Looking for a practice schedule to help you focus on golf more? Want to become one of the the best junior golfers and climb the rankings of the AJGA?
In this article, I’ll outline a simple but effective golf schedule for junior golfers to follow assuming you have school Monday through Friday and free time on weekends to spend practicing golf.
Resource: Download our favorite 15 practice drills
Monday – Rest Day
After practicing golf hard all weekend, we recommend Monday as a day of rest with no golf practice drills. Focus on school and get ahead on your homework so you free up time in the evenings on the other weekdays ahead.
However, if you absolutely must practice still, do so from home. Grab your putter and spend 15 to 20 minutes working on your putting stroke trying to keep it straight.
Also practice your putter grip. Fundamentals are important so don’t overlook them and ignore them!
Tuesday – Putting & Chipping
The first practice to start off the new week should include both putting and chipping drills. Short game is very important if you want to quickly improve and will be needed when competing in junior golf tournaments.
Putting Drill: The Circle
- Place 5 tees in a circle around a hole and measure each one 2 feet away from the hole
- Place a golf ball at each of the tees
- Go around the circle and try to make all 5 balls in a row to pass
- Repeat by moving the tees back to 3 feet, 4 feet, and so on as you pass each level
Chipping Drill: Short, Medium, Long Chip Shot
- Find 3 holes on the practice green; one close to you, one in the middle, and one far away
- Chip one ball to each hole and see if you can get all 3 balls within 5 feet of the hole to pass
- Then move to a new location in the rough and repeat this drill again to the same 3 holes
- Next practice, pick 3 new holes to chip to
Wednesday – Driving Range
This is a great day to hit some balls on the driving range and work on your irons, woods, and driver. It’s important to focus on every shot. Each bucket only has maybe 60 balls so take your time and make every rep count.
Driving Range Drill:
- Start with your driver and draw an imaginary fairway out on the range you’re aiming for
- Hit your driver and try to get it within the boundaries you set so you’ve “hit a fairway”
- If you successfully kept your driver straight and in your imaginary fairway, then hit your 9 iron or 8 iron next
- If you miss the fairway, hit your 7 or 6 iron next
- Pick a green or distance target to aim at for the iron shot and find one that is close to the right distance for that iron you’ve selected. Know your iron distances ahead of time so you can look at the range chart to see what target matches up with your iron’s potential distance.
- Track if you successfully hit your iron within 5 yards (15 feet) of the target green on the driving range
- Repeat this drill 14 times and count how many fairways and greens you successfully hit (2 x 14 = 28 shots)
- Try to beat your score by repeating this drill 1 more time (2 x 28 shots = 56 range balls)
Thursday – Short Game
Thursday is the day to practice short game and specifically your up and down conversions. An up and down is when you miss a green but successfully still make par by hitting a great chip shot followed by a 1 putt par save.
Anytime you miss a green in regulation you should feel confident you can still save par, because you’ll have practiced your up & down conversions plenty by doing this drill every Thursday!
Short Game Practice Drill:
- Pick a spot about 15 feet away from the green that is in the rough. This will simulate missing the green on your approach shot and leaving yourself a chip shot from the rough several yards away still from the green.
- Set down one golf ball in the rough by dropping it from shoulder height. This way you can’t dictate the lie, let the ball fall and wherever it lands, play it from that lie “as-is” no adjusting it with your wedge to fluff it up!
- Now pick a hole on the practice green to chip to and hit your chip shot trying to get it within 5 feet of the hole
- Regardless where the chip shot ends up, grab the putter and head onto the green to attempt your 1 putt par save
- If you successfully sink the putt, count it as +1 points. If you two putt or worse or if you hit multiple chips to get onto the green, count it as -1 points. This makes it either a pass or fail situation.
- Repeat 18 times by picking 18 different locations to chip from and different holes on the green to chip to.
- See if you can end up with a positive score, meaning you converted more up and downs than you failed.
- A score of 0 after 18 holes, means you got up and down 9 times but also failed to get up and down 9 times, cancelling your score out to 0 points.
Friday – Driving Range
On Friday you should practice on the range again by hitting through all your different clubs.
It’s good to start with the 9 iron and then hit your 8 iron, 7 iron, and so on until you’ve worked your way through the Driver. Then start over again with the 9 iron and work through all the clubs, hitting one shot with each.
This trains you to hit your best shot because you only get 1 chance with that club before moving to the next club. We aren’t hitting multiple 9 iron shots in a row with the same club.
Hit once and try to get it straight and close distance wise to the target on the driving range. Then move to the next club and see if you can get through all irons successfully without a terrible swing.
Spend the last 10 balls in your bucket working on full wedge swings by finding a driving range target that is 40-80 yards away from you. Practicing your wedge shots from 40 to 100 yards is super important to scoring well.
Saturday – Play 18 Holes
You’ve spent Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday rotating between driving range and putting/chipping practice drills. You’ve earned to have some fun! Go out and play 18 holes testing what you’ve been working on at the practice facility.
Keep track of stats like:
- Number of Fairways in Regulation You Hit
- Number of Greens in Regulation You Hit
- Up & Down Conversions
- Total Number of Putts
Then you’ll be able to compare your stats overtime and see you’re improving in these areas even if your score hasn’t caught up yet. It will though!
So don’t worry if scoring isn’t showing improvement yet. Get the fundamentals down first like successfully converting up & downs and reducing your total putts per round.
Sunday – Practice or Play
Sunday is a free day to choose how you’d like to practice your golf game. You’ll know from Saturday’s round of golf what you need to work on so maybe spend time Sunday practicing those things.
If you struggle with distance putting from far away, resulting in 3 putts and 4 putts, then spend Sunday hitting lag putts to improve your distance control.
If you missed a lot of putts inside of 5 feet, go back and practice the circle drill from Tuesday’s practice to work on your close range putting skills!
Overall, you judge what needs worked on Sunday and make it happen! Aim to spend 2-4 hours at the golf course practicing since this is a free day you don’t have school!
Golf Practice Plan to Follow to Improve Golf Scores
Parents of junior golfers! If your child wants to follow more advanced training plans than the above junior golf practice schedule, consider signing them up for one of these practice plans we’ve built.
They are downloadable so once you checkout with our shopping cart, you’ll have access to download the PDF files and print them out to write down your junior golfers stats as they complete these practices!
