Learning a New Golf Shot

A few weeks ago, I took a lesson on how to chip from several yards off the green. This is not where the ball is just off the edge of the green and you could poke it on with a 6-iron. The shot I need help on has to be hit with a lofted club, and that introduces spin. I wanted to learn how to hit it and get predictable spin so the shot wouldn't check up one time and run out the next.

So, the pro taught me step-by-step, and in a half hour I had it figured out. I practiced it for a while after the lesson was over, then sat in the car before I drove home to write down the points the pro gave me on how to hit it. There were six. Six things I had to do to get it right.


I practiced every day after that, working on those six things, one at a time, until one or two points became one. Now only four things to work on, gradually merging the points until it became two points, then one. When it gets down to none, I'll have it cracked.

What I have been doing is not training the body, but training the mind. None of the points are difficult at all. Anyone can execute them. The hard part is to coordinate them, to do them in the proper order and not leave out any. That's an accomplishment which occurs in the mind.

When we play golf, we should just be playing. Mechanics get worked out on the range. They get worked out by training the mind to perform, not the body. Swinging the club, hitting balls without a plan, is so much exercise. If you know what you are trying to accomplish, in the sense that if you get certain points right you'll get the shot you want, you're working on embedding the mental instructions into your memory so they become automatic and don't think about them.

When you play, you ideally just perform so what you have trained yourself to do will come out. If you're still worried about mechanics when you play, you haven't completed your training yet. You haven't spent enough time giving your mind a chance to learn what to do.

I read once, in regard to learning a new language, that language learning is overlearning. Through constant repetition, habits are acquired so the speaker can to be concerned only with what to say rather than how to say it. It's the same with golf. Through mentally structured practice, the mind learns how to hit a shot automatically so the golfer can be concerned with what the shot is supposed to accomplish rather than how to hit it.

Let me be clear on what a new shot is. It's not a shot you haven't hit before. It's any shot which you can't hit without thinking about what to do. I began by describing a shot which I have hit many times on the course. Because I didn't really know how to hit it, it was still a new shot to me. If you would adopt that attitude to your game, it will lead you to thinking the right way about developing your game and becoming a shot-maker.

Happy Independence Day, everyone.



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