How to Practice a “Process vs. Outcome” Golf Mentality (Video) - by Pete Styles
How to Practice a “Process vs. Outcome” Golf Mentality (Video) - by Pete Styles

During the lessons that I give on a day to day basis, I often ask golfers what are you working on at the moment, what are you focusing on? And they might reel of a list of five or six different things. “Oh, I’m working on this and this and this and I’m trying to hit the ball next to that flag and there’s just far too many things going on,” you can’t possibly practice hitting golf balls down at the driving range.. You put your 50 balls down, and you think about your right hand on your first one then you think about the left knee on the second one, then you think about the head and then you think about where it’s going, just too many things going on. And ultimately you go after those 50 golf balls probably not ingraining any single one of those elements. What would be better is just to have one focus for one practice session.

So when I come down to the driving range my focus might just be my grip and I spend every single ball really intently focused on the feeling of the grip, feeling every finger getting into the right position for absolute consistency. Then I make my swing and I think about my hands and the feelings in my fingers rather than looking actually where the ball came down. So I’m not focused on, “Oh it went left or it went right therefore something must have gone wrong in my grip or my swing.” As long as my grip feels good and it’s exactly the position that I’m trying to get it into, it doesn’t really matter about the result. I get my hands in the right position soon as they’re comfortable, I’m feeling my fingers throughout the entire swing, and not really focused too much on where the result goes. And it might not be your grip, it might be your right knee and your back swing but the point being limit it to one particular part of your swing. And don’t relate it to the point where the ball lands. So if you’re thinking about your knee and the ball goes off sideways don’t let that distract you from getting your knee right. And then in the longer term when you’ve build all these sections together all these different bits it becomes a much smoother much more sort of fluid golf swing. And your brain doesn’t have to skip around the 10 different parts. And we just got a shot that just finishes down in the middle in the long term. So focus on the process of the golf swing rather than the outcome of your golf swing and practice hard doing that.

 2013-03-29

During the lessons that I give on a day to day basis, I often ask golfers what are you working on at the moment, what are you focusing on? And they might reel of a list of five or six different things. “Oh, I’m working on this and this and this and I’m trying to hit the ball next to that flag and there’s just far too many things going on,” you can’t possibly practice hitting golf balls down at the driving range.. You put your 50 balls down, and you think about your right hand on your first one then you think about the left knee on the second one, then you think about the head and then you think about where it’s going, just too many things going on. And ultimately you go after those 50 golf balls probably not ingraining any single one of those elements. What would be better is just to have one focus for one practice session.

So when I come down to the driving range my focus might just be my grip and I spend every single ball really intently focused on the feeling of the grip, feeling every finger getting into the right position for absolute consistency. Then I make my swing and I think about my hands and the feelings in my fingers rather than looking actually where the ball came down. So I’m not focused on, “Oh it went left or it went right therefore something must have gone wrong in my grip or my swing.” As long as my grip feels good and it’s exactly the position that I’m trying to get it into, it doesn’t really matter about the result. I get my hands in the right position soon as they’re comfortable, I’m feeling my fingers throughout the entire swing, and not really focused too much on where the result goes. And it might not be your grip, it might be your right knee and your back swing but the point being limit it to one particular part of your swing. And don’t relate it to the point where the ball lands. So if you’re thinking about your knee and the ball goes off sideways don’t let that distract you from getting your knee right. And then in the longer term when you’ve build all these sections together all these different bits it becomes a much smoother much more sort of fluid golf swing. And your brain doesn’t have to skip around the 10 different parts. And we just got a shot that just finishes down in the middle in the long term. So focus on the process of the golf swing rather than the outcome of your golf swing and practice hard doing that.