Toughen up your practice

If you really want to see improvements on the course and reap the full benefits of all your hard labour, you need to challenge yourself during your practice sessions. PGA professional Joe Ferguson explains how...

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Driving

Create your own target

Hitting towards a target on the range is not a bad use of your time, but we can be more focused than that. Knowing that the average fairway in the UK is about 35 yards wide, I will pick a target on the range that's narrower - about 20 yards. This fine-tunes my feel and perception for what a 'real' fairway is. All of a sudden, when I'm back out on the course, the 35-yard fairway seems massive and my confidence is sky-high.

I like to hit ten drives in a row and see how many of those I can keep within my 20-yard target. What's important is that I'm challenging myself and making notes, either on a notepad or my phone. Sometimes I'll try to hit ten in a row and go back to zero if I miss one. This adds a bit of pressure to the practice, so I'm not just going through the motions. When I have a score recorded, I can also come back to try and beat it next time.

Iron play

Finding the strike

Your front-to-back dispersion is equally as important as your left-to-right dispersion. To achieve the former, we need the strike to be precise. I've invested in a ButterBlade training club recently, which is about half the size of my 7-iron.