What drives improvement?

[barrybridges]

Morning all,

I've been thinking to myself a fair bit recently about my golf and how often I'm able to play; recently, things have got a bit quiet and I'm restricted to a couple of sessions at the range each week.

Now, without wanting to get into a discussion about the merits of the range, one of things that got me thinking was that no matter how big the gap between the last time I picked up a club, it never really takes me long to get back into the groove on the range. Whether I played yesterday or two weeks ago, 100 balls and I feel I'm back to where I left off.

Which made me think; if that's the case, then what actually causes improvement in golf?

In other sports, the more you practice/train, the better you get, because you're physically changing your body with more training. Stop training and you lose your ability as your body goes to waste.

But with golf, you never really 'lose it' if you take a short break. It might take you a few more balls to get back into the groove, but by the end of a range session you tend to be comfortable again.

In which case, what is the main driver for improvement?

I get that it's time spent out on the course, right? As in, the more balls you hit in real situations - not on the range - the better you get? In which case, does the range really have a use as a training aid. Or - in other words - do you actually improve as a result of using the range, or just maintain what you already had?

 

[pokerjoke]

Going to the range probably helps you maintain what you all ready have.Hitting hundreds of golf balls with no real structure wont be that beneficial imo,but it could help you with thing like tempo.
The balls are like nothing you would hit on the course,so all the distances you hit on the range will have no bearing on your course distances.
Also direction is an issue as your not really hitting it onto a green as such.
Improvement imo really comes from playing rounds on a course,getting to know yardages,working on how the ball you play reacts to the conditions.
Also playing in different weather will help you improve,learning how to play knockdown shots if its windy,or if its bone hard,learning how to play bump and runs etc.Thats why no two rounds are the same,but going to the range could be.Imo the way to improve the most is practice,and practice in different climes as well.

 

[JustOne]

In which case, does the range really have a use as a training aid. Or - in other words - do you actually improve as a result of using the range, or just maintain what you already had?

Go to the range, hit a draw, a fade, a push-draw, a push-fade, a slice, a high ball, a low ball, land them all where you want them using every club in the bag... go practice your chipping & putting

It has it's place especially for LEARNING but if you're going to go there and just 'whack' balls then it's almost a waste of time.

 

[USER1999]

But whacking balls is FUN.

 

[HawkeyeMS]

I'm not sure it's that much different to other sports, what you don't necessarily need is the fitness other sports require. A few years ago I started playing football again and the thing I struggled with was fitness. I hadn't lost the ability to pass, tackle, control or read the game but I couldn't do it for 90 minutes. Clearly I wasn't as good a player as I used to be but I could still play but it took a few weeks to feel comfortable on the pitch again. The longer I played the better I got.

If I stopped playing golf for 6 months I'm sure I'd be able to hit a ball after a bit of time on the range but it would take me a couple of rounds to feel comfortable on the course and get my feel back around the greens. It would take me a while to get back to my current level but I would still be able to play.

 

[User 105]

The range definitely helps IMHO.

But for different reasons depending on you're hcp and skill level.

I think for low handicappers it's not so much for improvement, unless you are trying to fix a fault that's crept in, it's more a maintenance thing.

For higher handicappers there are quite lot of techniques to learn and the only way to get good at them is to practice.

Chipping, pitching, putting, bunker play etc.

Think about a club like the driver. You probably hit it maybe 13-14 times in a round. That's never going to be enough to get even average at using it.

 

[TheClaw]

Perfect practice makes perfect.

If you can take long breaks and walk back into your usual game, maybe it wasn't good enough to begin with?

Every sportsperson benefits from repetition of skills. You may not see your body changing like with other, more physical sports but it is adapting to the skill.

 

[barrybridges]

Perfect practice makes perfect.

If you can take long breaks and walk back into your usual game, maybe it wasn't good enough to begin with?

Every sportsperson benefits from repetition of skills. You may not see your body changing like with other, more physical sports but it is adapting to the skill.

It's a fair point!

I guess what I'm saying is that when you play on a course you have an objective measure of how well you performed; it's called your score. Of course, there are other measures too not reflected in your score - shots that you hit well, putts you make and things that are also unmeasurable for us mere mortals - things like dispersion, distance etc (by unmeasurable I mean you don't have an objective stat at the end of your round to show you).

