When you go to the range, evaluate your shotmaking in a realistic way.

In seven balls, say, you will hit one that is just PERFECT. You will hit four that you would take on the course all day. You will hit one or two that aren’t quite up to snuff, and every so often you will hit one that is, YEEEGH!

What you should try to do every time is hit one of the middle four.

That perfect shot? Admire it, and move on. Those shots just happen, and if you try to reproduce them, you just go backwards. When the moment is over, go back to hitting one of the middle four.

The ones that aren’t up to speed you can live with. You’re a recreational golfer; they’re going to happen.

The cringeworthy shot? That one demands a reset. Reproduce that swing, which you can do because it is so far away from your usual swing that the glaring error should stand out in hindsight.

Practice the right swing a few times to get the particular wrinkle ironed out, then go back to hitting one of the middle four.

So. Don’t chase perfection, fix the glaring error, and hit shots that are good enough.

Over time, the good enough shots will become more frequent, and better, which is what you are after. And the ones that make you look like you took up the game last week will disappear.

A few years ago, I put up a video post called How to Get Good at Golf. It was about installing the right movements into your swing.

After you have done that, the next step is to learn how to repeat those movements. That’s what this post is about.

Use your driver. That takes the ground out of play.

Tee up a ball. Now make five swings in one continuous motion. Pay attention to getting your swing right and identical several times in a row. It might take more than five swings to get there. If you’re having trouble, slow down until you can repeat.

When you do, without hesitation, address the ball and make your swing just like you have been practicing. If you hit a good shot, do it again: continuous swings you can repeat, then hit a ball.

If you did not hit a good shot, repeat, but WITH A SLOWER SWING. Very important.

Keep repeating, slowing down a bit more if you keep hitting bad shots. Sooner or later you will bust one. That is your tempo. Keep practicing at that tempo. DO NOT SPEED UP.

By swinging at that tempo, you give your swing the time it needs to fall into place. Swing faster and you push your body beyond its ability to perform a complicated series of movements correctly, which means you don’t accomplish your purpose. You actually make it worse because you are not giving the right things you learned a chance to emerge and repeat.

And remember, the point of this drill is not to hit balls. The ball is merely an indicator. This is a swing drill. Do it over and over until you get to the point where the right way is the only way you can swing.

That’s a lot to ask, but it’s the price of becoming good at golf. It’s with the price.

Golf Digest just published an article on three things you should be doing this winter to maintain your game and improve it. Read the article, it’s short, then come back here for my commentary.

1. Absolutely. Standing over a three-foot but, knowing that you are going to sink it, does wonders for your score and that confidence spills over to every other part of your game.

Make your target, instead of a fake hole, a 28-oz. tomato can. Hit the can dead center. See Better Recreational Golf, pp. 54-55 to find out why.

2. Stats. Fairways hit, greens in regulation, number of putts–not worth that much. Instead, keep number of full swings, number of short shots, length of each putt, hole by hole.

3. Get a lesson that deals with correcting why you aren’t hitting the ball straight on command. Take notes during the lesson. Then at home, work on those things every day. Go to the range once a week to put your practice to the test and find out which things are now working and which things need extra attention.

Real quick.

If you go to the driving range and an idea comes into your head to try something new and you try it and it starts working so well, ball after ball, that you can’t believe it and you think you have found The Secret To Golf that will solve the game forever, here’s what to do.

Sit down. Watch other people hit the ball. Chill.

After a few minutes, step onto your mat and start doing that same thing again.

If it works, you’re onto something.

If you can’t seem get it to work anymore, though, give it up. You got into a groove, you had some fun, but odds are that trying to recover that magic will make things worse, not better.

Golf is hard. You have to swing a club back behind your head, then around in front of you again so that the clubface has perfect geometry when it meets the ball while travelling at at least 80 mph. For some you, 100 mph or more.

Since the only part of the swing that really counts is when the clubface meets the ball, you get good at that by practicing just that. Here’s how I do it.

With a 7-iron in my hand, I’ll take the club not even halfway back. The shaft is still short of being parallel to the ground.

The important thing is for the sole of the clubhead, as you turn your head to look at it, to be pointing a bit up and to the left (not straight up and down!). This is the sign that the clubface is still square to the clubpath.

Now swing the club gently forward and through the ball, making sure of two key points. The hands lead the clubhead by just a bit. Don’t overdo it.

