Do You Really Need to Practice A Lot To Play Golf Well?

Well, of course you may say. Why would anyone practice at all if you could play well without it?

You’re right in most cases. A player recently asked me if he would be mentally fragile if he didn’t practice for a while.

By mentally fragile he meant that wasn’t really confident about his game since he didn’t practice.

It’s logical, that if you don’t practice, you can’t play that well. Right? NOT necessarily!

It depends how many years you have been playing before. If you have been practicing golf for many years (10 and more), then your body and mind are so well trained, that all the programs for:

• ball judgment
• timing
• coordination and technique are so deeply ingrained that they will run without problems even if you don’t practice much.

What you’ll lose is feel, and stamina but not the technique and other skills already mentioned above.

Why is this important to know? So that you don’t limit your performance with your thoughts (and doubts) the next time you play after a long break.

It is very likely that you’d be affected by the lack of training if you haven’t been playing golf for years.

Your skills are still not totally automatic and will lose their accuracy over time.

But if you’ve been playing a certain sport for many years, it is possible to play at a very high level without much practice.