On the range, how do you know if you've trained 'better' or 'harder'? Bad shots go unpunished. How can you tell if you're swinging 'better' at the end of a session than at the beginning?

I'm just wondering whether 2 rounds a month (which is all I'm managing at the moment) is ever going to be enough to improve, I suppose. I feel my game improves during real rounds, but not on the range. I can have a brilliant range session - fantastically dead straight shots with plenty of distance. I can hit pins with accuracy, but on the course I can suck. But if I spend more time on the course, I'd suck less.

 

[TheClaw]

Yea I suppose it's down to where your weakness lies. I feel like I improved a lot over the winter (even though I didn't play or go to the range) by putting in my hall and swinging a wedge in my living room. That's one way to get practice.

If I didn't do this and just tried to play on the course a couple of times a month I'd play badly. In a round you don't really hit too many shots to help you improve- take away chips and putts and how many shots have you hit that day?

 

[Toby_LeRhone]

I often take a notebook to the range in which I have planned out my session. I then score each and every shot out of 10; 1 being a shocking miss and 10 being a perfectly struck shot that goes where I was planning for it to go.

Benefits of this very simple exercise include giving me an indication of progress when I compare average scores across all sessions, and it forces me to put my club down and completely rebuild for every shot.

I have over a year's worth of data, can see a definate general improvement over time and where during that time my form has been up or down. All of this adds purpose to my range work and forces me to focus throughout.

 

[StrangelyBrown]

Desire - how much do you want it?

Commitment - putting other things off so you can practice and play.

Knowledge - knowing what to practice and drill.

Talent - goes without saying.

If any one of these things is lacking, you'll plateau.

 

[sawtooth]

Theres a saying, practice makes permanent. If you spend countless hours on the range you might just be grooving in a fault. Better to have a drill or some instruction from a pro and practice that rather than aimlessly hitting balls IMHO.

 

[HomerJSimpson]

I make a note of my range sessions on SS2 so I have a record of how much time I spend on each part of the game and some comments about each session. There is nothing like playing to see what level your game is at but the range has a place for making the improvements to take the game onto the next stage.

If you are playing only twice a month there is probably too much of a gap between games to get a definitive idea of what is happening especially as you're relatively new into it again

 

[upsidedown]

I hardly ever go the range these days as I now live on 10 acres but when I did back in UK after my warm up I'd mentally play each hole on my course.
So driver to start with, if good one 7 iron or if not chip out with wedge, let your imagination help you.
Second hole 6 iron , so on and so forth.

 

[EZprophet]

I'm just wondering whether 2 rounds a month (which is all I'm managing at the moment) is ever going to be enough to improve?

It completely depends on what parts of your game you need to improve on. There are so many ways to improve your scores in golf, the golf swing itself is just one of them.

I have a mate (14ish handicap) who plays about twice a month and has a good swing and a decent short game, but just makes so many horrible decisions on the golf course that cost him shots (course planning, club selection, reading putts, short game shot selection etc...). If I caddied for him he would genuinely knock 5 shots off of his handicap instantly.

However, if with your question you mean can you improve your SWING by only playing twice a month, then in my opinion the answer is no. You can find short term fixes that might help out, but not make long term improvements.

The reason why you only need to hit 100 balls to get back to your old swing is because it is ingrained in your brain as the way to hit a golf ball at a target. It takes so many repetitions of a new swing movement to have it ingrained naturally into your swing (I believe Butch Harmon estimated it as somewhere around 10,000 reps for a swing change) so unless you are really REALLY bad, I dont think you would hit enough shots in your two rounds to make a swing change

Also, on the topic of your range practice, I go to the range 3-5 times a week and I would say that 9/10 guys I see up there don't practice properly (myself included a lot of the time...) Just banging balls really does absolutely nothing (even hitting lots of balls with certain swing changes in mind does very little) The unfortunate thing is that practicing properly is not much fun at all, as it usually involves repeating over and over things that you do very poorly, and trying to improve them.

So if you do want to improve your swing, you need to figure out what youre doing wrong, (lessons is obviously the best way to do this) then repeat the drills you are given, over and over and over and over again and then presto! youve knocked one shot off your handicap! Then rinse and repeat