Hit All Of The Tee Shots From Your Home Course On The Range Golf Game (Video) - by Pete Styles
Hit All Of The Tee Shots From Your Home Course On The Range Golf Game (Video) - by Pete Styles

Here is a great game that I love to see golfers doing on the driving range particularly through those long winter months when you are not out in the golf course much, but you are grinding on the driving range. I like to see people not just pounding balls over and over again, but actually using their imagination and playing all of the tee shots that they have on their home golf course in order. So most people have a home golf course, a course they play on a regular basis and you should be able to remember the types of shots that you require of each hole, 1 to 18. So what I would advocate doing is coming down to the driving range, lining up 18 different golf balls and then teeing off those shots in order that you would find them on the golf course.

Let's imagine our first hole, it’s a 350-yard hole. It’s not mega long, but being the first hole of the day I never feel overly confident taking driver, so I might take out my hybrid club. I would make a couple of nice practice swings with the hybrid, knock it down the middle, and just have a little sort of mental checklist. Was it a good shot, would it have hit the fairway? It might be an idea actually to pick out a couple of markers on the fairway and say, that's where my fairway line would be and that ball landed in the fairway. Second hole, let’s say it’s a little par-3. What club would you normally have on that par-3? Is it an average sort of distance that you would normally get, I am going to take a 9-iron, my average distance on this par-3 150 yards, that's my 9-iron, couple of little practice swings again and then knock the 9-iron down there. And again little checklist, did it land on the fairway, was it to the left side, was it to the right side? Off to the third hole now, big par-5. So I'll take my driver out this time. Tee the ball up with the driver. Again a couple more practice swings, you will notice every time we've taken those practice swings to try and ingrain the feeling that you would have on the golf course of changing to a new club, loosening up with that club and then knocking it down there. We are not just sort of randomly grabbing clubs out of the bag, whacking them, whacking them or whacking them. We are trying to judge this as if you are playing on the golf course. The hope is then that when you go out on the golf course and actually play for real, you feel like you've been there before. You feel like you have practiced it maybe the night before. If you did this on a Friday night and teed off on a Saturday morning that would be great. If you are in one of those long winter months when you are not actually playing on the golf course much, but then you go out on the golf course in spring, it’s almost like you have not been away quite so long because you've actually had a chance to practice what feels like, you're practicing on the golf course. You have taken all the clubs right away through your bag. So when you get to that second hole, you think, oh no this is a 9-iron, I practiced this on the range and I have a general success rate. I am normally on or close to the green. So rather than just pounding golf balls on the driving range, play all of the tee shots from your home course on the driving range, work out where your success rate is, where the fairway is, where the green is and hopefully next time you play on the golf course you will have more success playing the course for real.
2015-07-02

Here is a great game that I love to see golfers doing on the driving range particularly through those long winter months when you are not out in the golf course much, but you are grinding on the driving range. I like to see people not just pounding balls over and over again, but actually using their imagination and playing all of the tee shots that they have on their home golf course in order. So most people have a home golf course, a course they play on a regular basis and you should be able to remember the types of shots that you require of each hole, 1 to 18. So what I would advocate doing is coming down to the driving range, lining up 18 different golf balls and then teeing off those shots in order that you would find them on the golf course.

Let's imagine our first hole, it’s a 350-yard hole. It’s not mega long, but being the first hole of the day I never feel overly confident taking driver, so I might take out my hybrid club. I would make a couple of nice practice swings with the hybrid, knock it down the middle, and just have a little sort of mental checklist. Was it a good shot, would it have hit the fairway? It might be an idea actually to pick out a couple of markers on the fairway and say, that's where my fairway line would be and that ball landed in the fairway.

Second hole, let’s say it’s a little par-3. What club would you normally have on that par-3? Is it an average sort of distance that you would normally get, I am going to take a 9-iron, my average distance on this par-3 150 yards, that's my 9-iron, couple of little practice swings again and then knock the 9-iron down there. And again little checklist, did it land on the fairway, was it to the left side, was it to the right side?

Off to the third hole now, big par-5. So I'll take my driver out this time. Tee the ball up with the driver. Again a couple more practice swings, you will notice every time we've taken those practice swings to try and ingrain the feeling that you would have on the golf course of changing to a new club, loosening up with that club and then knocking it down there. We are not just sort of randomly grabbing clubs out of the bag, whacking them, whacking them or whacking them. We are trying to judge this as if you are playing on the golf course.

The hope is then that when you go out on the golf course and actually play for real, you feel like you've been there before. You feel like you have practiced it maybe the night before. If you did this on a Friday night and teed off on a Saturday morning that would be great. If you are in one of those long winter months when you are not actually playing on the golf course much, but then you go out on the golf course in spring, it’s almost like you have not been away quite so long because you've actually had a chance to practice what feels like, you're practicing on the golf course. You have taken all the clubs right away through your bag. So when you get to that second hole, you think, oh no this is a 9-iron, I practiced this on the range and I have a general success rate. I am normally on or close to the green. So rather than just pounding golf balls on the driving range, play all of the tee shots from your home course on the driving range, work out where your success rate is, where the fairway is, where the green is and hopefully next time you play on the golf course you will have more success playing the course for real.