How to Practice Golf: The Unique Golf Practice Model That Will Work For You Every Time

I’m going to introduce you to a very powerful and persuasive model for change that will teach you how to practice golf and help you to transform your golf game to a very high level.
This model is simple to understand and extremely effective at keeping you on track with your goals.

As you read through this article answer the simple question at the end of each section honestly. Our “Golf Praxis Performance Model” is a how to practice golf model that provides our students with the questions they need to ask themselves continually as they go to work on practicing and developing their golf skills to lower their golf scores and become more competitive.


I’ll guide you step-by-step through the how to practice golf process and explain why you need to seriously consider every aspect of this model if you are deadly serious about improving your golf game. You need to have a well defined approach to golf development if you want to achieve your ambitious goals and our golf praxis model will help you to do this.

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In case you’re wondering, praxis means to translate your ideas, theories or lessons into action. It’s using the knowledge you’ve acquired in your life and turning it into a practical and purposeful practice process that brings about ideal results.

That’s why we use it at Pro Tour Golf College because it takes the how to practice golf theory and turns it into something practical, useful and helpful for our students and it will do the same for you.

Passion Fuels Your Motivation to Practice For Longer:
Do you love golf and the idea that you can become a great golfer? We hope you do. In-fact it’s vitally important that you do. When we work with advanced golfers the starting point for us is to make sure that the golfer has a strong passion and desire for improving. Passion drives your golf performance and research shows that it is the key fundamental in motivation that will keep you developing your expertise over a long period of time.

There’s also a correlation between your level of passion and the scores you produce. The higher the level of passion - the better the golf score. The reason for this is simple; passion keeps your interest focused on achieving worthwhile outcomes.

No golfer will continually put up with failing without the passion and commitment to keep moving forward. Passion is about the motivation from within. Passion also makes you a self-starter and someone who marches to the beat of your own drum.

To play scratch golf or break 70 consistently you need to have a strong commitment to self-development and without the passion to perform and continually improve yourself you simply will not get to the standard of golf where you can break 70.

Every successful male or female who has achieved anything of significance has been powered by their passion for achieving excellence in their field or domain.

Q1. Do you have passion and desire for working long and hard to reach your goals?

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Pride Powers Your Practice With Precision and Patience:
The definition of pride has two meanings. Its negative association is that it refers to an inflated sense of status or achievement. The positive association is that it refers to a contented sense of attachment to the choices you make and your actions. It is a product of praise, self-reflection, or a fulfilled feeling of belonging. 

Pride for us relates to the development of a positive self-image and also the quality of your approach to your practice. You need a strong sense of pride in how you go about practicing and developing your golf skills. With pride in everything you do you will develop your golf skills and attitude to a very high standard.

Pride is a product of the hard work you do and the attainment of small successes along the way. Over time you start to develop a strong sense of confidence in yourself and your ability to get the job done. Pride in this case is a virtue, a desirable quality to develop and it is extremely important for developing your golf game to a standard of par and better.

Top tour professionals are often mistakenly perceived as have an inflated sense of self, but in-fact what they have is an extremely well developed level of confidence. To play this game at the highest levels you need to protect yourself from its dangers – the constant failure that is an inherent part of the game.

Pride ensures that your work or practice is first class. That everything you do is to the very best of your ability. Without pride in your work you will never learn to perfect your techniques because you’ll settle for less than you’re capable of.

Q2. Do you have strong pride in the way you go about developing your golf skills and golf game?

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Purpose Provides a Focus For Your Practice:
There an old saying from the famous football coach Vince Lombardi that goes like this; “Success demands singleness of purpose.” Basically what it means is that you need to be focused on what you do to the exclusion of nearly everything else.
You cannot pursue your goal of improving your golf scores and golf game if you can’t find the focus to keep your nose to the grindstone.
It is hard to go to the practice fairway and hit balls on a daily basis; or chip and putt for hours on end if it doesn’t fit into an overarching plan.

