How to Practice Like PGA Tour Players

If you love the game of golf, you may at some point wonder what it would be like to become a touring professional. If you have a reasonable amount of talent, you may even go beyond dreaming and consider taking your game to its highest level. Practicing like a PGA touring pro requires commitment, time and a variety of resources. While there is no "one way" to practice, the routines of most professionals do share some common features.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Develop a team of coaches. Every PGA professional has a swing coach. Most also have fitness or strength coaches and many use the services of a sports psychologist.

2. Plan on spending four to five hours per day working on your game when you are not playing in a tournament. Use well more than half of your practice time on putting and your short game. This is where strokes are saved.

3. Work on a specific part of your game during every practice session. Every practice shot should be executed with a specific goal and aimed at a specific target. Simply "hitting balls" serves no function.

4. Develop the ability to know exactly how far you hit each of your irons, hybrids and wedges. This means working at a practice facility where you know the exact distances to targets. When working with your driver, you must develop at least some ability to "work the ball"--how to hook and fade it.

5. Practice your short game by hitting wedges from varying distances to varying types of pin placements. If your practice facility does not have a well laid out practice green, go out on the course at day's end and use one of its greens. Commit two hours per day to the practice of your short game.

6. Practice putting by starting with short putts and moving back at designated distances. One common practice technique is to begin at three feet; putt until you make 20 putts in a row. Then move to ten feet; putt until you make 15 putts in a row. Then move to 20 feet; putt until you make 10 putts in a row.

7. Establish a regular routine for working with your swing coach. Make sure you frequently review the basics: grip, alignment and posture. If a part of your game falls apart, get help sooner rather than later. Work with your strength coach frequently enough that your progress can be monitored.

Resources

• Article describing the life of a Nationwide touring pro.
• Description of a practice routine for an aspiring professional.
• PGA manual that lays out a practice routine.

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[cmorganbrown]

on 7/23/2008 The putting practice detailed in Step 6 is ludicrous. Everyone knows that even the best pros make less than 10% of their 20-footers, so making 10 of them in a row is going to happen 1 time in 10 billion...