Last weekend I went to Topgolf with my family. While we mainly went as a fun activity for my dad, brother-in-law, and nephew (an overdue fathers day gift for grandpa-dad-grandson to use together), it got me thinking about how we can improve our practice when actually having a range session at our home driving ranges.
If you haven’t been to Topgolf, there are multiple different game modes to play with. There is just a general session where you get 20 balls to score as many points as you can by getting the ball into one of the target zones. There is also an Angry Birds game mode where the ball you hit acts as the bird and, just like the game, you try to knock over the structures and kill the pigs.
Topgolf is a fun activity, and by no means am I saying we need to take it too seriously while we’re there, but we can certainly incorporate certain aspects of these games into our actual practice back at home. The concept of their range is actually a great example of how we should practice at home, and it’s crazy that more driving ranges don’t incorporate these ideas into their own spaces.
How often do we actually hit shots on the driving range? Picking a target, picking a distance we’re trying to hit it, thinking about the wind, visualizing the trajectory. I would bet most golfers couldn’t honestly tell me they think about this kind of stuff while practicing.
Most people grab a bag of golf balls and just start hitting shot after shot, not really paying attention to what they’re doing. This may be ok if you’re working on your swing and need hundreds of repetitions to implement a change, but for the most part this isn’t productive practice. By visualizing the fairway at a Topgolf, we can create our own games at home.
Block practice has its benefits, certainly, but random practice is going to be way better for us in order to improve our scores. When you’re on the golf course, you never hit the same shot two times in a row, so we can try to simulate this on the driving range. Change your targets and club frequently and try to picture the shot you want to hit. If your driving range has targets, that’s great, but if it doesn’t, we might need to be a little creative. Pick a tree in the distance or a clump of balls on the fairway to aim at. We can find two trees or buildings in the distance to simulate what the fairway width would be when practicing our drivers.
This has so many benefits. For one, it helps you practice your routine. You have to pick your target, visualize the shot, and then execute. You have minutes between shots on the course, so by switching clubs and targets between each shot, you are kind of simulating the lag time between shots. Getting into a rhythm is great when you’re block practicing, ingraining your (hopefully) good habits, but that’s not realistic when translating to the golf course.
Another benefit is it forces us to practice our aim. When we’re raking in one ball after another, we often lose sight of our target. Switching targets between every couple of shots helps us dial in our alignment which will be hugely beneficial when we get to the golf course.
We also played the Angry Birds game mode. It was a fun and silly game, but the concept is actually one we should consider when we practice as well. In the game, it’s best to keep the ball low in order to try to knock out the bottoms of the towers, resulting in the entire structure collapsing and killing the pigs. We can transfer this concept to the driving range and start working on our trajectories.
I rarely see people practicing trajectory on the driving range - everything is basically a stock shot. Working on different flights will help us when it’s windy or if the greens are firm or soft. It will also help us control our distances. Try keeping the ball below the tree line or launching it as high as you can. Play around with different ball positions and see how the flight is affected. Does the ball curve differently? Does it start right or left of your target? Practicing these shots and trying to get creative will teach you a lot about your swing, and you will learn how your ball reacts in different types of conditions.
Think about this stuff the next time you go to the driving range. If you’re working something, by all means do your block practice, but try some of these things at the end of your practice session. Golf isn’t about making perfect swings, it’s about hitting shots. Play games, have fun, experiment, visualize. You will have a bigger arsenal when you get out to the course.
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