What you really want to know is..How long will it take me to get good at golf, right?
I’m sure many of you will have read the fairly recent speight of talent books such as ‘The talent code” or “bounce” and much of this is based around two principles time (10,000 hours of deliberate practice (really good practice) and environments (sometimes called hotbeds of talent.
These are massively important aspects of expertise, but often they don’t help the average golfer of say 40 years of age holding down a job and family.
So the question really shifts from how can I get good to how can I get good when I don’t really have the time to practice
Many of the professionals you see on TV or are giving lessons are very good because of time (school holidays as a teenager) and environment (good competition from friends) and a sprinkle of good genetics.
Most of us would play every day, often playing 36 holes daily
Playing in twice the amount of competitions than an adult
With little to no coaching most of the time, but learning on the fly and experimenting as we go
8 hours a day 6 days a week is not going to be practical for 99% of the population so instead, we move onto the second question,
How do we get good when we don’t have much time?
Low hanging fruit
- Make sure 50 % of your practice time at least!!!!! is on the golf course
- Know your strengths and weaknesses through an app that deals with strokes gained (I recommend Golfstatscoach app for free for 14 days and you get 10% off with this link and use coupon code 0108 if you buy it after the trial)
- Work on the one thing that is losing you the most shots when looking at your stats. Not the thing that tickles the ego.
- Review your progress, with practice tests and monitor your strokes gained in competition
Here is an example
How did a 9 handicapper shoot 73 twice in a month and reduce his handicap by 3 shots
I have been working with him semi-regularly on his game and due to his wishes, we have worked on the full swing. I ask him to download Golf stats coach to try for free and send me the results. This is what we get
What do you think we worked on next? and the next 3 rounds were almost identical
We could have tripled our time in the range and it would have made almost zero impact to his scores
Find the Low Hanging Fruit
We then went on the putting green and I found his aim shifted a long way when he was on right to left. We have two putting lessons and then booked him in with Oli Leett a putting specialist
We sent him on the way, with a plan
Below are the stats for his golf a month later
and also the strokes gained for his putting for the rest of the season
All of this would not have been possible without taking into consideration of 3 points
1 Find your strengths and weakness with concrete data
2. Make the smallest change for the biggest possible return on investment
3. Review in practice and after performance.
So in answer to the question, How long does it take to get good at golf? If you arent doing these 3 things, quite a while : )