Why Playing More Golf Isn’t Lowering Your Handicap

Does playing more golf actually make you a better golfer? Not necessarily.

In this episode of Think Above Par, Kathy explains the important difference between practicing your golf skills and playing the game. You’ll learn why repeatedly playing rounds can allow bad swing habits to creep in, how practicing the wrong things may reinforce the very problems you’re trying to fix, and why your fundamentals deserve regular attention.

Kathy also shares how to balance time on the golf course with productive practice, what to check after tournament rounds or difficult playing conditions, and how to prevent small issues with your grip, posture, alignment, ball position, and tempo from becoming bigger swing problems.

If you play frequently but aren’t seeing your handicap improve, this episode will help you take a more intentional approach to golf practice—without beginning an emergency swing reconstruction after three ugly shots.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

•  The difference between practicing and playing golf 
•  Why playing more rounds doesn’t automatically improve your skills 
•  How ineffective practice reinforces bad habits 
•  Why fundamentals often cause bigger swing problems 
•  How to balance practice, tournaments, and recreational rounds 
•  What to work on after playing in wind or difficult conditions

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Above Par. I'm your host, Kathy Hartwood. I show you how to take more of your talent to the golf course without practicing harder, taking more lessons, or buying new equipment. I show you how to end the frustration of underperforming so you can start playing to your potential. This is where you are going to learn how to think above par so you can play below par. Let's get to it.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Hello my golf friend. Welcome back to Think Above Par. Hope you're doing amazing, having a wonderful week, playing lots of golf. We're in September, so hopefully some things are cooling down in certain regions and not getting too cool up north. But this is actually one of my favorite times of year to play golf. But coming out of the typical golf season in the United States, as far as tournaments go, we can run into a stage of really playing a lot of golf, back-to-back golf, a lot of tournaments. And I wanted to talk a little bit about when's playing too much, how much you should practice, like what happens. There is a mental component to it, but I figured I'd tap into a little bit of my instructional background and my playing background to share with you my insights about the combination, the balance between practicing and playing. So, in my opinion, practicing is to build and repeat a skill. You are going to the range for repetition and whatever you repeat, you are building. So if you go to the range and you are repeating and hitting a golf ball with lots of loops in your swing, you are going to build the skill of being a great looper. If you go to the range and you are repeating a reverse pivot over and over and over again, you are going to become very, very good at a reverse pivot. So practicing is about repeating something. Now, just because you practice, clearly, it does not mean that you're going to get better because if you're practicing the wrong things, you're just going to be better at what you repeated. So a lot of times people can go to the range and go, like, well, I'm practicing, I'm putting in the time. Like, what's wrong? Why aren't I getting any better? And my first question is what are you practicing? Are you practicing properly? Are you practicing the right things? So it's important for you to know how to practice properly. And what's a practice for you, not for everybody, not for the person that's next to you, hitting golf balls, don't copy them. I used to have that happen all the time. I'd give a lesson and I'd get these creepers. Like I get these guys that would come in and they just start hitting balls right next to where I was giving a lesson. And so they're eavesdropping on what I'm telling the student, kind of trying to get a free lesson. And that doesn't necessarily apply to them. It's like taking the wrong medicine. It's not necessarily useful. So you want to make sure that you're taking the medicine, the lesson that is right for you and your swing. That applies to short game too. Often I go to the short game area and I watch guys stand there and just scoop it and scoop it and scoop it and blade it and blade it and blade it. And then they hit one good one. They're like, yeah, that's the one I want. I'm like, yeah, but what you own is the scoop and the blade. Because that's what you just repeated the most. Right now, if they stood there trying to get rid of that so that they could hit a solid shot in the short game area, that'd be different. But they're just waiting to see the good shot. And they're like, oh, there it is. And then miraculously, they expect to hit that every single time on the golf course when they did it one out of 20 times in the short game area. I was at the course with my friend, and we were watching this guy before we got out of the cart to walk over to the short game area, hit bunker shots, and it was kind of entertaining. Like I'm gonna just say it in a probably not very nice way. So I'm like, what the heck is that guy doing? He's swinging and he's falling back, and there's so much sand going up in the air, and the ball's not getting out. And we were just watching and we were having a snack before we got out of the cart. And I was like, oh my gosh, that has to be so frustrating. And no sooner does he tomahawk this club right into the face of the bunker. He was so mad. We had to put our heads down and giggle. But yeah, he's just practicing hitting bad bunker shots. I don't want you to do that. That's a waste of time. I get golf is hard and you're gonna stand out there and try and figure things out. But if you're gonna spend the time in a bunker when it's 100 degrees outside, which is the hottest place to possibly be, know what you're trying to practice and rehearse to get out. So then when you go out to the golf course, golf course is playing. Golf course is figuring out course strategy, if you're paying attention to that, and how to score. Right? So if you go through a series of weeks in the summer or in the season where you're just playing and playing and playing, that doesn't necessarily mean your skill is getting better. You might learn a little bit about course strategy and some rules. But if you think about it, you're going out on the golf course and you're hitting 14 drives over four hours. That doesn't mean your driving got better. It situationally got better. Your pre-shot routine, it's a great place to practice that. It's a great place to practice some of the mental part of the game, but not necessarily your skill. It's not the place that you want to try and fix your skill or your swing. The other part of that is as you play over and over again, bad habits will creep in. Your aimer, where you aim, might start slowly creeping over to the right. To the next thing you know, you're standing over the golf ball and you feel great over it, but you're aimed in the right trees, and everybody's like, where are you aiming? You're like, down the middle of the fairway until someone throws a club against your toes and you're like, Oh my gosh, I'm in the trees. How did that happen? That happened because you've been playing golf without really a station or some structure to make sure that you're not creating bad habits, which is what practicing does. If you play golf in the wind all the time and then it's not windy one day, and you're wondering why you're kind of leaning into the shot, like as if you were bracing for the wind or you start moving a little bit over the golf ball, someone says, Why are you swaying? You're like, I have no idea. I just came back from Ireland and I was playing in the wind for two weeks, right? It's because it's important for you to go back to the range and get some stability again because the environment is impacting your swing. When I played professional golf or a lot of competitive golf, I would always go to the range after a windy day or inclement weather day, and I'd make sure I get my tempo back and some of my fundamentals back because I know how much the wind can impact your tempo and how conditions can also impact that. So going back to the range either after a round of golf, which if you have time, there's not social events, is a good thing to do in a tournament. Like, you know, definitely go to the range and and kind of knock out some of those sore spots on the golf course that happened. So you kind of erase them from your memory, like you bladed one out of the bunker. Let me just go back to the bunker and hit a couple good bunker shots and it's like delete, delete, delete. Yeah, that's useful. In between tournaments, it's also useful to go to the range and just double check my fundamentals, double check my aim is on point, my grip and my posture, work on my tempo a little bit. Make sure I didn't pick up any bad habits because I was consistently playing golf, where they have a tendency to creep in. I'm sharing this with you from experience, from playing week after week and not really spending the amount of time that I typically do practicing, I would get bad habits that creep in. Once a bad habit creeps in, it becomes work to change. Now I've got a little bit of a problem. Now I'm not necessarily moving the needle forward with my skill set. I'm trying to get back to ground zero, so to speak, because I went backwards from just constantly playing and not paying attention to some of the simple things that create habits. I'm gonna promise you that nine times out of ten, if not more, any swinger that you get in your swing starts with in your fundamentals. It starts because your grip was off, your posture was off, your stance, your ball position, your aim. One of those things got wonky. And it's hard to be consistent with it when you're playing in day in and day out, unless you go to the range and make sure they're all on point. That would be a very fast way for you to improve your skill set. You do not get set up perfectly and decide to suddenly start creating a loop. Just it doesn't happen. You're creating a loop probably because you're aimed in the trees and you gotta loop it to get it back into the fairway. And you're like, see, I hit it straight. It works, it's just not very consistent or predictable, and you're probably gonna hit your ball a lot lower. You're like, why isn't my ball stopping? Well, you know, you're pulling it 40 yards, right? But it's in the fairway. And the other point I want to make is I've had people come up to me and say, like, I just started, but all these other people have been playing for 30 or 40 years, they're so good. And we know plenty of people who have been playing for 20, 30, 40 years and they have a mid-range handicap. Playing golf does not necessarily make you better at golf because you're not practicing your skill. You're spending all the time on the golf course.

