How to Practice Golf Like a Pro

Hitting a bucket of balls at the driving range can feel productive, but it rarely moves the needle on your handicap. True improvement comes not from how many balls you hit, but from how you hit them. This guide will walk you through the exact methods professionals use in their practice sessions, helping you move from mindless reps to purposeful, game-changing work so you can start seeing real results.

The Pro Golfer's Mindset: Practice with a Purpose

Before stepping onto the range or putting green, you have to understand the fundamental difference between how an amateur practices and how a professional practices. It’s a complete mindset shift.

The average golfer arrives at the range, pulls out their driver, and starts hammering away, measuring success by the occasional pured shot that flies straight. There's no plan, no goal for each swing beyond "hit it good." This is the equivalent of wandering into a gym and randomly picking up weights. You might break a sweat, but you aren't building strength effectively.

A professional, on the other hand, never hits a golf ball without a clear intention. Every single swing has a purpose. They aren't just hitting balls, they are simulating a specific situation, working on a distinct mechanical feel, or grooving a precise shot shape. They treat practice like they're on the course, because that's the only way to build skills that hold up under pressure. Your goal is to stop being a "ball beater" and become a "shot-maker," even in your practice sessions.

How to Structure Your Range Session

Professionals don’t just show up and wing it. Their sessions are structured and balanced. A generic "Large Bucket" mentality is replaced by a planned workout for their golf game. You can adopt the same model to make your time at the range dramatically more effective. Here’s a blueprint for a 100-ball practice session:

Part 1: The Warm-Up (20 Balls)

The goal here isn't to make perfect swings, it's to wake up your golfing muscles and get a feel for the clubface. Do not, under any circumstances, start with your driver.

• 10 Balls - Soft Wedges: Start with half-swings using your most lofted wedge. Focus only on the feeling of solid contact. This helps establish rhythm and builds confidence from the very first shots. There are no expectations beyond centering the ball on the clubface.
• 10 Balls - Mid-Irons to Specific Targets: Grab a 9-iron or 8-iron. Now, pick a small, specific target, like a particular yardage marker or a mower stripe. Hit all ten balls to that single target. You’re teaching your brain to connect a swing with a specific outcome.

Part 2: The Technique Block (30 Balls)

This is where you dedicate time to a specific swing improvement. This is your "gym" work. The important thing here is to focus on one thing and one thing only. Amateurs often fall into the trap of trying to fix five things at once (keep my head down, start the downswing with my hips, transfer weight, extend through the ball...). This is a recipe for confusion.

Pick one concept for the day. Maybe it's the rotational feel of the swing that we talked about earlier - that feeling of the club moving around your body, powered by your torso. Perhaps it's implementing the proper setup by leaning from your hips and letting your arms hang naturally.

A great drill for this is to make two rehearsal swings focusing only on that one feel, then step up and hit a ball trying to replicate it. Don’t worry about where the ball goes. The goal is the quality of the movement, not the result of the shot. Use alignment sticks - one pointing at your target line, another parallel to it for your feet - to remove any guesswork about your alignment. This frees you up to focus solely on the mechanical task at hand.

Part 3: The Performance Block (50 Balls)

This is the most important part of the session and the biggest separator between amateur and professional practice. Now you stop thinking about mechanics and start playing golf.

Imagine you’re out on the course. Play the first five holes of your home course, or any course you know well.

• Hole 1, Par 4: What club would you hit off the tee? Pull the driver. Pick a specific fairway - the right side of that distant bunker, for example. Make a full pre-shot routine and hit the shot.
• Evaluate: Did you hit your target? Let’s say you pulled it slightly left into the "first cut." Now, what's your approach shot? Maybe 145 yards from the left. Pull the club you’d use for that shot (say, a 7-iron), pick the appropriate green on the range, and hit your approach.
• Continue: Proceed through the next four or five imaginary holes in the same way. Hit drives, layups, and approach shots. This introduces variability and forces you to switch clubs and targets, just like you would during a real round. It trains you to commit to a shot, execute, and move on.

During this block, you can also throw in "consequence" drills. For example, play a par-3 target. If you miss the green, you have to hit an entire sleeve of balls perfectly before you can move on. This sort of gentle pressure helps bridge the gap between relaxed range swings and on-course thinking.

The Short Game: Where Real Scoring Happens

Professionals often spend at least half of their practice time on and around the greens. Why? Because this is where they save strokes and turn bogeys into pars. If you genuinely want to practice like a pro, you must commit to short game work.

Mastering the Putting Green

Forget circling the green and hitting random long-distance putts for 20 minutes. Pro-style putting practice is about building repeatable skills. Partition your time intentionally:

1. Start Line Practice: The Gate Drill
This is non-negotiable for improving your putting. Put two tees on the ground about an inch wider than your putter head, placed about a footin front of your ball on the line you want to start it on. Your only goal is to roll the ball through the "gate" of tees without touching either one. Do this from 3-5 feet. It removes the obsession with making the putt and focuses you on the single most important skill: starting the ball on your intended line.

2. Feel and Speed Control: The Ladder Drill
Find a long, straight putt of about 40 feet. Place tees at 10, 20, 30, and 40 feet. First, hit a putt to the 10-foot tee, trying to get it as close as possible without going past. Then putt to the 20-foot tee, and so on. This builds an incredible sense of feel for distance you can't get just by aiming at the hole.

3. Pressure Putts: The Clock Drill
Place 3 to 5 balls in a circle around the hole at a distance of 3 feet. Go around and make them all consecutively. If you miss one, you have to start over. This gently simulates the pressure of having to make a short putt to save your score.

Chipping and Pitching Games

Again, the key is to have a goal beyond just getting it "close." Pick a landing spot, not the hole.

• Choose a Landing Zone: Pick out a specific spot on the green - a discoloration, an old ball mark - and try to land five balls on top of it. Don't worry about where the ball rolls out, focus on your carry distance. Observe how the ball reacts when it lands.
• Use Multiple Clubs: Don't be the golfer who uses their 56-degree wedge for every shot around the green. Practice hitting the same landing spot using your pitching wedge, 9-iron and even an 8-iron. Learn how each one runs out differently. This builds a creative and versatile short game.
• Practice Tough Lies: Don’t always throw your balls onto a perfect fairway lie. Drop some in the high rough, on an upslope, or on a downhill lie. Learning how to navigate these tricky situations in practice is what gives you confidence when they appear on the course.

Final Thoughts

To really practice golf like a pro, you must trade mindless volume for mindful intent. Quality of practice will always overshadow quantity, and focusing on simulation, specific goals, and balanced sessions is the only sustainable path to lower scores.

Figuring out what to work on is often the biggest obstacle to this kind of focused practice. That's why we designed Caddie AI. By analyzing your game on the course, it helps you understand where you're losing strokes. You can get instant advice for any shot situation, and then use that knowledge to build a smarter, more targeted practice plan that fixes your actual weaknesses.