Here’s a simple and fun game to practice your pitching that actually works

Welcome to Play Smart, a new game-improvement column that drops every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from Managing Editor Luke Kerr-Dineen to help you play smarter, better golf.

If you’ve read this column before, you know that the subject of practicing is a particularly interesting one to me. The reason is simple: Changing how you practice is something every golfer you can do, regardless of whether you’re on the PGA Tour or a higher handicap. And anecdotally, when I talk to pro golfers, one of the first things they’ll talk about is how they practice; talk to an average golfer, and the subject of practice falls by the wayside.

Which brings us to Ikonik, a new app and coaching platform designed to help golf coaches track their students’ progress both in person and from afar. The app, which launched on Tuesday, has already partnered with the LPGA and the Metropolitan PGA, and the goal of it all is simple: To help students get better, faster.

Sounds good to me! And so I asked them for an example of how they help golfers do this, so we can learn for our own purposes. They shared with me one of their benchmark challenges, which a coach will ask a student to complete as a way of measuring their process, and it’s one you can try for yourself the next time you’ve got a few minutes to practice.

How the game works

As you can see, you’ll get five points for hitting inside 15 feet, three points for hitting it inside 27 feet and 1 point for hitting it inside 45 feet. Make sure to keep track of your overall point totals so you can track your progress over time, but by practicing in a more intense, targeted, and goal-oriented way, you’ll be getting more out of your practice, and you’ll probably improve because of it.