There are some parts of golf you have no excuse for getting wrong.
You can always grip the club correctly. You can always have the proper stance, good posture and accurate alignment. These are the parts of the game you have time to set up correctly because they occur before you even begin the backswing. The only thing standing between you and performing these actions perfectly every time is the amount of care you take.
Good news, there is another part of your game which you can drastically improve, and like all the above, it happens before you even strike a ball on the course. It is the way you practice.
What’s The Best Way To Practice Golf?
The truth – there are several effective ways to practice and even more ineffective ways to do it. But it’ll come as a relief to learn that you don’t need to spend years figuring them out for yourself. A group of people have already researched this question for you. In fact, you already know who they are, they are tour pros.
If there is one group of people who know the best way to practice golf, it’s the people who spend eight or more hours a day doing it.
Common Amateur Mistakes
Let’s have a look at what most amateur golfers do wrong and what they can learn from the best in the business.
Fail To Plan, And You’re Planning To Fail
Most amateur driving range sessions are relatively similar. Let’s assume the golfer is at least engaged enough with the practice session not to spend the entire time trying to drive the ball over the back fence of the range (or worst spend it trying to hit the buggy collecting the driving range balls).
They usually hit a couple of wedges, then quickly set up shop with their seven iron or driver. They then blast through 100 balls as fast as possible and go home pretty much where they started.
The first thing you can do to be more like the pros is slow down. Think about what you’re trying to achieve and hit the balls with purpose. Otherwise, you’re just further engraining existing swing faults into your muscle memory.
Although many tour pros will boast about 12-hour training days or hitting 1000 balls, they’d probably all agree it’s actually the quality of the practice that counts. Blasting through several buckets of balls as quickly as possible doesn’t help your game. You’d be much better off saving yourself some money, buying a half bucket and hitting the balls slowly with purpose.
You need to have a plan. You can guarantee that a tour pro isn’t going to start hitting balls on the driving range without knowing exactly what he is trying to achieve. A famous swing coach like Butch Harmon or Hank Haney isn’t going to let a pro loose on the range without some direction.
It’s best to get professional instruction, but even if you learn your golf on YouTube or reading golf magazines, you should still be aware of what you want to improve on any given day. Before you even start practising, ask yourself, “what am I trying to achieve today”?
For Goodness Sake Aim At Something!
On the golf course, you always have a target. It might be the flag, perhaps a tree in the distance or a side of the fairway. You don’t blindly hit in the approximate direction of the hole and hope for the best. Therefore, it makes sense you should always have a target on the driving range too, which brings me onto my next point.
Not Practising Like They Play
One of the biggest mistakes amateurs make is that they don’t practice golf the same way they play. Rather than aimlessly beating away at range balls, a tour pro will practice as if they’re playing on the course.
The first thing you can do is to start taking a practice swing and going through your full pre-shot routine on the range. Remember, not every shot on the course is a driver or full swing seven iron. Sometimes you need to hit a low 4-iron through the trees, sometimes you need to hit a wedge 60 yards, sometimes you need to hit a three quarter nine iron, sometimes you’re in a bunker. The more realistic you make your practice sessions, the more the practice sessions will help you on the course.
The Importance Of Feedback
By not selecting a clear target on the range you’re severely limiting the feedback you receive. Dave Pelz wrote in his early short-game books that the secret to learning is immediate, accurate and reliable feedback.
Tour pros are taking in feedback on every shot. Unlike an amateur, they don’t hit a ball and immediately tee up the next one. If you’re ever at a PGA or European Tour event find the driving range. Spend some time watching the tour pros practice after finishing their round (make sure it is someone who has finished playing for the day because before the round they’ll be warming up which may be slightly different).
When a tour pro is on the range they take the time to feel each shot, they carefully watch the ball flight, they check where it lands, they talk to their caddy and check the numbers on the launch monitor.
I’m not saying go out and drop twenty-thousand-pounds on a launch monitor but knowing if you’re hitting the ball where you intend to is a pretty good start. You may not have a caddy watching every last shot, but you can at least get a few swings on your phone camera or ask your friend if they can see the change you’re trying to make.
Overdoing It
It’s better to hit ten balls correctly than hit one thousand balls poorly. Practice doesn’t make perfect; it makes permanent. If you’re tired and start getting sloppy, you’re only going to hurt your game.
Take a break, switch to practising your putting, or call it a day and come back with more energy tomorrow. Amateur golfers are not alone on this one; this is a mistake that even the tour pros are guilty of.
Neglecting Their Short Games
The final common amateur mistake is making it all about the full swing. 70% of golf shots are made from within 125 yards of the green. Isn’t it logical that these shorts should make up 70% of your practice time?
Of course, everyone wants to be like the pros hitting drives 350 yards, but the truth is that golf professionals spend more time practising with a wedge or putter in their hands than any other club. If your goal is to shoot better scores, nothing provides a better return on time investment than practising your short game.
Practising Like A Tour Pro
We have already touched on a few things that tour pros do when practising so let’s do a quick recap.
