The Practice Manual: The Ultimate Guide for Golfers

This is no golf swing book. Instead it is more a practice companion.A Swings, on plane, stack and tilt etc. are not up for discussion here, instead the author talks about strike, how to improve it and how to practice in a way that helps you find target on the course.Most golfers aspire to improve, but most golf coaches insist that our swing must meet some pretty specific criteria before we can achieve this. If you look at any golfer, even Tour Professionals you will see we all swing the club differently. The common factor for good/exceptional players is strike.This is where the Practice Manual comes in to its own. It does not go about changing your swing for the sake of aesthetics, instead it goes about outlining practice drills and ideas to improve your strike and ultimately help you understand what is happening on good and bad shots.Before buying The Practice Manual, in the last 3 years I have spent over £1000 in the pursuit of improving my golf game and actually seen my handicap change by 9 shots for the worse. While my positions had improved on video, my strike was still poor and my ability to find target all but gone. Best of all we had no idea why. I had positions to drill and spent 5+ hours a week practicing them yet on the course I could not find the centre of the club, or more importantly the target.The Practice Manual at first glance does seem to outline common sense. The problem with common sense however is that it is not that common. We get caught up in our swing looking good instead of it actually performing the function we need it to perform. The ideas, the drills, the focussed practice techniques in The Practice Manual are all things we should be doing as these will actually improve our golf on the course.This is not a book you read from start to finish, but like it says it is a manual. You will read it in sections, performing the drills etc. and then return to it again and again.The drills work. Use them and make your practice time actually count for something instead of bashing thousands of balls out in to a field constantly looking for that perfect position or shape. To quote another book, Golf is not a game of perfect.I have used nothing but this book and the author’s content available on his website adamyounggolf.com and have seen my strike, understanding and game improve dramatically over the last few weeks. I am even playing under my old handicap now!

Read the reviews and thought this is just what I,m looking for. what a disappointment, a whole book of smoke and mirrors. Makes up a load of principles and explains them in comparing them to darts, weight lifting etc. and says that in the latter half of the book we will learn how to put all this into practice. Well unfortunately I'm not psychic (still have to work for a living and can't conjure up the lotto numbers) and can't see where there is a practice programme or system written in the book. There is proposals to what you should do but no direct instruction on or practice routine to get you there.First thing he tells us do when we get to the practice part is tell us get a coach, what do you think I bought the book for?A manual is supposed to be a step by step guide of how to, practice in this case, this fails miserably.I have just ordered another book that hopefully will be what I thought this was, the golf insider performance diary.Will let you know how I get on.

What else could anyone need to improve their golf.Too wet to get to the course at the moment but a great time to study this book and Adam,s Strike Plan Video.Like no one else Adam explains what we need to be doing,why and how.Been to the range twice seen reading and watching Adam,s material can,t begin to tell you how much I have improved to previous numerous visits over the years.Very few pull shots now since I now FEEL I am swinging 15-20degrees in to out.but the ball goes where I want it CONCEPT and FEEL.Following Adam,s drills I am now getting a good face strike having discovered I was favouring heel strikes(I didn,t know) and have improved my divot position (powder on the sole,and the towel behind the ball drill.I have heard the term of hearing the better strike and I now hear it for myself fantastic.ANYONE at ANY level can benefit from this book in conjunction with the Strike Plan Video my advice would be don,t hesitate and waste the years I have.GET THIS BOOK and do yourselves a real favour and progress your golf like you wouldn’t believe!!!!!The other benefit is that now when it does go wrong I have a very good idea WHY and HOW to put it right due to Adam,s ball flight laws and how to change swing path and or face position by going too much the other way,seeing the result and throttling back to what gives the desired result.

Well firstly it's a substantial 385 page book with not a lot of pictures - so not for the faint hearted non serious golfer. You have to be a bit of a geek pretty committed to serious permanent improvement. This is different to the quick tips and fixes I digest in videos and golf magazines. I've had it a few weeks now and I'm on page 112. I'm still in the Theory of Learning stage! Days after buying the book, I went with a friend to La Manga on a 3 mornings golf school at the Leadbetter Academy with Anthony McCarthy. I discovered that the lead instructor there was Adam Young author of this book. He was away so I never met him.The instruction was really good and for the first time really helped me understand what I do. The first session we hit or tried to hit balls off the toe, heel, middle, then high, low, left, right just to understand how it felt, giving us the feeling of doing that and an understanding that we could change ball flight instinctively. The latter is very much in tune with Adam's book and a different way of teaching to that which I'm used to, which is "Let's look at your fault and I'll tell you how to fix it".So I feel the book is a good investment for me. It addresses a lot of the issues I have had trouble with eg. the difficulty of making swing changes permanent. Whether it will work - who knows? Ask me in 2 years if my handicap has come down. I'm 12 right now. It's a serious tome for the serious golfer and also coach I would imagine. Probably not everyone's cup of tea - but having had lessons from one of Adam's instructors Anthony, I was very impressed - so I have high hopes Adam's book will pay dividends - but then I'm prepared to invest the time to find out.I would recommend it wholeheartedly - but you need to be seriously committed to change.

Like other reviews I can confirm this book is not a light read. Stick with it though - the concepts blew my mind. It was like Adam Young was in my head and wrote this book for me! I can see clearly now, how the concepts described in the book and visualised in Adam's accompanying Strike Plan video series are the best chance for me to transform my game.For years I've paid £1000s for lessons, equipment, training aids and buckets of range balls. I've played more in the past few years than the rest of my 30+ year golfing career combined, and my handicap is going up. I'm a fairly analytical person and I relate highly to mechanics based golf coaching. However when on the course I get paralysed by swing thoughts and sometime stand over the ball for an age not knowing what to do. Fats, thins, pulls, slices - I can play them all.For the first time in my life I can say I now properly understand the laws of ball flight, the important of contact with the ground and the influence of the swing path vs. the face angle. This really helps you in your practice to understand why the ball is shooting off to the right.The moment of clarity for me came with the knowledge that to avoid becoming paralysed by swing thoughts I have to turn my attention to something other than the swing.I can't recommend this book highly enough. I find it slightly ironic, but for a highly analytical person, this highly detailed book is my best chance to get my handicap down - by learning how to play without my head being saturated by swing thoughts. Try it, its less than the price of a 30min lesson with a PGA pro and all they do is teach you to swing according to the PGA swing template (in my experience).