Fall college golf season starts this week, and for most teams that means the same routine it always has: qualifying rounds, early tournament travel, and long practice days trying to shake off the summer layoff.
But here’s a pattern I noticed as a player, and now see even more clearly building tools for coaches: two teams can hit the same number of balls, run the same number of practice rounds, and end the season in completely different places. The difference usually isn’t effort. It’s what the practice time is actually aimed at.
Most practice time is spent on what feels wrong, not what costs the most strokes
It’s natural to gravitate toward whatever part of your game feels shakiest that week. If the putter’s cold, you putt for two hours. If you hit a few loose drives on the range, you spend the next session on full swing. That instinct is normal — but it’s not the same as prioritizing long term growth and following the process.
A player who’s genuinely losing strokes around the green but feels worse about their driver will often keep grinding on the driver, because that’s the miss that’s most visible and most frustrating in the moment. Meanwhile the actual leak — say, short-sided wedge play inside 50 yards — never gets the attention it needs, because it doesn’t feel as bad as a duck hook off the first tee.
This is where strokes gained data earns its keep. It doesn’t care how a round felt. It tells you, category by category, exactly where strokes were actually gained or lost against a tour baseline — not against your gut instinct from the bad round of golf.
Early season is the highest-leverage time to fix this
Coaches have limited practice hours, especially once travel and qualifying eat into the week. That’s why it’s vital that the practice targets each player’s individual needs in order to put them on the right track for the rest of the very long season.
That makes the first few weeks the right time to ask a simple question for every player on the roster: where are they actually losing strokes, and is their practice time lining up with that?
For a lot of teams, the honest answer is no. Practice plans tend to be built on what coaches feel like the whole team needs to be better at, lacking the individual approach will hinder progress of some of the players and that sets back the whole team back.
Heading into the season
If there’s one thing worth doing in week one, it’s this: before locking in the fall practice schedule, take an honest look at where each player’s strokes are actually going. Not where it feels like they’re going — where the numbers say they are.
That single adjustment, made early, builds the right habits and tends to compound over an entire season.
Have questions about strokes gained baselines for your program, or want to see how this works for your team? Reach out at m_bargenda@parfectperformance.com.
