1. This is old knowledge, but I needed a reminder. I hit the ball very straight, but I often push it. The fix is to finish the turn so my belt buckle faces the target.

2. Leaving putts short is an insidious habit. The way to cure it is to leave your head down for a few seconds after you have struck the ball. Don’t look, don’t peek. The ball will get to and past the hole.

3. When chipping, take the club back and let it fall back into the ball in a controlled way — a gravity move guided by the hands. This gives you surer contact and more control over the length of the chip, which is determined solely by the length of the backswing. I use three clubs to chip with: 7-iron, 9-iron, and 56-degree wedge.

There’s so much to practice in golf, and you need to do all of it at some time or another. But try this concentrated practice routine and see if it doesn’t pay off real soon in lower scores.

1. Hit range balls only with your driver and sand wedge. Go through your bucket in a six-shot pattern: hit five wedges, then one driver. That will tighten up your short game, and bring a controlled swing to a club that you just have to hit well to have a chance to score.

2. Go to the practice green, with one ball, and chip up to a hole and putt it out. Do this thirty times, hitting to a different setup every time. Maybe you don’t chip with a sand wedge all the time, but that’s OK. You’ll learn to get the ball close enough. You’ll learn to putt by making real putts: the back end of an up and down, which is golf’s major scoring skill.

I know there are a lot of shots and clubs this scheme doesn’t address, but it does address the important ones. The skills you learn here will carry over into the rest of it, believe me.

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Practice is not play. By that, I mean it’s not playtime, where you can knock around some golf balls and call it good. It’s serious business, if you want to improve.

A few days ago, I took my grandson to the range to practice his short game and putting. This is the phase of the game were he’s losing too many strokes, and can get them back the most easily. I gave him a challenge: get a twenty-yard chip up and down, and not quit until he did it.

He had four golf balls that he hit with his 6-iron. Two of them ended up way out of one-putt range, but two gave him makable putts. He missed them both, so back to the start. Four more chips. Just get one of them up and down.

Well, this was taking longer than I thought it would. After four rounds of this exercises, with no luck, I just stood out here and tossed the ball back to him if it ended up too far away. Finally, he got one to five feet. I helped him read the putt and line it up. He missed. Back to chipping, and he was getting pretty discouraged.

About six chips later, he hit one to four feet. OK, I thought, this is it. He missed. Back to chipping. We had to be getting to the 40th chip by now, and I was wondering how long this was going to take. He was getting pretty discouraged. I stayed calm, though, and told him that if we quit, we would have walked away and learned nothing.

So here we go again. The next chip he hit was running a little too fast, but had a really nice line, and it went in. We’re done. If the up goes in and you don’t need the down, that’s OK, too. He was so happy.

But one thing he was so happy about is that he had stuck with it (with some help) and met his goal. Anyone can quit. He left the range with a feeling of achievement rather than failure. That’s serious business.

I’m a good chipper. My exercise is more demanding. I chip four balls to one hole and don’t quit until I get all of them up and down. Then I hit four balls to four different holes and don’t quit until I get all of them up and down, too. Sometimes I get both parts right away, so I start over with more difficult chips. I make myself work for success.

You won’t get good on the course until you make yourself be good in practice. That’s my habit, that’s a habit I’m teaching my grandson, and I hope this post inspires you in that regard if you’re not doing that already.

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1. Last fall, I developed a killer chipping method using primarily my wedges. It worked well through late spring. We’ve had a period of hot weather recently which dried out the courses in the area.

That chipping system had to be put on the shelf because the ball isn’t checking up on the firm greens. It’s back to my 6-iron for the garden variety greenside chips.

2. Also, greenside rough is behaving differently, so I found the solution by putting away my wedges and chipping out with a 24-degree hybrid iron. The ball comes off that club pretty hot, so it takes a bit of practice to learn how much touch to put on the ball.

3. I have a confession to make. I can miss really short putts. I would rather have a four-footer than a two-footer. For some reason, my mind’s eye doesn’t define the line to the hole on the short putts and they can go anywhere.

My solution? Line up the putt, close my eyes, and make a pendulum swing with my shoulders. Works like a charm.

