How to make your practice on the driving range worth more
Striping it on the range but losing it on the course? Here is how to practice so your good shots come with you.DP
May 20, 2026
I see it with my students all the time. ‘Davey, I’m striking it well on the range, but when I get on the golf course, I suck.’
Practicing on the driving range can work great for your game, but there are a couple of things that are fundamentally different than playing on the golf course. To begin: most of you reading this practice from mats and not real turf, which will give you less feedback on bad or good strikes. I will help you with some points, which can help you practice better on the driving range and take that good practice with you to the golf course.
Practice with purpose
A lot of people practice without purpose. They get a drill from their Pro and when practicing by themselves they have absolutely no idea if they do it wrong or right in their swing. Practice with purpose is THE way to get better. There are a couple of ways you can do that, for example: make videos of yourself, so you can make sure you actually make adjustments compared to your ‘old’ swing. Or build a station in which you have to do your new swing correction right, or you get punished. For example: place a headcover in front of the ball around 2 clubheads away. When hitting a driver and you are working on hitting it more in the upswing, hit the ball and miss the headcover, so you know 100% you are striking the ball in the upswing.Aim
Golfing mats in general are square, which we people have the tendency to stand parallel to. When standing on a mat, make sure you are always well aware of your target, so you don’t actually try and hit it toward a target that’s not parallel to the mat. But even better, make sure you put an alignment stick or a club down on the ground which will help you with a target line. This will also help with feedback on setting up your feet, knees, hips and shoulders parallel to the target line. Since you don’t have any reference out on the course, first try this with the help of alignment sticks, and after that try and play to random targets, so you can actually train your alignment instead of just whacking balls to the same target.Impact
Driving range mats give way more room for error than turf. Hitting the ground before the ball on a mat can still result in a decent strike and/or shot, where on turf the ball would lose a lot of distance. So if you struggle with impact on the course and not necessarily on the driving range, this will probably be the issue. I like two things to train impact on the driving range. The first one is to use chalk: make a line of chalk in front of and behind the ball and see if only the one in front of the ball is gone when you’ve made your swing. Are both of them gone or only the one behind the ball? Betcha, the strike on the course would have been worse than on the driving range.Stop guessing.Start improving.
Film your next swing and see what a tour pro would change.
