ABSTRACT
Practice is arguably regarded as the most integral component in the development of expertise in sport. In golf, a large proportion of the time spent on practice focusses on the acquisition and refinement of technical skills. In order to identify the types of practice settings that best facilitate learning, the task and environmental characteristics of these contexts should be measured and monitored longitudinally. This in turn allows coaches to optimise the design of their practice drills, based on player responses to these prescribed stimuli. A variety of approaches that can be used for this purpose have been reported in the literature, which will be discussed in detail throughout this review. The review also provides a summary of the skill acquisition literature to directly inform the creation of efficient and effective learning environments for players. Specifically, it is proposed that practice design should be considered using five separate components, namely, i) specificity (also referred to as representative learning), ii) progression, iii) overload, iv) reversibility and v) movement variability/practice variety. Existing empirical evidence is provided to support how these practice environments can be systematically manipulated over time, based on information relating to the player responses, thereby potentially improving the quality of skill acquisition and refinement.
