I’ve been spending my time around the practice green lately. Here are a few things I reminded myself of.

1. Slow down your swing. This advice is generally stated in the context of the golf swing, but it applies with equal force to short shots. Poor contact on chip shots is too often caused (in my game) by making the stroke too brisk. Slow it down. Try practicing a few chips with a stroke that takes as long to make as your full swing does.

2. Chipping is pretty complicated. To get good at it, give yourself as many different shots as possible and figure out which club and stroke gives you the best results. (See #5, below.)

At the most basic, you can vary the distance from ball to green and green to hole. Mix and match long and short distances for both. You might be forced to hit over an obstacle. You can chip into a downhill slope or an uphill slope. You can have a cushy lie, a tight lie, or be in the rough. You can chip to a green that is elevated (common) or a green that is lower than the level of your ball.Watch Full Movie Online Streaming Online and Download

3. From outside 10 feet, all that matters is speed. You can read the line well enough to get the ball close, but more important is to get the ball cozying up to the hole speedwise. That’s how those 20-footers fall in.

4. When you address a putt, let the sole of the putter rest very lightly on the top of the grass. That way you can start the club back smoothly. If the putter rests with its weight on the ground, you have to subtly lift up the putter, then swing it back. That is enough to disrupt your stroke.

5. I now use one club for chipping – my 48-degree pitching wedge. Elsewhere on this blog I talk about using one swing with six clubs for calibrated distances. That works well, but using one club makes you learn how to hit shots, improving your overall skill as a golfer.

Does this happen to you? You go to the range and get loose. You hit a few balls and they’re perfect. Or you go to the practice green and the first few chips you hit end up right next to the hole, or the first few putts go right in.

And after that, you can’t do a thing right. You hit ball after ball, trying to get back the magic you had at the start, and you never quite get there. Well, maybe you shouldn’t try.

James Sieckmann has a new book out, titled, Your Short Game Solution. In addition to invaluable short game advice, Sieckmann spends a little time talking about the difference between block practice, which you do a lot of, and random practice, which you probably don’t do at all.

Block practice is hitting the same shot over and over again. Random practice is where you have a shot for the first time, and you hit it. Then you pick a different shot and hit that one.

Sieckmann suggest that you spend a only few minutes in block practice, then the rest of the time in random practice – hitting different shots to different targets with different clubs. The reason is that you train your brain much better that way.

He refers to an article in the blog, The Bulletproof Musician, that says our brain is wired to respond to change. It gets dulled by repetition.

What about practicing to perfection? Again, that’s not how our brain works. It was designed to improvise, not do the same thing over and over again, according to the work of Stanford engineer Dr. Krishna Shenoy.

Sure, you do have to practice a golf technique (the RIGHT technique) enough to have learned how to do it. That means a lot of repetitions. But you don’t pile up those repetitions. You do them over time, along with other techniques you’re learning.

Along the way you spend lots of time giving yourself problems to solve with each technique, even as you’re learning it.

So here’s what I would recommend. It’s how a practice session goes for me.

I get a small bucket of balls, 33. I’ll warm up with dry swings (no ball), then hit a few 9-irons, a few 7-irons, a few 5-irons, a few hybrids, and a few drivers. Back to the 7 or 5 and hit few fades and a few draws. I’ve hit about half the bucket.

This part is just to remind me how my swing works, to keep the feelings fresh.

Then I take out my wedges and hit to random distances. I’ll play with trajectory next. When maybe three or four balls are left, I’ll go back to the long clubs and hit a driver and a few irons. Done.

At the practice green, I’ll drop four balls and chip them to different holes. Or, I’ll pick one hole and chip to it from four balls different places around the green. This goes on, hitting different shots all the time, until I’ve gotten all four balls up and down twice in a row.

Finally, putting. Eight three-footers in a circle drill to a cup that is on slanted ground. Then a dozen or so 20-footers to different holes and from different directions — never hitting the same putt twice. Four balls to the same hole on the same line from 35, 15, 45, and 25 feet (in that order) until all of them go down in two. End with five straight-in two-foot putts, to go home with success in mind.

To get better at swinging the golf club, you have to swing it a lot, the right way.  The 120 Swings drill, more than any other, meets that need.   It comes from my first book, Better Recreational Golf.

You’re going to swing the club 120 times, in five sets of twenty swings, each set different from the last.  It might take you three minutes to complete each set.   The complete exercise takes about twenty minutes.

