Honing Your Golf Skills At The Driving Range

When you are at the driving range practicing your golf shots, you should always have a plan. Before your day begins you should know exactly what the intended goal is for that day.

When practicing at the golf driving range, it’s all too easy for golfers to lose their focus; with such wide-open spaces it can be hard to resist the temptation to pull out your driver and start whacking away. Many senior golfers simply don’t show up to the driving range with a plan.

Before you hit your first ball you should decide what part of your game needs concentrated practice. Think back to your last round and piece out the areas that cost you strokes. An important thing to remember is that you want to pinpoint one specific goal for your time at the driving range that day.

Once you decide on what to practice, it’s time to take some warm up shots. Nope! Don’t reach for that driver! Try warming up with some wedge shots and middle irons. Once you’ve gotten back in the groove, head directly to the club/shot/goal you decided on. While practicing, here are some other things to keep in mind to gain the most from your efforts:

Assign A Shot Target

Your ultimate goal for every hole in golf is just that… to get the ball in the hole. If every shot you hit at the driving range is just knocking balls into the air with no particular target, how can you hope to gain any useful technique from your practice? Every shot you take at the driving range must have a specific target.

Not having a target means you won’t have a clue as to your accuracy. Maybe you can make a ball soar beautifully into the sky, but can you do that and make it land next to a 4.25-inch diameter hole? Those super-shots can soar gracefully right into bushes or out of bounds, into water hazards or bunkers… not a pretty scenario in games or competitions.

Pretend that you are actually on the golf course and keep in mind that if you were hitting balls the same as you are on the driving range, with no focus or goals, you would spend the entire afternoon walking through the rough or the out of bounds area.

Boxers use bags to simulate the opponent, hitters use a machine to simulate pitches and you as a golfer must use the driving range to simulate an actual round. Pretend that you are on an actual course trying to get as close to the hole in as few strokes as possible.

Lesson Learned: When to Back Off

You may find after some practice that the technique you were hoping to improve is coming around; the shots are looking near perfect and the ball is landing right near your assigned target. This is where most senior golfers tend to over-practice.

If your technique starts becoming consistently successful, then it’s time to walk away and practice other shortcomings. At first your shots will be wonderful and your confidence will soar, but that confidence will keep you swinging until you start to fatigue. Your shots will start doing the same old thing, the same mistakes you had just fixed (so you thought) will come back. This will put you in a negative frame of mind and, unfortunately, probably put an end to your day.

Sometimes when you have achieved goals the best thing to do is just walk away and take a break, relishing the feeling of a job well done. If you use these tips each time you head to the driving range you can bet you will achieve a lot of goals, too.