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The 7 Par Breaking Habits You Must Know to Become a Successful Amateur or Professional Golfer (Part 1 - Habits 1 to 3)

29/5/2014

 
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We use 7 specific practice habits to help our high level amateurs and professionals break par on a consistent basis.  If you apply these practice habits diligently, over time, they are guaranteed to help you to break your par more often.

What would these 7 habits be?

Most golfers just practice and wish or hope for improvement. They go about their practice routines with the hope that somehow and in some way what they do will help them to improve their game.

The truth is that most of them get bored and frustrated and short-cut the practice process to get out of there as quickly as possible and go do something else more interesting and stimulating.

Yes golf practice is not what it’s cut out to be for most golfers.

But for a very small percentage of golfers, who work out what golf practice is really about, they do the things in their practice routines that truly make a difference to the way they play in golf tournaments.

They do the things that lead to lower golf scores and more consistent performances and they develop lifelong rock-solid habits that help them to break their par more than other golfers.
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So what are the habits that really make the difference and that will help you to break your par more often? 

When I talk about breaking par here I’m not talking about the par of your golf course necessarily, what I’m actually talking about is your best scores over a year. 

It’s about breaking your par.




We have found that an advanced or elite golfers score range is within 10 to 12 strokes of their best score so a good amateur golfer who has a score average of 75 will likely have a high score average of around 80 (when they are not playing their best) and a low score average of around 70 when they are playing their best golf.

So your below par score is the score that is lower than your average score, so it could be a 70 is your par breaking score when your average score is 75.

Or it could be that 68 or 69 is your par breaking score when your average score is 73. 

Or it might even be an 80 when your score average is 85.

For professional tour golfers their low score average will be 3 to 5 strokes lower than their score average and their high score average is likely to be 3 to 5 strokes higher than their score average,

So breaking your par more often is all about getting the absolute most out of your golf practice the skills and by developing the 7 habits that you are going to learn about today this will be easier for you to do more often.

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Your Par Breaking Habit Number 1. 
Put a Higher Value on Your Practice Time

Golfers who get more done and make more progress in their game all have one thing in common. 

They value the time they have available to them on the practice fairway more than other golfers. 

This habit is at the very top of the list because it is the most important of all.



All you have to work with is time, and since it is something that you cannot save for another day the way you manage your time on a daily basis is the primary key to your success at golf and so I want you to remember this;

“You don’t have all the time in the world to get good at golf; you have the same amount of time as everyone else.”

1,440 Minutes and Counting Down...Tick...Tick...Tick...
You have 1,440 minutes in every day and if you think about each minute as a valuable gold coin that vanishes once the minute expires you can see that those 1,440 minutes each day are cutting into the available time you have allocated to work on your game.

Your gold pile goes down every day by the same amount day-after-day and like I said there's no saving your coins for another day. Ten minutes of 'chat time' with someone costs you 10 gold coins. 

How many coins have you spent not practicing when you should have been in the last week?...

You can’t waste one moment of any practice session and yet it amazes me how often I see really good golfers (even pro’s) just standing around talking on the range (or checking their texts) when they should be focused and working on their skills.

They give me the impression that they have all the time in the world to get good at their craft. This is not true; you don’t have all the time in the world to get good at your craft and golf success won’t wait for you, it will leave you behind.

Do you like giving away your precious gold coins to others. How does that benefit you?

The first habit you need to cultivate is the habit of managing the time you allocate to your golf practice and ruthlessly protecting it. 

You need to determine how much time each day you will spend on the practice ground, and on the golf course, and you need to make sure that you never compromise on this.

The way you manage your time and how important time is to you determines to a great extent how good you will be at golf.

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Your Par Breaking Habit Number 2. Segment Your Practice Time

​The next important par breaking habit is to segment or divide your practice time so you can work on each of the golf skills you have to improve

As there are many skills that need your attention so you need to determine how much time you will spend on these skills during a week of practice.


The first thing to do is work out how much practice time you will "spend" on the range and how much time you will "spend" on the golf course over a week. 

If you work, go to school, or you are a tour player, you will build your practice plan around your available hours from Monday to Sunday by creating a plan that incorporates the available hours you are practicing.

For example how many total hours will you spend practicing this upcoming week? _____

And keep in mind that your schedule will allocate time for these 4 areas of your game;

  • Golf course preparation and playing skills development
  • Short-game skills development
  • Long-game skills development
  • Mental skills and physical development

Can you answer the following 4 questions easily?
  1. How many hours this week will you spend on the practice fairway and on and around the practice green? _____
  2. How many golf course practice hours will you spend playing holes this week? _____
  3. How many hours this week will you spend working on your mental skills and also your physical training? ______

These are important questions that you should be able to answer quite easily. 