Your purpose needs a point. That is, it needs a reason to exist. The reason is that you want to be a great golfer, or you want to produce low golf scores. To become a great golfer you need to work hard, very hard; and to work hard and manage you effort, you need a good plan.

A good plan will give your practice a direction and a purpose. Is there a point to your practice? We hope so. More than likely there is, and a strong purpose is the vehicle you need to develop your golf skills and game to the level where you can achieve the success you desire.

Purpose is the substance of goals, objectives and outcomes and requires a narrowing of your focus and the patience of a monk. Training your golf skills require hours and hours of honing and refinement, and the golfer with a good plan makes it easier to see an outcome to the work as well as the necessary control points needed along the way to ensure that you remain on track.

To lower your golf score average you can just go about your practice casually or you can plan it carefully and in a calculated manner. We believe that every bit of your effort should be guided by a plan that provides you with the tools to reach your goal.

Q3. Do you have a focused purpose and plan for getting to your goals?

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Principle Based Practice Drives Predictable Performance:
To move yourself and your golf club purposefully you’re subjected to simple explainable laws of force and motion. When you practice your golf skills it is advisable that you have a reasonable understanding of the principles behind why you practice your golf skills a certain way, particularly if you want to improve your golf scores.

You don’t have to have the knowledge that a competent golf teaching professional has, but you do need to understand what you are doing so that you can practice the long lonely hours without getting yourself into trouble.



In other words, you need to become self-reliant. You need to understand the principles that will drive your practice to predicable outcomes.

As you are aware (if you’re been reading our articles) we coach our students at Pro Tour Golf College to improve their golf performances with the application of sound training principles that guide, govern and generate effective results for them.

These principles are not ideas or randomly generated thoughts but sound tested structures that should guide your effort. When you practice you need to decide on the principles that will help you to improve. These principles are based around the simple idea that if your can track, test and measure your practice, then you can improve your golf performances on the golf course.

The underlying rule that should drive your golf practice is that all your physical and mental effort will lead you to lower golf scores in competition. Therefore you must ensure that your practice effort is in some way or another influenced to stay on this path with the use of sound guiding principles.

Think about it; if all your effort was directed at lowering your golf scores in competition then how would you go about it?  In our opinion you would start by establishing a baseline to work from and then develop a plan that moves you towards your goal.

Q4. Is you golf practice underpinned by sound practice performance principles?

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Process: The Glue that Binds Your Golf Practice System:
The golf practice process is a course of action that takes your golf skills from one place to another. Practicing your golf skills is basically a whole series of small events that are influenced by the preceding parts of the praxis as discussed.
The golf praxis takes an idea and turns it into action, and that action has consequences. Your job is to guide the direction of your practice to a successful outcome, and the way you do this is to stick to the path by being consistent with the routines that keep you engaged until the end.

A process in simple terms has an input end---a route to travel and an outcome end. It’s a simple cause and effect event.

Your approach to practicing your golf should be strongly influenced by the need to ultimately improve your golf scores. The practicing of your golf strokes is the means to this end. Unfortunately many golfers will go about this casually and the result will be unstable and inconsistent practice architecture and results that are less than desirable.

This is why it is absolutely essential that you design and build practice structures that drive your performance in the direction you want to go. Of all the elements in the golf praxis, mastering the process is the most important, simply because the structure or framework is meaningless if you don’t drive better performances because of it.

Use the golf praxis model to guide you from one end of your practice session to the other, and from where your competitive score average is now to where you wish it to be. Golf practice is your vehicle for getting to your goals.

Without the passion to be motivated to work hard and the pride of workmanship to do your best work, your purpose will be problematic and it won’t matter whether your work is principle based as you will never stick to the process long enough to transform your golf skills in the months ahead to be the golfer you wish to become.

Q5. Do you stick to the practice process that gets you from one end of the process to the other?

We hope that enjoyed this article and if you have any questions about the golf praxis or anything related to game improvement, just drop us a line at [email protected]

Until next week,

All the best with your practice and performances on the golf course.

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

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