The Short Game Reset

Eighteen sessions. Not six weeks.

Every practice plan you'll find online is organized by calendar week, which assumes you'll get to the practice green every Tuesday and Thursday forever. You won't. It'll rain, you'll travel, the kids will have something, and by the middle of week two you'll have "fallen behind" on a plan that was arbitrary to begin with.

So this one counts sessions. If you get three a week, it takes six weeks. If you get one a week, it takes eighteen. Either way you're on session 7 of 18, not two weeks behind.

Each session runs 45–60 minutes on a practice green with a bunker if you have one.

Why the short game first

If you're somewhere between a 12 and a 25 handicap, more of your strokes are lost inside 100 yards than anywhere else in the bag. Not because your wedges are worse than your driver — because you hit far more of those shots, and because the misses are more expensive. A pulled drive costs you half a stroke. A chunked chip costs you a full one, and often two.

The short game also improves faster than the full swing. It's less athletically demanding, the feedback is immediate, and the movements are smaller and easier to change. This is the highest return on practice time available to almost every amateur.