Winter Golf: 5 Ways I Keep My Swing & Sanity | Jess Ratcliffe

Jess Ratcliffe winter golf practice — (Image credit: Jess Ratcliffe)

As a golfer, winter is the hardest season – and this one feels particularly tough in the UK. Endless rain. Soggy range sessions. Constantly checking the forecast for a sliver of dry weather, just long enough to practice before the rain starts again.

It’s hard to feel motivated when the conditions leave you wondering whether it’s worth leaving the house in the first place. And if you’re finding it harder than usual this year, you’re definitely not the only one.

While the weather may curtail my plans to practice, my motivation doesn’t waver. Because to me, winter is the best time to make meaningful progress on my game – to do the work that pays off come spring.

Focus On Your Biggest Leaks

It’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to overhaul your entire game during the winter. With months of potential practice, it feels logical to work on as much as possible. But I’ve found that when you try to work on everything, you end up struggling to make progress with anything.

Combine that with patience-testing weather and it’s a recipe for range sessions that leave you feeling like you’ve hit plenty of balls without actually moving your game forward.

That’s why, instead of trying to fix everything, I focus deeply on my biggest leaks. The parts of my game that cost me the most last season – in both scores and confidence.

That might be one specific area, like approach play from 100 yards. Or it could be a technical change, like improving my impact position. The key is that it’s targeted and tied directly to where I was dropping shots last season.

So I know I’m doing everything I can do to be in a better position at the start of the new season than I was at the end of the last.

That combination of knowing what I’m working on and why is what keeps me turning up to practice, even on days when I look out the window and think staying home is probably the more sensible option.

Have A Plan For Your Practice

Winter golf practice without a plan can be brutal. You head up to the range, trying to keep your clubs dry from the car to the cover, only to find yourself standing there wondering: What am I actually working on today?

And when the weather inevitably turns, it’s easy to ask an even more motivation-zapping question: Why am I even here?

That’s why I always have a plan for my practice. Because when I’ve got a plan, motivation takes care of itself. I’m not at the mercy of distraction or procrastination – I’ve already decided what I’m going to work on before I arrive.

And being the golf nerd that I am, I get excited about doing the work. Even if the session is short, I know I’ve still taken a step forward.

Those steps might be small but over the course of a winter they add up. And when conditions are tough, knowing you’ve made progress, however incremental, makes all the difference.

Work In Building Blocks

When I think about golf improvement, I think about building. Building my game by plugging my leaks. That’s why I work in blocks.

Winter is the perfect time for this approach. There’s a long enough window to make lasting progress and working in blocks keeps things simple rather than overwhelming.

Instead of trying to change several things at once, each block has a single focus – one thing I’m trying to improve before adding the next. That might be a specific technical move or even a decision-making habit.

The key is trusting that by going deep on one thing, I’ll make more progress over the course of the winter than if I try to work on everything at once.

This way, every practice session has a purpose – working on that specific thing until it feels solid enough to move on to the next.

It also removes the pressure to see instant results. I think of it like this – when you’re laying foundations, you don’t expect the finished house to appear overnight. You trust that each block you put in place makes the whole structure stronger.

In winter, that mindset feels invaluable because progress might feel slow but I know it’s never wasted. By the time spring arrives, those building blocks will be in place – quietly supporting a game that’s better than it was before.

Set Yourself 'Good Enough' Goals

One of the quickest ways to lose motivation in winter is to expect too much from it. Whether it’s for a single session or the week ahead, I’ve found that when I set myself unrealistic goals, I’m left feeling like I’ve come up short, even when I’ve put the work in.

With cold, wet ranges, shorter yardages and fewer rounds on the cards, winter isn’t a fair environment for performance-based goals. If your targets are built around chasing perfection, it has a habit of making you feel like you’re wading through mud…sometimes quite literally.

That’s why, instead of seeking big-bang breakthroughs, I set myself 'good enough' goals. Ones that keep me engaged with the process, rather than fixated on the outcome.

A 'good enough' goal might be seeing the move I’m working on show up on video, without worrying about where the ball goes – yet. Or hearing the sound of my strike improve on most shots, rather than expecting it on every swing.

These goals are about narrowing my performance window. And they protect my motivation by giving me something meaningful to work towards, and measure, without feeling like I’m falling short.

Track Your Progress

When you’re deep in the weeds of winter practice, progress can seem invisible. That Groundhog Day feeling of heading to the range in the rain – again – can leave you wondering whether you’re actually being productive at all.

That’s why tracking your progress in some way is so important during the winter months. Without it, you’re effectively walking in the dark, without any real evidence that what you’re working on is moving you – and your game – in the right direction.

For me, I track my progress by filming my swing and I’ve found that it does two important things. First, it gives me a feedback loop within the session itself. I can see whether the “feel” I’m working on is moving me closer to the “real” I want to see in my swing.

Second, it gives me something to look back on over time. When it feels like I’m stuck, I can revisit swings from last week or last month and see how those small steps are quietly adding up. Tracking progress also gives me something to hang my “good enough” goals off.

And when motivation dips, as it inevitably does in winter, having something tangible to point to can be the difference between drifting away from the work or finding the desire to head back out and practice again.

Follow Jess’ golf journey on Instagram & TikTok.

TOPICS

After cutting her handicap from 34 to 9 in a year, Jess Ratcliffe is documenting how she’s working on her game to get really good at golf on her YouTube channel and Instagram.

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