I’m sure many of you have heard the saying that “you’re only as strong as your weakest link”. Well, the same applies for your golf game. In order to become a complete player, you must identify your weaknesses and practice them. It’s human nature to want to practice the things you are good at instead of the things you struggle with the most. I caught myself facing this same issue early in my professional career. My college boyfriend was a good golfer and came out to caddy for me during a tournament. He noticed that most of my missed shots and bogeys were with my longer irons. He also noticed that during practice I hit twice as many shots with my short irons as I did with my long irons. So I decided to focus on hitting more shots with my long irons than I did any other club. I set aside an extra pile of balls on the range that was specifically for long irons only. It was amazing how much better I got with them and the results I saw on the course reflected the improvement.
Keeping up with your stats can help you identify your weaknesses if you do it properly. The more specific you are with details such as what club you hit when you missed the green or the type of short game shot you hit that you didn’t get up and down will help you better identify your specific weaknesses instead of a broad area. Many times stats can be misleading though so be sure to take notes after the round. For instance, a day where you hit a lot of greens but you hit them on the wrong side of the green and not very close in proximity to the hole will lead to an increased putting stat compared to a day where you may have missed more greens but they were just off the edge and you had some easy up and downs. If you just looked at your stats you might have assumed it was a bad putting day in the first scenario and a bad ball striking day in the second, but that doesn’t always mean that is the case. So make sure you really break down your round and identify what really caused the mistakes, even some of the small details or shots that you don’t think you will have to hit again.
Once you have identified your weaknesses check with your swing coach to see if there are any mechanical mistakes you are making that are causing it to be a weakness. Then set a goal to practice those areas the most. Create some drills that are specific to that skill and track your progress. You may only encounter your specific area of weakness on occasion and feel that it isn’t that important to practice very often, but you will be amazed at the confidence you will build by improving on your weaknesses.
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