I Wasted Too Much Time: 3 Golf Habits I’d Embrace And 2 I’d Leave Behind

Each year that I gain more experience on the golf course, I also get a better perspective on what helped me improve – and what I spent a bit too much time focusing on.

I’m about three years in, and after some trial and error, and plenty of ups and downs with my game, I’ve realized how much time and patience it takes to significantly improve at golf. I’ve also realized how important it is to embrace the many things about golf (being outside with beautiful scenery, spending hours with friends) that don’t have to do with the score.

Looking back, I can pinpoint some habits that would have made my progress more efficient if I had focused on them, and conversely, habits that weren’t doing me any good and should have been dropped sooner.

If you’re a beginner, or a few years into the game, and feel frustrated about why you aren’t improving as quickly as you’d like, I’ve been there! Sometimes it’s helpful to reset goals, look at your golf rounds differently, and create a structured practice plan. Here are three habits that I wish I had implemented sooner in my practice and play time:

Keeping Stats On My Round

At first, this felt ridiculous to me, isn’t this something that only professionals and really experienced golfers do? Not at all. In fact, it’s information that guides beginner (or any level) golfers where they need to focus their practice.

A teaching pro told me that if I simply mark on my scorecard every time my drive lands on a fairway, when I hit a green in regulation, and 1 or 2-putt, I’ll start to see a pattern of where I’m succeeding, but also where my missed opportunities are, and where I need to put in more practice time (which leads me to my next point).

It became obvious that I had a big short game problem, specifically with putting. I used that info to re-structure my practice time away from the driving range and onto the putting green. Now, a year later, I have a problem hitting fairways. But that’s the way golf goes, right?

Intentional Short Game Practice

It’s not as much fun to practice the parts of golf that we struggle with, but it’s important to get better. Having a practice plan (versus going out and randomly hitting balls) helped me stay on track.

On the course, I was missing so many putts (especially the really short ones), that 3-putting was starting to be my regular thing. So, I did a putter fitting to find a club that worked better with my stroke and forced myself to dedicate time to very short putting. Sounds boring, right? Well, it made a big difference!

I don’t get tense over those putts anymore and rarely miss them. I also spent a lot of time intentionally working on chipping, learning how the ball flight changed with different wedges and how I needed to adjust my landing spot around the green. I’ve seen great results, and chipping is the most confident part of my game now. It’s more fun to hit the long shots, but working on the short ones made the biggest difference in my game.

Prioritizing Mental Strength As Much As Technical Skills

Creating a pre-shot routine has done wonders for calming my nerves. I had no idea how important this would be to me. My nervous energy was affecting my golf game big time. I was overly concerned with who was watching me and my score, which would lead to a lot of negative self-talk and ugly golf.

I’ve since learned that being so outcome-focused creates anxiety, which is kryptonite on the golf course. Now I have the tools to compensate for this, mainly a consistent pre-shot routine that involves taking a deep breath and finding a target in the distance to focus on instead of the person on the sidelines watching me swing.

I’m also more self-aware and recognize when I’m starting to feel that initial frustration after a bad shot. Instead of spiralling, getting tense, and messing up the rest of the hole (and sometimes the next one, too) I’ve practiced resetting mentally: new hole, new game, another chance.

For all the good habits, there are also a couple that I wish I ditched sooner. If you recognize them in your golf game, consider how they make you feel and are impacting your scores:

Holding Myself To Large Goals

I was pretty fixated on lowering my handicap quickly – and quickly became discouraged when it didn’t happen just like that. I didn’t have a structured plan to reach my goal and kind of expected it to fall into place because I was playing often. That’s not the way golf works! I spent a lot of time feeling annoyed at myself and my golf game, and not understanding why I wasn’t improving.

I’ve since learned that small golf goals lead to big results. Instead of setting a goal to win a match, or to break a certain score, I set more controllable goals for myself, like focusing on my swing tempo and weight shift. When I break golf down and think about it on that level, the larger goals naturally fall into place.

Comparing Myself To Other Golfers

This goes along with the mental strength building habit I mentioned earlier. Comparing my golf game to anyone else’s is pointless, yet I spent a lot of time fretting over how I compared to other women in my golf league, even though some have been playing for decades. You can imagine this wasn’t great for my confidence.

Golf is one of the only sports where you are just playing against your own best score (unless it’s a matchplay situation), and everyone is at a different stage, which means everyone was a beginner at some point.

It’s a waste of energy and mental space to be embarrassed about my bad shots - every golfer has been there, and the negative thoughts just end up leading to more bad shots. Not a great cycle to be stuck in.

Many of the habits I try to focus on have to do with relying less on outside distractions and more on internal awareness. But, trust me, it’s hard and takes practice. I have setbacks all the time.

Remaining present on the golf course is a work in progress for me, but I’m improving each year. Golf has so many variables – weather, bad lies, different playing partners – that are out of my control. If you think about it, the only factor that makes sense to try to control is myself.