I just got back from a long practice session with one of my professional players. We were working on distance control with his long pitch shots, and fine tuning his pre-shot routine.
Our session consisted of setting up five golf balls at 30 yards, five balls at 40 yards, five at 50 yards and five at 60 yards. Every single ball, our purpose was to execute a perfect pre-shot routine. To give you some idea of what his pre-shot routine consisted of:
- See the shot you want to hit! (Stand behind the golf ball on line with the hole for a minimum of five seconds. Here is where the player needs to see the entire shot he or she wants to hit)
- Feel the shot you want to hit! (Take a practice stroke to feel the shot you’ve chosen)
- Hit the shot you want to hit! (Once the player gets to the ball, all there is to do is hit the shot with confidence)
This pre-shot routine is incredibly simple, and it helps a player feel completely committed to the shot at hand, which allows for a confident golf swing! On average it took this player roughly 25-30 seconds to see it, feel it, hit it on each shot… and about 10 minutes to hit all twenty golf balls that we set up. Simple enough right? Every single shot hit had a purpose, and every shot was hit with confidence.
Hitting golf balls next to us was a husband and wife couple that were also practicing long pitch shots… each had a bag of golf balls (maybe sixty balls in each bag). Before we got done with our twenty golf balls, both the husband and the wife had already finished each of their bags… between the two of them hitting about 120 golf balls in 10 minutes.