For beginners and experienced players alike, practice is key to becoming better at golf. However, it’s not always possible to go over to the golf course every time you want to practice. This begs the question, can you practice golf at home?
Here are Some of Our Favorite Home Golf Practice Accessories
Although practicing a game meant for the open space might seem strange to you, but it’s still possible. In this article, we will discuss the best ways to improve your game when you’re stuck at home.
Swing Drills
One of the most basic forms of practice you can do at home is practicing your golf swing. By following simple swing drills, you can improve your game without leaving your home. Here are three useful techniques:
Swing Changes
One of the most common swing drills includes practice for swing changes. You can use these drills to alter your downswing or backswing position. To start off, place yourself in front of a mirror or a window.
After that, slowly move into the position required for your swing. If you’re not sure whether your position is perfect, keep adjusting by checking your position in the mirrors. Most golfers don’t practice beyond this because usually they can only practice a broken swing at home and aren’t able to translate what they learn on the golf course.
This is why you also need to practice the required swing changes in slow-motion without stopping. As simple as it may seem, it is surprisingly hard to do when you start practicing. Keep in mind that you need to practice at 50% to 75% of your usual swing speed.
You need to invest considerable time and use a mirror or window to adjust if you want to learn anything significant. With that said, only doing either the two forms of practice for swing change will affect your progress.
Ideally, you should try a combination of both these methods to improve your game. You should start with the slowed practice and then speed your swing up as you finish to engrain the swing changes when you are practicing at home.
Perfecting Impact
One way to analyze the way the impact of the ball is to make the practice swing and stop as the club makes an impact. When you look at your club at that exact moment, you can see where your club is pointing. To become a better player, you need to work on your impact position.
If you’re the kind of player who slices the ball, it’s highly likely that you will notice an open clubface every time the club makes an impact with the ball.
It isn’t easy to help golfers improve their impact position, because you can only sense it when you know what great impact feels like. Still, you can practice descending strikes and compression of golf balls at home. You can practice it either against the corner of a wall or by draping a towel over your club.
Start with a set-up position and press forward against the wall or the towel without performing a backswing. As you try to apply greater force, your body will slightly adjust to an expert position.
Practice the Basics
Often, beginners struggle with the basics and are unable to improve as players because of it. You need to keep your posture, grip, and alignment tidy to prevent yourself from falling into bad swing habits. As much as 80% to 90 % of total swing flaws are developed because of a poor set up.
The golf grip is the only component of your drive that links your body to the clubface angle and your swing. By changing your golf grip without altering your golf swing, you can improve your swings considerably and reduce the chance of splicing the ball on impact.
To improve your grip, you need to start with both of your hands twisted round from their normal position. Make sure that when you change your grip, your clubface must point to the target.
For the majority of golfers, the top hand is responsible for slicing the ball. Once you master developing a great left-hand grip, the right hand will fall into place automatically.
Indulge in Golf Exercises
Although working on your fitness away from the golf course won’t turn you into a pro player automatically, it can definitely help you to improve your game. If you have good fitness, you will be able to swing the golf club effectively, generate greater clubhead velocity, and practice for an extended period of time.
Since most of the power behind your shots come from your lower back and hips, it’s important to work on hip stability and mobility. A considerable number of golfers suffer from these problems and have to deal with issues such as lower back pain because of a lack of exercise.
The mobility of the hips will affect your movement during a swing, whereas stability has an effect on the control over your swing. Being fit will allow you to have greater control over joint movement and, thus, greater control over your strike.
Practice with a Golf Simulator
A golf simulator is another excellent option for practicing golf at home. A number of players use these simulators to re-enact the action on a golf course. These simulators recreate the entire environment of a golf course by using digital graphics and projection.
As a result, users of the golf simulator are able to play on a course using very small space and minimal equipment. While you can find numerous golf simulators at pro shops, it’s also possible to set one up in your own home.
When most golfers go to a driving range, they tend to repeat the same patterns and keep making the same mistakes over and over again. You probably would have seen people hitting 20 consecutive shots with the same club, and spending the majority of their time trying to see how far they can hit. Therefore, they don’t have the time to practice effectively.
On the other hand, a golf simulator allows you to face the same conditions you face at a golf course. Therefore, you can practice at a range of different clubs and courses and improve multiple aspects of your game. Furthermore, you can give more attention to the weaker facets of your game.
The best part of practicing on a golf simulator is that you can track intrinsic details about your shots and notice where you are going wrong. A simulator will provide you with reliable data things such as your golf ball flight.
Therefore, you can make small changes to your swing and action and evaluate the results instantaneously. However, it’s important for you to keep on experimenting to improve your game.
Try making small adjustments to your alignment, grip, stance, ball position, and other aspects of your swing. Notice what each change brings to your ball flight.
For instance, some players hit the golf ball farther if they have a lower grip on the shaft of the club. Similarly, some golfers might improve the launch conditions of their drivers by teeing it higher. A golfing simulator gives you the option to run these experiments, track progress, and improve your game with the help of analytics.
If you’re seeking for a surreal experience in a golfing simulator, you should consider the ProTee golf simulator. ProTee Golf Simulator is renowned for being favored by seasoned golfers. The simulator provides an extremely realistic experience of golfing using its highly advanced software.
It contains a highly advanced golf mat filled with several sensors. These sensors detect and track every aspect of your golf swing from clubhead speed, clubface angle, and swing trajectory to swing tempo, strike zone position, and ball speed. Furthermore, it can also track the path of the ball and calculate the rotational speeds and the launch angle.
You can calculate real-time statistics of your shot and gather insights about the draw, slice, fade, hook, pull, and push in your strike. It also takes into account the strength and direction of the wind available on the selected course to visualize your shot. Therefore, you will be able to witness every necessary detail about your shots and improve your game exponentially.
If you buy the premium package, you will be able to experience a real feel of the gameplay. The system will detect finer details of the putt. Therefore, you can practice on the ultimate putting simulation from tee to tee.
Our Final Thoughts
While practicing at a golf course is perhaps the best way to improve your game, using these techniques at home can help you improve your game as well. There are a bunch of products on the market to allow you to practice your golf game even when you’re at home. Here are some of our favorites.
