Golf Practice Schedule Tips

Today I’m excited to talk about golf practice and how important setting up a specific golf practice schedule is for seeing your scores improve. Read to the end and you’ll find an example golf schedule template for spending your time at practice.

So why are we covering this topic today?

One email I get often from fellow golfers is a complaint email about how little improvement they’re seeing. They often ask me what they can do better to improve quickly and what I did to get to scratch golf.

My response back is usually a question along the lines of “How many hours and days per week are you practicing? Tell me your practice schedule and your practice routine?

The response I get is “I play 18 holes once a week and practice my putting and chipping for a half hour before my round.”

Do you see the problem here as well?

My response back to this answer is always the same. I got better because of Hard Work, which entails setting up a golf practice schedule and sticking to it for many weeks until I see improvement.

I was able to achieve scratch golf in high school as a result of hard work and lots of hours at the golf course. Not just once a week playing a round of golf.

Ask the local PGA teaching professional who ran the golf course I was a member at and he will tell you that he saw me and my brother there almost every day on the putting green refining our stroke from different distances.

Even days the Pro wasn’t at the golf course we were there chipping, putting, and hitting range balls until we had blisters, sore calf muscles, and tired fingers from gripping the golf club for hours.

Golf is a very tough sport to play and takes lots of repetitions to refine your skills and see the results you envision.

It’s a hard truth to tell those sending complaint emails as they want some quick and easy solution. But frankly, you’re not getting better because you aren’t putting in enough time.

I wrote an article titled 10,000 hours that I think is worth a read.

To go off that article, it’s not how many hours you put in but the quality of the hours that you do spend practicing your golf game.

That’s why having a golf practice schedule is important and using your practice days to follow a routine with golf drills that help you perform these “quality practice reps.”

How Long Should Your Golf Practice Schedule Be?

Not everyone can spend 6 days and nights at the golf course. We all have busy lives, school, our job, family, and friends to attend to.

But if you want to succeed and improve your golf skills you need to be putting in hard work each week and quality repetitions making the most of your practice time you have available in your schedule.

I recommend at a minimum trying to make 200 putts from different distances and different breaks before leaving the golf course.

If you make it to the course 2X a week then you’ll be sinking 400 putts that week. If you make it once per week, then you’ll be sinking 200 putts per week. This is more putts made per week than 90% of you are currently making each week.

This is the same concept as Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant shooting 1,000+ jump shots per day. Or better yet, making 1,000 jump shots before ending practice.

You need lots of practice drill repetitions so start scheduling out the math and you’ll see that after several weeks of practicing you’ll have made a few thousand putts and will see improvement in your putting skills.

Playing one 18 hole round a week is only getting you 30-40 putts. That’s not enough.

Take this same mindset to chipping.

I want you to complete 300 chips per week. 100 to a short distance hole, 100 to a middle distance hole, and 100 to a hole far across the green so you improve your distance control and carry vs roll judgement around the greens. Try to get each chip to stop 3 feet or less of the hole leaving you a short putt.

Can’t make it to the golf course? Then find a towel to chip balls to at your house in the hall way or an open room in the basement. This is what we do every winter indoors when we can’t make it to the golf course because of snow.

Lastly let’s talk golf swings. You should do 100 golf swings per day. This doesn’t have to be at a driving range. This can be outside in your back yard without a ball. Just practice reps, no golf ball where your mind is 100% focused on the swing and the feel and not about where the golf ball is flying through the air.

Here is a sample golf practice schedule template I used in another article on our blog covering a similar topic to this. Follow this template for structuring your practice time and you’ll feel more productive with your time!

  • Driver shots on the range – 15 min
  • Iron shots (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, PW) on the range – 25 min
  • Half & 3/4 shots with wedges on the range – 15 min
  • Warm up putting from 3 feet – 5 min
  • Putts from 4 to 10 feet away – 15 min
  • Long putts from 30+ feet – 15 min
  • Chipping practice – 20 minutes
  • Up & Downs – 10 minutes

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