¿Do you practice golf or just hit balls?

While some amateur players go out to their club’s course every Saturday directly to the first tee without hitting a single practice ball, the vast majority spend a lot of time shooting balls in the driving range. Sometimes, walking around the practice field, observing the very different swings of other players, I have timed the time between ball and ball of the fastest: they can hit between three and five balls per minute. One ball every 15 seconds, more or less. I guess that this tremendous rhythm meets important needs but of a different nature than effective swing learning. If we practice to improve we have to avoid hitting balls syndrome. Of course, you have to hit a lot of balls at the beginning, but at a certain moment, the improvement depends more on the quality than on the number of shots. On the practice mat we improve much more if we have a specific objective for each yellow ball: before each stroke, we must decide what is intended, dedicate the necessary time before moving the club and after the shot, enough time to interpret the flight of the ball and deduce the conditions of the impact. On the other hand, golf has basically three aspects: the long game, the short game and kicking on the green, the last two being much more decisive than the first. And in the practice session we have to dedicate time to each of these facets. It will not only be more efficient, but much more fun.