Golf At Home – Focus on The Short Game
To be honest, whether you’re practicing at the golf course or at home, short game practice is going to be the easiest way to improve your golf game.
When you spend a lot of time practicing wedge shots, you’ll notice an improve on your ball striking. Not just with the wedges but also with irons, woods, and even driver.
With proper wedge practice, you’re training your body what it feels like to strike the ball correctly, regardless of the club in your hands.
Add to that the fact that the majority of strokes you take will be with wedges and putter, and you’ll see that short game is clearly where you should be focusing your at-home practice.
Putting at Home
There are infinite ways to practice putting at home. What’s important is to sync up how hard you strike the ball with the speed the ball leaves your putter. Once you have this figured out, you’ll know your putting distance and will be able to adjust based on slope of the green.
Many times in golf we hear the term, “Know your distances.” It is always assumed we are talking about how far you hit your woods, irons, and full swing wedges. Knowing your distances is even more critical in your short game. That’s what makes good putters great. It’s why the pros are pros, yet it’s something we can all dial in.
So if you have a putting green in your backyard, great. Use it. If you don’t, use an area rug. Or use the carpet in the hallway. It doesn’t matter. Just choose a spot in your home where you can get the ball some decent roll.
Dial in Your Putt Distance
Once you’ve chosen a spot, set up your putting routine. It needs to be the same every time, so that you can make sure your grip, stance and swing are consistent.
So many people miss this point. And you won’t make any progress without paying attention to this. Cameron Smith is one of the best putters in professional golf. Watch his routine.
He goes through the steps to make sure he’s setting up the exact same way every time he hits a putt. That’s the only way to make it a predictable stroke.
Again, what routine you use isn’t too important. As long as it’s consistent and repeatable. If you do your routine correctly, you’ll feel confident every time you step up to a putt because you’ve trained your body what your putts feel like, and you swing the putter the same every time.
If you don’t know where to start with your putting routine, just find a professional with a routine you like, and copy them. Copy every tiny thing they do, and then if you find something you don’t like, change it to make it your own.
Once you have practiced a consistent, repeatable routine, you’ll find you have a lot more confidence with the putter.
Just in case I haven’t made myself perfectly clear. The takeaway with practicing putting at home is that you need to develop a consistent, repeatable routine that feels exactly the same every time you step up to a putt. That’s the only thing you need to worry about.
Practice Chipping in Your Basement or Backyard
Next up let’s talk about chipping. Much like at-home putting practice, the most important part of practicing chipping at home is developing a consistent, repeatable routine. My favorite chipping coach is Phil Mickelson. His videos can teach you a lot on how to practice golf at home or at the course.
Set up a target 10 yards away from your hitting spot. It can be a can of soda, a chipping net, whatever. Doesn’t matter.
Keep your weight on your front foot, and hands ahead of the ball. Line the ball up in the same spot every time, either your front foot or your back foot. Make it consistent and repeatable.
Next, hit 100 balls at the target. Do this every day and you’ll very soon train your body exactly what it feels like to chip a ball 10 yards in the air. It will then become very easy to transition that knowledge to the golf course. If your chipping with a pitching wedge or 52 degree wedge, the ball will typically roll about as far as it flies, so you can expect a 10 yard flight to stop 20 yards from where you hit the ball.
This will be a little different for every person, but you’ll see how your shots roll out and you’ll be able to adjust accordingly.
Once you know what a 10 yard chip feels like, it won’t be hard to dial in what a 5 yard chip or 20 yard chip feels like.
At Home Practice Makes Repetition Easy
The key to success for these short game drills is repetition. I hit 100 balls at my 10 yard target every single morning. If you don’t keep practicing, the feeling goes away fast and you’ll forget how to do it.
In fact I wrote a whole article on the 10 yard chip drill. It’s so simple and so effective in improving your golf game.
Pitching the Ball
Pitching is similar to chipping, but usually a bit further from the hole. You need to hinge your wrists and your swing is aimed more at lifting the ball. Michele Low is another great YouTube channel to help you get these skills dialed in.
The goal with pitching is to get the ball up in the air a little more, and to get consistent distance results. And the key to consistent distance control is technique and rhythm.
Once again you want your weight on your front foot. You want to get more wrist hinge in this stroke than on a chip since you’re going a bit further. (Typically >20 yards)
My favorite at home drill for chipping is to set up a few different targets in my backyard. I set up a 20 yard, 30 yard, and 40 yard target.
If your yard isn’t big enough, another option for this is to get a golf simulator. This costs a bit more money but is so much fun! I use the Garmin R10. It allows you to play full rounds of golf on simulations of real golf courses across the world! You’ll also need a sturdy screen or curtain to hit into.
But I’m getting distracted. Set up a few targets in your yard, and copy a pros technique. Whether that’s Michele Low or someone else is completely up to you. just find a repeatable pitching technique that you can mimic until you find your distances.
Get your rhythm consistent. Then just change the length of the backswing and watch how it affects your distance.
How To Practice Golf at Home – Know Your Distances
All aspects of the game require you to know your distances. Nothing will improve your golf score faster than knowing how far your putt stroke will go, how far your chips will carry, how far your pitches will fly, and how far each of your irons will go.
At home practice is one of the best ways to learn distance because you’re not distracted by slope of the greens or on a driving range just trying to smash the ball to smitherines. (A very bad idea always.)
So as you work on your golf game at home, remember that the goal is to create consistent, repeatable strokes, and understand what different distances feel like with that repeatable stroke.
Do this and you’ll see fast improvement come from your at home practice!
