A practical short-game example shows why measurement and technical work are only the beginning – and what needs to happen next before a golfer can really use a change.
A 15-handicap golfer repeatedly struggled with thin strikes around the green. We could simply have told him what to change technically. Instead, we first wanted to understand why those shots were occurring – and then help the golfer understand for himself what he could change.
Situations like this illustrate one way we work in the Practice Lab. The exact process is not always the same and depends on the golfer, the problem we are trying to solve and the skill we want to develop. The process also depends on the handicap level of a golfer.
Producing a technical change is only the first step. The more interesting questions come afterwards:
Can the golfer understand the change, repeat it, deliberately adjust it and eventually use it under different conditions?
Step 1: Using measurement to understand the starting point
In this case, measurement helped us describe the starting point more objectively. In other situations, observation, ball flight or the golfer’s own feedback may provide the more useful starting point.On the first measured shots, it was approximately between -2 and -7 degrees.
For us, however, a value like this is not simply a number that the golfer should try to change as quickly as possible.
We look at how different factors interact. Setup (in this case very much sitting backwards), angle of attack, vertical launch, spin, low point, dynamic loft, spin loft and vertical swing plane can all provide information about how the shot was produced.
The key question is not:
“How do I get the number on the radar to change?”
But rather:
“What influences this value, and which of those factors can I change?”
This is exactly why we work with a Practice Lab training plan. The measurements are not collected in isolation. The golfer learns to compare them with a desired shot pattern or baseline and to understand how different changes can influence the outcome.
Understanding is not enough
During the session, the golfer added his own notes and drawings to the training plan. We discussed how changes in setup, weight distribution, shaft position, strike and loft could influence the shot.
At that point, the concept was understandable.
But understanding something intellectually does not mean that the body already has that solution available.
The golfer simply did not yet have a steeper approach to the ball reliably available in his movement repertoire. As soon as he played a shot, he tended to organise the movement more shallowly again.
So we had to change the task.
Step 2: First discover the movement
Two additional intermediate steps were necessary here.
First, I asked him to try a much steeper, almost chopping action from a sloping lie. Not because this was meant to become his standard technique, but because the task was deliberately chosen to help him explore a movement that had previously been difficult for him to access.
The task was deliberately chosen to make a movement available that the golfer had difficulty producing in the original situation.
He could experience that a steeper approach does not automatically mean hitting the ball low or driving the club hard into the ground. With enough loft, the ball can still launch clearly upwards.
Then I threw a ball into the semi-rough and asked:
“How do you want to get this one out?”
Suddenly, the steeper approach also made functional sense to him.
We played several balls from the semi-rough onto the green. The new movement was no longer just a technical instruction or a number on the screen. It now had a purpose.
The golfer began to understand what this solution could be useful for.
Then the measurement confirms the change
Early in the session, we had already been able to produce clearly steeper attack angles of around -7 degrees. Later, FlightScope showed values of more than -11 degrees on further shots.
That was a clear change compared with the earlier example.
But this is exactly where the measurement needs to be interpreted correctly:
-11.6 degrees initially means only that the golfer was able to produce this solution at that moment.
That is valuable. It confirms that the change is fundamentally possible.
But it does not yet prove that the change has become a stable and adaptable skill.
This difference between a short-term technical change and actual learning is also the subject of our Golf Learning Insight When is a technical change in golf really learned?.
Step 3: Can the golfer deliberately control the change?
The next step is therefore not simply to produce -12 degrees another hundred times. It is more interesting to see whether the golfer can begin to distinguish between different solutions. Can he deliberately organise a slightly shallower shot?
Can he then produce a steeper angle of attack again? And does he understand why one solution might be more appropriate than another in a particular situation?
This changes the learning goal.
At the beginning, we wanted to make a previously unavailable movement range accessible at all. Later, we do not want to turn it into a new rigid standard movement, but into an additional option the golfer can use when needed.
How much variation is useful, and how quickly it is introduced, depends on the golfer’s current level of control, experience and learning goal.
Step 4: The situation begins to change
Only then do we expand the task.
Different lies around the green. Different distances. Different desired ball flights. Different landing areas.
One possible progression might look like this:
- Stabilise strike: First, a technical solution is developed under relatively controlled conditions.
- Stabilise movement organisation: The golfer gains increasing control over how the shot is produced.
- Connect the preparation: Alignment, strike, ball flight and intended distance are planned together.
- Add variation: The skill must be adapted to different distances and situations.
This is where “I can play this chip” gradually becomes something different:
“I can adapt my chip to the task.”
How we make stabilisation visible
Many of our Practice Lab training plans therefore include a Performance Tracker.
This allows us to observe more than whether a golfer managed a change once.
We want to see whether the results become more stable over time and whether the skill remains available when the task is varied or becomes more demanding.
Repeated measurements, variation tests and, later, stress tests can be used for this purpose.
If the results in these tests become more reliable over several sessions, that gives us an indication that the skill is becoming increasingly stable. No single test proves that learning has occurred. What matters is whether the golfer can reproduce and adapt the skill over time and under changing conditions.
This is an important difference from a single good practice session. A better measurement or a clean strike shows that a change is possible. The Performance Tracker helps us observe whether that change is becoming reliably available.
This is exactly the logic behind the Practice Lab: skills are not only changed, but developed, tested, varied and further stabilised.
This connection between technical change, understanding, variation, testing and transfer is part of our Golf Learning System, where Practice Lab, Strategy Lab and real playing experience are connected.
The measurement is not the learning goal
FlightScope was very useful during this session.
It allowed us to describe the starting point more objectively, make a change visible and check together whether what the golfer was feeling was actually happening.
But the number itself was never the real goal.
The goal was for the golfer to:
- understand why his previous shots were occurring,
- discover another solution,
- recognise when that solution is useful,
- become increasingly able to produce it deliberately,
- and eventually adapt it to different situations.
Only then does a technical change begin to become a genuinely usable skill.
Monnard Widmer Coaching Insight
A better measurement shows that a change is possible. It only becomes a skill when the golfer understands it, can deliberately adjust it and can use it under different conditions.
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