Golf Improvement Breakthroughs Come One Shot At A Time

Do you practice, read books, watch DVDs or subscribe to articles in the hope you'll have a major breakthrough in your golf game?

Believing the breakthrough will come and suddenly you'll drive it long and straight or you'll make every putt from inside 12 feet. You might be struggling around the greens and hope a chipping tip from a friend will result in getting up and down from everywhere.

Alternatively you live in fear of the sudden and catastrophic loss of your game.

What if all of a sudden you got the yips, shanks or lost distance and line off the tee?

Unfortunately most players genuinely believe this is how any improvement or decline will come, expecting an almost overnight change.

The truth is very different.

Improvement never happens this way, what happens is a much slower and less obvious change in performance, very often it is unperceivable.

Progress and improvement in golf comes one shot at a time, changes to your game will be slow, very slow. This is the major reason why so many players quit lessons or give up practicing regularly.

And here lies the problem, you lose patience.

You may have experienced this disappointment, feeling you weren't getting the success you expected as soon as you expected.

On the other hand, when improvement comes it's often not recognised for what it is because of the time it's taken.

Think of it this way - improvement in golf comes in "Ones".

One more:

Putt made

Up and down

Fairways hit

Greens in regulation

Better decisions made

Round better prepared

Hole played with good energy and stamina

Sand save

One less:

Missed putt

Act of frustration

Flubbed shot

Mental mistake

So here's what you can do:

The Personal Scoring Window (PSW)

Instead of hoping for a dramatic overnight scoring breakthrough, look back over the past 3 months and write down your best and worst scores. I call this your Personal Scoring Window, players have a band they score within, for better players it maybe 75- 81 and higher handicaps could be 88-100.

A really powerful way to approach improvement is to do two things, firstly reduce the width of the window and secondly move the whole window down. When you set your goals decide on your scoring window. Here's an example, let's say a PSW of 81-90 (9 shot window), a realistic goal would be to narrow it from 9 shot to 6 shots and move it down 3 shots. The PSW now becomes 78-84.

The most important change isn't lowering the best scores from 81 to 78, good as that is; but reducing the worst scores from 90 to 84. To achieve this you'll have to make changes in all areas of your game, and each of these will add up - one by one.

As I said earlier, improvement in golf comes in "Ones".

So take it one shot at a time and you'll get your game to where you want it to be

And above all, remember to celebrate single good shots and the scores you make, one by one these achievements stack up.