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Practice

Hasn't it been impressed on most of us that "that practice makes perfect?" Most of us in our egalitarian society believe that someone with enough gumption, persistence and a willingness to work hard can get ahead. In sports this means that practice will lead to acquisition of expertise. But both the cognitive and physical abilities of individuals differ one from another.

A person seeking more expertise in golf should consider his own resources of talent, discretionary time available ability for self directed learning. Also important are availability of coaching and availability of local golf courses and practice ranges.

Many achieve reasonable proficiency, say in the below 90's area just by playing once or twice a week with occasional practice sessions. Add 10 shots for senior citizens. This is golf as a social avocation, an objective not to be despised. However, major improvement requires a major commitment.

Achieving even low level expert competence takes dedication and requires lessons from a pro as well as organized practice. Golf is a game well adapted to organized practice because of the immediate feedback. It has been argued that after 10 to 100 hours of organized practice acceptable levels of skill can be reached in many disciplines. There have been instances of 5,000 to 50,000 hours being spent to reach the highest level of expertise. Organized practice has been defined as an activity rated highly for effort and improvement and poorly for enjoyment. However only the exceptionally gifted will progress without it. Usually sessions with a coach have been found to be enjoyable.

Usually elite participants will start out at an early age and professional instruction is common in the early stages. Later on, expert candidates will rely more on their own observations as they watch and copy the of expert players. Once a person has decided to change a certain motion, it takes many, many hour of deliberate practice to ingrain the change. Usually it is best to concentrate only on one or two attributes of the swing per practice session session, with a goal of appropriate difficulty for each.

We might add that being a great striker of the ball is not enough. The arts of course management and the control of competitive pressures need to be acquired.