If You Want To Play Better Golf Feedback Is The Key

Depending where you work, you'll very likely get feedback on your performance every 6 or 12 months (personally I never believed this is regular enough, and the best businesses make sure their people get feedback much more regularly).

On the other hand, successful athletes and sportspeople get feedback all the time. Can you imagine if the players at Manchester United were called into Sir Alex's office just once a year for an appraisal of the last twelve months?

How about Roger Federer playing a full season before his coach lets him know how he's doing?

Let's face it, you're reading this article because you're one of the very rare players who invest their time and effort into improving your game.

So you need, and deserve feedback too.

Here are some reasons why:

It keeps you motivated

It identifies shortfalls in your performance early

It highlights your strengths

It highlights your weaknesses

It generates a record to look back on and see how far you've come

It helps you set your goals

It's useful in planning how to achieve your goals

It keeps you focused on what matters

Of course, if you haven't got a performance coach yet, you'll need to set up a system to help you get the feedback you need to keep improving.

Here's a system I've developed for you, funnily enough, it's based on feedback I've received from hundreds of people I've given feedback to myself!

So here goes:

At the beginning of the year set out your goals, break them down into 3 monthly phases or groups.

Then each month set out the mini goals you need to achieve to get you on target for your bigger goals.

At the end of each month set aside some time to look back on what you've done towards achieving your specific goals.

When you decide on each of your goals remember they should be the processes of:

Playing

Improving

Learning

And putting your learning into your play

So from January to December your programme could look like this:

From January to December: Your goal to reduce your handicap by 4 strokes.

January, February and March: Range work and fitness

April, May, and June: Short game work, play in competitions

July, August, and September: Play often and compete

October, November, and December: Learning for next year, consolidate over the winter

Keep records of fairways hit, greens in regulations, number of putts per round. These details will help highlight what areas need attention and equally importantly you'll have real evidence of your progress.

Whenever you achieve a milestone of achievement make sure you recognise your success and give yourself some form of reward to celebrate and remind you of the work you have done.

Something you should always do is celebrate each time you pull off a shot you have been practicing, an example would be if you have been work on your bunker shots and you make a sand save. Credit your hard work.