Trying to sharpen your skills during practice sessions can be infuriating without the right driving range tips.

We’ve all been there. You spend over an hour hitting ball after ball, slowly adjusting your stance to build your power. You’ve made progress by the end of the session and head home, only to find you’ve reverted to old habits on your next visit.

If this sounds familiar, don’t worry. Here you’ll find everything you need to develop consistency in your training, including how to connect your practice to your performance on the green.

#1 – Master your grip 

Even experienced golfers can pick up bad habits, so it’s important to get your grip right as an amateur.

If you golf regularly and have issues with shot consistency out on the green, there’s no shame in going back to basics to polish your technique. Your grip is likely the culprit behind slicing or poor ball striking and altering it will improve your game.

Gripping a golf club correctly will:

• give your left hand more control over the club
• improve the position of the club’s face at impact
• give you a deeper wrist hinge when needed  
• give your swing more power
• make it easier to hit a draw
• massively improve your shot consistency 

Watch Rick Shiels Golf’s video below if you want to reap these benefits.

#2 – Work on your stance when using a driver  

Stance is everything when it comes to driving distance. You could miss out on reaching your full potential if you don’t nail this early on or adjust it when it’s affecting your game.  

Your power is determined by how far you turn your shoulders on the backswing. Keeping your spine straight will boost your driving distance and allow you to hit more consistently.

For the best results, you should follow these steps:

• Grip – keep it relaxed to allow the club to turn over in your hands
• Feet – place them shoulder-width apart, the ball in line with the inside of your left heel
• Alignment – pick a target, and make sure you’re aligned ‘square’ to it  
• Posture – ensure the balls of your feet, knees and upper spine are lined up with each other

Need a more visual guide? You’ll find this video useful.

#3 – Check your ball distance during set-up  

Standing too far from or close to the ball will harm your shot consistency.

If your ball distance is off, you’ll have to sacrifice your stance and adapt your movements to accommodate this, leading to more issues in your technique.

Standing too far from the ball can cause:

• hook shots
• toe shots
• an altered swing path to stay balanced
• a poor posture that places additional pressure on your back and shoulders

Standing too close can cause:

• slices
• shanks
• heel shots
• swings that place additional pressure on your arms

Both scenarios involve compromising the stance you’ve worked hard to master and adding in additional movements to get the ball back on the right path. Not only does this wear you out, but it overcomplicates the process.

Want to keep your swing simple? Use the video below to determine your ideal ball distance set-up.  

#4 – Give every shot a purpose 

Progression is the main goal of practising, so one of our top driving range tips is to know the purpose of every shot you take.

Decide on the elements you want to practice during your session and then in each shot during your pre-shot routine.

It would help if you determined your target before each shot. Select a yard marker or specific target area and commit to it. Take time to think about what parts of your technique you’ll need to adjust to hit it, as this is what you’ll be doing in an actual round.

You should then align yourself properly with the target. Don’t be afraid to use alignment sticks, as the driving range is the perfect environment to practice with them!

Finally, you need to decide the elements of your swing and the ball flight you wish to practice. We’d recommend aiming to hit a straight golf shot if you’re a beginner.

Related: Everything you need to include in your golf pre-shot routine

#5 – Use training aids 

There’s no shame in using golf training aids to improve your game. This is one of our top driving range practice tips, especially since PGA professionals frequently use them.

Using an orange whip swing trainer to warm up or an impact ball to perfect your stance could prove more useful than you expect. Training aids are a great way of getting settled into your driving range session, especially if you’ve had a week off.

At the very least, we’d recommend always having a set of alignment sticks to hand. Ideally, you’ll have:

• one signalling your target
• one aligning your feet, knees, and upper spine
• one on your target line

Related: The 13 best golf training aids for 2022

#6 – Diversify your training 

Once you’ve mastered the basics and a few block sessions under your belt, moving on to randomised practice can work wonders for your performance on the green.

Not only does it emulate the experience of playing an actual game, but it trains your body and mind to switch into the position and pre-shot routine required for different shots.

Think of it this way. If you were training for a marathon, would you practice by jogging around your garden and then expect the skills you gain to transfer into a 42km race over a route with endless variables?

Instead, you’d use practice routes of a similar distance or even jog along the exact route used on race day.

It works the same way with golf. You may get great results during training sessions if you only utilise blocked practice, but this won’t necessarily transfer onto the course.