unknown 9:25

Right?

SPEAKER_01 9:25

And this is where we can create some really bad habits, as I just said. And that's totally fine. But the question for you do you want to lower your handicap? Some people are just totally satisfied with this is the amount of work that I want to put in. I don't like practicing. I'm good being a 24, 25 handicap, whatever. I'm good. But if you're a person who wants to improve and you don't want that handicap, then you're gonna balance out the amount of time that you spend on the golf course and the range where you practice your skill set and you practice properly because that's the fastest way for you to get better. You don't want to stand there on the driving range and practice the wrong thing. Actually, another good point. These people who don't improve after 20 or 30 years either don't care, which is fine, like they're just like they don't care to put in that time, or they do put in the time and they've been putting it in the wrong things because a lot of people aren't willing to invest in lessons or making sure you're getting the most you can out of the money you spend on a lesson. And I'll share that with you in the next podcast. And we just want you to look at the number of rounds you play back to back, how much time you put in between them practicing, and are you practicing the right things? Are you practicing the things that are gonna keep you from creating bad habits? I call that whack-a-mole. We're gonna go to the range, we're gonna play whack-a-mole so I don't build any bad habits. And then not expecting playing a lot to necessarily mean your skill improved. Playing a lot means that you're getting really better at figuring out how to score with what you have. And that's a useful thing too. All right, my friends. I'd love to see you inside your mental caddy. If you get a chance, your mentalcaddy.com. It's free to join. And I hope you have a beautiful week, and I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Bye.