We’re all guilty of it. We stroll up to the range with a few clubs in hand, tip over a bucket of balls and go to town. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, no plan, it’s no wonder why golfers have trouble transferring their game from the range to the golf course. As GOLF Top 100 Teacher Sean Foley told us recently, they’re not practicing the same skills.
Thankfully, instructor Mark Russo has a formula to help. Don’t worry, it’s not very complicated. It simply requires some planning ahead of time.
As Russo says on his Facebook page, rather than going to the range without a time frame in mind, budget how much time you’ll have to practice, and then set a goal for a specific number of balls. Divide the number of balls by your practice time, and then you have your time-per-ball pace set.
So, lets say you have an hour to practice. Rather just bang balls indiscriminately, set a goal. Let’s say your goal is to use that hour to hit 100 golf balls. Plug it in the formula and you have a pace of hitting 1.67 balls per minute.
That may seem much slower than you’re used to, but that’s the point! Make all that extra time count. Do your routine, practice your mechanics and set a pace for your body that you’re going to be moving at on the course. After all, you’re not hitting shot after shot in rapid succession on the course, so don’t do it on the range.
