Did you know a good practice plan should connect three things:
- What you are trying to change.
- How you will practise it.
- How you will bring it onto the golf course.
That third part is where many golfers struggle.
You may improve a movement on the range, but that does not mean you can automatically produce it when playing. You must also practise changing targets, selecting clubs, making decisions and performing with only one attempt.
How do I build a player’s plan?
With many players, I first need one or two coaching sessions to understand their
What, Why and How:
- What is happening in their game and technique?
- Why is it happening?
- How are we going to improve it?
Once I have a clearer picture, I send the player a set of questions about their goals, practice habits, available time, facilities and how they currently measure progress.
Their answers give me further information that I combine with what I have learned during our sessions. From there, I can start building an individual blueprint and practice plan.
View the questions I use to help build a player’s plan (Click Here)
Start with a blueprint
A blueprint sets out the overall direction for your development.
It should identify:
- Your main priority.
- The movement or skill you are working on.
- Clear checkpoints for measuring progress.
- How the change should affect your strike and ball flight.
- The order in which you should work on each part.
Your coaching point or feeling may change as you improve, but the overall direction should remain consistent.
Without a blueprint, one poor practice session can lead you towards another drill, another swing thought or another technical change.
The blueprint is only the starting point
Knowing what to change does not tell you how to practise it or how to use it on the course.
Your practice plan needs four stages.
1. Technical practice
This is where you work on the movement itself.
You may use rehearsals, video, feedback and repetition. If you have separate backswing and downswing priorities, work on them separately before trying to combine everything.
2. Skill practice
Now you begin changing the target, club or distance.
Before each shot:
- Choose a clear target.
- Decide on the intended ball flight.
- Complete your routine.
- Hit one ball.
- Judge the strike, start line, flight and distance.
This starts moving your attention away from the movement and towards the shot.
3. Transfer practice
This is the key stage for bringing your work onto the golf course.
You hit one ball, complete your routine and accept the result. You do not immediately repeat a poor shot or return to technical practice halfway through the test.
Change the target, club or distance after each shot. This forces you to make a fresh decision and prepare properly every time.
You are no longer trying to produce a perfect movement. You are learning how to use that movement to hit a golf shot.
4. On-course testing
The final stage is taking the work onto the course without analysing every part of your swing.
Your attention should move towards:
- The target.
- Shot selection.
- Intended ball flight.
- Commitment.
- Accepting the result.
- Recovering before the next shot.
If you spend every range session hitting several balls with the same club towards the same target, you may improve at that particular task.
It does not automatically prepare you for the decisions and consequences you face on the golf course.
How should you check your progress?
Feeling that your swing has changed is not enough.
You need agreed checkpoints, such as:
- Video from the correct camera angle.
- Strike pattern.
- Start line and ball flight.
- Carry-distance control.
- A skill-test score.
- Commitment to each shot.
- Your ability to recover after a mistake.
At the end of every structured practice session, take five minutes to record:
- Did you complete the plan?
- Did you introduce any unplanned technical changes?
- How many shots had a commitment level of at least 8 out of 10?
- Did you reset properly after poor shots?
- What did you learn?
This gives you evidence of progress before that progress appears in your scores.
One plan. Clear checkpoints. Proper transfer.
A poor shot does not automatically mean the blueprint is wrong.
The movement may still be developing, or you may not have spent enough time transferring it into a playing situation.
The answer is not always another drill.
You need a clear blueprint, a structured practice plan and tasks that gradually take the work from technical practice onto the golf course.
See how the process works
I have included an anonymous example showing how a player’s blueprint can become a complete practice structure.
View the sample practice plan (Click here)
Before I build a plan like this, I need to understand the player’s goals, current practice habits, technical work and how they measure progress.
You can also see some of the questions I send players before creating their plan of action.
