One of the biggest problems that you’ll deal with on downhill shots is the fact that most driving ranges are perfectly flat. It’s hard to find anywhere to practice golf on uneven lies, so the first time most players deal with this issue is when they get out on the course. If you only draw a couple of downhill lies per round, and you only play a couple rounds per month, you could hit less than 50 shots in an entire year from this kind of lie. You probably hit more shots than that from flat ground in a single practice session. If uneven lies were a common feature on driving ranges, you can be sure that more golfers would be adept at handling this situation.

So, what can you do? Well, unfortunately, there isn’t a lot you can do to get around this problem. One idea is to play a couple rounds of golf where you intentionally find as many downslope lies as you can. Obviously, you should do this during a round where you don’t care about your score, as you are going to be making the game harder than it needs to be. Instead of playing toward the flat parts of the course, try playing toward the uneven areas of the fairway to test yourself and accumulate some experience. Whether you wind up on a downslope or some other kind of uneven lie, you will have the opportunity to improve. If you play these kinds of rounds from time to time, you should gradually get more comfortable with the task of hitting the ball from awkward positions.

Another important step you can take to get around your lack of practice is simply to expect less in these situations. Aim for big targets when you are playing from a downslope to give yourself as much margin for error as possible. For example, instead of aiming directly at the hole when it is cut close to the edge of the green, try aiming for the middle of the putting surface. With more margin for error built into your shot, you won’t need to be as accurate to come away with an acceptable result. It will take patience to aim away from the hole in favor of a bigger target, but taking this step is a great way to improve your average result when hitting from a downhill lie.

Unless you happen to live near a rare driving range that offers sloped lies, you will be limited to working on this shot while on the course. With that said, you should be able to gradually improve over time, hopefully with the help of the tips offered in this article. Pay close attention to both your process and your outcome each time you play from a downhill lie and learn from your mistakes along the way. You may never get to the point where you look forward to this kind of shot, but you can at least raise your performance to an acceptable level.