String Together Good Shots on the Golf Course (Video) - by Pete Styles
String Together Good Shots on the Golf Course (Video) - by Pete Styles

As an experienced golfer, I’m sure you'll appreciate that time in your golfing career when everything goes right for you. It may even be in a driving range session or a round of golf where just shot after shot goes straight down the middle. Why can’t we get that real good consistency when we absolutely need it the most under the pressure of the monthly competition or down the back nine and the club championship? A lot of it can come down to the way you practice.

We have two different methods of practice. We have blocked practice and we have random practice. Most golfers do blocked practice majority of their time where they'll stand on the driving range with 150 golf balls in front of them. They'll hit 50 wedges, 50 7-irons and 50 drivers and by the 50th shot of each of those sessions of course, you're hitting the ball brilliantly, every single drive pounding straight down the middle. Every single day wedge shot is going to really close to the flag. But that's unrealistic for how you will go out on the golf course. So try and make your practice a little bit more random and that's exactly as the name suggests. You're chopping and changing. You're doing different shots different times so you're not always hitting the same shot over and over again.

A nice way of practicing that on the driving range is actually to visualize the golf course for real out here and then just go through your round of golf so if you start off with 500-yard par 5, you take your driver and hit your driver down there as far as you can and then you would take a 3-iron let’s say or a 3-hybrid and knock that down for your second shot. Then chip it onto the green and then even, if you have an opportunity to putt, practice a bit of putting at the back of the driving range. Then pretend you're on the next hole, might be a par 3, 170 yards. What club would you use for that? Take that out of your bag. Pick a flag. Aim at it. If you hit a good one, do your putting. If you hit a bad one, do your chipping on. That's a really great way of random practicing on the driving range. Now if you've got an opportunity to go after a chipping or putting green at your golf course where you're allowed to chip on and putt out, that's great because rather than doing all your chipping in one go and then all your putting in one go, you need to chip and putt.

So what I’d like to do is take 10 balls to the middle of the green and stand in the middle of the green near the flag and just throw the golf balls off the green in a big circular pattern right the way round so I’ve got 10 golf balls around the side of the green and then sort of play a game that I call sort of par 20. Go after the green. Chip on. Try and hold the putt. Off the green chip on and hold the putt. The ideal there would be to shoot level par, par 20. One chip shot, one putt. One chip shot, one putt. See how close to par 20 you can get your score. If you're scoring 30 and certainly more than 30, you need to do a lot of work on your short game because that would indicate you're chipping on and then taking three putts or you're not chipping on the first time. The lower your score can be near to par 20, the better that would be. Again, that's a great example of random practice, chipping and then holding putt, chipping and holding putt. Don’t do all the chip shots in one go and then all the putts in one go. Like I mentioned, make it random. Split it up. Chip on. Hold the putt. Chip on. Hold the putt. Change your practice from block practice to random practice. That should encourage you to be a little bit more consistent about stringing good shots together, shot after shot on the golf course like you have been on the driving range.

 2012-09-17

As an experienced golfer, I’m sure you'll appreciate that time in your golfing career when everything goes right for you. It may even be in a driving range session or a round of golf where just shot after shot goes straight down the middle. Why can’t we get that real good consistency when we absolutely need it the most under the pressure of the monthly competition or down the back nine and the club championship? A lot of it can come down to the way you practice.

We have two different methods of practice. We have blocked practice and we have random practice. Most golfers do blocked practice majority of their time where they'll stand on the driving range with 150 golf balls in front of them. They'll hit 50 wedges, 50 7-irons and 50 drivers and by the 50th shot of each of those sessions of course, you're hitting the ball brilliantly, every single drive pounding straight down the middle. Every single day wedge shot is going to really close to the flag. But that's unrealistic for how you will go out on the golf course. So try and make your practice a little bit more random and that's exactly as the name suggests. You're chopping and changing. You're doing different shots different times so you're not always hitting the same shot over and over again.

A nice way of practicing that on the driving range is actually to visualize the golf course for real out here and then just go through your round of golf so if you start off with 500-yard par 5, you take your driver and hit your driver down there as far as you can and then you would take a 3-iron let’s say or a 3-hybrid and knock that down for your second shot. Then chip it onto the green and then even, if you have an opportunity to putt, practice a bit of putting at the back of the driving range. Then pretend you're on the next hole, might be a par 3, 170 yards. What club would you use for that? Take that out of your bag. Pick a flag. Aim at it. If you hit a good one, do your putting. If you hit a bad one, do your chipping on. That's a really great way of random practicing on the driving range. Now if you've got an opportunity to go after a chipping or putting green at your golf course where you're allowed to chip on and putt out, that's great because rather than doing all your chipping in one go and then all your putting in one go, you need to chip and putt.

So what I’d like to do is take 10 balls to the middle of the green and stand in the middle of the green near the flag and just throw the golf balls off the green in a big circular pattern right the way round so I’ve got 10 golf balls around the side of the green and then sort of play a game that I call sort of par 20. Go after the green. Chip on. Try and hold the putt. Off the green chip on and hold the putt. The ideal there would be to shoot level par, par 20. One chip shot, one putt. One chip shot, one putt. See how close to par 20 you can get your score. If you're scoring 30 and certainly more than 30, you need to do a lot of work on your short game because that would indicate you're chipping on and then taking three putts or you're not chipping on the first time. The lower your score can be near to par 20, the better that would be. Again, that's a great example of random practice, chipping and then holding putt, chipping and holding putt. Don’t do all the chip shots in one go and then all the putts in one go. Like I mentioned, make it random. Split it up. Chip on. Hold the putt. Chip on. Hold the putt. Change your practice from block practice to random practice. That should encourage you to be a little bit more consistent about stringing good shots together, shot after shot on the golf course like you have been on the driving range.