How To Practice When You Are Busy & Lead Vs Lag Metrics

Happy Monday,

I’m a little behind as we work on new Golf Insider videos and developing the Break X Golf app.

So it seemed a good idea to talk about how to practice when you are short of time.

We also have the usual tip of the week, a skills game and an article from Break X Golf.

Enjoy.

How To Practice When You Are Busy

There are periods in life when you just can’t fit in much time to work on your golf game, but you still want to keep things ticking over. In those times what should you do?

Here is my approach to keeping my game flowing when I’m short of time.

GAP practice

Top of my list is to keep my fundamentals in order. GAP stands for Grip, Aim & Posture and when these go off course it results in all sorts of bad golf and swing faults creeping in.

This week I’ve laid down an alignment stick and hit 30 balls at the range to check my basics are in good order (10 x wedges, 5 × 7i, 5 × 5i, 10 x drives).

Some golfers are good at keeping their long game basics in order, but most neglect their chipping and putting.

I’ve also hit 20 putts on a putting mat with a good alignment aid. Here is the putting mat I use, it’s not perfect, but it has a very good surface, good visuals for alignment and I love the half-sized hole for challenging practice.

Again, if you can aim straight and start putts on line then your putting performance will never be too far off where it needs to be.

9 holes (sometimes 5 holes)

On the golf course, I try to really think through what club to take off the tee, pick a clear target off the tee and into the green and focus on making positive swings to every target.

Even if I can only play a few holes, I want my decision-making process and focus to be great.

The results don’t always follow, but I find it very easy to become lax and rusty in my thinking when I stop playing frequently.

This approach of focusing on my thinking and caring less about swing mechanics on the golf course has been really useful in recent years.

Short game bonus

If I have any extra time, I pick a simple 3-5 yard chip and hit 10-20 shots with a pitching wedge trying to hole each one. I might hole 1-2, but the mindset of trying to hole each shot is key for building a positive chipping action.

Summary

That is it.

40-60 minutes of practice and 5 or 9 holes. Admittedly you’re not going to see giant leaps with this approach, but with a strong focus on basics and mindset, I’ve found you can play some really solid golf with not much input.

I hope that helps.

Will

Break X Golf Practice Session

Break X Golf is a sister project to Golf Insider and was co-founded by Will Shaw. You can check it out here.

Levelling Up Your Golf Practice

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