When is a technical change in golf really learned?

Two experienced golfers came to us with a clear problem: their short game around the green was not reliable.

On the first day, we were able to identify and change some of the technical causes relatively quickly. After about half an hour, there were already clear improvements. Contact and ball flight improved, and the movement worked.

At this point, you could say: problem solved.

For us, however, this was where the more interesting question began:

Has the change simply worked for the moment, or is it actually developing into a skill the golfer will be able to access again later?

Understanding a movement or performing it successfully a few times can happen relatively quickly. Learning, however, requires more than this first success.

On the second day, we therefore returned to the technical change. It had not disappeared, but it was not yet automatically available either. This time, the golfers found their way back to the desired solution more quickly and were able to repeat it more consistently.

It is precisely this development over time that is interesting.

What worked yesterday has to be available again today. And what works under consistent conditions will not necessarily work when the task changes.

On the third day, we deliberately changed the demands of the task.

Chipping became pitching. Clubs, starting positions and targets changed. We then added Practice Lab tasks with a scoring system.

The score was not primarily used as a competition. It helped us see what remained of the technical change once the golfers were no longer hitting ten similar balls in a row.

And that was exactly when errors began to appear again.

This is not a failure of the training. It is information.

A poor shot initially tells us only that the overall task was not solved as intended. The cause does not automatically have to be technical. Perception, shot selection, target choice, attention or execution can all play a role.

In our Strategy Lab, we therefore look at the entire process of a shot: perception, preparation, decision and execution.

This became particularly clear with one of the golfers.

In another task, her result initially became significantly worse. It would have been easy to assume that the new technique was breaking down under changing demands.

But closer observation revealed something different.

She was strongly orienting herself towards a marker we had placed and was trying to play “short” from there. The actual target area, however, was short and to the right of it. Her perception and the task she derived from it no longer fully matched the situation.

At that moment, the primary problem was not her shot technique.

This is exactly why it is important not to respond automatically to every poor shot with another technical correction.

We then continued working with the change on the golf course.

Now the lies, distances, green shapes and tasks were constantly changing. The golfers had to do more than simply reproduce the movement. They had to adapt it to different situations.

Not every ball was struck perfectly.

At this stage, it does not need to be.

Both golfers reported a clear improvement in their short game. At the same time, individual poor shots showed us where the new solution was not yet fully stable under changing conditions.

This gave us the information we needed for the next step in the training process.

Monnard Widmer Coaching Insight

A technical change can happen within minutes. Whether it has developed into a usable skill only becomes clear when the task changes.