Winter golf: What to practise from your home

PGA Professional Ben Emerson on why now's the time to ramp up your distance gains.

When we arrive in winter we hear a lot about hitting putts at home and working on our stroke on a carpet. For me when we get to winter, we should be in speed territory. This is the one time of year where we can swing as hard as we like without worrying where the ball’s going.

Most people either stop playing or they putt on a mat but this is our chance to get faster for next season and to push our boundaries.

There’s no consequence as we’re not playing as much golf and winter golf (format wise, at least) is more for fun so it’s a good time to break down the barriers and do some proper speed training. I use the speed sticks, I think they’re amazing, but there are so many weighted clubs that we can use - and they take things away from actually hitting a shot. The focus is all about getting faster and tricking the brain to be able to go faster.

When we think of the golf swing it is all about control most of the time. We need to break through that control and move the goalposts and we can do that far easier in the winter. Plus we can match it up with any gym work and we don’t need to worry about putting a score together.

What's the first step?

All the products offer some sound programmes where we will be doing drills using the sticks or with our feet together or swinging on our knees. I'm trying to learn golf left-handed at the moment and whole idea is based on being able to swing it faster the other way and being able to put on the brakes.

A whip analogy is a good one – is it how fast the handle moves forward or is it how fast the handle stops? The crack comes from the stopping and in golf it is pretty similar, we have to accelerate and then we have to decelerate and left-handed explosive swings really help with that. We don’t even have to hit a golf ball, we just have to get used to swinging it left-handed.

Playing left-handed shots is a great one as it builds the entire body up. We are better off having a balanced body, we don’t have tennis players with one massive arm, and in golf we want to be able to put on the brakes and be able to stop. The stopping power comes from the other side of the body being stronger.

By building up our speed it is nice to know that we have got more in the tank and also to be able to do less and still get the same result. So we don’t have to hit it as hard but we can get the same power which means that we can focus more on control. It is not always about out-and-out distance, if we can gain distance then great but what if we can do half the work and get the same result? Then we can work on controlling the clubface which then controls the ball.

Is this for everyone?

Absolutely, yes. We can all do it as it’s all relative. Also it is a case of maintaining our speed and not getting slower which is still a win. In 20 years of coaching nobody has asked to hit it shorter and we all want to get more out of it but there’s a caveat – it is still about greens in regulation. By hitting it 300 yards into the deep rough it is no use but, if we are just off the fairway, then we are better off. So find that breaking point almost of pushing ourself without ruining our game.