Green Grass Golf Shop

Out of all the questions I get asked as a golf professional, and there are quite a lot, this one stands out as one I get asked quite a bit. How do you take your range game on to the golf course? There is actually one quick and easy tip that takes care of that really quickly, spoiler alert…



You can’t.



You will never be able to take the lack of pressure and how loose you feel on the range over to the golf course where the strokes actually count. You have to replicate the pressure you feel on the course and bring that over to the range, learn to harness and work through that pressure on the range. The feeling of pressure or nerves over a shot that means something to your overall score will never be something that goes away. It needs to be practiced so, at the very least, you know what you tend to do under that pressure, and can practice ways to overcome that. Ideally though, with enough practicing that pressure, you learn what swing faults come out the most during that pressure, and how to combat those with your pre-shot routine and swing thoughts on the course. In their wonderful book Every Shot Must Have a Purpose (which everyone should have in their golf library), the authors who also happen to have been two of Annika Sorrenstam’s incredible coaches, Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson, teach us some great ways to bring the course on to the range and practice that pressure:

1. – Practice How You Play

The concept and question here is pretty simple; how many times on the golf course are you going to be hitting 5 drivers in a row without another club in between? The answer, if you’re not my dad walking around with cargo pockets bulging with golf balls so you can tee up 5 on every box and hope one will land in play, is zero. You don’t hit the same club on the course 15 times in a row, so why on earth are you practicing that and thinking you can bring that to the golf course? If you are practicing one specific move and using a drill or a training aid to work in that motion, that is the only time you should be peppering the same club out there over and over again. Most of the time you go to the range and hit balls, or warm up before a round, should be a lot more like you play on the golf course. Pick a different club and different target for every shot. This can be a lot easier than you realize, you should be able to pretty easily play a golf course in your head on the range, any course you’ve played more than once. If you can’t, you can make one up! Hit a driver down there between the blue and white flag that look to be about a fairway wide, then take an iron toward the green flag in a totally different direction. Hit a bad iron shot into the green? So take out the wedge and hit a little pitch shot up there toward the red flag or the 50yd marker, then you’re off to #2 hitting driver again, or maybe it’s a par 3 you normally hit hybrid on, even better! The key is just finding a way to stop beating 7 irons or drivers over and over again. ‘But Coach Matt I suck with my 3-wood, I came to the range to practice with that,’ Well then you better have a drill or a training aid you’re going to use to get better with that, because just hitting balls the same way you have over and over again clearly hasn’t worked in the past, right? There are much quicker ways to fix the 3 wood than just hoping something clicks after hitting 2,000 balls with it. Take a lesson on a launch monitor, video your swing and compare it to the pros, anything that’s not just doing the same thing over and over and hoping for different results. That would be the definition of insanity, brotha (or sister).

2. – End With a Game or Goal

Here is another place you can beat balls with the same club over and over, as long as it has a purpose. Give yourself a goal to hit at the end of your practice session. This can be as easy as picking two flags out on the range about a fairway-width apart from each other and hitting 5 drives in a row between those flags. You can even pick a target and make yourself hit a certain number of shots in a row with a certain club to within a certain distance of that target. Take a ball and pitch it out there 40 or 50 yards, draw an imaginary green around that ball and hit it 3 times in a row. If you’re just a brand new golfer struggling to get the ball off the ground, end with 3 shots in a row that you’re able to hit in the air. It really doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s at least somewhat challenging for you. This is just trying to simulate that pressure you feel on the course, this is where you practice that part of the game. I can guarantee you after a large bucket of golf balls, with sweat beading and muscles starting to tire, that 5th shot of the drill after you’ve hit 4 perfect shots and you just want to freaking go home, might feel like a birdie putt to finish off the round of a lifetime. When you practice that pressure enough on the range, you will understand how to handle that pressure much better on the course when you’re trying to take all that cash from your buddies.