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Correct Golf Answer Making practice more meaningful - play the course at the range


Once you are at a certain point with your swing, where it is fairly repeatable and trustworthy, make your practice more difficult and meaningful. Try this activity.



Play a round of golf on the driving range.
In your mind, or using a course planner, go through the holes on your golf course in order and play each shot on each hole, scoring yourself as you go along.
To do this, take the yardage for your hole and use whatever club you need to tee off. Once you have hit the shot estimate how far the golf ball has gone and subtract this from the yardage of the hole. Keep repeating this process until you are on the green.

For example, you start with your first hole which measures 390 yards.

Shot 1 - You hit a driver 230 yards and so the second shot is a 160 yard shot.
Shot 2 - You hit your 6 iron but do not strike it correctly and it goes 90 yards, leaving 70 yards.
Shot 3 - You play your sand iron and it goes the correct distance and on to the green in your mind.

Throughout this exercise, create fairways and bunkers using the markers and obstacles that are on the driving range. When you are hitting at a green, try to use a flag on the range to aim at and imagine the green around the flag. Also do not forget the pitch, chip and putting shots. There is no reason to not pitch a ball into a close flag or chip a ball on to the driving range if you did not quite get the ball on to your imaginary green. If there are no close flags, pick a patch of grass to aim at instead - this is all good visualization practice for the golf course. For putts, estimate how far away from the flag the ball finished and putt to a tee peg or another golf ball in the driving range bay or on the walkway at the back of the range.

Why do this kind of practice? Because it is good practice both physically and mentally.
Physically - It adapts your range game to the golf course and makes you vary your club selection keeping you focussed rather than just beating balls.
Mentally - Encourages you to visualize your golf shots and make suitable plans to maximize your game ready for the weekend.

To make things more interesting why dont you play a famous golf course and beat the pros? Whatever you do make practice meaningful and your golf game will improve.

Sorry Try Again! - See Explanation Below

This is a good practice for imagination and shot making and is worth trying for a few holes at least. There is nothing quite like the challenge of playing a bunker shot with a 3 iron and having to adapt set up and technique to achieve a successful shot. Not one for the faint hearted though.

Sorry Try Again! - See Explanation Below

This is a type of practice where the focus of the session tends to be social, catching up with friends with a little competition thrown in as different challenges are suggested - often for beers or money. Typically there is no focus or structure and is usually an enjoyable experience depending on your friends!

Sorry Try Again! - See Explanation Below

This type of practice can be fruitful for the golfer as the act of playing the holes in a different order alleviates boredom and provides a different challenge than normal. This type of practice can also help to get rid of bogey holes. These are holes that a golfer normally performs badly on. Here, because the holes are played out of order, the mindset will be different when approaching the bogey hole as it arrives at a different part of the round when the score is perhaps not so vital.