As January picks up momentum we hope you’ve taken the time for reflection and used the insights from your past year to get clear on what you want to achieve in 2025. If you haven’t already done so, you can check out a few of our recent posts to help you do just that:

From Reflection to Excellence

Your Best Golf Year Yet: A Roadmap for 2025

Planning Your 2025 Tournament Schedule

This post will move from planning to action. Many of you will have heard the quote credited to Benjamin Franklin that “by failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.” As Franklin suggests, you must have a plan in order to grow, achieve your goals and sustain your success. Goals without a plan are just a wish. Where we focus our time is crucial.

“If you gave me six hours to chop down a tree I would spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

• Abraham Lincoln

As discussed in previous blogs, there are four key components to performance; Mental, Physical, Technical and Tactical; for more detail explore our previous blog The 4 Components of Performance. To be successful and compete at higher and higher levels, players must be proficient in all four components; but how can we effectively spend our time improving in all the key areas? In order to effectively prepare we must consider our goals, and the competitive schedule that we believe will help us work towards and achieve those goals. 

As a coach in the NCAA I often receive questions about which tournaments are the most important to play and why. We discussed how to select tournaments in more detail in our previous post (Preparing your 2025 Tournament Schedule). For players in the 14-17 age range, looking to be recruited by college coaches, this is my opinion on a competitive season: tournaments beginning in May and Majors are in July (Provincial Junior) and August (National Junior). 

Improvement Season (January – February)

This is a quiet period that many people consider the “off season.” What I propose is that you reframe this to “improvement season.” The primary purpose of this season is threefold, reflection and assessment of the previous year, getting clear on your learning and training priorities for the current year, and starting the work of learning and sharpening skills to align with your goals and trajectory. 

This requires selecting 3-5 priorities from your 2024 year end assessment that will have the biggest impact on your play for 2025. You must include skill acquisition from mental, physical, technical and tactical components as this is the best time of year to make space for learning and improving.

Refinement Season (March – April) 

You are beginning to see your competitive season on the horizon. March and April your attention should begin to shift to refinement. This means that you are beginning to taper the amount of new information and skills you are acquiring and beginning to test and finalize the position you are in ahead of the season. What this also means is that the time spent on training will begin to include more mental performance preparation.

Scoring Season (May-June)

You have now entered your competitive season and it’s time to shift into scoring season. What this means is that you are largely set technically and physically as your competitive schedule has begun. In May and June you will begin to put more emphasis on scoring and working on your mental and tactical skills. You will be spending more time on course and using competitive drills and challenges to emphasize that you will soon be competing and using all the skills you have been acquiring and refining. 

Competitive Season (July-Sept)

Your tournaments have now begun and you are in the full swing of competing. To play your best you need to be as close to 100% on mental and physical energy in order to take advantage of the skills you learned to this point. In order to show up at 100% you must prioritize rest between events. Challenges and set backs will inevitably occur, but you are in a position to manage them thanks to all the work you’ve done to this point. Good breaks and bad breaks are all part of golf (and life!) so be sure you are well rested and prepared to keep improving. You are constantly working towards your major events in August so you are best prepared to reap the rewards of all your hard work throughout the year. 

Assess and Reflect Season (Oct & Nov)

Once your competitive season comes to a close you have time to recover the energy you spent during your tournaments. Celebrate your successes, assess your performances and reflect on the work you have put in. It is important to connect with your goals and identify where you made the strides you were striving for and where you can improve again for the coming year. Take advantage of the resources available to you, such as your coaches or tools like the Oneiota Golf App to help you. 

Rest Season (December) 

This is your opportunity for a full on break. Take time away from your clubs, and use this as an opportunity to reset and renew your energy and enthusiasm for golf. You will once again have an opportunity in the following year to continue to improve and to move closer and closer to your ultimate goals. 

We all have a choice on how best to approach our goals, be 100% committed and go in with a plan to take advantage of all the hard work you will be putting in.