This a practice system that I use when I’m working on the range. I practice from the same side of the range and face the same direction for basically every shot I hit.
Note: This is not my system. I discovered this while reading Practical-Golf, a blog that I follow written by a scratch golfer. He interviewed a former PGA tour member, Scott Fawcet, that came up with the DECADE system. His methodology of stats and practice really aligned with how I currently analyze my game and the way he articulated his vision of a golf shot aligned with me.
This is how I used to envision my shots and I couldn’t articulate exactly how to draw it out until I saw Scott’s video. I used google maps to draw a straight line down the angle of my practice range out to about 300 yards.
- At 300 yards, the dispersion is 60 yards.
- At 250 yards, the dispersion is 50 yards.
- At 200 yards, the dispersion is 40 yards.
- At 150 yards, the dispersion is 30 yards.
- At 100 yards, the dispersion is 20 yards.
I can envision exactly where these imaginary lines are. I know exactly where the distances are to the poles and I know how far left or right of each one my shots went by looking at the trees in the distance.
I have this map for every range that I frequently practice on.
I will use this setup and vary the difficulty by reducing the dispersion, but the goal when practicing the skill of finding target is always going to be landing a shot within some pre-defined area.
I think this is a very effective way of practice on the range, because a 100-150 wide yard range doesn’t give you a good visualization of how effective your shot was.