Start out with twenty normal golf swings.   You’ll be hitting a ball only every tenth swing.

For swings 21-40, swing with your left arm only.  Swings 41-60 are your normal swings again.

Swings 61-80 are right arm-only swings.   Swings 81-100 are two-handed, but with your feet together, heels touching.

The final set, swings 101-120, is back to your normal swing.

(If 120 swings are too many, then do six sets of ten.)

The one-armed swings teach you what that arm does in the swing.  It will also help you strengthen your left arm when you do that set.

The point of the feet-together swings is to teach you how to move your upper and lower body together.  You will not be able to make as great turn with your feet together, so don’t force it.

Step away and set up before every swing.  Take your time.  This prevents you from getting into a groove that will not last beyond the conclusion of the drill.

It is very important that in any set you swing the same way every time.  Do not go trying different things with each swing.  Swing the same way every time.  This is especially important when you hit a ball with that tenth swing.  If you change your swing, you’ll feel it, and that tells you are ball bound—a bad habit that needs to be broken.

Use the same club for the entire drill.  A 6-iron is an ideal club.  I would recommend not using a driver.

An advanced application of this drill is for the club to impact the ground in the same way with every swing.  This means you are in control of the depth of your swing, a vital but seldom-mentioned requirement for consistent ball-striking.

Do this exercise twice a week.  It will make your swing repeatable without your having to think about more than any drill I know of.

A few years ago, I published a blog post that was a reprint, with permission, of the best piece I have ever read about how much practice it takes to get good at golf.

The answer is essentially what Ben Hogan told Gary Player when Player said he practiced all the time. Hogan said, “Good. Now practice more than that.”

I read an obituary a few years ago of Bob Kurland, who played professional basketball in the 1950s. He was one of the first truly big men in the game. Kurland realized if he developed a hook shot from close in, no one would be able to stop it.

So the story goes that he went to the gym and started practicing. The first 100 or so shots didn’t come close. The next hundred showed promise. By about 300 shots, he started to connect.

That’s not too much for you to do, either, if you want to.

A few days ago I was cruising around Wikipedia, reading the entry for Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim. He worked his butt off to get where got to.

He said, about composing, “Well, I can do that. Because you just don’t know. You think it’s a talent, you think you’re born with this thing. What I’ve found out and what I believed is that everybody is talented. It’s just that some people get it developed and some don’t.”

You have the talent to be good at something in golf. Very good. Decide what you’re going to be good at, and put in the work to get there.

How much work? One more time.

I picked up this line recently, but I can’t remember from where. It goes like this: An amateur will practice until he (or she) can do it right. A professional will keep on practicing until he can’t do it wrong.

The next time you practice chipping for ten minutes and a few shots get close to the hole and you’re about to call it a day, think about how good could you be vs. how good are you allowing yourself to be.

The rainy season has landed on the Pacific Northwest with a vengeance. The last good day to play golf was a week ago. We’ll have a few good days here and there, but if you’re in a rainy climate, too, spend your golfing getting better for next year.

Here is a practice program for winter of 2014-5.

Swing. Learn to hit the ball straight. All good golf depends on this. My Six Fundamentals show you how to do that.

Chipping. If your ball is three feet off the green and the pin is 30 feet away, do you routinely leave the chip tap-in close? There’s no reason you can’t learn to.

This is the easiest shot in the game and expectations are so low. You don’t have to get the ball in the hole, just close to it.

I’m serious about this now, get a lesson and have the pro teach you the shot from start to finish. I did a few years ago. I was a pretty good chipper, but I told the pro, “Pretend I’ve never chipped before. Teach me how to do it.”

What he showed me was entirely different than what I had been doing, and much more effective. It will be for you, too.

Pitching. If you’re from 30 to 90 yards from the green, can you guarantee getting the ball on with one shot? You might be surprised, if you counted, how many strokes you lose if you can’t guarantee that simple result.

This winter, when you’re at the range, buy two buckets. One is for your full swing, the other is for pitching. Only for pitching. Learn the shot, calibrate your wedges to hit the ball to pre-determined distances. Pitch every time you visit the range.

Do not take this shot for granted. When you start getting up and down from 60 yards, you’ll thank me.

Trouble shots. Learn how to hit the ball off uneven lies. I have YouTube videos on all of them.

