I see golfers make two opposite mistakes with practice.
The first one is familiar. They find a wedge distance they like, hit ball after ball to the same target, and stay there until the shot looks good. Nothing wrong with that for a while. You need repetition when you are trying to find a number or settle a feel.
The second mistake usually comes after somebody tells them they need more random practice.
Now everything changes with different yardage, club, target, trajectory, and maybe a different lie if they can manage it. Every ball becomes a new problem. The session gets ugly fast, and the seasoned player walks away thinking, Well, that didn’t work.
I don’t blame him.
We took a shot he was just starting to understand and turned practice into a guessing contest.
There is a middle ground.
That is where I want to work.
Repetition Has a Job
I am not against hitting the same shot several times. If you are trying to learn what your 70-yard wedge feels like, hit some 70-yard wedges.
Get the number, see the flight, and notice the strike. Find a landing spot that makes sense to your eye. Let the shot become familiar enough that when I say, “Give me 70,” you are not starting from scratch.
That is useful practice.
The mistake is staying there forever because the session looks good. By the eighth or tenth ball, the previous shot helps with the next one. You know whether the last ball was long. You know whether it was short. The feel is still fresh. You have already made most of the decisions.
The course will eventually take that help away. So, practice needs to take some of it away too.
Just not all at once.
Harder Is Not Automatically Better
“Make practice harder” sounds like good advice, but it is incomplete advice.
If I give you a 70-yard shot you barely know, then immediately start calling 43, 86, 58, 77 and 49 while changing clubs and trajectories, I may make the session difficult.
That doesn’t mean I made it useful.
There is a point where difficulty stops asking you to retrieve a trained shot and starts asking you to invent one.
Those are different things.
What I want you to notice is whether you still have a clear intention:
Do you know the number?
Can you picture the flight?
Do you have some feel for the carry?
Can you go through your routine and commit?
If the answer is yes, the harder task may be doing its job.
If every ball feels like a guess, back up. You are not failing the drill, but the drill got ahead of the skill.
Build the Shot, Then Ask More of It
If I were standing beside you at the back of the range, I would build this in layers. First, show me the stock shot. Maybe it is not perfect but just stable enough that you know what you are trying to produce.
Then I would change one thing.
Maybe instead of hitting 70 over and over, we alternate 70 and 85.
Now the previous ball does not give you the complete answer. You have to change the picture, change the amount of shot and find the number again.
But the task is still understandable. Once you can do that, then I might give you three numbers and mix the order.
Now you do not know what is coming next.
That is another step. The practice gets harder because you have to find the shot again—not because I have thrown every possible problem at you at once.
That distinction matters.
One Change Can Be Enough
Seasoned players who like to work tend to overdo this.
Give us permission to vary practice and pretty soon we are changing five things at once. I would rather change one useful condition and see what it tells us. In other words, keep the same club and change the distance. Or keep the distance and change the club. Or keep the shot basically the same and move the landing target. You do not need to turn every ball into a trick shot.
We are trying to find the edge between comfortable repetition and confused guessing. That edge is a useful place to train.
The First Step Is Supposed to Feel Easier
Sometimes seasoned players think the early stage is too easy to matter.
Three balls to the same number? I already know how to do that.
Good but those balls tell us whether there is actually something stable enough to move forward. If your 70-yard shot is all over the place while you are hitting the same number repeatedly, going random probably is not the next move.
We are not trying to impress anybody, so stay there a little longer.
Find the strike, the carry, and get a clear picture. Then change something. This is not about protecting yourself from mistakes. It is about making the next challenge productive.
Alternating Exposes a Different Problem
The middle stage is one seasoned players tend to skip. I like it because it tells you quite a bit without turning the session into chaos.
Take two distances:
Say 60 and 80.
Hit 60.
Then 80.
Back to 60.
Then 80 again.
Four balls.
Now pay attention.
Does the 80-yard shot feel fairly clear?
What happens when you return to 60?
Do you find the old feel again, or does the 80-yard swing follow you?
You are no longer repeating one comfortable answer, but you are not solving a completely new problem every time either. You are learning to leave a shot and come back to it.
Golf asks you to do that all day.
Then Make Yourself Find It
Once the alternating work is holding together, change the order.
Now give yourself three distances.
Maybe 55, 70 and 85.
