Practice golf under pressure around the clock drill, Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
Practice golf under pressure around the clock drill, Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

One thing I hear a lot when I chat to golfers about the ability that they have with that putter, they feel like they're good putters in practice. They can stand on the putting green and shall putt for fun and hole putts, but when they get out on the golf course, they get in a pressurized situation, particularly towards the back end of a game of golf, on the backend of a round of golf. They start to struggle and miss putts under pressure.

So, another thing I would encourage you to do is practice with an element of pressure. So here, I've set up a little exercise where we got five balls, all about two and a half, three feet away from the hole, which is my tee peg. It's a putt that you know you should make. You've had a decent putt down to three feet or a great chip shot into three feet. You think, "I will just roll it forwards, I will just roll that one in." Under pressure, this is a sort of thing that starts to miss.

So, the way to do it is build the pressure into your practice routine. So, we start off with putt number one and we work around the circle and we have to hold the last putt before we can move on to the next exercise. You'll find that as you get around to number five, the pressure does naturally start to build on you. You've got to be disciplined with yourself here. You know that if you miss number four, you've got to go back and set up number three, two and one again and you say to yourself, "Once I've done all these, I can go inside and get a coffee," or, "Once I've done all these, I can go and practice with my chip-in or something different."

But you want to try and build a little bit of pressure into your routine. Once you're quite confident knocking them in from this two and a half, three-foot, move them back four feet, five feet, six feet, or add extra balls into the end of the chain, but put more and more pressure into your practice routine, then when you go out in the golf course, you'll find the game quite easy. To add more pressure, challenge your friend or a colleague doing this as well. So, you say, "Come on, the first one to finish their five balls. I've got five balls around my hole here, you've got five balls around your hole there, the first one to knock all five in."

That would add another element of pressure and you'll feel that when you go on to the golf course, suddenly this three-foot putt is not so daunting because I've been practicing this three-foot putt and under pressure.

So, add some pressure with around-the-clock exercise and you'll be a much better putter on the golf course.

 2013-01-23

One thing I hear a lot when I chat to golfers about the ability that they have with that putter, they feel like they're good putters in practice. They can stand on the putting green and shall putt for fun and hole putts, but when they get out on the golf course, they get in a pressurized situation, particularly towards the back end of a game of golf, on the backend of a round of golf. They start to struggle and miss putts under pressure.

So, another thing I would encourage you to do is practice with an element of pressure. So here, I've set up a little exercise where we got five balls, all about two and a half, three feet away from the hole, which is my tee peg. It's a putt that you know you should make. You've had a decent putt down to three feet or a great chip shot into three feet. You think, “I will just roll it forwards, I will just roll that one in.” Under pressure, this is a sort of thing that starts to miss.

So, the way to do it is build the pressure into your practice routine. So, we start off with putt number one and we work around the circle and we have to hold the last putt before we can move on to the next exercise. You'll find that as you get around to number five, the pressure does naturally start to build on you. You've got to be disciplined with yourself here. You know that if you miss number four, you've got to go back and set up number three, two and one again and you say to yourself, “Once I've done all these, I can go inside and get a coffee,” or, “Once I've done all these, I can go and practice with my chip-in or something different.”

But you want to try and build a little bit of pressure into your routine. Once you're quite confident knocking them in from this two and a half, three-foot, move them back four feet, five feet, six feet, or add extra balls into the end of the chain, but put more and more pressure into your practice routine, then when you go out in the golf course, you'll find the game quite easy. To add more pressure, challenge your friend or a colleague doing this as well. So, you say, “Come on, the first one to finish their five balls. I've got five balls around my hole here, you've got five balls around your hole there, the first one to knock all five in.”

That would add another element of pressure and you'll feel that when you go on to the golf course, suddenly this three-foot putt is not so daunting because I've been practicing this three-foot putt and under pressure.

So, add some pressure with around-the-clock exercise and you'll be a much better putter on the golf course.