Practice makes perfect, or so they say. But does it? Not in my experience – certainly when it comes to visiting the driving range 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.
It’s 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’s the latter, and I know I’m not alone.
It’s not something I normally do, because I’m 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 and putting.
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’t you?
I initially hesitated, largely because of past experiences. I have no idea how many rounds of golf I’ve played, but I’d estimate it’s somewhere between 750 and 1,000. I can’t recall a single instance of a pre-round range visit yielding dividends on the course.
Why? I think it’s a combination of factors. Mentally, I’m not sure you can win. If you strike the ball brilliantly, you convince yourself you’ve wasted all your good shots and things can only go downhill from there.
But paradoxically, it doesn’t work the same the other way around. A succession of shanks, tops, thins and bad strikes doesn’t mean you head to the first tee knowing things can only improve; instead, you mentally consign yourself to having ‘one of those days’.
The other issue is range mats are beautiful to hit off and not representative of the turf you encounter on the golf course – something my colleague Elliott Heath has written about before. The astro-turf is proficient at disguising an average strike and far more forgiving than grass and soil.
Range mats are lovely to…
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