01 Why the range flatters you
Practising the same shot over and over is called blocked practice. It produces rapid improvement within the session: by the tenth ball you have adjusted, by the twentieth you are striking it well, and you leave convinced something has changed. What has changed is your performance on that specific repetition, in that specific state, off that specific flat lie.
A golf course removes every one of those supports. Different club, different lie, different target, different wind, one attempt, consequences attached. The skill you built in a block is a narrow one, and it has not been tested against any of that.
This is not an argument against ever hitting two of the same club in a row. Technical work needs repetition, and a change to the strike pattern or the club path has to be rehearsed before it can be used. It is an argument against a session that contains nothing else.
02 What the research found
The finding is old and unusually consistent. In a study published in 1979, John Shea and Robyn Morgan had participants learn movement patterns either in a blocked order or in a random one. The blocked group performed better during practice. On retention and transfer tests taken later, the random group performed better. The effect has been reproduced many times since and is known as contextual interference.
The interpretation is that mixing tasks forces the learner to rebuild the plan for each attempt rather than repeat the previous one. That reconstruction is harder, produces worse practice scores, and is precisely what the first tee demands. The uncomfortable conclusion for golfers is that the practice which feels worst while you are doing it is frequently the practice that works.
A caveat that matters. When a movement is genuinely new, or when a technical change is being made, some blocked repetition helps to establish it first. The sequence is repeat, then interleave, then test. Skipping straight to random practice with a change you cannot yet make simply produces random results.
03 A session in three blocks
One hour, one bucket, three parts, in this order. The proportions shift depending on whether you are rebuilding something or sharpening it, but the shape stays the same.
- Technical block, twenty minutes. One club, one intention, slow. This is where a gate drill or a path drill from the ball flight chapter belongs. No target scoring, no judgement of outcome, just the movement and the strike.
- Variable block, twenty minutes. Same intention, but change something every ball: club, target, trajectory, lie. Never hit the same shot twice in a row. Expect the strike quality to fall off, and let it.
- Transfer block, twenty minutes. Play holes in your head. Driver, then the club you would actually have left, then a wedge to a specific flag, with a full pre-shot routine before every ball and a score written down at the end. One attempt each, no reloads.
The transfer block is the part almost nobody does, and it is the part that most resembles golf. It is also the only block where hitting a bad shot has any consequence, which is exactly the condition you are trying to rehearse.
Caddie note
A pre-shot routine is a practice skill before it is a course skill. If it only appears on the first tee it is not a routine, it is a superstition. Build it into every ball of the transfer block until it costs you no attention at all.
04 Feedback, and why less is more
Launch monitors, video and a coach standing behind you all supply feedback, and feedback obviously helps. The complication, documented in a review of the motor learning literature published by Salmoni, Schmidt and Walter in 1984, is that feedback given after every attempt can create a dependency: performance improves while it is available and falls away when it is removed.
The practical version for a golfer is straightforward. Look at the screen after every third or fourth ball rather than every ball. Predict what the number will be before you look, then check. Predicting is the skill that survives to the course, where the only feedback available is what you can see and feel.
The same principle applies to your own eyes. Watching where every ball finishes on a range with distance markers teaches you to judge outcome, not to feel the movement. In the technical block, hit a few with your eyes on the divot rather than the flight.
05 Measuring transfer with games
Practice that is scored is practice you can compare with last month. Three games, each of which takes fifteen minutes and produces a single number to write down.
- Nine shots. Three clubs, three targets each, alternating in a fixed order. Score one point for each shot that finishes inside a defined circle. Out of nine.
- Par eighteen. Nine different spots around a practice green, none of them repeated. Par is two shots from each: one on, one in. Score against eighteen, and it is a genuinely hard target.
- Around the clock. Six four foot putts in a circle, all six in a row or start again. Record how many attempts the round took, as described in the putting chapter.
Keep the numbers in the same notebook as the three-putt audit. Improvement in golf is slow enough that it is invisible without a record, and a record turns a vague feeling of stagnation into a curve.
06 The week before a competition
Everything above is for building skill. The week before a competition is not the time to build anything. Drop the technical block, shorten the variable block, and spend the time on transfer work and on the short game, where confidence is built fastest and the risk of breaking something is lowest.
Two additions are worth the time. Play nine holes in the same conditions you expect on the day, and read the local rules sheet in advance, which is covered in the rules and scoring section. Knowing your options before you need them is a competition skill that costs nothing to acquire.