Want to lower your scores quickly and easily? Then master the short game. With 60% of the average score coming within 100 yards, perfecting your short game saves strokes and lowers golf handicaps. It’s a must do if you want to break 80.
Visualization helps you make master short game shots—especially your putting. It programs the necessary information into your brain, which tells your body how to hit the desired shot—without you even thinking about it.
In addition, it imprints the image of what you’re about to do and focuses your attention on what you’re about to do and away from your swing. In other words, it makes you reactive instead of mechanical. That pays off in more sunk putts.
What’s more, research shows that when you visualize performing a physical action, you stimulate the same muscles you use when actually performing the action. In golf, that’s like practicing your putt before actually hitting it.
Touch and Feel Required
Putting requires touch and feel. With this type of shot, you need to rely on two factors—depth perception and feel. Visualization helps you leverage both factors
Below are five golf tips on visualization that will help you drain more putts, including those makeable three-footers you always seem to miss. You can use visualization to:
• Boost commitment to shot — Commitment is a critical factor when putting. If you’re not fully committed to a putt, you’ll probably miss it. Building a clear picture of the putt you’re about to make in your mind, on the other hand, boosts confidence in the shot you’re about to hit. That, in turn, increases fluidity in your putting stroke.
• Increase focus on the putt — With golf, you need to focus on the external not the internal. In other words, you need to focus on the shot, not on your swing’s mechanics. Visualizing the putt helps you do that by shifting your focus to what you’re about to do. Put another way, it makes you more reactive and keeps your movements more free-flowing.
• Paint a picture of the outcome — To sink more putts you need to paint a clear picture in your mind of the outcome. Visualizing yourself sinking the putt is critical to success. It’s what’s called outcome visualization. So see the ball dropping in your mind and keep the image right up until you make the stroke.
• Imagine yourself hitting the shot — Savvy golfers take visualization one step further than outcome visualization. They see themselves hitting the and completing the shot with perfect rhythm and technique. This step further programs your mind to execute the movements needed to make the putt.
• Practice the exact shot — Putting, as you know, is all about speed and line. You can use visualization to help you decide on both. How? That’s easy. Stand looking down the line (facing the putt from behind).
Now, make several practices swings until you feel the exact line and speed. Imagine the ball following the path you have in your mind and the right speed. Then watch the ball get to the hole and drop in. Now hit that shot without thinking about it.
These golf tips on visualization can help you drain more putts. But like any other skill, you need to practice visualization to get good at it. So spend part of your time on the practice green working on visualization and feel, not mechanics.
To help you ingrain visualization in your pre-shot routine, we’ve added a putting drill that improves your lag putting:
Take five balls to the practice green. Stick tees in the ground at 30, 40, and 50 feet from the hole. Now try to putt five balls in a row from each tee to within three feet of the hole. Start at 40 feet, and then move to 30, and then to 50.
Staggering your shots like this prevents you from just grooving a slightly longer stroke as you go. Don’t move to the next station until you get five straight putts within the circle.
This drill is a great little exercise. It puts you under the gun—the way you would be during a round. When you get to the fourth putt, you’ll feel the heat to get the fifth within the circle.
