“During our Tuesday practice round, Dr. Richard Coop, a sports psychologist who has worked with Payne for a number of years, walked with us. As he watched Payne play the course, he noticed something vital. “When are you picking your spots?” he asked.

They had been working on a way to improve Payne’s set-up and alignment. Payne would pick a spot in front of the ball and align the club and his body to that spot. Apparently, he was neglecting this important part of his pre-shot routine.

“That’s right, Coop,” Payne shot back. “Always analyzing, aren’t you?”

“I’m just asking,” Dr. Coop replied. “When are you picking your spots?”

Payne said nothing — but he went back to picking his spots. If you look at a tape of Payne’s win, you’ll see him doing this before each shot. It was a point well taken.”

Ok, so to help you line up you need to pick a spot in front of your ball that will help you to line up with. You probably already know that golf alignment tip, but like Payne Stewart… are you actually doing it – and doing it consistently?

If not, you need to make this part of your pre-shot routine to ensure that you always do it.

So for every shot stand behind your ball and imagine a line from your ball to the place where you want your ball to go. Then along this line pick out an object that is a yard or two in front of your ball. This object has to be one that you can easily keep an eye on as you’re walking up to your ball, e.g – a particular leaf on the ground, a stick or twig, or some other object that is easily identifiable.

When you setup to your ball use this object to line up your clubface and then line up your body correctly in relation to your clubface. By making this a habit you may not win a U.S. Open like Payne Stewart, but I’m sure your ball striking accuracy will improve and become more consistent.

Ok, the very first thing you should do when you go to practice is do a few stretches to warm up and loosen up your muscles. This doesn’t need to be anything elaborate, however, just some arm swings, twists, toe touches etc. Spend about 5 minutes doing this to get nice and loose and warm.

After this warm-up then start off hitting some golf balls with a wedge. Hit about 3 balls with your wedge and then change to your 9-iron and hit 3 balls with that. Continue changing clubs and hitting about 3 balls with each golf club until you reach your driver. This should take you about 20 minutes. But this is important – when you hit these shots you should treat each shot as though it’s a real shot out on the golf course, and go through your pre-shot routine for each shot.

After this you should then practice pitching for about 15 minutes. When you do this never hit the same shot to the same target. For every pitch shot pick out a new target to hit to and go through your pre-shot routine for each shot just like you would out on the golf course.

Next up you should practice chipping and bunker shots for about 10 minutes. Again, play a different shot each time and go through your pre-shot routine for each and every shot.

After doing this you will now have about 10 minutes left in the hour. In this time you should work on improving your putting. For most of this 10 minutes you should focus on putts outside of 10 feet. Work on hitting the longer putts the correct distances so you are left with an easy tap in. When doing this, hit your putts to the fringe rather than to the hole to help you focus on your distance control rather than focusing on the hole. Then to finish off your putting session knock in some short putts. This will give you confidence as you’re finishing off your practice session on a successful note. But do not end on a missed putt, make sure you finish up after a successfully holed putt.

Alright, that is how you should spend your one hour practice session to improve your golf game. Here is this in bullet form so you can print it out and take it to the golf course with you:

1st. Spend 5 minutes stretching to warm up your muscles.
2nd. Spend 20 minutes hitting about 3 balls with each of your clubs, starting with the wedge and finishing with the driver.
3rd. Spend 5 minutes hitting pitch shots. Remember, try to hit each pitch shot to a different distance and target.
4th. Spend 10 minutes trying to improve your chipping and bunker shots.
5th. Spend 10 minutes trying to improve your putting. Spend most of this time trying to improve your distance control and then finish with some short putts.

So long as you treat each golf shot as though it’s a real one on the golf course, then you’ll notice over time that your golf game will improve a lot by practicing like this just once a week.

This is a very common problem and there are many things you can do to prevent this from happening. The one biggest thing I think is to have a pre-shot routine and then stick to it no matter what. Now this takes discipline to do and it can be very difficult at times, but you simply must do it if you are ever going to beat this thing.

Now your pre-shot routine must be very precise. You don’t have to be so precise that it goes for a certain length of time but you do have to do the same movements over and over again. So that’s one thing you can do to really beat this problem.

I believe that after every golf shot you hit that isn’t up to your potential (and with the game of golf that will be most of them) you should take a moment to shut your eyes and visualize how you would’ve liked to have played that shot. You see, most people play a bad shot once and then replay that bad shot over and over again in their mind.

You’ve got to stop this from happening because the more you focus on something the more you’re going to get it.  So immediately after any bad shot simply take a few deep breathes and close your eyes and visualize that shot again, how you would’ve liked to play it.

After you’ve done this don’t rush to the next shot, take your time. And here’s a suggestion of what you can do before you play the next shot. Take out a club and shut your eyes and have a few swings just concentrating on the feel of the clubhead. Let the clubhead control the swing, not you.

Also have a few swings while gently humming to yourself trying to maintain a quiet tone. And if you are swinging too fast or you’re not swinging with any rhythm then your humming will speed up and this will give you great feedback as to how your tempo is. Simply keep swinging and concentrate on your tempo so that your hum stays at a constant pitch throughout your swing.  This is also a good practice technique that you can do when hitting golf balls.

Now picture this.

You’ve been playing great and then you hit one bad shot and one of your playing partners goes, “you dumb jerk, you stupid idiot, what did you do that for you?”

Would you be happy?

Of course you wouldn’t, so why would you accept thoughts like that from yourself? You shouldn’t. After a bad shot simply accept it and move on. Hey, everyone has bad shots, golf is a game of mistakes.

The better golfers simply learn not to let one bad shot turn into two, then three, then four. And to stop this rut you’ve got to notice how you’re moving your body, how you’re talking to yourself etc, etc. Now what most people do when they play a bad shot is they speed up, so be especially weary of this. Slow down. Change the pace of your walk. In short do something different until you get back into your natural rhythm again.

Do these techniques and you’ll find your bad shots won’t lead to more bad shots, but if you don’t do these techniques then you’ll always have a big disaster regularly. The choice is now yours!