Scratch By 50: I Was Practicing All Wrong

Graham Averill will turn 50 this year and he’s freaking out. Instead of buying a motorcycle or getting a tattoo, he’s decided to try to get really, really good at golf. He’s a 13 handicap attempting to reach scratch in a year. Welcome to his midlife crisis. 

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A golfer goes to the driving range and buys a large bucket of balls and then proceeds to hit those balls one after the other at an alarming rate so that he swings through 130 balls in about 10 minutes. He does this religiously once or twice a week because he’s convinced that “practice” will help him improve. Large bucket, 130 swings, fast as shit. And he never gets better at golf. 

It’s not a joke. It’s how I used to approach “practicing.” I’m putting that word in quotation marks because I don’t think what I was doing should be called practice. I would simply hit the range for an hour or so getting a massive volume of reps in without any direction. Occasionally, I would work in a drill that I gleaned from social media but I would quickly abandon any sort of structure as soon as it felt too awkward. 

“Does this alignment stick threaded through my belt buckle make me look stupid?” 

Yes. Yes, it does.

I was getting lots of reps in but not getting any better. Sound familiar? 

My approach to practice started to shift when my coach broke down each element of my swing and had me work on the smallest movements over and over. It gave my time at the range focus. And focus is what all good practice sessions need. Because if you’re not practicing with intention, you’re not practicing. You’re just wasting time. 

I already wrote about how I had to completely change my swing early in this project and that dedication to reworking my takeaway gave me something tangible to take to the practice facility. It added intentionality to my practice sessions. I wasn’t just hitting the range with the vague notion of getting better at golf. I was hitting the range to get better at this tiny piece of my swing which would eventually help me get better at golf. 

I’ve tried to incorporate that same sense of intention to every practice session during the last couple of months. Sure, I might slowly work through a small bucket of balls when I’m warming up before a round but when I’m practicing, I’m focusing on one or two aspects of my game. 

There are days when I’ll spend an hour off to the side of the practice green, just working on initiating my turn with my core on short chip shots. It’s a small detail that lays the foundation for a good swing that translates to the course regardless of the club I have in my hand. Or I might spend an entire session doing slow-motion swings with my driver, trying to bake in the setup and motion that produces a draw or a fade with the big stick. I’ve had entire practice sessions when I never even swing at full speed because I’m working on a specific pattern of movements. 

Honestly, every aspect of my game needs work so the focus of each practice session doesn’t really matter. The important thing is that I’m focusing on something and not just hitting balls blindly. 

Having a coach helps because he guides me towards specific elements that need work but you don’t need a coach to add intentionality to your practice. All you need is a phone with a camera. 

The biggest game-changer for my practice sessions has been putting my swing on video, especially slow-motion video. My coach lives on the west coast of the U.S. and I live on the east coast so we send a lot of videos back and forth. The situation has gotten me in the habit of setting up a tripod behind my station at the range and rolling film. I admit that filming myself in public is a bit awkward but, so far, nobody has made fun of me to my face. Honestly, we’re all out there in pursuit of a better game and whipping out a camera phone is probably the least embarrassing thing a golfer has done during that lofty quest (see: alignment stick, belt loops, et al above). 

And watching a vid of yourself hitting a golf ball is eye-opening. It will give you a greater understanding of your own swing and clue you in to the elements that are working and those that are lacking. Even without a coach’s guidance, you’ll be able to see big problem areas. Are you rolling your wrists over at the beginning of your backswing? Are you initiating your downswing with your shoulders? It will all be there in slow-motion 4K. And once you see the gaps in your swing, you’ll have a better understanding of why the ball doesn’t do what you want it to do on the course. And then you can target those specific elements of your swing during your next practice session. 

Practicing with that sort of intention is how I’m starting to actually get better at golf. 

Dig deeper into one golfer’s struggle to get better at golf in middle age and read last week’s Scratch By 50 about Graham’s decision to join a country club. 

Scratch By 50: Do You Need To Join A Club?