There is a kind of wedge session every seasoned player likes.
You pick your target, 50 yards. Hit a few feel warm up balls. The first one is a little heavy, the next one is better, and pretty soon you start finding a little groove. One lands close, then another. The motion settles down, the ball starts coming off the face the way you want, and by the end of the set you have a nice little group sitting around the target.
That feels like progress, and sometimes it is.
But here is where I used to get myself in trouble: I assumed the session that looked the best was automatically the session that taught me the most.
Those are not always the same thing.
Take that seasoned player and give them 43 yards on the first ball, 67 on the next, then 54. Now it is getting a little more challenging.
The strike may not feel as good. The grouping disappears because there is no group. One comes up short and one flies farther than expected. The rhythm never gets quite as comfortable.
It can feel as though the practice is falling apart. But hold on, maybe it isn’t.
Maybe you finally made yourself do the part golf actually requires.
Find the shot again.
Repeating a Shot Gives You Help
There is nothing wrong with hitting several balls to the same number.
I do it.
If I am working on a feel, checking a carry, or getting familiar with a stock shot, repetition makes sense. Sometimes you need a few swings in a row just to understand what you are working on.
The problem starts when we confuse getting comfortable with being ready.
Hit ten balls from the same lie to the same target and each ball helps with the next one.
You know the club, the number, and you just saw the last ball flight. You know whether the previous ball was long or short. You have a fresh feel for the amount of swing you used. Even if you are not consciously adjusting, the last shot is still sitting there for you.
Then somebody changes the number.
Now you have to start over.
That is where things get more interesting:
What does 63 yards look like?
What club?
What flight?
Where does it land?
How much speed?
Now you have a decision to make before you ever move the club.
That is closer to the job.
Golf Rarely Gives You the Same Shot Twice in a Row
You already know this.
You may hit a 52-yard wedge on the third hole and not hit another partial wedge until the sixth. By then you had hit a driver, an iron, a couple of putts and probably stood around waiting on somebody.
Then you get 74 yards. You only get one ball with a different lie. Then there is wind and a different landing spot. Nobody gives you three warm-up swings from that exact yardage until you find the right feel. That is why I want some of our practice to ask us to find the shot without borrowing quite so much from the ball before it.
Not every session or every ball. But enough that changing the target does not feel like starting from scratch. The research behind this idea generally points in the same direction. Practice that forces you to change the task can make the session look worse while you are doing it, yet sometimes produce better performance when you come back later or have to use the skill in a different situation. The size of that benefit is not identical in every study or every setting, so I would not turn it into a law of golf.
I do not need to.
The golf lesson is useful without overstating it. If changing the number exposes your ability to recall the shot, adjust and commit, that is information worth having.
The Range Can Make You Look Better Than You Are
I have had plenty of sessions where I walked away thinking I had something figured out.
Tight groups. Solid strike. Nice flight.
Then I went to the course and the first wedge shot felt nothing like the last ten balls on the range. For a long time, I blamed the course, or pressure, bad lie, or did not get loose enough.
Sometimes those things mattered.
But sometimes the simpler answer was that I had practiced a different job than what I am facing on the golf course.
On the range, I practiced repeating the same shot.
On the course, I had to retrieve information, and start over.
Those are not quite the same thing.
The course was not asking me to repeat the shot I just hit. It was asking me to look at a new problem and produce an answer. That distinction changed the way I think about distance-control practice.
I still want stock shots. I still want repetition when I am building something. But eventually I need to break the pattern and find out whether the shot belongs to me or whether I am just riding the feel of the last ball.
Do Not Judge Mixed Practice Too Early
This is where seasoned range grinders can get impatient.
We know what good practice looks like. Or at least we think we do.
Good strike.
Tight dispersion.
Consistent flight.
Ball after ball doing roughly the same thing.
Then we start changing distances and all of that neatness disappears. It is tempting to say, “This is not working.” But do not make that call too quickly.
What I want you to notice is what changed.
Did your golf skill suddenly disappear because I called 67 yards instead of 50? Probably not. The job just got harder. Now you have to read the number, choose the shot, find the feel, and commit without the last ball giving you the answer.
There is more work in that.
Of course it may look messier. That does not excuse poor shots. We are not going to call every miss “good learning” and walk away happy.
A miss is still a miss.
But we should be careful about judging the quality of a practice session only by how easy it felt to hit good shots during the session.
Sometimes the practice got uglier because the question got more honest.
First-Ball Skill Is Different
If I were standing beside you at the back of the range, I would care a lot about the first ball. Not because one ball tells me everything about your game.
It does not.
But the first ball tells me something the eighth ball cannot. Can you look at the number and organize the shot without rehearsing your way into it? Can you see the landing spot? Can you choose the club or feel? Can you go through your routine and make a committed swing before you have a correction ball?
That is useful information.
If the first 70-yard ball finishes 20 yards short and the fourth one is perfect, I am glad you found it. But I also want to know why it took four balls.
Do not fix it yet.
Just take notice:
Maybe you did not have a clear picture.
