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So you’ve figured out your schedule for the day and what do you know, you have time to get out to the range for some practice. The first thing to do is to decide how to budget the time you have. There is no set way to divide up your practice time. You need to assess what has been going on with your golf game up to this moment and address what most needs to be addressed. If you are hitting the ball terribly, by all means plan on spending most of your time hitting balls. If your short game has recently been horrible, pick the shots you have been the worst at and spend some time with them. You should always hit at least a few putts if there is a green available.
Mix it up. Some of us love to practice, and working on one thing for an extended period of time is fine. We maintain our interest and focus and can put in a lot of important work on a particularly nagging problem. Most of us, however, need a bit more variety to keep us in the game. If you make practice boring you aren’t going to want to be out there very long. Do a bit of everything, and try to make up your mind just what you are going to do before you get to the practice area.
For example, if you have two hours to practice, maybe you could hit full shots for 45 minutes, take a short break, then hit your wedges for 15 or more. When hitting full shots start with a short iron, switch to a mid to long iron, then go to the driver. After the driver, go back to your fairway woods and hit a few off of a tee, then hit them off the ground. I prefer to work on most mechanical things with a mid-iron, say a 6 or 7. When working on your wedges hit them all, the pitching wedge, sand wedge, and lob wedge. If you have a gap wedge you should probably get rid of it. If the lofts of your wedges are spaced correctly you should not need a 4th. Mine are 47 degrees for my pitching wedge, 52 for my sand wedge, and 58 for my lob wedge. Hit shots with each and change frequently in order to get a feel for distance and trajectory.
If you are at a driving range where the only facilities are for hitting, then there is not much you can do other than to keep hitting. It would be a good idea to find a place where you could work on your short game, even if it means giving up a bit of your allotted time for extra travel. You can’t have a good short game if you never practice it. Your scores will come down quicker with short game work than with any other form of practice. Start with chips from the fringe, then work back to short low pitches. Chip and pitch to different pin placements and from different spots around the green. In the short game section of the web site you will find techniques to hit all required shots around the green. With the time you have, try to hit at least some of each of the 5 shot trajectories. There is nothing worse than getting out on the course and finding yourself facing a shot that you haven’t practiced in recent memory.
The key here is to put in the time. You are not out there to “get it”. You are gaining the feel you need to swing the club and get the ball into the hole by virtue of repetition, trying to repeat correct thoughts and actions. If you have been taking lessons you should have notes on your last session and should be using these thoughts to guide your movements. There is no such thing as harmful practice as long as you have a clear idea of what you are supposed to be doing. A teacher’s job is to show you how you swing, then show you how you can improve what you are doing. The thoughts your instructor gives you are probably somewhat unfamiliar, and if there is more than one you are liable to forget it. Get yourself a small notebook, one of the small spiral ones you get for under a dollar at the drugstore will do fine, and jot down the major points of the lesson. If you are getting your information from magazines or television, write it down in your own words and take it out with you when you practice.
Your goal is to use your time as effectively as possible. Just walking out onto the range with your clubs and proceeding to whack ball after ball is simply not good enough.. You need to get yourself organized and get started with a clear and focused mind. You need to remember just what you were doing the last time you swung at a ball. And, even more importantly, how you felt, or how the club felt, when you were swinging. Hitting a golf ball, no matter whether it is along the ground for a short distance, or through the air for a long distance, is a difficult, complicated, physically and mentally demanding task. Anyone who says it is easy is either Tiger Woods or an idiot. Of course it’s not easy, or simple. If it were, why are the vast majority of those who attempt to play the game absolutely pathetic? Knowing this, you can’t allow yourself, if you are serious about learning to improve, to make a half-hearted effort. Write stuff down. Describe to yourself what thoughts you are having before and after you swing, and if it occurs to you that you have any different sort of feelings. Do this quickly. If you have to think too hard to come up with anything to write then you are trying too hard. These items should be readily apparent, jumping out at you. This type of thought can be remembered: complex explanations tend to fade away.
Keep in mind that the objective here is to play better golf. You are practicing the shots you will face on the course. If you think you have come up with a way to swing better, work on it for a time, but get out on the course to test it out before too long. As you work on your game put a little pressure on it to give yourself a progress report. If it doesn’t work for two bucks it probably won’t work when the big trophy is on the line. You need to play in order to better focus you on what you need to work on. Everyone has a tendency to revert to old habits when they get under pressure. These reversions are unfortunate, but they do serve to further focus you on your major problems.
What these rounds will show you is the need to practice with playing in mind. Not many golfers have the ability to concentrate for a full 18 holes. Their minds wander, and their confusion tires them out. They take differing amounts of time to hit each shot, and each bad shot produces new swing thoughts: at some point, whatever game plan was in effect at the beginning of the round is abandoned, and chaos reigns. A few good practice sessions where you practice using your exact on-course routine is a good way to keep yourself focused on the course. It may seem more tedious than machine-gunning balls out onto the range, but it definitely pays off in the short and long run.
The most important part of your routine is the moment between your last look at the target and the start of the back swing. Just about anyone can learn how to stand behind the ball, grip the club, walk up beside it, put their feet together, get into the correct posture, find the correct distance from the ball, move the left foot then the right, waggle the club, look up to the target, then look back at the ball. Now, you have to swing. You should never take more than a couple of seconds to hit the ball after that last look. You need to organize your swing thoughts well enough so that you are only using a few of them at a time, and giving yourself less time frozen over the ball will help you limit them. Remember that at some point you have to trust what you are trying to do with the club.
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