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Every time you hit a golf ball, there should be a purpose. At the driving range, you can hit balls with no other purpose than building positive habits to serve you when you play. What would be the habits you might wish to develop?

The first one, which should be shared with what follows, is the feeling of mind that the shot is within your capability to hit well, and that it will be hit well. Train yourself to have that feeling every time you step up to the ball. Do not take for granted. Make that feeling explicit, part of your emotional checklist you go through before you take the club away.

When you play, don’t you want to have a confident feeling like that when you’re about to play a shot that counts, as confident over a drive into a narrow fairway as over a six-inch putt? Of course you do. You can have that feeling if you have trained yourself to have it, by making it a natural response to hitting a golf ball, regardless of the situation.

You need technical skills, too. Good golf is played by hitting the ball the right way, the same way, every time. Please take lessons to learn what the right way is. Very few of you are genius enough to figure it out by yourself. Once you know what the principles of good golf are, practice those principles, and only those. Hit each ball with one thought in mind, the same thought.

If you hit the ball poorly, take it to mean that you haven’t learned the principle yet. The mistake is to think it doesn’t work, and then go fishing for something else. That leads to one thought after another, ending up in having learned nothing, and having established a habit of guessing over the ball.

While the emotional confidence you are trying to build up shouldn’t be influenced by your circumstances, when you really don’t know what you are doing, it’s hard to maintain your confidence; because you are believing in, what?

So practice your technical point using practice swings, enough of them so you feel you have it down, and then step up to a ball with the feeling that you know what you are doing and that it will work. The ball cannot be a test to see whether you know, but a confirmation that you truly do.

If the shot works out, repeat the whole process. If it doesn’t work out, chalk it up to needing more work, then go do the work.

In the end, this is true: While you want to have all parts of your game polished as well as you can, a positive mind will serve mediocre technique much better than flawless technique will serve a mind that worries. Because the mind is intangible, we tend to forget its influence. Those who remember are the ones who get the most out of their skills and have the most fun.

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Today has to do with putting.

1. To acquire the feel for the length of the stroke needed to hit an approach putt, and thus the speed, I set up behind the ball looking directly at the hole. I then take a practice stroke that I know would send the ball ten feet. I take another stroke that would send the ball halfway to the hole from there, and another that would get the ball all the way to the hole.

By sneaking up on the actual stroke in this way, proceeding in identifiable steps, I get a very good idea for how long to make the actual stroke because it is built on the foundation of knowledge that I gained using the practice procedure #3, below.

2. To make short putts, that is, putts of under eight feet, you must feel the speed, find the line, in that order, and step up to the ball aligned in your stance to the staring line of the putt.

Now for the critical part. You must forget about the hole entirely and hit a straight putt of a given distance, just as if you were putting on your living room carpet. The existence of the hole beside you must vanish from your awareness. All that must be on your mind is the physical act of making that straight putt. If you do just that, you have set yourself up so the green will do the rest.

Do not try to do the job of the green once you have found it.

3. Here’s a distance drill for you. Line up four balls and hit each one six feet, without looking where they go. You do this by closing your left eye and keeping it closed until you have putted all four balls. Line up four more and do it again. Repeat the drill to distances of nine feet and twelve feet.

You don’t look at where the balls ended up until you are finished, to prevent you from subtly adjusting your stroke. The purpose of this drill is to memorize what a stroke that hits the ball these distances feels like.

You may do the drill another day to fifteen, eighteen, and twenty-one feet.

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Most golfers say they want to be consistent, little realizing that they already are. What they want to be is consistently good, a claim few golfers can make.

Today’s post was in August 2001 by Bob Madsen for the defunct website, lessonsingolf.com. Madsen is a PGA pro and currently Director of Instruction at the Sycuan Golf and Tennis Resort in El Cajon, California.

It is the best piece I have ever read on what it takes to become a consistently good golfer. Honest, straightforward, and valuable.

Here is “Do the Reps and Work Your Way Up,” by Bob Madsen:

“One of the many things my students are asking for is more consistency. ‘I just want to be more consistent’ comes the cry.

“Well, this seems a valid request as we all know how much fun it is to do well repeatedly. Better worded though, we might all be asking for more ‘repeat ability.’

