Today I’m sharing important golf drills with you to use in your golf practice template to improve your short game.
Improving your short game in golf is the fastest way to shooting lower scores. You should spend the majority of your practice time working on the short game.
Short game consists of putting, chipping, pitching, sand shots, and wedge play inside 50 yards.
What Not to Do When Practicing Short Game
Blindly hitting golf balls on the driving range or hitting the same exact putt over and over on the practice green are not the best practice approaches to improving your scores.
To get better, you must make practice as close to a real round of golf as possible by simulating scenarios you’ll face. Why practice something that you’ll rarely face on the golf course? Seems like a waste of time to me.
You also want to make practice as fun as possible while still being purposeful.
I’ve tried to combine all of this into these short game practice drills I’m presenting to you today so that you can get better at golf while having fun doing so!
Resource: Golf Practice System with Step by Step Practice Plans + Video Lessons
Short Game Drills that Improve Your Score
Here is one of my favorite putting games to practice short putts. Short putts (inside 10 feet) are the biggest difference maker in your scoring and can separate you from the average golfer.
Simulation Putting Drill from 4-6 Feet
For this drill, you’ll need to head to the practice putting green and set up 10 different locations to play from. Each location should vary in distance between four and six feet from the hole.
Make sure you create a variety of scenarios such as downhill putts, sidehill putts, and uphill putts.
To score this golf game do the following:
- Add two points for each one-putt.
- Two-putts in which the first putt reaches or rolls past the hole earn zero points.
- Subtract one point for each two-putt in which the first putt doesn’t reach the hole.
- Subtract three points for each three-putt or worse.
After your 10 putts, compare your total score to those of the pros and weekend golfers.
On the course, with these same parameters, the best Tour putters average 16 points; typical Tour putters, 15 points; and poor Tour putters, 14 points.
Golfers who shoot around 80 average 12 points in the game; 90-shooters, 10 points; 100-shooters, eight points.
Play against your friends or by yourself, and track your progress. Over time, your short-range putting will definitely improve.
Four to six feet is such an important distance to your golf game and shooting lower scores. The better you are from this distance, the easier and more fun the game of golf will be to you.
Next, let’s take a look at another fun golf practice drill to play at the golf course for improving your wedge play.
Resource: Golf Practice System with Step by Step Practice Plans + Video Lessons
Golf Pitching Practice Drill
From off the green, play 15 shots: five from the fairway, five from the rough and five from the sand. Each should be between 15 and 25 yards from the hole, varying the lie, angle and shot difficulty for each ball.
How to score this golf game:
- Add five points for each hole-out.
- Add two points for each ball hit within six feet of the cup.
- Add one point for each ball that lands within six to 12 feet of the pin.
- Balls outside 12 feet but on the green earn zero points.
- Subtract one point for each ball that misses the green.
After 15 pitch shots, 5 from each of the locations mentioned above, compare your total and see how you compare to the pros:
- The best PGA tour pros average 19 points
- Typical Tour pros, 16 points
- Poor Tour pros, 14 points
- Weekend warriors, 11 points
- 80’s shooters, 9 points
- 90-shooters, 6 points
- 100-shooters, 3 points.
Try out these two golf practice drills and see how you score in each game. Golf should be fun shouldn’t it? I hope you enjoy practicing with purpose while still incorporating some competitive spirit to improve your golf game. Let me know in the comments below how you did!
**Download 15 drills I used to reach scratch golf here**
Chipping Drill – 100 Chips x 3 Holes
This is a time intensive drill that will take you between 1-2 hours to complete. You can dedicate a specific practice day to this drill or mix it into your full practice routine if you plan to be at the course 4 hours working on driving range and putting drills too.
For this chipping drill you’re going to locate a spot near the practice green to chip from so that you have 3 different distances to holes:
- Hole #1 on the green = 10-20 feet away from you
- Hole #2 on the green = 30-40 feet away from you
- Hole #3 on the green = 50-70 feet away from you
I call this the short hole, medium hole, and far hole.
You’ll chip from the same location in the rough but by varying distances to 3 different holes you get to practice your chipping distance control, learning to hit a short, medium, and long distance chip shot.
You’ll hit 100 chips to each hole for a total of 300 chips. It’s a high-volume chipping drill that gets you lots of reps so you can build skill faster.
Make sure to perform high quality reps where you focus on each chip shot trying your best. Don’t quickly hit each chip without much thought or pre-shot routine.
Sand Bunker Drill
Find a sand bunker to practice bunker shots from. Next, draw a long line in the bunker that is 10-15 feet long.
The goal is to improve your bunker contact. You’ll work on perfecting where you enter and exit the sand with your golf club, creating a nice divot as you splash sand out of the bunker.
The line represents the start of the divot.
Setup to the line so that you can make a full, normal bunker swing but without a golf ball. Try to create divots that start at the line and finish forward of the line.
If you’re hitting behind the line, this can lead to poor contact and chunks in the bunker.
Once you feel confident in your ability to strike the sand in the correct spot, place a ball and practice real repetitions to a green.
You can keep the line for a reference point as you hit bunker shots to the green to check how you’re doing with ball striking and divot location.
Additional Articles:
- The Ultimate Putting Tutorial: Putt Like a Pro
- Try Out This Chipping Practice Plan
- How to Escape Sand Bunkers: Golf Practice Drills
- Putting Drills for Beginners
Golf Practice System for Lower Scores
Learn the exact golf practice routines thousands of students at Foy Golf Academy are using to lower their golf scores.
Follow these step by step practice plans and watch video lessons to learn how to improve your golf swing, chipping, and putting fundamentals.
Get access to hundreds of golf drills to practice as well as content on the mental side of golf, fitness plans, worksheets, and many more resources. This is a complete golf practice system.
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Work hard,
Nick Foy, Instructor
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