3 easy ways to improve the quality of your range practice

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Most of us practice our golf swings. But we don’t all practice well, which is why GOLFTEC’s Patrick Nuber is chiming in with a couple of handy pieces of advice that can help all of us improve the quality of our practice sessions.

“I walk around my local driving range and I don’t see anybody doing this,” he says. “But I go to PGA Tour events and they all are.”

Which is a shame, because as Nuber explains, some of these techniques are really easy to implement, and will improve your game in short order.

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1. Put a dot on your wrist

First things first, Nuber says, is to draw a dot at the bottom of your wrist between your thumb and index finger. This provides a reference point that you should place on the right side of your grip. Start with a bad grip, and a bad swing is likely to follow.

2. Place a stick on the ground

Many average golfers struggle with aiming. A stick on the ground eliminates this problem before it even starts, and crucially, gets you comfortable with what may, at first, feel uncomfortable.

“It will get you used to the feeling of lining up straight,” Nuber says.

3. Drop a head cover outside your ball

You may have noticed in the picture above a golf head cover on the ground. That’s not by accident: It’s an obstacle Nuber has placed there to help slicers from swinging over the top.

“This encourages golfers to swing from in to out,” he says.

Luke Kerr-Dineen

Golf.com Contributor

Luke Kerr-Dineen is the Game Improvement Editor at GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. In his role he oversees the brand’s game improvement content spanning instruction, equipment, health and fitness, across all of GOLF’s multimedia platforms.

An alumni of the International Junior Golf Academy and the University of South Carolina–Beaufort golf team, where he helped them to No. 1 in the national NAIA rankings, Luke moved to New York in 2012 to pursue his Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University. His work has also appeared in USA Today, Golf Digest, Newsweek and The Daily Beast.