Practice & Drills

Practicing Under Pressure

Make practice feel like a tournament.

Why it matters

Practice putts and tournament putts are different shots, and only one of them is being practised in an empty field on a Tuesday. The gap between them is nerves, and nerves can be rehearsed — but only if practice has something at stake.

How to do it

Add a consequence. A set you must restart on a miss, a small wager, press-ups, anything that makes a miss cost something.
Use must-make sets: five in a row from 20 feet, back to zero on a miss.
Practise with other people watching. An audience is most of what tournament pressure actually is.
Deliberately practise the shots you fear rather than the ones you enjoy.
Do pressure work at the END of a session, when you are tired, because that is the state a closing hole finds you in.

Common mistakes

Practising only in comfortable conditions and expecting it to transfer.Comfortable practice builds a comfortable game. Add stakes deliberately, every session.

Avoiding the shots that make you nervous.Those are the ones costing you strokes. Spend the practice time there, where it is cheap to fail.

Making the stakes so high that practice becomes miserable.Enough to feel it, not enough to dread it. The aim is a slightly raised heart rate, not a bad afternoon.

Key points

Add consequences (games, wagers) to simulate nerves.
Practice the exact putts and shots you fear.

The drill

Drill · Five in a row, with a cost — 5 consecutive makes from 20 ft, restarting on every miss. Five in a row from twenty feet, back to zero on a miss, and you are not finished until it is done. Do it at the end of a session with somebody watching. The fourth putt feels completely different from the first, and that feeling is exactly the thing you came to practise.

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