Put them on cards, use a random-number app, or have somebody call them.
However you do it, do not know the next number until the previous shot is finished.
Then make a decision:
Pick the number and mean it.
See the shot.
Use your routine.
Hit one ball.
No do-over.
Then take the next number.
This is where the training begins to look more like golf. Not because the practice is random for the sake of being random. Because the shot now has to be recalled instead of repeated.
Give Me Ten Balls
Try this the next time you practice. You need one stock distance and two additional targets.
That is all.
Start with three balls to your stock distance.
Use your normal routine. Same number. Same basic shot.
What I want you to notice is whether the shot has a clear shape and feel. You are establishing the answer before I ask you to retrieve it.
Next, take four balls and alternate between two distances.
A-B-A-B.
Do not hit correction balls.
If the first one is poor, leave it alone. Hit the next number.
Then finish with three random targets using all three distances.
One ball to each target.
That means a new number, a new decision, just find the shot.
Ten balls total.
That is enough.
Know When the Practice Has Become Guessing
Here is the important part. Do not judge the three stages only by which one produced the tightest group.
Of course, the repeated stage may look better, it is supposed to be easier. Instead, ask where the difficulty changed from useful to confused. Maybe the stock shot was solid, and the alternating stage was challenging but clear.
That is a good thing.
If random practice turned into a mess, that tells you something. You probably do not need to go back to mindless repetition forever. You may simply need more time alternating between a couple of known shots before you add the third problem.
If the alternating stage itself becomes guesswork, back up another step. That is not regression in the way seasoned players sometimes think about it. You are not starting over; you are getting back to the last place where the shot was clear enough to train.
Then build from there.
Do Not Earn Difficulty With One Lucky Ball
Over a real practice sample, I want to see that you can handle the current job reasonably often before adding another demand.
In this little ten-ball test, keep it practical.
If you hit one good ball out of three and the other two are complete guesses, I would not rush forward because the good one happened to finish close.
Likewise, I am not asking for perfection before you progress. I want enough evidence that the shot is becoming yours. Over repeated sessions, roughly seven acceptable results out of ten is a useful line.
Good enough that we can ask harder questions.
It’s not so easy that the harder work never arrives.
The Goal Is Not Random Practice
This is worth saying plainly. Random practice is not the goal.
The changing target is simply one way to find out whether you can still produce the shot after the easy repetition disappears. Sometimes repetition is the right training. Sometimes alternating two targets is exactly where you need to stay. Sometimes you are ready for random targets and one-ball tests.
The mistake is treating one of those as the only proper way to practice. Your practice should move with your skill.
Build, challenge, and test.
If it starts getting loose, then back up.
Then go again.
Do Not Confuse Struggle With Progress
Seasoned players sometimes get this backwards. We hear that uncomfortable practice can be useful, so we assume more struggle means more learning.
Not necessarily.
A session can be difficult and still be poorly designed. If you have no clear target, no reliable number and no idea what answer you are trying to produce, struggle is just struggle.
You need enough challenge to make yourself solve the shot. You also need enough clarity to know what you are solving.
That is the balance.
When you get it right, practice does not necessarily feel easy. But it feels understandable because you know the job. You can make a decision, you can hit the ball, and learn something from the result.
That is productive difficulty.
Take the Right Level to the Range
The next time you practice, do not start by asking, “How can I make this harder?”
Ask:
What level am I actually ready for?
Repeat?
Alternate?
Random?
Answer that honestly.
If the stock shot is not stable, build it. If you own the stock shot but lose it as soon as the number changes, alternate two distances. If that is holding together, start changing the target, and give yourself one ball.
There is no prize for getting to random practice fastest. And there is no prize for making the tenth repeated ball look perfect either. The job is to build enough trust that when the course gives you a different number, you can find the shot without rebuilding your swing over the ball.
That takes layers.
Build the answer.
Take away some help.
See what remains.
Then ask for more.
Journal Prompt
What level challenged me without taking away a clear intention?
Write down where you were still seeing the shot and where you started guessing.
That is your next practice decision.
Not what looks hardest.
Not what somebody else’s session looks like.
What are you ready for now?
Repeat, alternate or random.
Pick the right level.
Then hit the shot.
Train trust, not swing thoughts.
Scott | Distance Control Coach
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