With golf courses around the world closed for business, it’s still possible to keep fit and improve your technique while you’re taking some downtime away from the golfing green. You can practice golf techniques both in and outdoors; just make sure you clear some space and move any fragile objects out of range.
The Golf Travel People has researched some useful drills that you can practise using your golf clubs and everyday objects in your home, with different techniques to master putting, chipping and swinging.
Hitting balls into a net
The first home golfing practise you can do is setting up a golf net in your garden or garage and try hitting balls into it at short range. You can even mark a target onto the net and see how many times you can hit the target during your practice session. Hitting balls into a net will help you improve your tempo, technique and impact location. You can also use impact tape to track how often you’re hitting the ball in a consistent spot. Hitting regularly off the sweet spot means you need to adjust your swing path, and multiple marks in different places on the tape shows that your swing needs some fine tuning.
Chipping drill
Firstly, make sure you use a mat if you’re practising on a hardwood floor. Use buckets, bins or containers and line these up at different distances to practise chipping the ball into a target. For a slightly more challenging chipping practise, use your bed as an obstacle and set up something to hit your ball into at the other side. From there, see how many times you can chip your golf ball into the target.
Putting drill
Putting drills can help you with distance and direction control. The clock putting drill is an excellent place to start. Place an object in the middle and place 12 balls around the outside in the shape of a clock (leave about 2 feet between each golf ball). Mark a target in place of what would normally be a hole and take turns to putt each ball into the target area. The key with this drill is that every time you miss, you should restart the drill until you complete a clean sweep – hitting all 12 balls into the hole/target area.
For all of the golf practise exercises above, we recommend filming yourself to play back later and watch where you can improve your technique.