“Repeated success gives us a feeling like, “Hey. I can really do this!” Isolated success does not. Being able to repeatedly, for example, hole out putts from four feet brings joy and refreshment, not to mention lower scores.

“Anytime we can really do it and do it over and over and over again it feels good. And isn’t that what we all want – to feel good?

“Repeat ability is therapeutic. As you gain in your ability to repeat a skill – like being able to get out of a bunker – you will just plain be better off out there. You will be more relaxed, friendly, fun to be around and full of confidence. Repeat ability really is the source of trust.

“So, we have a few concepts here that I urge you to get a grip on. Consistency really is just repeat ability. And repeat ability will give you trust and confidence.

“Now for the kicker. How do you get more repeat ability? There is only one way and that is by repetition. You must spend time doing the reps. You will not become more consistent while reading Golf Digest or watching the Golf Channel.

“You are not going to be more unfailingly skilled by going off of the latest tips and pointers, band-aids, and quick-fixes. You will not find more consistency while you are in line at Starbucks. You will also not get better if you are out there on the range flailing and failing over and over again with the latest big head driving club.

“The only way to get more consistent and really be able to repeat success is with lots of repeated success in practice. For example, if you want to hole more putts, you have to go spend hours and hours sinking putts. I am talking about starting six inches from the hole if you have to. Hole 100 in a row. Then, move back an inch.

“Here is the recipe. Find something you know you can do and do lots and lots of it. Then, go for a LITTLE, tiny bit more.

“If you want more repeat ability so you can dazzle your friends and really leave the golf course refreshed, practice succeeding. Succeed over and over and over again.

“I promise, before you will ever be able to hit the driver consistently, you will have to be almost tour caliber with a seven iron. You’ve got to work your way up. You’ve got to earn consistency. It is well worth the effort.”

Thank you, Bob, for your permission to reprint this tip.

Yesterday I went to the range with my 60-degree wedge and my putter. I started with the wedge.

1. Chipping off a downhill slope. I had no luck trying to finesse the ball downhill by sliding the clubface through the ball with the face open. Next I tried setting up with the ball just outside my right foot (that’s WAY back in the stance) and using a normal chipping stroke. That worked a lot better.

If you have a good way to hit this shot, please comment below.

2. Short pitches to tight pins. Open the clubface, set up to the left of the pin, aim the clubface at the pin, and slide the club under the ball, swinging along your stance line, keeping the clubhead low on the follow-through. Opening the clubface more or less will send the ball shorter or longer, respectively, with the same swing.

All that took about 45 minutes. On to the putter.

3. Practiced distance control using six balls. First, the short stroke, that goes about 15 feet. Hit all six without looking up. They will end up in a tight cluster if your stroke is consistent. Then a medium stroke, ~25 feet, and a long stroke, ~35 feet, again, hitting six balls into a cluster without looking up until the last ball is hit.

4. Practiced with my knitting needles. This is a good way to learn to square your putterface to the line and to make a stroke that goes along the target line.

5. Two-, three-, and four-foot putts with four balls. I measure this by hooking the putterhead inside the cup, laying the putter on the green, and placing a ball at (a) the end of the shaft, (b) the end of the grip, and (c) the end of the grip plus one shoe-length. Putt four balls laid down at N, E, S, and W. Repeat with balls laid down at diagonals to the first setup – NW, SW, SW, and NE. That’s 24 putts in all.

6. Breaking putts, using the Vector Putting method. 12-foot and three-foot putts to a hole on a slope, using the same scheme as in #5.

7. Lag putts, using a completely intuitive method of getting the speed right. I stand behind the ball, swing the putter back and forth, letting the green inform me what the right stroke is. Sounds odd, but once I know the speed of the greens, I can’t go wrong with this method. Figure it out for yourself, because there’s no way I can explain it more than I just did.

8. In all of this, I’m practicing my pre-putt routine: find the speed, find the line. Step up to the ball and place the putterhead in front of the ball, square to the line. Step into the putt, parallel to the line. Bring the putter around (not over) the ball, place it behind the ball, wait one beat, and go. From the time I place the putter head in front of the ball to takeaway requires seven seconds.

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