- They arrive at the range or short-game area with a definite plan. This means they know exactly what they’re trying to achieve and how they plan to do it.
- They always pick a target to aim for. It might be something on the range or an off colour blade of grass on their putting line.
- They practice like they’re playing. Pros hit all the clubs in their bag; they’re constantly trying different shots to simulate on-course situations.
- They get enough feedback on every shot and try to absorb as much information as possible.
- They practice at a good rhythm and they set a pace for themselves. Their goal isn’t to just blast through their bucket of balls as quickly as possible.
- They spend more time practising their short game than anything else. They’ll hit lots of distance-controlled wedges, chips and putts. They understand that a solid short-game is what’s going to make the most significant impact on their bank balance.
What else do pros do differently?
They Follow Their Pre-Shot Routine
Many golfers complain that they can’t bring their driving range swing onto the golf course with them. One solution to this issue is using your pre-shot routine on the range. By doing this, you’re giving yourself an anchor that’ll help you take your range swing out onto the course with you. As an added bonus, it helps you slow down and think about what you’re trying to achieve with each shot.
They Use Drills
Be careful with this one. It’s possible to go overboard, but you’ll often see tour pros trying to get a better feel for something by following a drill. If you know what you want to change, you’re only a quick YouTube search away from a couple of useful practice drills.
They Set Challenges To Keep It Interesting
As mentioned earlier, trying to hit the buggy collecting the golf balls doesn’t count.
There are loads of fun ways to make practising your golf more exciting and to simulate real game pressure. You try some of them on the range by yourself, like trying to hit a low stinger into the 50-yard marker or challenging yourself to hit a high 100-yard draw across the width of the range.
My old golf pro used to tell me that challenging a friend to a putting match was “better practice than practice”. What he meant was that by simulating actual match scenarios (like having a putt to win a game) you’re getting to practice golf under real pressure.
(There you have it – if you care about improving your game, get out your wallet and start making bets against your friends to pile on the pressure!)
They Keep Statistics
You don’t have to go crazy with this one, but many tour pros will know all their critical statistics like fairways hit, greens in regulation, putts per round etc. Some pros geek out on stats more than others but even those who claim to hate knowing the numbers will have a coach or caddy monitoring them to some degree. They may not openly admit they’re doing it but they’ll be telling their guy which part of his game is costing him the most shots.
So next time you play, keep track of the basics.
- Fairways hit
- Greens in regulation
- Putts per round
- Scrambling (i.e. getting up and down from a greenside position)
- Bunker saves
These five metrics alone will give you an armoury of information to help you structure your practice sessions more effectively.
Some Famous Examples
Don’t just take my word for it. You can hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.
Justin Thomas
In a 2018 Golf Digest article, Justin Thomas lifts the lid on the practice regime he followed as the reigning number one ranked golfer in the world. His interview mirrors many of the key points in this article. For example, his dad and short-game coach pour over his statistics to decide where he should spend his time. He highlights the importance of mixing up your training sessions by trying to hit different types of shots and yardages. Similar to most tour pros, he spends most of his time practising his short game, hitting plenty of wedges and making use of putting drills.
Dustin Johnson
In another Golf Digest article, Dustin Johnson talks about how he practices. It should come as no surprise to hear he mostly hits wedge shots and focuses on his putting and chipping. Dustin backs up what we discussed about practising like you play and recommends getting out on the course and putting a few balls down from different positions to simulate real-life scenarios. He stresses the importance of warming up slowly – “If I have to rush, I’ll be moving too fast all day”.
Tiger Woods
If there is one golfer who everybody wants to learn the secrets from it has got to be Tiger Woods. In a 2019 PGA Tour Video, Rob McNamara (Tiger Woods’ long-time training partner) talks about how Tiger sees the driving range divided into a nine-box grid. He explains how Tiger will try to hit shots through different parts of the grid. For example, if Tiger wants to hit it straight, he’ll aim for the dead centre box in the grid. A high shot will go through the top centre box while a low stringer goes through bottom-centre. A draw will start at centre right and curve back while a high-draw starts at top right and curves back etc. This approach matches perfects to what we were saying earlier about having a target.
In the same interview, Tiger talks about the difference between feel and real. When we make changes to our golf swing, the swing we feel like we’re making is often different from what we’re actually doing! This point enforces what we were saying about feedback. Only by getting the right feedback, like filming your swing or asking a friend what they see, will you know if you’re doing what you want to do.
Tiger is detailed oriented in his preparation. Before he plays a practice round at a new course, he’ll ask about the length of the par 3’s and then try to hit those distances on the range. When faced with a shot on a course, he has the reassurance of knowing he has practiced that exact shot. It’s about slowing down and practising with a plan and purpose, just like we discussed earlier in this article.
Learn More
If you’re interested in watching the video where Tiger Woods explains how he practices, sign up to our mailing list below and we’ll email you the link.
As Tiger himself says, do the leg work, get out there, spend the time, and see the results on the course!
Until next time, happy practising!