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Jason Day hits a shot last month at the RBC Heritage.
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Jason Day says golf’s a bit like getting in your car. You know where to go. You know how to go there. You have an idea on how to get to where you need to be.
But amateur players?
It’s as if they’re in drivers ed, in keeping with the theme.
On a recently released video from Bridgestone Golf, Day was reviewing the thought while standing over a ball placed on an upslope near water and a handful of yards away from a flag. Jason Goldsmith, a performance coach, had asked him what his pro-am partners would do.
The major winner answered with their don’ts — they don’t run through what he calls the information stage, and they don’t visualize.
The information stage, he said, is an assessment.
“Them just being able to walk the shot,” Day said in the video, “and then come back and assess like, OK because of it is upslope, we are on an uphill, we’re landing on an upslope with grain, we’re going to land a little bit further.
“And then I think the next part is they don’t really understand the lies as well. Like I mean we got a pretty clean lie and taking a couple of practice swings to kind of feel, OK, that’s how hard I need to hit it.”
As for visualization, Day said amateurs don’t ask what a good shot looks like, then fail to picture it.
“I go, OK, that’s what it looks like,” Day said in the video, “I can see it coming out, I can see it landing on the green, I can see it rolling out.”
And if the steps are skipped?
“It’s more luck than anything else involved,” Day said in the video, “because they go through the couple of practice swings and they just hope that it’s going to get up there and be close to the pin.
“It’s like getting in your car this morning coming to the golf course. You know exactly what to do, where to turn, how to turn, how fast to go — you have a road map to get here. That’s what we’re trying to do with this. We’re trying to give you a road map to go, OK, I know how to go from here to here. Like sometimes I’m not always going to execute the shot, but you’re trying to do it consistently so over time it gets better.
“To be honest, it only takes a little bit of discipline and a little bit of practice. After a while, you start to do that and that routine cements in and you can’t hit another shot without doing it.”
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After a short review, Day then chipped to about 4 feet.
“I think the biggest thing is that what you got to understand is that regardless of the outcome, you have to take outcome out of it regardless of what it does,” he said in the video. “As long as you match your visualization, your feel to what you’ve done and you committed to that shot, you’ve hit a good shot.
“So the more that you can focus in on what you’re trying to do and what you’re trying to accomplish and ask yourself the question and run you through your loop, the better golf you’ll play in the end.”
Editor’s note: To watch the entire Bridgestone video with Day, please click here.
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