To improve your game around the greens, practice under pressure

Anyone who has struggled to bring their range game to the golf course understands that hitting balls during practice is very different from executing those same shots on the golf course when it matters. Carrying obstacles, salvaging a par with an up-and-down and hitting greens in regulation after a missed drive are important skills that contribute to good scores.

The ability to perform under pressure doesn’t come naturally to everyone. But the good news is, in golf, it can be acquired skill, and one that you can hone and sharpen over time.

Adding pressure to your practice sessions is one way to improve your on-course performance, and GOLF Top 100 Teacher Trillium Rose has a simple drill to help.

In a video posted to Titleist’s YouTube page, Rose explains why adding pressure to your practice sessions is an important step to overall game improvement.

“Practicing under pressure is a little bit hard to do on a normal driving range or short-game area when you don’t have any consequences,” she says. “The driving range is huge, you have multiple balls. It may not matter if you hit a bad one. But on the golf course, it all matters. So what you’re gonna do is limit the number of shots you have and put consequence on each one, make each one matter.”

To do this, Rose recommends gathering five balls and attempting to chip them to the same spot, with a goal of having the balls end up within one flagstick of each other. If one ends up outside of a flagstick length, you have to start over.

As you go through the drill, the pressure will naturally ramp up as you try to get to five. When you have just one shot remaining to reach your goal, that’s the pressure you want to feel.

“I’ve got to get this one in or I’ve gotta start all over — this is the feeling we’re looking to achieve when you practice,” Rose says.

So if you want to make your practice time really count, make sure to add pressure to help you see results.

“The more pressure you put on yourself in practice, the better equipped you’ll be when it comes to the real thing,” Rose says, “and you’ll play much better for it.”

To watch a video of Rose’s tip in its entirety, click here.

Golf.com Editor

As a four-year member of Columbia’s inaugural class of female varsity golfers, Jessica can out-birdie everyone on the masthead. She can out-hustle them in the office, too, where she’s primarily responsible for producing both print and online features, and overseeing major special projects, such as GOLF’s inaugural Style Is­sue, which debuted in February 2018. Her origi­nal interview series, “A Round With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in both in the magazine and in video form on GOLF.com.