Fred Fruisen, Auckland Golf Coach

Most people who take golf lessons are impatient. They believe that their instructor has a magic wand and can fix their swing flaws in an instant. This is a myth. There has never been a student whose handicap has gone from 15 to scratch after a single lesson.

When you have a golf lesson you will get solid information from your instructor on why your shots do what they do, and then you’ll get equally good advice on how to fix the problem. After that it’s mostly up to you. Are you willing to change and put in the time and effort? If you hit a few bad shots and get frustrated then revert back to your old bad habits, you won’t improve. If the only time you practice the new technique is when you have a golf lesson you won’t improve very fast, if at all. If you only play rounds of golf and don’t hit balls on the range, change is not likely to happen.

It is proven that it takes 28 days of practice for a new motor skill to feel natural.

That means you need to practice away from the course so you won’t be influenced by outcomes like score. When practicing, you also need to be patient with yourself and your progress. You must have faith in the process and stick with it. As I tell my clients when frustrated while trying to learn a new skill, “The old you is fighting the new you, and one is going to win. If you allow the old you to win, this is as good as you will ever be. BUT if you stick with it, the new you will eventually win out and then you’ll go to another level. But it will take time an patience.”

The other thing I impress on my students is that improvement is not a constant. There will be ups and downs. The analogy I use is a stock chart. The stock I will use to illustrate my point is Apple. Perhaps the best company in the world. As you see in the chart, even Apple doesn’t go up every day. Each little spike on the stock chart represents a day.

Learning works the same way. Some days are easy, others are a struggle. That is because what you are doing is uncomfortable and/or you just don’t trust those new feelings yet. This will especially be the case on the golf course. These “dips” in your learning are learning opportunities. Wise investors don’t panic and sell when this happens. They understand that this is completely natural and if they stick with the stock, over time they will see a tidy profit. Also, you can be assured that following the dips, as shown in the chart, the stock rises to new highs as new skills are ingrained. That being said, notice the TREND of the stock. The trend is very positive. If you were in the market for a good stock, this would most definitely be a BUY! You need to look at yourself and your progress in the same philosophical way.

Progress may not be happening as fast as you would like, but it is happening. Focus on your trend.

Often you’ll hear a tour pro in an interview when he/she is working on a swing change say something like, “I know I’m working on all the right things, I just have to be patient and wait till it all comes together.”

Why not take that same approach. Work on the right things. Don’t revert back to what frustrated you in the first place. Take a long term approach. Don’t expect it all to happen instantly.

If each time you practice you only improve by 1% then over 20 practices you’ll be 20% better! That is enough to see some real improvement.