A “foolish consistency might be the hobgoblin of little minds.”

But consistency is the Holy Grail for golfers.

Improving consistency takes your game to the next level and helps lower scores. It’s critical if you want to break 80.

But improving consistency around the greens is challenging—no doubt about it.

The golf drill below from Padraig Harrington, which involves shifting your weight forward when chipping, encourages a more consistent strike when chipping.

Golf Drill to Build Consistency

Take an alignment stick and lay it down it inside your left heel. It should extend out three or four inches behind the ball, placed even with your left foot. Then, hit your chips without hitting the alignment stick.

This drill forces you to move your weight forward. That’s critical for hitting pinpoint chips.

Sure, there are times when you might play the ball off your back foot or more toward the middle.

But even then, you want to have your weight forward.

Boost Consistency and Ballstriking Using These Pre-Shot Checklists

We talk a lot about pre-shot routines in our golf tips articles.

Many weekend golfers, however, don’t have one.

They get to the ball, jump into their stance, take a couple of practice swings, and then hit away.

That’s no way to generate consistency from shot to shot and round to round.

Using the same pre-shot routine boosts consistency.

It’s critical to hitting crisp, accurate irons in every instance.

So, if you don’t have a repeatable pre-shot routine, it’s time to develop one.

It will get you ready mentally and physically to hit great shots.

A good pre-shot routine includes pre-shot preparation (mental) and pre-shot ritual (physical).

Below are golf tips on a pre-shot preparation and a pre-shot shot ritual you can use to develop your own set of routines:

Golf Tip: Pre-shot Preparation

The goal with pre-shot preparation is to get you ready mentally to hit the shot.  Below are five steps you can use as the basis for your pre-shot preparation.

1. Check lie, distance, wind, and landing area
2. Consider the risk of mishitting; gambling percentages
3. Choose club, visualize the shot, and commit to it
4. Imagine the swing and swing keys
5. Internalize feel of the swing
6. Play Golf Video game

As you consider these variables, your mind calculates and evaluates how they affect club selection. Choosing a suitable iron to hit your shot is crucial.

Golf Tips: Pre-shot ritual

The goal of your pre-shot ritual is to prepare you physically to hit the shot.  Below are four steps you can use as the basis for your pre-shot ritual. Timing is always the same:

1. Always move at the same rhythm, just like in practice
2. Forget the shot’s consequences and focus on the ritual
3. Let your ritual lead you into repeating your swing preview
4. Watch/feel how good are the swing and shot that follow
5. Commit to the shot and swing away. Don’t hold back.

Developing a repeatable, consistent pre-shot routine prepares you physically and mentally for hitting the ball. That, in turn, helps boost your ball-striking. Use your pre-shot when at the range. That will help ingrain it for when you’re playing.

Also Read:

Focus on Full Swing after Long Layoff

Master Your Putting Technique with These 7 Golf Tips

Hitting ‘Em Straight: 5 Golf Driving Tips That Also Cut Strokes

Two Pillars to Playing Consistent Golf

A good pre-shot routine helps lower scores. More importantly, it helps you achieve consistency from shot to shot and round to round. Consistency is critical to breaking 80 whenever you go out.

Use these 5 Golf Tips to Build Consistency and Confidence

in Your Golf Game Starting Now

Consistency and confidence. These two things go hand in hand in golf.

The more consistent you play, the more confident you become.

The more confident you become, the lower your scores. It’s that simple. If you want to break 80, you need to do more than master golf tips. You need to achieve consistency throughout your game. It should be the top goal when practicing.

But golf often humbles us. So, building consistency in your game isn’t easy.

LPGA and PGA Tour players practice an average of four hours daily to build consistency. Some put in more.

They spend much of that time on the greens.

But mastering the physical side of consistency helps. But that only gets you so far.

You need to master the mental drivers of consistency as well.

Padraig Harrington is one of the most consistent golfers on tour.

If you scrutinize Padraig Harrington’s game, you can find a number of consistency-boosting golf tips.

Below are five golf tips to help build consistency—and confidence—in your game:

1.      Develop/use a proper pre-round warmup routine

Nothing beats having a good pre-round warmup routine.

Just make sure your warmup doesn’t turn into practice.

Instead, work on warming up your muscles, developing swing rhythm and tempo, and getting into golf mode mentally.

Putting is a critical piece of the puzzle.

The greens change from day today. Address that in your warmup.

Also, keep the number of swings at the range down. You don’t want to wear yourself out hitting ball after ball on the range.

2.      Stick to your game plan for that day

Create a game plan for the course the night before playing and stick to it during the round.

The plan could involve eliminating a swing flaw, like not overswinging or not swaying when the hitting driver.

Or it could be mental, like staying focused on every shot. Whatever the goal, stick to the plan you develop and you’ll have a good day.

3.      Stay in sync during the round

Having built swing rhythm and tempo during warmup, you now need to take that feeling to the course.

Critical areas to focus on are your takeaway, downswing, and transition.

Rushing these areas spells disaster, like slicing or hooking.

Those miscues add unnecessary strokes to your scores.

Also, focus on accelerating through the swing.

Pump it up slowly at first, then drive through the swing getting faster and faster into impact.

The golf drill below helps you stay in sync:

Line up five balls in a row. Begin with a smooth chip swing. Increase the length of each swing until your tempo feels the same for each ball, or the full swing seems to take longer than the shorter swing. You may also want to count “1,2,3” as you swing at various lengths. Time yourself, so each swing starts at 1 and ends at 3.

4.      Keep calm after a bad shot

Even good golfers make bad shots. Sure. Bad they tick you off. But you can’t let them get to you.

Instead of getting mad, focus on hitting a good recovery shot, then move onto the next shot.

Fuming over missing a one-footer on the last hole does nothing for your driver.

Staying calm inspires better shots, helps you hit shots that stay in play, and improves your focus.

5.      Work on stay focused at mid-round

It’s easy to start out staying focused on every hole. But when you get to the middle rounds, many golfers lose their focus.

Some golfers try to stay focused during the entire hole.

That’s hard to do, too.

Instead, focus only when you need to, then back off the rest of the time.

Put another way, how you spend your time between holes and shots is critical.

Do everything you can to relax yourself during that time.

The golf drill below sharpens your ability to focus on something for an extended period:

The Consistency and Focus Drill

Pick up an object while at home and study it. Notice how it feels. What is its weight? Is it rough or smooth? Move your hand while holding the object. How does it feel? This effort brings your focus into the present and puts all of your attention on one object.

Now set the object down and think of an experience or a recent TV show. Think about it and how you felt in that situation. Now, bring your thinking and feeling back to the present. Focus all of your attention on the current situation. Repeat this little exercise until you can move freely back and forth.

These five golf tips will help you improve consistency.

But improving consistency is easier said than done. After all, golf is a humbling sport.

Ingraining the five tips above, however, can help you build more consistency in your game.

That, in turn, boosts confidence. Confident golfers are better golfers. Better golfers show lower scores.

Just like Padraig Harrington.