How to Practice at the Driving Range Effectively

Why Blocked Practice Is Holding You Back

Blocked drilling means hitting one shot on repeat: ten 7-irons to a 150 flag, then ten 8-irons, then ten drivers. It feels productive because strikes clean up as you go. They clean up because your brain is solving one problem on a loop, not because your golf is improving.

Random schedules do the opposite. Something changes between every attempt: club, target, shape, trajectory. Each swing is a fresh problem. Strikes worsen during the session. Skill, measured days later, gets better.

Wulf and Lee's 1993 paper first showed it: random schedules outperformed the repetitive approach for "generalised motor program learning," the technical name for skills that travel. Fazeli and colleagues replicated this on golf putting in 2017 with 30 novice golfers, and at a one-week retention test the variable group had pulled away. Chua's 2019 paper in Human Movement Science added a mechanism: variety nudges attention onto a target, while repetition nudges it onto your body. External focus beats internal focus.

A 2024 systematic review by Barzyk and Gruber in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living pulled together 52 randomised trials on golf motor learning and confirmed the pattern. One caveat: too much variation, too soon, hurts beginners. If you're brand new to the game, you need some repetition to build a baseline. Once you can make contact with most clubs, variety wins.

The science is 30 years old. Range culture hasn't caught up. Practical Golf has a good summary if you want the long version.

What You Need Before You Start

The kit list is short and cheap.

• Alignment sticks. Non-negotiable. Without them, your aim drifts and you can't trust any feedback that follows.
• Impact tape, or painter's tape from the hardware store. Painter's tape isn't designed for clubfaces, but it works fine for a session and tells you where on the face you struck the ball.
• A session plan on your phone. Three phases, target ball counts, two or three drills. Without a plan you'll default to ten 7-irons.
• Optional: a personal launch monitor or rangefinder. Helpful if you own one. Not required.

For alignment sticks, the GoSports 3-pack is the default cheap option (4.6 stars, 11,000+ reviews on Amazon). The SKLZ set with ring markers is the upgrade pick.

The Three-Phase Session Structure

Mark Blackburn, Justin Rose's coach and Golf Digest's number one ranked teacher, splits a 60-minute hour into 15-minute blocks. Will Shaw, PhD and PGA Pro at Golf Insider UK, uses something close. The blocks are short on purpose. Switching modes inside a session is part of how the learning sticks.

Phase 1: Warm-Up (10 balls, 0 to 15 minutes)

Wedges and short irons. Half swings, then bigger swings as the body wakes up. The job is to move blood and rehearse tempo, not to hit pure shots. A wedge at 50% feel beats a 7-iron at 90% effort.

Drop one alignment stick on the ground parallel to your target line at the ball. Check your stance to it on every shot. Costs 60 seconds. Buys you honest aim for the rest of the hour.

Phase 2: Technical (15 to 20 balls, 15 to 35 minutes)

One swing feel. One club. Impact tape on the face.

This is the only block where you think about your body. Pick a single feel, whatever your coach or your last lesson gave you, and hit the ball. Look at the tape after every shot. If the strike pattern moves toward the centre of the face, the feel is working. If it doesn't, change feels or change the drill. Don't hit the same swing harder.

Keep the count tight. Will Shaw caps this phase at around 20 balls. Past that, you stop learning and start grinding.

Phase 3: Performance (25 to 30 balls, 35 to 60 minutes)

The most important block, and the one most amateurs skip. Different club, different target, full pre-shot routine on every ball. Treat each shot like it's the only one you're going to hit.

Blackburn's line: "We don't hit ball after ball to the same target on the course." So don't do it on the range either. Pick a flag. Pick a club for that flag. Run your routine. Hit one ball. Step away. New flag, new club.

Save the last 10 to 15 balls for a pressure block. Score yourself out of 10 on each shot, where 10 is "I'd take that on the course" and 1 is "I'd be reloading." Aim for an average above 6. Bet a sleeve against yourself if you need the stakes.

Total ball count: 60 to 90. The 2025 Masters Practice Range Tracker, written up by Zephyr Melton on Golf.com, showed pros averaged 86.5 balls per session with a median of 79. Bryson DeChambeau hit 393 in one day, which is why he's the outlier, not the model. Amateur Josele Ballester hit 14. Tour pros aren't grinding 200-ball buckets. They're deliberate.

Five Drills to Build Into Every Session

Pick two or three per session. Don't try to run all five in one hour.

1. The 9-Shot Drill

Johnny Miller's drill, with a GolfPass video walkthrough. Nine shots, each one different.

1. Picture a 3 by 3 grid: three trajectories (high, medium, low) by three shapes (draw, straight, fade). Nine combinations.
2. Pick a target.
3. Call the shot out loud before you hit it. "High fade." "Low draw."
4. Hit it.
5. Move to the next combination. No do-overs. Nine balls total.

A mid-iron is the cleanest club for it. You build control of the ball, not the swing. That's external focus, what Chua's 2019 paper credited to variable schedules.

2. The Gate Drill

Immediate physical feedback on club path and face direction at impact.

1. Drop one alignment stick parallel to your target line, at the ball position.
2. Drop a second stick perpendicular, pointing at the target.
3. Push two tees into the ground just outside the heel and toe of your clubhead at address. The gap is your gate.
4. Address the ball. Your clubhead has to swing through the gate without clipping a tee.
5. Hit five balls. Clip the inside tee, your path is too in-to-out. Clip the outside tee, you're coming over the top.

