What do professional golfers do on a practice day, that we could benefit from doing on a regular day?
Watching professionals practice
I have been lucky to be a spectator at a handful of professional golf tournaments. Spending a whole day outside, walking along a golf course, watching other people play, can actually be fun.
Usually, I’m at the tournament when the drama kicks in – when players are trying to make moves up the leaderboard.
But one time, the day I attended, was a Wednesday practice day. The players were surprisingly relaxed and joking with each other. They weren’t on the course to set a low score – they were there to, well, practice.
The golfers and their caddies were fully exploring every hole. They hit balls from the short grass, and the long grass. They actually put golf balls in the bunkers, to challenge themselves to hit them out. On the green, they tried putting from multiple spots.
These were, as I say, professionals, with caddies, and a fully thought out plan for their practice. Even though they were hitting more shots, they were still moving along pretty quickly.
I had never seen this kind of practice
I had never seen this kind of practice happen before. This isn’t shown on tv. This is rarely possible to do at a regular golf course with others expecting you to play ‘normally’ by hitting one ball, as efficiently as possible, to the hole.
But that Practice Day, was fascinating – and it has stuck with me. Those golfers saw the value in looking at a goal from multiple perspectives. Some of it was about preparing to recover after a miss. But some of it was about looking for more than one viable path, more than one strategy, to perhaps gain an advantage in different wind conditions, or to plan for a key moment to be aggressive.
They were literally looking at going after their goal from the left, and from the right, and from the back, and from the front.
More than one viable path
To me, this is a great reminder that there is always more than one way for the same person to accomplish something. Even if there is an expected way, or a usual way, there could be benefit, or even just some fun, in taking a different path and learning from a fresh perspective.
How are you at changing perspectives
Here’s an exercise to help you strengthen your perspective muscle:
- Today, identify an activity ahead this week, that you do pretty much the same way every time. (Maybe it’s the path you take through the grocery store, or the route you take walking the dog or going to work.)
- Then, every time that activity comes up this week, intentionally approach it from literally a different direction. Make a note of how it feels, and if you see anything new.
- At the end of the week, notice what was easy, and what was hard, and how a change of perspective had an impact on the activity.
