Perfect practice makes perfect

When I was about 13 or 14 years old I started on a new baseball team, with a new coach, Dan Mora. On the first day of practice, after a bit of warm up, Dan called us all in and told us to take a knee. He then asked us, “what makes perfect?” We all responded, thinking this was an easy question, “practice makes perfect”, to which Dan answered, “wrong, take a lap”. After we finished a lap around the four baseball diamonds at the park, we once again took a knee and Dan asked, “what makes perfect?” This time we were all a lot less confident, but again answered, “practice makes perfect”, and again we were told we were wrong and to take a lap. A third time he asked, “what makes perfect”, and without a better answer we all hesitantly answered, “practice makes perfect”. I’m sure you know by now that was still the wrong answer. After finishing our third lap, we were all looking at each other with confused expressions on our faces and thinking, “what is wrong with this guy?” He then revealed to us that it is actually, “perfect practice makes perfect”, meaning that you can practice everyday, but if you practice bad habits, practice incorrectly, you will never be perfect, it is only with prefect practice that you will become perfect at something.

I was reminded of Dan today at the driving range as I sat back and took a quick break from practice. I watched the man next to me doing what he thought was practicing. He was just hitting one ball after the other, no pause in between, sometimes not even waiting to see where the ball actually landed. As you can imagine ever shot had the same result, hooking hard left, while he himself fell towards the tee off balance. Again and again he did this, going through and entire bucket of balls without a single adjustment or correction. As I watched him hacking away I thought, “if he only knew that the key is perfect practice, not just practice”, then I wanted to make him take a lap.


Sadly Dan Mora is no longer with us, he passed away several years ago, but that little bit of knowledge he gave me all those years ago has stuck with me, I will never forget it, or forget him.