Tommy Fleetwood’s YouTube channel isn’t exactly churning out daily content. Quality over quantity. He’s a busy guy with a full PGA Tour schedule, a family and majors to prepare for. So when he gives us a peek into how he operates, you pay attention. His video, “How I Prepare for a Major,” walks through a full practice day at his home club. If your Saturday morning game is your version of a major championship, there’s plenty here worth stealing.
1. Constrain your swing to free your mind
Fleetwood shows up to the range with a small arsenal of training aids—a plane perfector, a golf box, alignment sticks around his head—and he’s unapologetic about it. The idea is that each aid takes ownership of a specific part of his swing so he doesn’t have to think about it anymore.
The thought process gets transferred out of his head and into an external element.
“The more constrained I’ve made certain aspects of my golf swing, the absolute freer I can feel,” he explains. “The harder I feel I can hit it, because I’ve stayed in such a good structured place.”
He’s not managing his shaft angle or checking his takeaway; the golf box is doing that for him. The result is a more athletic, uninhibited motion because the mental load has been offloaded to the equipment around him. For amateurs, the lesson isn’t to go buy everything in the training aid aisle. It’s to find the one or two things your swing consistently gets wrong and let something outside your body take care of them. Stop thinking and start swinging.
2. Give your brain a second to learn
We talk constantly about the importance of practicing with a target. But Fleetwood does something interesting when he starts working on his short game. He chips to absolutely no target at all. No hole, no flag, not even a spot on the green. He just works on the motion.
Fleetwood’s reasoning is that the moment a target enters the picture, your brain starts problem-solving around it. You stop repeating a movement and start manufacturing a result. Subtle adjustments creep in and suddenly you’re not ingraining anything useful.
By removing the target entirely, he gives his brain a moment to absorb the feel of the swing without interference. The movement becomes the focus, not the outcome.
The idea is that once that motion is grooved, he can then bring in a target and trust that the movement he’s been repeating will show up when it matters. For amateurs who skip straight to try to hole out from 20 yards, it’s worth asking whether you’re really practicing a shot or a motion or just trying to get the ball to drop.
3. Walk before you run: My favorite takeaway
This one is my favorite and I think it’s the concept that professionals almost never talk about because, to them, it’s assumed knowledge.
Fleetwood calls it calibration and he does it everywhere. On the range, he’s calibrating his strike and start line before he ever thinks about distance. In the bunker, he’s working through different lies and slopes systematically. On the putting green, he’s warming up his feet to feel slope percentages, rolling straight putts to confirm his alignment and hitting lag putts for pace. He’s building a picture of how the course (and his swing) are behaving that day, in those conditions, before he asks himself to compete.
The assumption at the professional level is that you don’t just show up and play. You gather information first. You run diagnostics. You learn the environment before you try to perform in it.
Most amateurs do the exact opposite. They hit a few range balls, a quick putt or two, head straight to the first tee and then wonder why it took six holes to find their game. That is the calibration phase; you’re just doing it on the course when it counts. Fleetwood does it before he ever gets there.
Final thoughts
I’ve always said that if you’re going to practice golf, you might as well practice it correctly. These tips won’t necessarily change your entire routine but they may be worth incorporating if you’re trying to get better.
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