Not being able to get the ball in play off the tee makes golf challenging and not much fun! Here we’ll cover the best ways to practice your driving in a way that will help you develop your skill and confidence.
We start with the obvious, but important, technical practice, before moving onto more useful and innovative ways to practice your driving.
Technical Driver Practice
If you’re missing most fairways, then there generally is something that needs as you strike the golf ball (at impact). If you’re generally inconsistent and your golf shots are flying off in all directions, begin by making your strike more consistent.
If you have a consistent slice or a hook, you need to focus on your swing path and club face through impact. We’re not here to give you a thousand technical thoughts, but we’d suggest you go find a local PGA pro to help with these aspects.
How to practice your driver technique
If you fit into one of these categories we’d suggest setting aside 30 to 60 minutes each week to work on technical movements in your golf swing.
This is where driving practice for most golfers stops, but below we cover all the extra aspects most golfers miss out on.
Skill Development Driver Practice
The better you get your technical, the less you will rely on timing to hit great golf shots. However, you’re already capable of hitting the fairway sometimes, and you might already be hitting the fairway more than 50% of the time.
Another type of practice that is highly effective for lowering your scores is skill development practice. With this type of practice you should care far less about your technique and far more about finding a way to solve the problem.
A simple skill development driving challenge is the 20 Ball Driving Challenge below.
This is a simple but really effective way to practice your driving at the golf range and can be done at the end of your technical practice.
Here are some quick tips for developing driving skills games:
Make it measurable
Skills games should have a score, your scores will vary, but having a score keeps you motivated, allows you to track your progress over time and builds your confidence as you improve in practice.
Make it challenging
Aiming at a 100-yard wide golf range is not useful for hitting down a water lined 35 yard fairway. Try to make your practice 10% harder than what you need to achieve in play.
You could make your target fairway 10% smaller, or aim for 10% more balls in the fairway than you need on the golf course. Both work well and allow you to feel more confident when you step onto the golf course.
Make it realistic
As we covered above, the driving range isn’t realistic of how you play golf. Having smaller targets is one way of increasing realism. Another way is to add minus points for missing one side of the fairway, or the side where you commonly miss.
This small tweak results in a surprising change to your mental approach – there is all of a sudden a small seed of doubt when you step over the golf ball. Practicing in this way can really help you learn to deal with negative thoughts on the golf course.
On Course Practice
Most golfers don’t see the golf course as a place to practice, but this is one of the best places to practice particularly if you don’t have access to a driving range. We count all time on the golf course out of competition as practice.
A simple but great on-course game to work on your driving is In Regulation. This game rewards you for accuracy off the tee and into the green.
It is a simple tweak on a normal round of golf, but if you really try to score as many points as you can you’ll find you think a lot deeper about which clubs to hit off the tee, where to aim and how to swing.
Summary
We hope this article has given you some new ways to practice your driving and some new ways to think about your golf practice. If you want more driving skills games or a personalised practice plan built for you each week check out the Break X Golf app.
Happy golfing – Will @ Break X Golf