The Practice Range

It's about time someone acknowledged that the driving range isn't where we amateurs can get much better. In this months issue of Golf Magazine there was an article about the so called 'practice range'. I've been preaching about this scenario for quite some time. The article talked about the range not being a realistic place for getting better at the golf shots we're most faced with. We hit maybe 4 or 5 fairways in a round so why are we taking all these swings from a perfect lie. Here in Jersey we don't have grass to hit off of so we're faced with mats. No rough, no hardpan, no trees. That's 80% of the shots we're faced with. Basically we can only get better by playing golf a lot because that's where we're learning the repetition of these shots. We'll have about 5 flat lies per round and that's all we hit at the range.

For amateurs, the range is good for timing and tempo, that's all. Of the hundreds of different shots there are in golf we can't practice any of them at the range.