Why You Need This:

In this video, you’ll discover golf drills that actually lower your scores.

This is the 4th video in my bonus course Secret Science to Improve Faster Than Anyone Around You…

And it focuses on specific drills for putting, chipping, iron, and driver shots.

These drills offer great examples for how to practice effectively.

Remember, the goal of this entire course is to improve as quickly as possible with deliberate practice.

Here’s a quick overview of the drills (watch the video to get all the specifics)…

Putting Drill Example

If you put too much speed on a putt, the ball can easily lip out.

But if you get the speed just right, it’ll lip in.

Instead of going to the practice green and just hitting putt after putt, have a more specific purpose.

Try this…

To work on your putting speed, place a string near the back of the hole and another string about a foot past the hole.

Focus on hitting your shots in this zone (or in the hole).

This is a specific and measurable goal.

Once you get a better feel for your speed, you’ll avoid a lot of the lip outs caused by placing too much speed on the ball.

Do this drill for 3 foot putts and once you’re good at that distance, perform the drill at longer distances.

Eventually you’ll improve your speed with 12 foot putts or even farther.

Think of how many strokes you’ll save by just getting your speed right!

Chipping Drill Example

Create a zone around the pin and work on chipping the ball into that zone from a particular spot.

Once you can consistently hit the ball in that zone, practice hitting from left and right of your original spot.

This is very specific and measurable practice.

And you can mix it up however you want.

Move back 10 yards and perform the same drill or you can practice with different clubs to get a feel for how the ball launches with the different lofts.

How about drills for you irons and drives?

As you’ll see in the video, the same ideas apply.

Make your drills specific, measurable, increasing difficulty, and varying.

Watch this video now to learn deliberate practice and put more shots into your comfort zone!

What's Covered: Drill ideas to consider for rapid improvement

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 9:59

Video Transcription:

Hey, it’s great to have you back here. Hope you guys are feeling like you’re getting a really good grasp on how to create the perfect improvement plan.

In this video I’m going to break it down for putting, chipping, iron, and driver. Just some great examples of types of drills that you could do that are going to fit in with the things that we’ve talked about.

They’re going to have deliberate practice. They’re going to go by that model. They’re going to have the three rings to bring things into your comfort zone, and we’re actually going to train our brain to improve.

Without further delay, let’s just get right to it. Let’s say we’re going to work on putting. Let’s imagine here’s our hole right here in the middle.

Let’s pretend we’re a beginner to intermediate golfer at first, and we’re really working on our speed control. I could imagine that if I hit a putt and it’s going too fast, if my ball catches the lip of the hole, or the right side of the hole, it’s going to lip out because it’s got too much speed on it.

Now if my speed control was better, and it catches the lip of that hole, it’s going to fall into the hole and I’m going to make it, because the hole’s capture width is a little bit better.

I talk about that in some other videos, but basically we want to make sure, ideally, that we’re rolling the ball by, about a foot by the cup. We could go a little bit more, we could go a little bit less. Let’s pretend the foot by would be absolutely ideal.

I’m going to have my cup, and I’m going to have a little zone, maybe put a couple strings behind the hole right at he back edge. Let’s say that that is two feet behind there. Anywhere in this zone that my ball stops, or if I make the putt, it’s a perfectly hit putt. It goes with the drill.

When we talked about deliberate practice, it’s very specific. I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m working on speed control on the putting, and I have a specific and measurable way to do t.

Now if I’m a beginning player, maybe I’ll start here at three feet. I’m just working on my speed just from three footers. We’ve got to make this increasingly more difficult, that’s the third piece on deliberate practice.

As we go out to four feet, let’s go to 8 feet, 12 feet, 20 feet, whatever it is, it’s just always going to get a little bit more difficult to force myself to improve.

Well eventually you’re going to get to where you’re pretty good at that. We could also shrink up this zone, make it to where it’s tighter. Maybe we’ll only have a one-foot area instead of a two-foot area to get that perfect speed.

So it doesn’t matter how you want to make it more difficult, all that it matters is that it’s specific, it’s measurable, increasing more difficult, and then it’s variable.

One of the things that I would do if I’m going to vary it and try to learn a little bit better, I’m going to hit a couple putts that stop here short of the hole.

I’m going to hit a couple putts to get started that go too long past the hole, or past my target zone, that way I get a feel of both ends of the spectrum. Then I can start to tighten that in as I practice a little bit more.

That will actually help you to improve a little faster, but that’s a great way to take these same things and work those on putting.

Now that’s in the three rings because as I start to make things more difficult, I’m going to find kind of the border of my comfort zone. For some players, maybe those three-footers are going to be outside your comfort zone.

For other players, maybe the 20-footers are going to be outside your comfort zone. We’re going to find somewhere.

You could also practice uphill and downhill putts to make them a little bit easier or to also vary that training technique.

Over time what’s going to happen is your brain is actually going to rewrite, it’s going to put in more neurons, it’s going to make faster neurons to get a better feel for what you’re doing as you continue to practice that.

Now I could sit down all day, that’s a great way to practice putting, I could sit down all day and hit three-footers one after another into the cup from the same spot.

I could hit 10 in a row every day for the rest of my life, I’m really not going to get any better, because I’m not at the edge of my comfort zone. I’m not trying to push my barriers.

We also mentioned the chaos zone out there, we don’t want to go straight to – beginning golfer – go to 50-footers and put this little tiny target out there and try to hit to those, it’s just too hard.

It’s just going to be chaos, we’re not ever going to succeed so it’s going to be too difficult for what we’re trying to accomplish, we’re not going to learn very fast.

