The driving range is a great place to practice your game. You can buy a bucket of balls for a reasonable amount and start swinging. The driving range is meant to be a place where you can dress comfortably, take as much time as you want without pressure, and work on your golf swing technique.
You can add some structure to your driving range practice by following some golf drills. Each drill is meant to work on a specific aspect of your golf swing.
There are many golf swing fundamentals to work on like swing speed, transfer of weight, body stance, and accuracy of hitting where you were aiming. If you take your driving range practice routine serious, you can see significant improvement!
Swing Drills on the Driving Range
Get Your Posture Right
Any good golf swing begins with standing in the right posture. You can swing your arms freely only if your stance is right. Start by standing straight. Then, move towards the ball by bending from the hips. Try to maintain a flat back and do not hunch over.
Make sure your arms are aligned. If someone was standing behind you, they should see only one arm as the other one should be aligned with it. If one arm is higher than the other, then you may hit the ball either left or right of the target.
The Tiger Woods 9-Shot Drill
Coming from the man himself, this drill has been discussed in Tiger Woods’ book. You basically need a 6 or 7-iron. Then, hit 9 different shots.
These should include three variations of the straight shot (hit one high, one low, and one at normal height). Then repeat this while hitting the draw shot, and the fade shot working on hitting them high, mid, and low.
The concept isn’t too difficult to understand, but the drill is not easy. You will learn which shot or variation you struggle with the most.
The Water Bottle Drill
If you are slicing your shots a lot, you need to try out the water bottle swing drill. Place an empty water bottle about 9 inches to a foot in front of your back foot.
Then swing the golf club in your natural position trying to stay inside of the water bottle. If you hit the water bottle, then chances are you are slicing the ball, because your swing path is coming from outside which is where we’ve placed the water bottle.
Practice this golf swing drill and try to not hit the bottle. It will force you to work on swing path from the inside, not outside. Your slicing problem will likely be solved.
Glove Under The Arm Pit
Another golf swing drill to fix slicing of shots is to stick a glove under the back arm pit. When you swing through your shot, try not to let the glove fall.
This will compel your arms to stay close to your body and ensure that your swing is in the correct plane. The glove will eventually fall off and there is nothing wrong with that. But, you want to make sure that it stays under the arm pit until the club makes impact with the ball.
This drill helps you avoid chicken elbow where the elbow flares out away from the body.
Swing Speed Drill
Another aspect of the golf swing to focus on during your driving range practice is building swing speed. The faster you can swing the golf club, the farther your golf shots will go.
Professional golfers, for example, have swing speeds with their drivers above 120 miles per hour. This generates fast ball speeds above 180 miles per hour and results in 300+ yard drives.
To work on swing speed, you can use a swing weight that adds some weight to your golf club. Practice making smooth swings with good rhythm with a heavier golf club and over time it will become more natural feeling.
As you return to hitting your normal driver with no added weight, the club will feel lighter and you’ll find yourself swinging it faster.
Imagine Your Fairway
When you are practicing the first tee-off shot, you want to make sure you land in the fairway and not in the woods or rough. Hitting your next golf shot from the fairway will make the game much easier and you’ll find yourself scoring lower golf scores.
So, when practicing at the driving range with your driver or your 1-iron (driving iron), imagine a fairway in front of you.
Pick some spots, perhaps trees to the left and right, or lampposts, or some milestone markers, and try to hit the ball between these spots to simulate a wide fairway you’re aiming at.
Give yourself a score every time you are successful and keep track of such scoring to see your accuracy in how often you would have hit the fairway if you were out on the real golf course, instead of the driving range.
This golf swing drill should help you hit straighter and stay on target, thus finding your ball in the fairway more often.
Hover The Club For Better Rhythm
If you find yourself struggling with rhythm during the golf swing, try this golf swing drill.
Instead of setting the driver head on the ground and starting the back swing from this position, try hovering the driver by lifting it above the ground and take a couple of breaths. Then turn back and start the back swing while the driver is still hovering above the ground.
This should help you get into better rhythm in the golf swing. You’ll notice many golf pro’s do this exact move during the set up and just before they start the swing, they lift the driver head off the ground slightly, into a hovering position.
Perfecting The Back Swing
When you take your back swing, analyze yourself and see, how far back do your hands go? Are you taking the golf club too far back? Are you not getting back far enough into a full turn? This could tell you the story as to why your drives aren’t flying as accurate or as far.
Golfers who dip the club shaft past parallel at the top of the backswing, tend to struggle with accuracy problems. To gain more control, they should focus on shortening up the backswing a little bit so the club doesn’t get to far back.
Other golfers whose swing isn’t getting a full turn, could be losing some power and distance as a result. Try to work on flexibility drills to get the upper body to turn back further into a full swing.
Use a Strike Spray
If you really want to know where on the driver you are making impact with the golf ball, then a simple tip is to use a strike spray.
Some golfers hit closer to the heel of the clubface, and others may hit closer to the toe. If you want to find out where on the clubface you’re consistently making contact with the ball, then having a white film sprayed onto the face can leave ball “finger prints.” Then you can analyze the prints to see how close to the sweet spot you’re hitting.
In order to fulfil the maximum potential of your strength and the driver, you want to hit in the center of the face. Once you know how far off you are, you can make adjustments. There are specific golf swing drills to work on if you are hitting off the toe and other drills if you are hitting off the heel.
Footwork
Our last area of golf swing focus is with footwork. Practice footwork on the driving range to fix posture and weight transfer problems.
For example, if you are swaying too much during the swing, then try standing with your feet together. Then, hit half or three-quarter shots but with your feet together.
When your feet are very close to each other, there is nowhere for the body to lean. With practice, you will eventually be able to stay upright as you commence your backswing.