Mark Williams on how to optimise practice

09/03/2025

Coaching golf is an art, one that is shaped by intuition, historical precedence, emulation and craft knowledge. Knowledge in coaching is often transferred via experience on task, as well as by the mentorship and guidance of more established and ‘knowledgeable’ practitioners.

Such transfer of knowledge over time is inevitably crucial in becoming a skilled and reflective practitioner. Yet, relying exclusively on experiential knowledge is not without limitations. What starts off as intuition or emulation in the field soon becomes accepted as the unquestioned norm, or the most optimal practice conditions. Then such behaviours become ingrained in the fabric and culture of the sport.

While this evolution is not always negative, there is a need to rely on evidence-based practice where possible. In golf, anecdotal evidence suggests that most golfers and their coaches rely heavily on blocked, repetitive practice of skills/shots, with coaches often accompanying such practice with high levels of instruction and feedback. The latter emphasis has recently been exaggerated by new advances in technology that provide easier access to data related to stroke and/or ball flight characteristics.

The general belief is that the more one practises, the more repetitive that practice should become, particularly when accompanied by high levels of instruction and feedback.

Yet, more is not necessarily better. The challenge is to practice both efficiently and effectively, and while golf is invariably a game where short-term performance matters, it is arguably more reliant on long-term learning and development.

The need therefore is to see practice as a long-term journey to become more skilled over time, albeit one that is punctuated with periodic needs to perform in the short term. It is not my intention to be overly specific in outlining how these principles should be integrated into coaching practice. My role is merely to extend the professional knowledge of coaches as to how golfers learn and how it can be facilitated.

Mark Williams highlights four key principles emerging from the latest research on the science of learning that you can apply to your coaching.

1. Performance and learning are not the same thing

Be aware of the difference

When golfers engage in practice, what coaches observe is performance. Performance is short-term, observed behaviour during that session. Learning is distinct from performance and to evaluate whether the golfer has learned and improved on a task one needs to see that any change in behaviour is retained over time (e.g., in subsequent sessions) and that it transfers from practice to competition. One can therefore only infer learning over extended periods of time and across different contexts.

Why is this distinction between practice and learning important? Scientific evidence strongly suggests that the conditions which promote better performance during practice rather paradoxically are less efficient at promoting long-term learning. If the focus of the coach is on short-term performance, then the provision of high levels of instruction, specific, blocked and repetitive practice of a single shot and copious feedback creates the ideal scenario.

However, the reverse conditions are better for long-term learning. Low levels of instruction, highly variable and random practice (i.e., never replicating the same shot or set-up twice), and limited feedback facilitate skill retention and transfer. Coaches need to be clear about when the focus is on performance and when it is on learning.

If confidence is low or during the final practice session before a competition it may be that performance is the priority, but certainly in between competitions and during the off-season at least, the focus should always be on learning and skill development.

When the focus is on learning, being more hands-off and continually changing the type of shot played (e.g., club selection) and using different ball locations and shot trajectories are paramount from one shot to the next.

In addition to not repeating the same shot twice, consider changing the lie, stance and different fight characteristics from one shot to the next.

2. Differentiate between growth practice and maintenance practice

Try to find the optimal balance

It might be argued that the separate focus on performance and learning aligns with the differentiation between growth and maintenance practice. When golfers engage in maintenance practice, they are working on skills that they can already perform well and are merely refining or retaining those skills. In contrast, growth practice or what some might refer to as deliberate practice involves identifying each golfer’s individual weaknesses and then designing practice sessions that allow them to work exclusively on refining and improving those skills. The key question is what’s the best balance between these two different types of practice; is it a 50-50 split, 70-30 or 80-20?

We don’t know the answer to this question because it likely depends on a range of factors such as each golfer’s aptitude to deal with success and failure (e.g., psychological factors such as grit, mental toughness and self-confidence), as well as the relative importance of each strength and weaknesses to performance, and the stage of the season involved.

What we do know is that when skilled athletes are left to their own devices during practice, they spend most of the time in the growth phase trying to improve weaknesses, whereas less skilled athletes spend more time in the maintenance phase.

Coaches should be aware of when the golfer is engaging in growth and maintenance practice respectively and consider what might be the optimal balance for each golfer. A danger would be for the golfer to experience ‘arrested development’ because practice is not sufficiently challenging.

The coach is therefore left with two key challenges. First, what skills need improving through deliberate practice. Where possible this decision should be driven by objective data.

Second, how to set the difficulty of practice at the right level, what some refer to as a desirable level of difficulty, or to create challenge points that stimulate growth and adaptation.

Clearly, creating a positive environment where failure is seen as an opportunity to learn and to try something different next attempt is essential to facilitate learning and engagement. Unfortunately, science does not present prescriptive guidance as to how shot difficulty should be manipulated. This level of prescription is down to the craft knowledge of the coach. However, we know that decreasing the amount of instruction and feedback provided, increasing shot variability (e.g., ball placement, stance, flight trajectory, club selection), increasing pressure and raising shot difficulty level by manipulating stance, ball placement and changing flight dynamics all make the task more difficult – but it’s up to the coach to decide what to manipulate and when.