Learn how to hit the ball low, and how to hit it high. Learn how to draw the ball, and fade it, intentionally. Learn how to hit out of rough.

I’ll be making videos of those skills come the first sunny day. Once you have the idea, they don’t take much practice at all.

Putting. Learn to make 3-foot putts by doing the circle drill. Go all around the hole hitting 3-footers, the length of your putter. Take ten putts to get around the circle.

Memorize the feel of hitting a 30-foot putt. Learn how to adjust for an uphill putt and a downhill putt. Do this every time you visit the range.

Then go play putting games that you make up. I won’t tell you what mine are. Have your own fun on the practice green, and stay on it putting for at least twenty minutes.

Thinking. All those skills won’t help you as much as they could if you can’t use them effectively on the course. That comes down to your state of mind when you’re hitting the ball. My book, The Golfing Self, shows you how to make sure you are mentally ready for every shot.

You spend lots of time training your body, why not train your mind as well?

Lately I’ve been reworking how I practice golf — what to do with a bucket of balls at the range. For years I’ve been getting it all wrong. I’ve started to do it the right way, but it’s really hard. Let me explain.

After I started swinging a golf club again, nine months after my back surgeries, I knew I had to find a swing that put as little stress on my back as possible.

I also knew that it had to be a simple swing, easy to remember, because I couldn’t hit balls three or four times a week to keep the swing in tune.

After a year and a half of experimentation, I found a swing based on six fundamental principles that worked, was easy on my back, and was easy to re-create after a layoff.

The plan now is to apply those principles every time, or as nearly as a person can to that. That takes practice, but the right kind of practice.

I now start out at the range reviewing the six principles, focusing on each one through practice swings only. I don’t move on to the next principle until I’m satisfied the one I’m working on is correct.

After I have worked through all the principles, and they have melded into one unified swing feeling, I can hit a golf ball. A golf ball. One.

It might take thirty swings to get things where I like them before I hit that first golf ball, but I hit it without thinking of swing mechanics, without wondering how the shot will work out. I just swing with the swing feeling I have created for myself and I get a really good shot out of it.

Then I start over. I do the same thing again. It might not take me thirty swings until I’m ready this time, but there will still be a lot of them. And then I hit another golf ball. One. And I go through the whole thing again to get ready to hit a third golf ball. Et cetera.

I’m getting two things done here. One is lots of isolated practice with each of the six principles so I learn them well. The other is putting my mind in a place where those things I mentioned, worry, swing thoughts, never come into my mind. I just swing with my best swing and the ball goes on its way.

That’s how you have to play golf. That’s why if you flub a shot on the course, drop another ball and try again, that second shot is always better than the first — because you don’t have those swing-wrecking thoughts any more. You just hit the ball.

So you could say that I’m teaching myself to hit my second shot first.

The title of this post is Practicing Golf the Hard Way. That’s because it takes a LOT of will power to take all those practice swings between the time you hit golf balls. But that’s the only I way I know to get it right.

Note: I’m writing up the six principles in a small pamphlet to be published in October with related YouTube videos. I’ll keep you posted.

You go to the range to learn how to play on the course better, not to hit range balls better.

That sounds obvious, but from what I see at the range, and what I catch myself doing there, range golf and course golf are two different things. They shouldn’t be.

As you stand over a range ball, remember how you hit the ball on the course, with the club you’re holding, when you have one chance, and it has to count. I’ll bet you make a careful, controlled stroke. That’s the kind to make with this range ball.

Back on the range, seeing how far you can hit it, or trying a new swing thing just this one time, all that moves you backward in your progress, not forward.

Use your golf course swing at the range. Which one is that? When I’m hitting the ball well during play, I have the feeling that I’m just chipping the ball around the course. It’s that effortless and that controlled. I get into trouble when I try to do more. More than perfect isn’t perfecter.

You’re there to perfect that controlled swing. By that I mean learn to do it over and over, the same way every time. Don’t try to keep getting more out of it. Teach yourself to get the same thing out of it every time.

Have you ever seen a good player at the range hit one great shot after another, with the same easy swing? That’s what those golfers are doing, learning how to repeat THAT swing. That’s what I want you to do.

So on the practice tee, take your time between shots. Pick a target, line up the shot, go through your pre-shot routine, every time. Then use your golf course stroke.