And, the sole of the clubhead strikes the ground for the first time about an inch in front of, that is, to the target side, of the ball. Look at that spot before you take away the club, and keep looking at it throughout the swing.

And this swing is slow. No rushing, no trying to “hit” the ball. Just swing the club with good rhythm and hit the ground in front of the ball.

I think once you have this figured out you will be very pleased with the way the ball launches off the clubface and into the air, and flies straight away from you.

Do this again, and again. You are practicing the feel of how the club moves through the impact zone. Note: not “how you move the club,” but “how the club moves.” That’s a big distinction.

After a couple dozen successful shots, try a longer swing, at the same speed, with that same rhythm, taking the club back the same way, and aiming for the ground one inch in front of the ball, hands ahead of the clubhead.

Good shot? Good! Now do the drill a couple dozen more times before you take another full swing. Etc.

What to practice:

Learn to make contact on the center of the clubface consistently.

Learn how to get on the green in one shot from under full-swing distances.

Learn how to hit chips/approach putts to one-putt range.

Get good at sinking 4-7 foot putts. These are the ones that good putters sink and poor putters don’t.

How to practice:

Measure the attention given to each one by balls hit, not by time spent. For example if your full swing practice is built around skill-building, it might take a half hour, at least, to hit 30 balls. You can hit thirty 4-7 foot putts in well under 10 minutes.

This professional practice plan shows you how this practice concept works in full.

A few years ago I posted a video lesson titled, How to Get Good at Golf. This is probably the most important post I have ever made.

The point I made is that a golf stroke is the sum of its parts. To learn the swing, you have to learn its parts and how they fit together.

Practicing swing after swing as a whole does you no good.

In my video essay, Six Fundamentals of the Recreational Golf Swing, I described in detail six features of a functioning recreational golf swing.

At the range, and in my back yard, I practice them, and a few other movements that are specific to me. I practice each one by itself, to reinforce each one in my unconscious mind’s concept of golf swing movement.

I also practice them individually because several of them are not my natural inclination. I get lazy and my swing starts failing because one or the other gets left out.

But because I practice them so much and am so familiar with them all, it’s easy for me to notice which one is missing, so just a few reminder swings makes my swing whole again.

So, again: your task is to figure out the movements that make your swing work, what your fundamentals are, and practice each one, by itself, over, and over, and over.

That’s how you get good. And stay good.

There’s a lot to think about when you’re playing golf. The less you have to think about, the better it will be for you.

That means making as much as you can automatic. I know that every so often you play less than your best because you forgot to do something important in hitting your shot.

The way out of that lapse is to practice shotmaking habits when you go to the range. This is what I mean.

There’s a ball in front of you. Before you swing at it, check your grip, aim yourself and check your aim, check your ball position, check your posture. EVERY TIME. It takes only a few seconds to do this, and by going through this procedure before every range ball, you take one step closer to not forgetting to do it when you play.

If you have a practice swing technique you rely on, do that, too.

By doing this sixty times before you hit sixty balls, the same way every time, you build habit. You’ll eventually do it right without even thinking about it. That’s your goal.

Or when you putt on the practice green, do the same thing. Before you hit any putt, line it up. Get a feel for the distance, however you do that.* Check your grip. Check how far away from the ball you stand. Check the width of your stance. Check your posture. Check your aim. Check the alignment of the putter’s face. There might be some more things for you. There are for me, but they are personal, so I won’t go into them.

The point is to go through the whole procedure before any shot to build up the habit. All of it is automatic so all you have to think about is hitting the ball into the fairway/green/hole.

I’m not forgetting the short game, but you should be able to fill in that blank on your own.

Another way of looking at this is that automatic features of your game keep you from straying from what works. We get lazy, we forget. Then you aren’t playing well and you can’t figure out what went wrong.

Every time you go the range practice your shotmaking procedures constantly. The little things. You will never get to the point where you can stop doing this.

*Read my distance finding method called Triangulated Approach Putting.

I went to the range a few days ago and hit a medium bucket of balls. I got a lot of things done.

Then I went to the practice green. There must have been about fifteen other guys on the range, but I walked onto the practice green alone.

And I stayed there alone until I went home about 45 minutes later.

Happens all the time. Like it’s my private practice green. I just don’t get it.