-coached repetitions of your golf swing create the unconscious awareness of the swing that you are trying to build up so you don’t have to think about what to do when you are playing. The right swing just comes out.

You can do this drill at home whenever you want to, as many times a day as you want to.

From time to time though, do hit balls with the swing that you’re developing. You need feedback to know if you’re on the right track. You could easily start teaching yourself a feel-good swing that is useless for hitting golf balls.

But remember, when you play, no coaching! Just swing. If it works, wonderful! If it’s still not quite right, you haven’t fully absorbed your coaching points into one whole movement at an intuitive level.

More slow motion practice!