If the gate drill keeps showing a persistent outside-in path, my slice fix guide walks through the correction in detail. A personal launch monitor confirms what the gate is telling you. Watch the club path versus face angle numbers. With the driver, attack angle joins the conversation, since attack angle plus path produces your true driver delivery. Driver setup is its own rabbit hole, and getting the loft right is half the battle before you ever swing.

3. The Clock Drill (Wedges)

Builds a wedge distance ladder. What pros call having "your numbers."

1. Pick one wedge. Sand wedge is a good place to start.
2. Hit three balls with a 9 o'clock backswing (lead arm parallel to the ground, half swing).
3. Hit three balls with a 10 o'clock backswing (three-quarter).
4. Hit three balls with an 11 o'clock backswing (near full).
5. Watch where each set carries. With a rangefinder, write the yardage down. Without one, pace it off after the session.
6. Repeat for gap wedge and pitching wedge.

From 110 yards (101m) and in, course management is mostly knowing those numbers cold.

4. The Impact Tape Feedback Loop

The cheapest swing feedback tool ever invented. Shows you what your strike pattern looks like, which drives smash factor and ball speed loss on mishits.

1. Stick a strip of impact tape, or painter's tape, across the clubface.
2. Hit eight to ten balls without looking at the tape between shots.
3. Look at the pattern.
4. Read it. Toe strikes mean you're standing too close, or coming over the top. Heel strikes mean too far away, or your hands are stuck behind you. Low-face strikes with the driver mean the tee's too low or your attack angle is too steep down.
5. Make one adjustment. Replace the tape. Hit ten more.

You can't talk yourself out of a strike pattern. The tape doesn't care what your swing felt like.

5. The Pre-Shot Routine Lock

The drill Annika Sorenstam built her career on. PGA coach John Kolls of Duke University Golf Course has written about it. Annika's pre-shot routine was 24 seconds, consistent within one second across video analysis spanning 14 years.

Build your version.

1. Pick a target.
2. Visualise the shot: trajectory, shape, landing zone.
3. Pick an intermediate target on the ground, two feet (60cm) in front of the ball on your aim line.
4. Address the ball. Set up to the intermediate target.
5. Trigger move (waggle, look, breath, whatever yours is).
6. Hit the ball.
7. Step away. Wait 60 to 90 seconds before the next ball.

That last step is the whole point. On the course you have a four-minute walk between shots. On a typical range you have four seconds. Forcing the wait teaches your body to repeat the routine cold. Forty-five balls in an hour with a full routine, as Kolls frames it, beats 100 balls in 30 minutes. You're not training a swing. You're training the decision sequence that wraps it.

Six Mistakes Killing Your Range Practice

1. Machine-gunning 50 balls in 10 minutes. Ben Emerson, Golf Monthly's Top 50 Coach, said it bluntly in October 2025: "Can you get better at golf by smashing 50 balls in ten minutes? No, absolutely not." The brain consolidates between reps, not during them.
2. Aiming at the same target every shot. Kris Hart wrote about this on PGA.com in March 2024. On the course you never face the same target twice. Train the variance.
3. Practising only the clubs you like. Will Shaw's line: "Practice performance does not equal learning. Learning occurs from making errors." If your sand wedge is reliable and your 4-iron is a dumpster fire, the 4-iron is where the session needs to live.
4. Reading range feedback as course feedback. A 7-iron strike off a flat mat with a range ball isn't the same shot you'll have from a sloped lie with a Pro V1. Range strikes are training inputs, not score predictions.
5. Practising past fatigue. When the swing breaks down from tiredness, your reps train the broken-down swing. Stop at 90 balls. Walk to the short-game green or go home.
6. Skipping the pre-shot routine. The silent killer. Without the routine, you've removed the decision loop that has to fire on every course shot. The thing that doesn't transfer to the course is the thing you didn't train.

Where Amateurs Spend Their Time Wrong

PGA coach Daniel Gray has cited National Golf Foundation data showing 74% of golfers don't break 90. For a 90-shooter, the driver accounts for 16% of shots in a round, irons and fairway woods 31%, short game and putting 53%. Walk past your local range. Driver bay full. Short-game green empty.

Track your last five rounds. Work out the percentage of shots from inside 100 yards (91m), and match your practice time to it. For a 90-shooter that's half your practice. For a 100-shooter, closer to 60%.

The Golf Practice, a PGA-recognised academy, made the related point in July 2025: distributed practice beats massed practice. Three one-hour sessions across a week beats one three-hour Sunday grind. Sleep cycles between sessions are when the gains lock in.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long should I practice at the driving range?

What should I practice at the driving range?

How do I stop hitting the same shot repeatedly at the range?

Are alignment sticks worth it?

Should I use a launch monitor at the driving range?

Try This for Four Sessions

Pick four range sessions over the next two weeks, spaced 48 to 72 hours apart. Run the three-phase structure each time. Use two drills per session, rotated, so all five from the list above get used at least once. Track one number you care about: GIR, scrambling percentage, or a personal launch monitor metric, before and after.

The on-course test isn't whether you're hitting it further or straighter. The earliest signal that the work is sticking is that you stop standing over the ball thinking about your swing. You think about the target. That's the external focus the research kept pointing at.

The next layer up is a structured home practice routine for the days you can't get to the range. That's where the wedge distance ladder, the alignment sticks, and a piece of impact tape do most of their work indoors. The range is a third of the picture. The other two thirds happen at home and on the course.

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