Are You Willing To Put In The Work

You have the ability to play much better golf than you ever dreamed possible. It will take hard work and a new understanding of what’s effective on the range, what isn’t and why. It will take something called deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice was coined by the renowned psychologist K. Anders Ericsson, who did landmark research on how we attain mastery in a given pursuit. For our purposes — getting good at golf — deliberate practice is about improving by pushing your practice beyond your comfort zone. I don’t mean mindlessly pounding balls in order to build muscle memory. I’m talking about expanding your abilities by putting your brain through something akin to an ongoing golf boot camp. Only by practicing with purpose will you learn to bend the ball to your will.

I always thought “the secret” to golf was finding the correct physical sequence to make the clubface hit the ball hard and straight. It turns out that what happens in your brain is more important than what happens with your body. You can play all day, but if you aren’t intensely focused on doing a specific thing better than last time, you won’t improve.