“When people say stress, they often mean distress,” says Dr Jeremy Jamie- son, who oversees the Social Stress Lab at the University of Rochester. “People rarely use the word stress in a way that's positive. That’s just the way our cul- ture works. Athletes are one of the few groups that get it. They understand, ‘Oh, yeah, I need to be on and activated to do anything well.’” By Jamieson’s definition, stress is a signal to the body to pay closer atten- tion, which in competition, is some- thing golfers not only tolerate but need. Most tournament-tested players un- derstand this, and the most perceptive recognise how that stress manifests in their golf swings, like how a sand wedge can travel 10 yards further when they’re teeming with adrenaline. At Papago Golf Course outside Phoe- nix, Arizona State’s 2 040-square-me- tre practice facility features 21 target greens, including a series of eight cas- cading targets ranging from 30 to 145 yards, with bells in the middle that ring on perfect strikes, though around the chipping greens, head coach Matt Thur- mond relies on just a piece of chalk to outline the delineation between success and failure. “It creates just a little bit of stress and makes you accountable,” Thurmond says. “You either got it in or you didn't.” The goal is not to just tax his players. Thurmond recognises practices that are defined only by difficulty have dimin- ishing returns. “We really believe that having fun practising is vital,” he says, “because if you enjoy what you do, you're going to do it more, and practising golf needs a lot of volume. We try to create an en- vironment where they just like having a club in their hands. Most golfers are sadistic. If you give an elite golfer a shot that they’re going to maybe succeed one or two times out of 10, they kind of like it.” The last part might be most impor- tant because a practice facility is only as valuable as a golfer’s motivation to use it. A good facility might help stimu- late the type of focus other golfers can manufacture on their own. As Thur- mond notes, a golfer doesn’t make it to Arizona State without already knowing how to practice effectively, yet some golfers enjoy solving the puzzle more than others. Former tour pro and current Golf Channel analyst Tripp Isenhour shares a
story of when he was hitting balls next to Tiger Woods two decades ago on a Sat- urday at Torrey Pines. was after a round in which Woods had struggled with his driver, and Isenhour recognised the superstar was working through an as- sortment of curious shots with his irons – draws and fades way up in the air, straight bullets barely off the ground. When Isenhour asked why, Woods said his driver was problematic enough he needed to practice the recovery shots that follow wayward drives. “That's the reason why I'm a freak- ing announcer now and not playing the Champions Tour,” Isenhour says. “When that happened to me, my thought was, ‘Damn it, I gotta fix my swing.’ ” Woods could get wrapped up in swing mechanics like any other golfer, but he understood better than most the need to adapt to specific situations and to work through the challenge on his own. Which brings up another essential lesson in effective practice: The best sessions aren’t the kind with someone hovering over a golfer’s shoulder. When Will Robins describes his facili- ty adjacent to a public course in Folsom, California, he knows it will never be confused with the Grove. The bunker is one they dug themselves, there’s scarce room to chip, and the range balls are bad. “Apart from that, it’s great,” he says. He’s not entirely joking because in other ways, Robins has created an envi- ronment that trains his students for real golf with lots of drills featuring similar elements as competitive rounds. In one, players compete on the putting green in pairs. There’s a circular course, and ev- ery putt is recorded on what Robins calls a “purposeful practice card.” “They go through all the emotions, starting off well, then getting frustrated, then rushing, and that’s when I just walk away,” Robins says. “The lesson starts because now I’m adding pressure.” When players struggle, often Robins is not inclined to inject a solution, prefer- ring instead to pose questions that will help the player attack the problem on their own. “If you don’t know the prob- lem,” Robins says, “you’ll never know the solution.” It goes back to self-discovery. Michael Jordan learned by way of opposing de- fenders. Robins’ students learn when they start counting putts. You don’t need the fanciest facility to practice ef- fectively. You just need something that forces you to pay attention.
THE SHOT SHAPER Great iron-play is about missing in the right spot as much as it is knocking it close. This drill develops an understanding of smart, aggressive approaches versus what is careless.
YOU’LL NEED
A driving range or a golf hole with target flags, a mid- or short-iron, 10 golf balls.
STEPS 1. From an approach- shot distance of your
choice, identify a target. If the flags on your range aren’t on greens, use your imagination. 2. Hit a shot as close to the flag as possible while trying to avoid the short side of the green, meaning the side with less room between the hole and the fringe. (If a flag is on the right side of a green, a short-sided miss would be anything to the right of the flag). 3. Hit 10 shots using the following scoring system: 3 points for anything on the green and on the correct side of the flag, 0 points for anything that misses the green but on the correct side, and -5 points for any shot that lands on the short side.
SCORE TO BEAT
A scratch golfer should get about 20 points.
106 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2025
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