Six things you can learn from watching the professionals at the driving range

15/12/2023 19:02

The unseen part of being a professional golfer is the many hours devoted to practicing and perfecting their craft.

There are great lessons to be taken from how the professionals go about their practices – and not just that they do an awful lot of it.

Here are six such lessons.

Drills come first

Professionals also do training drills, but you will generally see them confine these activities to early in a session.

Usually, at the beginning of their range sessions, players focus on their swings and practice drills. After practising a certain feel for around fifteen minutes, they will go on to hitting strokes without it.

These drills will be more effective if they are not overdone and serve to get your feel right for a training effort.

Variety is important

Professionals will often hit one club repeatedly but will continuously change their target.

Players aren’t always out to simply hit the ball as far as possible but will look to mix it up and find their range with a club.

“I practice hitting lots of different shots very often,” Jon Rahm says of range-hitting, “Right-to-left; left-to-right; high; low; I want to see various ball flights before I go play, because that’s what I use to attack the pin.”

Lots of wedges

When a lot of golfers turn up to the range they are intent on smashing the ball as long and as far as possible.

However, the professionals get the wedge out a lot more than the average player.

A professional player could spend as much as 50% of their training time hitting wedges.

Numbers matter, but not that much

Professionals don’t hit the range trying to put up numbers and achieve great distances.

They will pay attention to all sorts of data that can be gathered in training but as it is training the numbers matter less. There is much more to a training session than putting up numbers and feeling the ball fly off the club.

“There can be an information overload aspect,” JT Poston says.

“For me, it’s nice to have them there, I keep an eye on them, but I’m not going to worry about them too much.”

Getting ready for the clutch

A tip to take from the professionals is not to assume that your game is going to get you into great positions and you have to practice getting out of trouble.

Part of this process is figuring out what club is your best to turn to when you just have to get it on the fairway.

Your bail out might be a fairway wood or it could be a driving iron and finding the right tool will help you go on your way.

Slow it down and work back up

Practice is a good time to slow things down to iron out the flaws in your technique.

A focus on form over power will help most players improve their game.

If you have a coach along it can also help to have them observe your swing as you speed it up to find out where issues might be creeping into your golf.

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