3. Create practice conditions that are high in specificity

Be willing to sacrifice repetition for specificity

In all sports, coaches are faced with creating practice conditions that are appropriately challenging, provide sufficient opportunities for repetition and retain competition levels of specificity.

In golf, for example, consider the player who gets on the driving range and repeats the same drive shot 50 times. In this instance, we have high repetition, but do we have high levels of specificity or challenge. Generally, the specificity and challenge in these situations are low. These practice attempts lack context, lack the need for club and shot selection, lack variability and pressure.

The pre-shot routine is different compared to the same shot in competition and often these 50 shots are reeled off in quick time with no cost associated with poor performance. Science is clear in demonstrating that when under pressure we change our gaze and thought processes and our stroke mechanics, so when we practise without pressure how high is the level of specificity or the degree of challenge? Coaches should avoid low levels of challenge and low levels of specificity, whereas high levels of specificity are paramount.

The label ‘level of challenge‘ on the vertical axis could easily be replaced with ‘level of repetition’. That is, low levels of repetition are not optimal, and the challenge is to create practice sessions that create high levels of repetition, are high in specificity and are set at the optimal level of difficulty for each learner. That, succinctly, is one of the main challenges of coaching.

Of course, the highest levels of specificity and challenge arise during competition, but match play presents limited opportunities for repetition. We can’t accumulate enough practice through competition alone, so the challenge for the coach is in maintaining high repetition and high specificity, and the appropriate level of difficulty. If one had to sacrifice repetition or specificity, it should be repetition since repeating a skill in a manner that does not resemble the specific demands of competition is unlikely to result in any substantive transfer. Coaches should always ensure that practice mimics the demands of competition as much as possible regarding its physical, physiological, technical, tactical and psychological demands.

4. Don’t be too prescriptive

Facilitate learning and don’t dictate or abdicate

Historically, golf coaches have favoured a prescriptive approach to coaching, with a preference towards high levels of instruction and feedback, as well as blocked repetitive practice.

These conditions certainly facilitate performance during practice. However, they may also impose artificial constraints on learning, providing temporary and non-optimal movement solutions that are more likely to break down under pressure.

In contrast, less prescriptive approaches such as guided discovery are likely to create more adaptable skills that are more robust to forgetting and performing under pressure.

So, the challenge for coaches is to allow the golfer to practise skills without providing too much explicit and augmented instruction or feedback.

The role of the coach therefore is not to dictate learning upon the golfer but rather to facilitate learning, as opposed to prescribing learning, and to provide the player with as much control over their practice as possible. This requirement also implies that coaches don’t abdicate their responsibility during practice either. The challenge is to provide the right balance between being hands-on and hands-off.

Several methods exist to facilitate more hands-off approaches to prescription. These include facilitating an external rather than internal focus of attention. For example, asking a golfer to replicate a particular shot trajectory would focus attention externally, whereas asking the golfer to open the clubface at the top of the swing would create an internal focus on to the dynamics of the shot.

dynamics of the shot. Similarly, providing summary feedback (e.g., providing a synthesis of feedback every five to 10 shots rather than after each attempt) and/or delayed feedback (e.g., asking the golfer to process their own feedback prior to providing feedback) are methods that have been shown to facilitate implicit learning: that is, learning without knowing or thinking, which is more resilient to forgetting and performing under pressure.

Another topic that has attracted significant interest of late is the constraints-based approach to coaching. This diagram is an illustration of the framework. The approach argues that coaches should consider how they can manipulate different types of constraints to facilitate skill learning. These constraints relate to the player, the environment and the task itself. Player constraints include things like fatigue, pressure, self-confidence and fitness, whereas environmental constraints include wind, rain, type of grass and rough, speed of the greens and width of fairways.

Task constraints, which are more easily modified by coaches, include the lie of the ball, positioning of the ball relative to the feet, club selection, ball flight characteristics, spin and type of swing, as well as physical constraints such as harnesses or clubhead weight.

The approach necessitates extensive trial-and-error exploration and considerable craft knowledge to ascertain what exactly to manipulate and when. The coach needs to act as the facilitator of learning. Consequently, this approach may work best with highly experienced coaches and more elite players. The positives of the approach are that the golfer learns less prescriptively, and the movement skills acquired are retained better over time and transfer better to the pressure of competition.

Implications for PGA Members

I have outlined four areas where the science of learning can impact positively on effective coaching. The points outlined are strongly supported by a large body of empirical evidence over many decades.

However, the knowledge presented is not intended to provide a recipe book for coaching. The points highlighted are intended to extend the coach’s professional knowledge of some of the key principles of skill learning. The hope is that coaches can integrate this professional knowledge into the craft of coaching and increase their confidence levels around what type of coaching optimally facilitates learning.

What is ultimately required is more interaction between golf coaches and academics with expertise in skill learning. Such interactions would create a more fruitful environment to facilitate innovation and change and improve efficiency in ensuring that every hour of practice is spent in optimally facilitating transfer of learning to competition.

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About Mark Williams:

Mark is a sport scientist with a focus on skill learning and optimising the use of practice time. He is a Visiting Professor at Loughborough University, the University of Florida and Florida State University.