“Forget about the ball and focus on the move” (Kenny Fahey, 2020).
Why do you practice? How do you practice? What is the purpose of practice? Up until a couple of years ago, I saw a practice session as the time to prove myself, and showcase my talents. I tried to hit every shot perfectly. Anything less would be a failure.
What if the stranger next to me sees me top the ball, or hit a massive slice?? My game will be scarred forever, and I will be known as a bad golfer! These are some of the thoughts that used to fill my mind at the range before I started going to lessons with Kenny.
“Nobody cares” he used to tell me – in the most colourful of ways mind you. At first, I didn’t believe him. The stubborn side of me didn’t want to let go of the pressure of perfection. However, the more I worked on making changes, the more I realised he was right.
A lot of golfers, myself included, find it hard to take their ‘range game’ onto the course. I suppose what Kenny showed me is that your range game is not supposed to be like the game you bring onto the course. You go to the range or practice green to improve your skill set, experiment and get comfortable with failure. If you can’t risk failing on the range, where there are no consequences, you can wave trusting your swing on the course goodbye.
“Forget about the ball and focus on the move Mary” – is the message Kenny would constantly reiterate to me. Being a little bit of a perfectionist, I found it difficult to wrap my head around this idea. But the more I thought about focusing on improving a move rather than my performance, the easier it was to view practice as a learning experiment rather than an interview.
Practice is not the time for perfect. It is the time to work on something specific and learn. It’s a very rare case indeed where a person can make a swing change on their first attempt without a few miss-hits. Change is uncomfortable but it’s the only way to progress.
