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The five keys to good golf practice would involve simulating how you actually play and the conditions you find when out on the golf course.

When you play golf you only use one golf ball on the golf course. When you practise, to simulate those playing conditions, only practise with one golf ball. Play the shot that you need to play and then go and retrieve the ball. If you did not hit it correctly, re-hit it, learning what happened from the first shot and the improvement that you need to make. If you did hit the ball well then that is absolutely fine, but only use one golf ball. Now obviously you cannot do this on the driving range as you cannot go out and collect your golf ball from the driving range, but with the short game with putting, chipping, with bunker play and with pitching as well for 20, 30 or 40 yards, just play one ball at a time, go and collect the ball, bring it back and use it for the next shot.

The second thing to do to simulate your playing conditions is play the ball as it lies. It is all too easy for us as golfers when we are practising to tee the ball up on a nice lie, sitting it up on top of the grass and then we go out on the golf course and we do not find those conditions – the ball sits down more and has a bad lie. Before you play the shot, pick the ball up into your hand and just throw it into the air. Let it roll to wherever it wants to as it lands. Then play the ball from that position, so that you get used to the lies that naturally the ground is giving you when the ball is landing on it and rolling in to the position it wants to rest in and learn to play from these positions.

The third thing to do to practice effectively, is to make sure you change your golf club and target on every shot. When you are out on the golf course, you do not hit the same club over and over again and you do not hit at the same target or the same distance over and over again. You get one go at that distance and that particular target and then whatever has happened to the shot you have just hit on the golf course, the distance and the target have now altered. When you are practising, change your golf club on every shot, change the direction of the target on every shot and change the distance to the target every time. That will help you get used to how you have to play, when you are out the course.

When you are playing, or when you are practising, play games that actually create pressure on you, because it is no good practising in conditions where you really relax and then you are playing at a different relaxation level and not as relaxed as when you are in training. Create a game that you can score, a game that you can record the score and then work on beating that score next time. Count how many balls you take to create a certain score and see if you can do it in a lower number of balls on the next game or similarly, the same number of balls seeing if you can create a higher score. That will start to simulate some of the pressure you actually experience when you are out on the golf course.

The final thing to do is to give yourself walking time, so you learn to play on demand. When you are out on the golf course, you do not hit a ball and get another one instantly and hit that, firing golf balls out like a machine gun! On the course, you hit a ball and you now have to wait for your playing partner to play and you have to walk to your position and then get ready to play. So when you are practising you need to give yourself that walking time. Play the shot that you need to hit, then step away and give yourself two or three minutes before you hit the next shot and you will then learn to play more on demand.

There are five really good points to helping you create better golf practice. Follow these and you will really see an improvement in your on course play and scores.

Practising on the golf course is a very inefficient use of your time and energy. You will improve much faster if you mix driving range sessions and course practise.

Using the same club for the whole practise session should generate good results with that club but negates the entire rest of the set which are essential to playing golf on the course.

When you are practising it is not about the quantity of balls you are hitting, it is all about the quality and how you are hitting them. If you are hitting golf balls following the five key points, you are simulating how you actually play. Just raking balls out of the basket and hitting them as quickly as you can does not simulate golf play. It simulates you hitting lots of golf balls but concentrate on the quality of how well you are hitting them. Work on hitting fewer balls, slower and better, rather than lots of balls any old how.