Here’s an example of a randomised drill, ‘The Nine Shots,’ to sharpen your skills:

• High Fade
• Regular Fade
• Low Fade
• High Straight
• Regular Straight
• Low Straight
• High Draw
• Regular Draw
• Low Draw

Related: Blocked vs random practise: too much of one, not enough of the other

#7 – Hit the putting green before you leave 

Following our last point, why not get the most out of your practice sessions by sharpening your skills in every area?

Hitting the putting green at the end of your training sessions means that you’ll be prepared for the shots that occur here during an actual game. After all, there’s no use in mastering your drives to find your putting skills are seriously lacking.

Getting a feel for tricky short chips is crucial if you want to become a better golfer, and the putting green can help you in this department.

One of our biggest driving range tips is to focus on connecting the gaps in your skillset and learning transferable skills that can be taken onto the green.

If you tend to arrange your golf clubs in a rather haphazard manner, you’re certainly not the only golfer to do so.

So long as there’s space to shove your wedge in, it doesn’t matter where it goes, right? Wrong. It matters, as does making the best use of all the pockets and storage space your golf bag provides. Here’s our guide on how to arrange your golf bag, helping you focus on your game and keep all your golf gear in tip-top condition.

How to organise a golf bag

Table of contents

1. Clubs
2. Clothing
3. Balls
4. Accessories
5. Valuables
6. Refreshments

Clubs

Let’s start with your sticks. We can’t stress enough just how important it is to organise these correctly. The last thing you want to be doing when you’re facing a difficult shot, or if you’re getting pressure from the group behind to hurry up, is to be rooting around frantically for your club of choice. Not only that, a disorganised bag looks… well, messy.

Modern golf bags offer a range of top cuffs to facilitate club organisation – from the 14-way with full-length dividers to the 4 or 5-way Tour Bag style top. Whatever design you have, the general consensus is that the longest clubs should sit nearest to the longest section of the bag (the spine), moving downwards to the shorter clubs. If your woods sit at the bottom of the bag, the shafts receive less protection (they tend to poke outwards more). Secondly, they get buffeted by the irons above them. So, woods up top, moving down to wedges at the bottom. Simple.

If you have a classic 4-way top bag, we suggest the following split: two woods/metals and a hybrid/long iron in the top, three irons middle right, three irons middle left, and four short irons in the wide bottom.

Not everyone agrees on where the putter should go. However, as it’s the shortest club in the bag, this should reside alongside the woods and longer clubs up top where it’s easily accessible. It’s where you’ll more often than not find the oversized putter well, which some bags have. 

Clothing

Today’s golf bags have ample storage space and numerous pockets, most of which have a certain purpose – so it makes sense to organise all your gear in the correct space.

Most bags offer at least one full-length apparel pocket for storing clothes–your waterproofs, spare mid-layer, jumper, gilet, and so on. This pocket should be used purely to store clothes, nothing else. Tees, balls, pitch mark repairers–none of these belong here–they have their own place to live, as do balls, food and valuables.

Fold up or roll up what you have and stow it away neatly; that way, this pocket won’t become a jumbled mess.

Balls

Most bags have a separate ball pouch. Only you know how many is enough, but the more you carry, the greater the weight you end up lugging around. Keep your golf balls separate and within their own pouch, as loose ones will cause discomfort when you’re carrying, and they take up unnecessary space elsewhere.  

Accessories

Most of us have more accessories now than we’ve ever had, and there’s often a designated spot in the bag for these, too.

Let’s start with those items that we all have, or at least we should have: tees, markers and that crucial item, the pitch mark repairer. These accessories tend to go well together, and you could probably throw pencils and the good old Sharpie pen into the mix. Some bags have a marker pen sheath, which is handy.

One of the most important golf accessories is the glove; they might have their own space, so this is something you should utilise, thus keeping it in good shape, so it performs well for longer. You should never just throw your glove back in whatever pocket you unzip first, especially if it’s wet.

Umbrellas are best stored on the side of the bag, in their own slot. If your bag doesn’t have one, the next best location is alongside the woods and long irons. 

Valuables

Most golf bags have a valuables pouch to help keep your smaller, personal belongings safe. Use it, because nothing quite spoils a round like a £500 lost phone, even if you do have an insurance policy. These pockets are often luxuriously lined with velour or ermine, and the best ones are waterproof, making them the best place to store your wallet, phone and car keys.

Refreshments

We’ve all made the mistake of leaving a sandwich or a banana in our golf bag for a week or two – it’s not a pretty sight or smell. Keep your consumable solids in one of your spare side pockets, ideally one that’s insulated. Most bags now have a water bottle pouch or holder, but if yours doesn’t, make sure you screw the top on tightly. The main thing is to keep food and drink separate from your clothing and accessories.