The big idea behind Golf Recipes practice is simple enough to fit in your pocket.

Intention shapes technique, not the other way around.

Which is just a tidy way of saying: Decide what the ball should do before asking every body part for an opinion.

Motion > Variability > Competition

Learn the motion.
Feel the motion.
Trust the motion.

That is the practice sequence. Teach the body a motion. Let the ball interrupt with facts. Then take the whole arrangement someplace where second chances become less available.

The golf course.

***

Practice shouldn’t be robotic.

Robots repeat. Golfers adapt. And adapting needs intention, feedback, variation, and a little useful mess.

Why?

Because the point of practice is not to make the swing look good in a safe little row of golf balls. The point of practice is to learn a skill that can travel.

To the course.
To competition.
To pressure.
To weird lies.
To unpredictable weather.
To the day when your body feels like it slept in a laundry basket.

***

You will, at one point too many, feel the betrayal of good range practice.

On the range, your swing behaves. The ball flies better. Contact improves. Hope returns wearing clean shoes.

Then you walk to the course, meet one uneven lie, one nervous tee shot, one pond with emotional influence, and … Oh my! Your swing left with no forwarding address.

Range success and course success are not always the same thing, unless we change how we practice.

Think about the fish throwers at Pike Place Market. They see the fish. They see the target. They throw.

Big doubt if they throw while thinking about elbow position, hip rotation, wrist angles, or whether their follow-through looks nice on video.

They just throw.

Their intention shapes their body movement.

That’s why intention is important.
That’s why we start with it.

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