Your second par breaking habit is to allocate time to practice your golf skills before you go to the practice ground or golf course.

Don’t just turn up and figure it out from there like the great majority of golfers do.

Plan it first, and then practice it.

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Your Par Breaking Habit Number 3. Practice Your Weakest-Most Important Skills First

You might be thinking that you have a certain amount of practice time already allocated to improving your golf skills but how do you know what to work on?

Good question, you do need to know what to work on and this is the challenge that many advanced and elite golfers face of not knowing what to practice out of all the skills they need to practice.

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To perform a simple golf course playing assessment go out onto the golf course with your golf instructor so he/she can observe how you play golf and use your skills to produce scores. 

Quite often your golf instructor can see things about the way you create your scores on each hole that you won’t notice. Isolate 1 or 2 skills or strategies that you know if improved will help you to lower your golf scores on the course in tournaments.

To perform an assessment on the practice ground hit 10 sets of 10 golf shots from 10 different locations around the green and notice which skills you have more trouble with. 


Set yourself a target of getting 7 shots out of 10 within 6 feet (2 metres) of the hole.

Do you struggle to hit high and soft lob shots to tight pin placements making it harder to save par? Or maybe your bunker shot to a tight pin gives you trouble.

If you score below 50 percent in any of these skills and you know that these are skills that you are certain would help you to break your par then you need to target these skills first.

To assess you mental skills there are a number of excellent mental profiles that cost very little to purchase and will definitely help you to understand your mental game more and show you where you can make progress in this important area of your game.

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How you know what to work on is quite simple to work out though; you assess (test) your golf skills on a consistent basis and then isolate the weakest ones that will have the most positive effect on lowering your golf score average to where you have more opportunities to break your par.

Basically every 4 to 6 weeks you perform a simple assessment of your golf skills to determine which ones need more of your attention and which ones need less. 

I’m including mental and physical skills in this assessment because they are every bit as important as the other skills you practice.

Write out a list of all the different skills you practice and then take the time to assess each one of them. How else will you know what to work on if you don't perform short and simple assessments?

If you practice your weakest-most important golf skills more than the others, you will move your score average needle down closer to your par - so which golf skills will help you to do this the most? 

To perform a simple golf course playing assessment go out onto the golf course with your golf instructor so he/she can observe how you play golf and use your skills to produce scores. 

Quite often your golf instructor can see things about the way you create your scores on each hole that you won’t notice. Isolate 1 or 2 skills or strategies that you know if improved will help you to lower your golf scores on the course in tournaments.

To perform an assessment on the practice ground hit 10 sets of 10 golf shots from 10 different locations around the green and notice which skills you have more trouble with.
Set yourself a target of getting 7 shots out of 10 within 6 feet (2 metres) of the hole.

Do you struggle to hit high and soft lob shots to tight pin placements making it harder to save par? Or maybe your bunker shot to a tight pin gives you trouble.

If you score below 50 percent in any of these skills and you know that these are skills that you are certain would help you to break your par then you need to target these skills first.
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Click on the Image to Learn More About this Extremely Useful and Accurate Profile. ENTER THE ACCESS CODE procollege
Assessing Your Mental and Physical Skills
Check out the Mental Golf Workshop at this link http://www.mentalgolfworkshop.com/app/default.aspx and use our student access code procollege to assess you mental game. You get a 28 page comprehensive report of your mental skills and strategies for how to improve them and this is the one we use with all our students at Pro Tour Golf College.

To assess the physical part of your game we highly recommend you see a qualified golf fitness professional and by going to this link http://www.mytpi.com/experts you can type in your zip code or location and find a golf fitness professional that is golf specific and accredited with the Titleist Performance Institute (T.P.I.)  

Now choose just 3 to 6 skills out of the 4 categories that you know are influencing your higher scores the most and spend more time each week working on these skills until they become strengths in your game.
Next Week Habits 4 to 7…

Next week we'll continue with our 7 Par Breaking Habits with habits 4 to 7 and we hope that you start to build these habits into your game with the help of your golf instructor because without habits like the one's we've shared with you it will be difficult to continue to make progress in your game.

See you next week.

Lawrie Montague and David Milne - Pro Tour Golf College
Your Success On Tour is Our Business
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