Around the green, whether chipping or putting, go through all the preparations you make on the course, before every chip or putt. Hit the shot like it’s on the course.

There will be more time between shots, so don’t get impatient. You’re learning how to make quality shots, and that’s the way to improvement.

The reason why you should spend more time practicing your short game than your swing is not because the short game is more important. It’s because the short game is more complicated. You have short chips, long chips, pitches, and they’re all different kinds of shots. On the other hand, you have one swing. So spend an equal amount of time on each kind of shot, and you’ll have it right. (Then there’s putting.)

What I’m saying is that you should practice shots, not phases. Then I got to thinking, how would you allocate your time between these shots? You would certainly want to spend more time on the ones that are most important. But which ones are the most important?

I listed six shot types (swing, long pitch, short pitch, chip, sand, putt) and compared each one head to head. That’s fifteen comparisons. In the spreadsheet below, I wrote in the cell the most important shot, in my opinion, between the one in the column head and row head (click to enlarge).

You can see that “swing” came out on top all five times. You have to jump around a bit, but chip came out on top three times. Because “sand” is 0 does not mean it has no importance, but that it is the least important shot of the six.

This list tells me how I should prioritize my practice: swing first, putting second, and so on. It does not tell me how much time I should spend on each shot type. I would suggest working on all of them at least a bit, and spend extra time on the one(s) you are having trouble with at the moment.

This is my take based on how I play right now. Ten years ago, when my swing was less accurate, I was hitting more short pitches into greens than chips, so those shots would have been in different order. As far as sand goes, I’m hardly ever in a bunker.

You might want to make up your own shots type and run your own comparisons. It would show you how to spend your practice time wisely.

When you go to the range, you need to work on two things–your technical skills, and your mental skills. The third phase of golf, playing skills, can’t be practiced. You learn that “on the job.”

You can, however, practice the first two at the same time if you do this one thing: never hit the same shot with the same club more than two times in a row.

After you hit your 7-iron twice (and you are hitting it to a target, aren’t you?), put that club down and take out another that is somewhat different, such as a long iron or a sand wedge. Hit two shots with that club and switch again.

If you’re practicing around the green, hit a chip twice, then pick a different target that makes you use a different club.

With the putter, again, don’t hit the same putt more than twice in a row. Hit a few three-footers, then go to a few 20-footers, for example.

Mixing  it up like this accomplishes two things. First, it keeps you from getting into a groove. After a while, you might be hitting one good shot after another, but that doesn’t help you learn that shot.

When you play, you have to set up your mind for making a shot because you only have that one chance to get it right. Banging out one ball after the other, even if they’re all good shots, skips that critical mental process.

Second, you can go the other direction. You have to set up your mind for each shot when you play, but you can’t overdo it. After three or four good shots at the range you might start thinking about it, and start tweaking what needs to be left alone.

Good performance in sports is based on trusting your training. Learning how to trust is just as important as perfecting your physical skills.

So you don’t have to hit only two 7-irons, or any other club,  and call it a day with that club. Just hit your two shots with it, and work with a few other clubs before you go back to it.

They say to practice as you play, and this is one way to do that.

Visit ww.therecreationalgolfer.com.

It’s cold where I live, too cold to even go outside for much time at all. Forget about playing, how do we practice? Well, it’s not too hard, and you can end up practicing some things you should have been practicing, but never do.

Putting on the carpet. Everybody knows that one. I like to putt at a tin can lid. You need something to align the putt to, to know that you’re not pushing or pulling the putt, but hitting the lid isn’t the important point. Making a smooth stroke is. In fact, don’t even watch the ball until you know it has gone past the lid.

You can practice your chipping stroke, off a carpet remnant so you don’t damage the good carpeting. Plastic golf balls make good targets, and you’re practicing making good contact with a consistent stroke. Chip with a number of clubs, too, from you 5-iron to your lob wedge.

Your swing? You can swing inside the house. You won’t hit the ceiling. Use a 7-iron or less, and there won’t be any problem.

As for those things you should practice, but don’t? Get a block of wood to practice your takeaway. The club should start back straight for the first few inches. Toe the club against the block of wood and take the club back. You should hear a quick scraping sound, like striking a match. No sound, you’re taking it back inside. Long sound, you’re trying to take it back outside.

Practice keeping your hands ahead of the ball at impact. My YouTube video on this point shows you how.

Invent. Think of something. There’s lots you can do.

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