Golf On Tour: The Little Known Approach to High Performance Golf Training That Gets Big Results

Most golfers and that includes seasoned tournament professionals tend to increase their training volume the week before a major golf tournament believing that it will help them to improve their performance. Unfortunately they discover all too often that under pressure it all breaks down.

So what do successful tournament golfers do different in their preparation from the rest of their competitors? They ‘periodize’ their training to attempt to play their best (peak) at the ideal time. Periodization is an highly organized approach to your golf training that involves progressive cycling of various aspects of your golf training program during a specific period.

Most of the Olympic sports have been using a periodization approach for developing the potential of their athletes over the last 40 years but in golf it’s relatively new having only been considered in the last 15 years particularly in Australia.

There are three training cycles to consider if you are going to implement a periodization golf program to help your tournament preparation.

Within these three cycles you pick the tournaments that you consider your “Majors” (ideally not more than 6) and plan when you are going to implement each cycle. Within these cycles there are four phases that are critical in peaking for the tournaments you have chosen.

1. Development:  This phase is done a minimum two months out from competition and involves any technical change in swing, physical program or mental skills.
2. Pre Competition: This phase is two weeks out from competition. A tapering of training load, more playing and high pressure drills to simulate tournament conditions.
3. Competition: As it implies, this is what you do during competition week.
4. Transition: This phase is any small breaks between tournaments where physical and mental recovery is of vital importance to prevent burnout.

Incorporating the above phases within the Micro, Meso and Macro cycles will allow you to bring your “A game” to your major tournament weeks.

Two PTGC students have been using periodisation in their program and have seen their games peak at the predicted time which has allowed them to gain Tour cards and rise up the world rankings.

Jason Scrivener after a frustrating year playing the Australasian, Canadian and US mini tour circuits had one month to prepare for Tour school to regain his Australasian tour card. The month was divided into a two week development phase and two weeks for pre competition. After working on deficiency’s in his short game skills and getting back his stock shot (fade) with all his long clubs, the last two weeks the focus was on playing every day and short game drills where one ball was used and a score recorded at the end of each drill. The result was a second place finish at tour school and a card on the Australasian and One Asia Tours.

Jason together with Co-Director Lawrie Montague and I discussed and implemented a periodisation for 2012. He chooses June, July to peak his game as he had to play six tournaments in seven weeks on the Canadian Tour. So March and April (3 months out) was used to develop his chipping technique and an adjustment to his grip to improve his ball striking.


The month of May (one month out) was to compete in small pro-ams around Perth and test where he was with his game. Two wins a second and numerous top five places confirmed he was ready and all he needed to do was fine tune and taper his training load. So watch out for some good results from Jason in the coming weeks in Canada.

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Whitney Hillier’s form and wins have been documented in previous blogs. She is about to embark on a two month trip to compete in the British and USA Amateur Championship‘s plus all the major amateur events in the USA.
As she will be playing practically every week her periodisation program is on track to give her every chance to do well and her final two weeks is geared to keep her competitive scoring skills sharp until she leaves.



Even the weather has come to the party to prepare her for the British Amateur being played at the famous Carnoustie course in Scotland where wet, windy and cold is the norm.

We wish them both well and low golf scores. Both these golfers have a plan that will allow them to train hard and effectively at the appropriate time in their cycle and be ready to play as their games peak as planned.

They are in control of their games and their future...which is nice.

David Milne and Lawrie Montague - Directors - Pro Tour Golf College

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