Preparing for important competitions or tournaments

Reaching the peak of one's form isn't the easiest thing there is. Reaching it during a competition when one really wants it is even harder. Yet you still see golfers playing their absolutly best game during big events. How?

Beside the fact that pros practise more there's one thing that classifies the best. They know from experience how to take out their best game by registering and analysing their training for several years and especially in accossiation with the competitions they played their exceptional games on. It can be anything from what they ate for breakfast that morning to piecharts of their training for the 6 months before a tournament they performed well in.

Jesper Parnevik knows that he performs best after a break and therefore plans a few weeks of rest before the big tournaments. It's rare to see him play more than 3 tournamentweeks in a row. This is because he wants it more and is more pumped up if he's been travelling for 4 weeks straight.

A terrifying example on how many amatures prepare for their for instance Club Championship. Most of you know how many are at the range the week before the CC trying to correct the swing for the biggest tournament the club has. They train harder than ever before and their bodies are almost in chock from all the balls they've been hitting. This routine is not recommended. It often shows at the results that are higher than when they haven't trained. In this case the training gives a more negative result since the demands are higher, the body get weary and performs worse than usual. It's a known fact that after training hard the body need rest to let the training sink in and perform at it's best to achieve the desired results.

The same goes for training the technique. When a change is made different muscles are used and your old musclememory is dropped. It can take a long time before the real improvement arrives hence it's recommended to train hard during the off-season and not during competition-months.

Even if a change is neccesary to make your game better in the long run there are times when the coach has make the decision to wait for the right moment to make the change. Reaching one's peak can in narrow perspective start as far as 12 months before a tournament.

An average schedual for the pros might look something like this:

6-12 months before a tournament:
- Technique on all shots in quantity.
- Physical training to built a raw power.

4-6 months before a tournament:
- Quality training to fit the course that is to be played.
for instance low punchshots for a linkscourse or high stopshots for Augusta Nationals hard greens.
- Cardiotraining.
 
2-4 months before a tournament:
- Shortgame practice

1-2 months before a tournamnet:
- Competitiontraining and shortgame practice.
 
1 month before a tournament:
- No courseplay for 1 week and only shortgame practice.
 
2 weeks before a tournament:
- Courseplay and time off from training.

To sum up this layout rest means as much as planned training.


...and the most important Targettraining / Goaltraining:
When it comes to that little piece just before the important tournaments everybody knows that it's the one with the fewest strokes that wins and that means that the shortgame is more important than ever.

Putting, chipping and shortgame is the most important part of the game to get a feel for on and around the green. If you look at the really good players you seldom see them crunching in the things they're already good at but what they need to work on and improve. While other amatures are standing there with their favourite club that feels safe in all situations. For the pros all clubs are supposed to be their favourite club. If there's one club that they don't agree with it's not unheard of that they go to the extent of going to sleep with the club in the bed to get the right feel back and "kiss and make up".


Summary - Learn how your body works
Not everybody has the same conditions, climate and possiblities to practice all year round. But if we plan the right way and know how we work the best way through analasys then we can continue to succeed.