The Anatomy of A Practice Round-Part One
At
Course of Action Golf, we receive a lot of questions about practice rounds. Whether it’s how important a practice round is or what should a player do during a practice round. I myself used to have no idea what an effective practice round entailed, but I learned the details of course preparation and I am going to share with you how to gain an edge over your competition.
Common Question:
Does my son or daughter need to have a practice round?
Quite simply, yes. Ask yourself, would you go into a big exam without studying or doing a practice test? Probably not. And if you do, the result will not be as good as if you had prepared. But what if I have played the course once a few years ago? You may have a decent idea what the holes do, but golf course conditions change a lot. The firmness of the fairways and greens change the entire strategy of a round, not to mention the wind direction. No matter if it’s your local junior tour event or an elite junior invitational, many times the separation is in the preparation. I was recently watching the WGC Mexico event and I heard the announcers talking about Tiger Woods. Tiger was eating a snack while walking down the fairway. They said during his preparation for the week he assessed that given the high altitude of Mexico City, he would only eat food walking downhill or otherwise he would expend too much energy trying to eat walking uphill. Not only that, he measured that his ideal heart rate would be constant if took 80 strides per minute when walking during the week. Now that might sound ridiculous to you and even, I laughed a little, but it is actually brilliant. And a reason why he is arguably the greatest player of all time. Tiger leaves no stone unturned to gain an edge over his competition. Imagine the confidence it would give you to know that you’re doing something that no one else is? And let’s be honest if the guy that has won 80 PGA Tour events is monitoring his energy levels walking uphill and downhill, the least you could do is play an effective practice round. With that being said, I am going to share some advice that will give you an advantage over your playing competitors, so you can walk the fairways knowing you are more prepared than them.
What Is an Effective Practice Round?
Now that you know you need to play a practice round before an event, let’s talk about everything you need to do during the practice round. An effective practice round should make a player feel completely prepared for whatever the course throws at them during the tournament.
Step One: Practice Round Tee Times
First and foremost, make a tee time. Call the golf course a week in advance and make sure the course is available the day you want to play a practice round. This isn’t a problem with big junior invitationals, but some local and regional events are played at country clubs that could have an outing or a member championship the day before the tournament. If possible, schedule your tee time as close to your first-round tee time as possible. This will simulate close conditions to the tournament round.
Elevation Yardages
To have an effective practice round, yardages are essential for off the tee as well as being pin high into the greens. When an event is being played in your area with similar elevation, just make sure to know your everyday carry numbers. However, if the player is travelling to a place where the elevation above sea level is different, then you need to calculate your new carry yardages. A player should account for a 7% distance change for every 2500 feet in elevation. For example, Player A carries an 8 iron 150 yards at 2500 feet elevation. They will now carry that same 8 iron 160.5 yards at 5000 feet elevation. Go through this process with every club to find the new carry yardages for a given area. This also includes 7% less if you go from 2500 feet to sea levels for areas such as San Francisco or New Orleans.
Yardage Book
Yardage books are essential for tournament golf. They are your road map. Everything is digital these days, so imagine a long drive somewhere you’ve been once without Siri or google maps. Sounds stressful doesn’t it. Yardage books are often sold in the pro shop for around 20 dollars. Make sure to save those books because they can be used again when you play an event there in the future. If you do not want to spend 20 dollars on a course book, I understand. This doesn’t mean you will not have a book. You will be making one from scratch. With this route, you’ll want to go buy a small handbook that is small enough to fit in your back pocket. You will be writing down each hole by hand; making the shape of the hole with any bunkers, trees, or water in play with yardages to each entity. Same with the greens. In a hand-written book, make sure the write down the shape and depth of the green with any contours that are worth noting. I’ll be discussing more in depth what exactly to put in that yardage book soon.
Never Ever Keep Score During a Practice Round
Just about one of the worst things you can do during a practice round is keep score. It’s called a practice round for a reason… to practice. Reminiscing on my junior golf career, I can’t even tell you how many times I saw kids keeping score in practice rounds and how this derailed them in the actual event. I fell for it once or twice too. There are so many problems with keeping score during a practice round, but I will explain three of them. First being, it sets expectations. Those junior golfers I just mentioned would tell me how they just shot 68,66,70 or whatever in their practice round and couldn’t believe they just shot 79 in the actual event. Well I’ll tell you why. There is no pressure during a practice round. There are no consequences for a bad shot compared to a tournament and many good junior players can rattle off birdies when they play free. Second, that 68,66,70 they just shot the day before sets expectations for the upcoming round. “I just shot 68. I’ve got to do that again today when it counts”. Even if you are not saying it out loud. Your subconscious has already set the precedent that that is what you should at least shoot today. I saw countless junior players tell me how great they played in their practice round, create unnecessary expectation and when they had an early bogey or two, they pressed and started going for tucked pins with long irons to get back to 68 and instead blew up to their eventual 78. And finally, most higher end junior events and maybe some local events will purposely put the practice round pins in the dead center of the green or on the far edges on 3-4% slopes. This is because they want to protect the actual pin locations for the event. So, keeping score is pointless because you either have the easiest pins on the course making it easy to shoot low or the hardest pins on the course which will make you question how good you are playing.
I hope you are finding this information useful. This is part one of my two-part series
(
sign up for our newsletter to get part 2
) explaining effective practice rounds. Next time, we will dive into specific notes and tricks that need to be in yardage books to be best prepared for tournament rounds. If you are currently on our email list you will be send part two in this series.
By Chris Petefish of Petey's Playbook
Chris Petefish is the VP of Player Development at Course of Action Golf -
BIO
