Podcast Transcript
I was playing golf with a friend recently and we got to about the 15th hole and he wasn’t playing very good. I saw him sitting in the cart, just staring off into the distance like he was pondering all of his life decisions. So I asked him what was going on. What was he thinking about?
He said he was wondering if practicing indoors is even worth it — or if it does more harm than good.
You can practice all winter and then you get to the course and it’s a shock how different it feels from being inside. You’ve practiced one way, you’ve been grinding on something and it’s been going really well, and then you get outside and everything feels totally different.
I hear this all the time.
About half of the players I work with one-on-one are in the northern United States, the UK, Canada, or somewhere else where the off-season can last six or seven months. For half the year they are basically stuck inside.
Most of those players might put the clubs away in October or November when it gets really cold. But golfers can only keep the clubs in the closet for so long before the itch to improve comes back.
And if you didn’t know this about golfers, we are obsessed with improvement.
We always feel like we need to be working on something. We’re rarely satisfied with “good enough.” Our standards just keep climbing. Your handicap might be getting lower and lower — a number that would have been your dream handicap five years ago — but now you have new expectations. Now you want to get to scratch. Or five. Or ten. There’s always another level.
When you combine that obsession with improvement with a six-month off-season, it can lead golfers down a dangerous path.
It often leads to spending the entire off-season working on technique.
Before long, you’ve spent months consciously controlling the club on nearly every swing.
When I say consciously controlling the club, I mean your attention is pointed inward. You’re thinking about your swing. You’re thinking about where the club is relative to your body, or where it is relative to some ideal model. You’re thinking about launch monitor numbers and how to manipulate the club to change those numbers.
None of those things are inherently bad.
The problem happens when that’s the only part of your brain you’ve exercised for the entire off-season.
Maybe your off-season is only a month or two where it’s just a little too cold or life is busy and the days are short. Or maybe it’s six or seven months. But during that time you’ve only been training that one mode of thinking.
Then you get back outside and you try to flip the switch.
All winter you’ve been controlling the club and analyzing technique, and suddenly you’re supposed to stand over the ball and simply hit a shot to a target. That’s a difficult transition.
Your off-season practice often looks nothing like how you actually play golf.
So if you want to be ready for the season, you have to reverse engineer how you want to play.
Start with the end point.
How do you want to feel when you’re playing golf?
What do you want to be thinking about when you’re standing over the ball?
Most golfers don’t want to feel overly controlling. They don’t want to be constantly in their head about technique. They don’t want to be trying to steer the club into perfect positions so a good shot happens.
Yes, swing thoughts can be helpful. Technical cues can be useful.
But ultimately most golfers want to swing freely. They want to go through a clear process. They want to feel athletic and let the club move.
They want to hit shots to targets.
That’s the end point.
A good process. Pick a target. Hit a shot freely toward that target.
Once you know that’s the goal, you can reverse engineer your practice.
The issue is that indoor practice often looks nothing like that. For most golfers, indoor practice means consciously controlling the club, trying to produce certain numbers, and trying to perfect technique.
Then they step outside into a completely different environment.
Different lies. Different grass. Different temperatures. Different clothing. Maybe extra layers. Maybe you’re wearing pants instead of shorts. Everything feels different.
And now you’re trying to take the same technical mindset into a situation full of variables.
You’re left with two choices.
You can play the way you practice — spending your rounds consciously controlling the club.
Or you can practice the way you want to play.
You can spend practice time hitting shots to targets and focusing on ball flight rather than swing mechanics.
That’s the better path.
If you practice indoors — or outdoors into a net — the goal should be to start flipping the technical switch off.
You need to practice letting go of technique.
Shift your focus from internal to external. Move your attention away from how the swing feels and toward what the ball is doing.
Start training your ability to use the golf club as a tool rather than obsessing over how to make a swing.
Yes, indoor practice has limitations. A simulator is only a simulation. It automatically squares you up to lines. You’re hitting into a screen or net ten feet away instead of 250 yards downrange.
But mentally, you can make indoor practice much more similar to playing golf.
If you have a full simulator setup, the best way to prepare for outdoor golf is to play virtual golf courses.
Go through your full pre-shot routine. Focus on the target. React to the shot.
And one key detail: hide the numbers.
Launch monitors give you dozens of metrics, and it’s easy to become obsessed with them. Even if the ball goes toward the target, you might look at the data and start analyzing path, face angle, or attack angle.
That pulls your focus back into swing mechanics.
Hide the numbers and play the course.
Focus only on getting the ball to your target.
If you’re practicing with just a net, there are still plenty of ways to train this mindset.
One great drill is the alignment rod drill. Put an alignment rod vertically through the net and aim at it. Then try to start the ball just right of the rod and curve it back. Or start it left and curve it away.
The exact shot shape isn’t the point.
The point is that your brain is focused on producing a ball flight rather than controlling the club.
Another drill is the window drill. Put tape on the net or screen to create a square or circle and try to start the ball through that window.
Your attention is on the task — not on your swing.
You can also use the towel drill. Place a towel just behind the ball so that if you hit the shot heavy, you’ll strike the towel.
Now your brain has a simple job: strike the ball cleanly.
That external task will naturally organize your movement without needing to consciously control the swing.
Even if you only have a golf club and no equipment, you can still train this.
Stand behind an imaginary shot and visualize a hole from your home course. Picture the fairway, the green, the distance. Go through your normal process and make a swing as if you’re hitting that shot.
You’re training the same mental skill: focusing on a target instead of focusing on technique.
Indoor practice is not pointless.
But it can feel shockingly different from outdoor golf if it’s done incorrectly.
The key is to reverse engineer how you want to play and shape your practice around that.
If you want to play by freely hitting shots to targets, you have to start practicing that way before the season begins.
Train the ability to step away from consciously controlling the club and instead focus on producing ball flights.
Play virtual courses. Hit shots around an alignment rod. Use window drills or towel drills. Visualize shots if you have no equipment.
Whatever you do, go through your full process and take your time just like you would on the course.
The goal is simple: reduce the gap between indoor practice and outdoor golf.
When you do that, the first round of the season won’t feel like such a shock.
