How to make a range session actually count
Warm up before you train, work on one thing at a time, and finish by playing nine imaginary holes. Sixty balls, one hour, real practice.
An hour on the range beating drivers feels like practice and changes almost nothing. The golfers who improve on a bucket of balls do three things differently: they warm up before they train, they train one thing at a time, and they finish by rehearsing golf rather than swings.
Ten minutes of warm-up, then start
Begin with wedges at half speed and work up. The first fifteen balls are not practice, they are preparation, and hitting them with full effort is where most range injuries and most bad habits come from. By the time you reach a 7-iron the body should be moving freely.
One thought, one club, twenty balls
Pick a single change and give it a block of balls with the same club. Alternating between driver and wedge while thinking about three positions is how you leave the range having practiced nothing at all.
A useful test: if you cannot say your swing thought in five words, it is too complicated to practice today.
Give every ball a target and a shot shape
Range mats hide the fact that most golfers aim nowhere. Pick a specific flag or marker, put a club on the ground to check your alignment for the first few, and name the shape you intend before each swing. Hitting a ball without a target is the golf equivalent of typing with your eyes closed.
Block practice builds it, random practice keeps it
Repeating the same shot twenty times, which coaches call block practice, is how a change becomes comfortable. It is also why the change disappears on the first tee: the course never gives you the same shot twice.
Spend the first two thirds of the session on repetition and the last third on random practice, changing club and target on every ball. It feels worse. It transfers to the course far better, and every study of motor learning since the 1970s says the same thing.
Finish by playing nine holes on the range
Take the scorecard of the course you play most and hit the shots in order: driver, then the second shot the drive would have left, then a wedge to the flag. Go through your full routine on each one. Twenty-five balls played this way is more useful preparation than a hundred hit at nothing.
What to measure while you are there
Range balls fly shorter than premium balls, typically 5 to 10 percent, so do not use a range session to set your yardages. Use it to compare clubs against each other instead: the gap between your 8-iron and 9-iron is real information even when the absolute number is not.
If the range has a launch monitor bay, one session spent recording carry distances with your own ball is worth a season of guessing on the course.
A session worth repeating
- Ten minutes of wedges before anything else.
- Twenty balls on one change with one club.
- Twenty balls changing club and target every time.
- Nine imaginary holes with a full routine on each shot.
That is around 60 balls and about an hour. It is less than most golfers hit and considerably more than most golfers practice.
