{"id":657819,"date":"2026-05-08T13:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T13:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/657819\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T13:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T13:46:10","slug":"why-does-the-driving-range-always-mess-up-my-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/657819\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Does The Driving Range Always Mess Up My Game?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Practice makes perfect, or so they say. But does it? Not in my experience \u2013 certainly when it comes to visiting the driving range<\/a> before a round of golf. Whenever I spend meaningful time on the range ahead of a tee time, I seem to play poorly on the course.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a curious phenomenon. Clearly, practice is a pre-requisite to improvement, but timing is everything. Does hitting 30-50 balls before a round help or hinder? For me, it\u2019s the latter, and I know I\u2019m not alone.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s not something I normally do, because I\u2019m usually short on time when I turn up at a golf club. I have many things ahead of visiting the driving range in my pre-round pecking order, including getting supplies in the pro shop, browsing equipment, ordering food, having a pint, going to the toilet, chipping<\/a> and putting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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But before my last round, I turned up in uncharacteristically good time with more than an hour to spare before my tee time. When that happens, you have to go to the driving range, don\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

I initially hesitated, largely because of past experiences. I have no idea how many rounds of golf I\u2019ve played, but I\u2019d estimate it\u2019s somewhere between 750 and 1,000. I can’t recall a single instance of a pre-round range visit yielding dividends on the course.<\/p>\n

Why? I think it\u2019s a combination of factors. Mentally, I\u2019m not sure you can win. If you strike the ball brilliantly, you convince yourself you\u2019ve wasted all your good shots and things can only go downhill from there.<\/p>\n

But paradoxically, it doesn\u2019t work the same the other way around. A succession of shanks<\/a>, tops<\/a>, thins and bad strikes doesn\u2019t mean you head to the first tee knowing things can only improve; instead, you mentally consign yourself to having \u2018one of those days\u2019.<\/p>\n

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The other issue is range mats are beautiful to hit off and not representative of the turf you encounter on the golf course \u2013 something my colleague Elliott Heath has written about before<\/a>. The astro-turf is proficient at disguising an average strike and far more forgiving than grass and soil.<\/p>\n

But on this occasion, I put all those thoughts to one side and told myself it was a good opportunity to tweak a couple of things and get loose before heading out.<\/p>\n

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\"Baskets\n<\/p>\n

Range mats are lovely to hit off<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

‘My head was scrambled’<\/p>\n

The trouble is, you always find yourself getting very technical on the range, even if you don\u2019t want to, which is not a recipe for success on the course. Instead of batting balls away with freedom, you\u2019re more aware of how you’re swinging and what movements you\u2019re making, and those thoughts can be difficult to cast aside.<\/p>\n

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I know I don\u2019t have a great golf swing, but it usually works reasonably well and I don\u2019t have to think much about what I\u2019m doing. I might have one swing thought as I stand over the ball, but generally speaking, I\u2019m setting up and swinging with a fairly quiet mind.<\/p>\n

However, as I hit wedges away off the astro-turf, I started thinking about needing to implement a pre-shot routine<\/a> \u2013 not something I\u2019ve ever really had. I know I should, but for some reason it\u2019s never stuck when I\u2019ve tried to incorporate one.<\/p>\n

That was strange and distracting. Then, I started thinking about how much I was pushing into the ground with my legs, at what point my wrists were breaking in the backswing, how much shoulder turn I was getting, bumping my left hip to start the downswing and throwing my belt buckle towards the target in the follow-through.<\/p>\n

Because the range was blessed with Toptracer<\/a> technology, I was also monitoring my data. I wasn\u2019t hitting the ball as far as I normally do, which I told myself was because of old range balls. But even still, it led to me swinging harder than normal as my competitive nature was piqued. This led to a loss of rhythm and tempo.<\/p>\n

When I reached the first tee, my head was scrambled and I wasn\u2019t swinging with any freedom. I couldn\u2019t declutter my mind and I was paralysed by swing thoughts.<\/p>\n

The opening three holes at my local pay-and-play are two reachable par 5s and a short par 3. If I\u2019m playing well, I\u2019d expect to be no worse than level-par standing on the 4th tee. This time, I started bogey, bogey, double.<\/p>\n

From now on, if I want to work on my swing or head to the range, I\u2019ll do it on days when I\u2019m not playing. Five shots with a wedge into a net to loosen up is all I need. If I have an hour to kill, I\u2019ll chip and putt.<\/p>\n

Practice doesn\u2019t always make perfect, especially when it comes to my long game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Practice makes perfect, or so they say. But does it? Not in my experience \u2013 certainly when it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-657819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}