As a high school golf coach it can be tough to run effective practices and help your players improve if you’re new to coaching.
What works? What doesn’t?
These are questions you’ll be asking as well as how to organize your practices and what drills to have players do. Dividing up a 2 hour practice is a tough task so we put together an eBook for you if you want to check it out.
And we also created these 2 hour practice routines for high school golfers to follow that will build up their short game skills to another level. You’ll see your team win more matches or at least improve several strokes on the team score each match.
Before diving into our 5 golf tips for high school golf coaches, consider downloading this skills assessment to have your players go through in addition to the 2 hour practice routines.
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5 Tips for High School Golf Coaches
Tip #1: Keep Practices Fun
While basketball and football are the popular sports where kids work hard to win as a team, golf is more of an individual sport.
A lot of kids try out for the golf team because they want to have fun and learn a few things to improve their golf game before they’re out in the real world on their own. Not because they want an intense coach who is going to get mad at them for mistakes like in football or basketball.
So keep this in mind when setting the tone and attitude of your team. Try not to be an over-intense coach who yells and gets heated with players.
Yes, it’s important to win and you’ll have your A players to help with this, but your main priority is to help kids improve at golf. Something they’ll be able to play the rest of their life with friends and at company outings.
Tip #2: Break Your Team into Groups
You’re going to have a range of skill levels trying out for the golf team – from beginners trying to learn a few tips to advanced golfers with dreams of playing in college.
Design practices that keep everyone engaged even if it means splitting players into groups based on their skill level.
Maybe you let the more skilled players go off on their own playing a round of golf and being independent, while you keep the beginners on the practice green and range to give them coaching lessons and tips.
Practice Programs to Buy for Students to Follow:
Tip #3: Use Competitions to Simulate Pressure Situations
Pair up golfers who are similar in skill and have them play different one on one competitions against each other on the putting green.
This will result in them having fun competing for bragging rights but also simulating pressure situations they’ll face in a competitive golf round against their opponents from the other high school golf team.
You can also send them out on the course to play match play against each other time to time to change things up and create a competitive atmosphere.
Tip #4: Give Your Players a Practice Packet to Follow on Their Off Days
On days you don’t have team practice, many golfers will still want to get out and practice on their own. You can hand them a packet of drills and games to guide them so they are still being productive with practice time even on off days.
I recommend downloading our step by step practice system, printing it out, and making copies to give out to your high school golf team. See more on this below!
Tip #5: Mix Up Practice Days (Rounds of Golf vs Practice Range Area)
Lastly, mix up practices by having some days for playing 9 hole rounds and others for spending the time on the putting green and driving range.
To get to scratch golf, my brother and I spent most of our days on the practice green putting and chipping as well as hitting range balls.
Playing rounds is great but you’re going to get better productivity for the time you have with the team by having them work on putting and chipping on the practice green.
If you’ve got a 5 day week of practice, Monday and Tuesday can be driving range and putting green to work on fundamentals and then Wednesday could be a 9 hole round to work on golf course experience. Thursday and Friday could be a play it by ear where you decide if you want to send them out to play a competition or challenge or keep them on the range and practice area to work on their short game
Ultimately, the short game is where your team will save the most strokes, giving them the best chance to win matches against other high school golf teams.
High School Golf Coaching eBook
You’ve asked, we’ve delivered! After many high school golf coaches have reached out to us at GolfPracticeGuides.com, we decided to write this detailed guide to coaching high school golf for you to use to coach your team.
Inside, you’ll find 6 chapters of content covering important topics like:
- How to be a great high school coach
- Teaching your team course management
- Being the mental coach your team needs to succeed
- Understanding the mental game of golf
- Practice drills library to pull from to create your team’s practice routines
- Sample practice plans
- The basic fundamentals of golf to teach beginners on your team
- Worksheets & Templates (bonus option)