Let’s do one for chipping. This is a pretty cool one. I think it’s a lot of fun to practice chipping. Let’s imagine that we have kind of a fun one to do, let’s imagine we have a green here.

Here’s my flag, and then short of the green is a little bit of a run-up area that’s nice and smooth. So let’s kind of draw a little bit of a fairway here, you get the general idea. A really basic hole.

Maybe I’m starting out, where I’m going to put a ring or put a couple clubs around this hole, put some kind of zone there that I want to chip these balls into.

I’m starting out with, let’s go with an 8 iron, and I’m right here by the edge of the hole, or edge of the green. I’m going to chip up, let it roll out, and roll to the hole.

I’m going to say, OK, I’m going to chip five shots and I want to try to get them inside this ring. Well that’s good for deliberate practice, because now I’m very specific.

I’m going to use my 8 iron, I’m going to hit from this one particular spot here, and I have to get in this very specific zone. So now I can measure it.

Now the third piece of that, I’ve got to make it increasingly difficult. Once I can do this basic shot with an 8 iron, maybe what I do now is I change and hit an 8 iron from over here, and an 8 iron from over there.

Now I’m hitting different types of shots. That brings in my variable practice and that brings in my increasingly difficult. It’s more difficult to hit an 8 iron from three different spots than it is from one spot.

Maybe I could try to hit my pitching wedge from over here, my sand wedge from over there, my lob wedge from here, and give myself a very specific number of attempts it takes to get into this hole.

Works perfect with deliberate practice, because I’m specific, measurable, increasingly more difficult, and we’re going to vary it up. So that’s a great one for chipping, and that’s a very basic way you could do it.

You could also make it even more difficult, infinitely more difficult, by hitting different types of shots. High shots, low shots, things like that.

You guys can think of your own games as long as they’re fitting in to this, and as long as they’re barely outside your comfort zone, you will improve with it.

Now a great iron one that I like, and Tiger Woods uses this one for his game, is whenever Tiger Woods warms up, he talks about how if I imagine this is my target out in the distance. If I’m going to hit an 8 iron, for example, let’s say he’s working through his bag.

He imagines kind of a window up here in the sky, and he’s going to hit his 8 iron, so let’s imagine a little, there’s Tiger with his 8 iron. That shot’s going to fly up, go through that window, and then land on the green.

So for players that maybe aren’t that advanced, that’s pretty advanced. Maybe we can say any shot that’s going to turn over from right to left is going to be a good shot.

We’re using our deliberate practice, we’re very specific, and we have a way of measuring it. We’re saying it has to land on this green or it doesn’t count, and it has to turn over right to left or it doesn’t count.

That’s great. If we want to make it increasingly more difficult, we can put that window up there that it has to fly through. Not only does it have to hit the green, not only is going to draw, but it’s also going to be a specific height.

Then what Tiger does to make it even more difficult, is he changes that window up. Now he’s going to go higher and lower, and he’s going to hit that same shot to the same target, but he’s going to hit different heights to get those to vary up there.

That’s right in with deliberate practice. He’s said that tons of time, about that is how he practices.

Ben Hogan did the same thing, he’d take his caddy out in the field, hit different types of shots, different heights, make the caddy move around and see if I could land it within the caddy wouldn’t have to take more than one step to get his ball. So pretty cool stuff.

That’s a great one for the irons. Then the same ting, hopefully you guys are getting a good feel for how we would practice this with any type of a shot, we could do the same thing for a driver.

Let’s imagine we’re taking a big fairway here again, we’re just kind of looking down a dead-straight fairway, and I’m going to do this same thing.

Now one of the things with the driver that’s really good, that I like to do, is I like to visualize eliminating one side of the fairway. Let’s stick with the high draw kind of scenario.

Let’s imagine there’s a giant wall covering up this side of the fairway. So it’s a brick wall, let’s imagine it’s 40 feet high. This giant wall that’s just covering the entire side of the fairway, blocking it out.

Now for my deliberate practice with the driver, maybe what I would work on doing is hitting a drive that goes down the right side of the fairway, draws back down into the center of the fairway right in the middle.

Now if I cross over that wall, which I can say is the edge of the fairway, I can make the edge of the fairway that wall. If it lands on that side of the wall, that doesn’t count.

So again, I have something that’s specific, it’s got to be a draw, and it’s got to be inside that wall. I can measure it very easily by seeing if it lands in the fairway. Then I can make it increasingly more difficult.

Maybe I can bring that wall in a little bit, and I can make the fairway tighter, or I can say I’m going to hit this drive a little farther, try to get it up there still doing it.

Or I can say I’m going to hit the drive a little higher, a little bit lower, however I want to do it, I want to make it more difficult so that I can force myself to get outside my comfort zone again, and get into my learning zone.

Then lastly, I’m going to vary it. So again, I may try to hit one high, one medium, one low. Or a may try to hit one fade, and one draw. You can vary it however you want to, but that’s going to help you to improve a little bit faster.

Then as we continue to work on that, that’s going to rewrite the neurological system. That’s why you get better at these because it goes in and rewrites your feel, it develops some muscle memory to allow this to happen.

So hope you guys got a lot out of this, this is four drills out of literally thousands or millions of drills you can do. Go out and make your own.

Don’t wait for me to tell you, I will be having a lot more drills on the website talking about how to work with this, but don’t wait for me to do the ones that I like.

Go up, play against your friends. Have games, try to hit all kinds of different shots and you’re actually going to get better. You’re going to improve the way your neurological system works. You’re going to play the best golf of your life.

See you guys soon.