Maybe you chose the wrong club.
Maybe your first decision was poor.
Maybe you stood over the ball and tried to manufacture the distance with your hands.
Or maybe it was simply one bad swing.
Fine.
The point is not to turn every miss into a diagnosis. The point is to stop letting balls two through ten erase what ball one told you.
Give Me Three Numbers
Here is the practice test I would use.
Pick three distances that belong in your game. They should be far enough apart that you have to make a real adjustment. Do not choose 68, 69 and 70 yards and congratulate yourself for changing targets.
Maybe yours are 45, 65 and 80.
Maybe 52, 74 and 96.
Use your numbers.
Write each distance on a separate card or piece of paper. Now shuffle and draw one number.
Now hit one ball to the first number:
That is the only ball that counts for that call.
Go through your normal process.
Pick the number and mean it.
See the landing spot.
Choose the shot.
Use your pre-shot routine.
Then pull the trigger.
Now pull the next number.
Find the shot again.
Then the third number.
After you have hit all three, shuffle the cards and repeat the exercise one more time.
Six balls total.
No three-ball correction set after a miss. You are changing the target and asking yourself to find the answer again.
That is it.
Score the First Ball, Not the Recovery
Before you start, choose a reasonable finish window for each distance. It should be your window not mine. You are building your wedge game, not anybody else.
Then score only the first ball to each call.
Inside the window or outside it is enough if you want to keep things simple. If you like a little more structure, you can use a primary zone and a larger safe zone. But do not bury the lesson under a complicated scorecard.
What matters is whether you can produce a reasonable answer on the first attempt. And when you miss, resist the urge to immediately hit another one to the same number.
I know you want to.
Golfers hate leaving a bad shot unanswered. That urge is part of what we are training. If the 67-yard ball comes up short, make a note and move on to 43. You will get another chance at 67 when it comes back around.
Now we get to find out whether you learned anything without using an immediate correction ball.
That is a more interesting test.
The Bad-Looking Session May Tell You More
Suppose you normally hit ten straight balls from 60 yards and finish with seven or eight sitting nicely around your target. Then you try the mixed-distance session and only three of six finishes inside your windows. That does not automatically mean the mixed practice was better. And it does not automatically mean it was worse.
Ask a better question:
Why did the score change?
Was the skill actually poor?
Or did changing the number expose a part of the skill you have not been practicing enough?
Those are different problems.
If you cannot control the distance even when you repeat the same shot, you probably need more basic calibration work.
Do that.
But if the stock shot is solid and everything gets loose the moment the number changes, another fifty balls to the same flag may not be the answer.
Change the target.
Make yourself retrieve the shot again.
That is where I would spend some time.
Do Not Make Every Practice Session Hard
There is an easy mistake here.
You read that mixed practice can be useful, so tomorrow every ball has to be random.
Different clubs, yardage, trajectory, and target. Harder must be better, right?
No.
Practice has different jobs:
Sometimes you need to build the shot.
Sometimes you need to calibrate it.
Sometimes you need to repeat something until the feel becomes clearer.
Sometimes you need to test whether you can find it again.
Know which job you are doing. If the shot starts getting loose and you have no idea what you are trying to produce, back up.
Hit a few familiar balls and get the picture back. Then change the number again.
The goal is not to make practice frustrating. The goal is to stop making it easier than the golf you are preparing for.
A Prettier Session Can Still Be Useful
I do not want to turn this into another golf argument where one kind of practice is good, and another is bad.
That is not how I see it.
A clean 50-yard block can be exactly what you need. If you are learning that shot, calibrating the carry or rebuilding the feel, hit the balls. Make sure to watch them and learn from them.
Just understand what the session proved. It proved you could settle into that task under those conditions.
Good.
Next question:
Can you leave it, hit something else, come back and still find it?
That is where the practice starts getting closer to golf.
And yes, the session may look worse.
Keep going.
Take the Honest Session
Most of us have enough experience to make the range look pretty if we stay with one comfortable shot long enough.
That is not a criticism, it is just not the whole job.
The seasoned player you are trying to prepare for is not the player hitting ball number 14 to the same flag. It is the player standing in the fairway with one ball, one number, and no recent rehearsal from that exact distance.
That seasoned player needs to:
Make a decision.
See the shot.
Trust the answer.
Pull the trigger.
So, the next time a mixed-distance session looks a little rough, do not rush to clean it up.
Ask why.
Did the skill disappear?
Or did you finally remove some of the help?
That is worth knowing.
I would rather have six honest balls tell me what needs work than twenty pretty ones convince me everything is finished.
Journal Prompt
Did the session look worse because the task was harder, or because the skill actually failed?
Write the answer without protecting your ego either way.
If the skill needs work, work on it.
If the harder task simply exposed that you need more practice finding the shot again, that is useful too.
Then ask yourself one more question:
Would I rather leave with a prettier session or a more honest one?
For me, the honest one wins.
It gives me something I can train.
Train trust, not swing thoughts.
Scott | Distance Control Coach
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