What do you work on to cut your golf handicap —your weaknesses or your strengths? Many golfers practice their strengths when trying to lower their golf handicaps. That’s only natural. We all like to do the things we do well rather than the things we do poorly. So we tend to favor those activities when practicing.
But an informal study indicates that working on your weaknesses is a faster way to lower your golf handicap than working on your strengths—especially if you have limited time to do it. The informal study, conducted by Mark Broadie, author of Every Shot Counts, used data gleaned from the PGA Tour ShotLink System.
Work on Golf Weaknesses
Broadie’s analysis showed that professional golfers that improve from one season to another do it most commonly by working on their weaknesses. For example, Jordan Spieth was “merely average” in driving and approach shots in 2014 while his short game and putting were great. As a result, he had a good year.
But in 2015, Spieth attacked his weaknesses—driving and approach shots—and dramatically improved those areas. That boosted his performance. He then went out and had a great year. The same could be said for other pros who made big improvements from 2014 to 2015, according to Broadie’s analysis.
What’s the takeaway from all this? To lower your golf handicap, you must attack your weaknesses, especially if you have limited time to practice. Working on your weaknesses will help you lower both your scores and your golf handicap.
Getting the Most from Golf Practice
The key to improving quickly when you have limited time is getting the most from practice. That’s often a challenge. But landmark research by renowned psychologist K. Anders Ericsson indicates that you can improve at golf through “deliberate practice,” which helps you master skills faster than other methods.
Ericsson explored the topic of “deliberate practice” in the paper titled The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. Deliberate practice, says Ericsson, is a highly structured activity with the specific goal of improving performance.
Deliberate practice is different from work, play, and the retention of a task.
It requires a dedicated effort, has no monetary reward, and isn’t inherently enjoyable—although you can make it fun. Below are the four cornerstones of deliberate practice:
• Personalized — Deliberate practice is highly personalized. What you work on in practice is unique to you. But you must stretch your comfort zone for deliberate practice to work. If you hit wedges close from 100 yards out, try choking up on a 6-iron and doing the same. Find the golf skill you want to work on then do drills that challenge you to master it.
• Challenging — Deliberate practice forces you outside your comfort zone in a small way, not a big one. If you’re good at short pitches of 50 yards from clean lies, work on short pitches of the same distance from hardpan. If you’re good at chips from good lies, don’t practice impossible chips from bad lies that only Phil Mickelson could make. Step up a level.
• Repeated — Once you’ve decided what to improve, practice it at high volume. Ben Hogan perfected his golf swing by hitting thousands and thousands of shots. Performing a specific activity repeatedly sends signals to the brain that create muscle memory. Great golfers have muscle memory that helps them make specific shots. You need to practice a skill until you’ve built up sufficient muscle memory to master it.
• Feedback — You can’t improve if you don’t know what you’re doing wrong. To really improve, we need feedback. Unfortunately, we can’t see ourselves hitting, so we can’t tell what we’re doing wrong. Deliberate practice requires continual, specific feedback. Without feedback, learning is nearly impossible. A good teacher is the best solution. You can also watch and analyze video of yourself.
Practicing your weaknesses isn’t fun. But it will improve your game faster than practicing your strengths. If you have limited practice time, use deliberate practice to squeeze the most out of time you have. Deliberate practice may not make you a Jordan Spieth, but it will help you break 80 more often. And that helps cut strokes from your golf handicap.
