This is how the driving range can make you worse

There is no official clock measuring this, but I am fairly certain my golf practice time has eclipsed the 10,000-hour barrier. That is the magic number for greatness, they say, which leads to the uncomfortable question of why I remain so stubbornly average.

>Probably because not all 10,000 hours should be graded the same.

>If you’re not familiar with the 10,000-hour rule, it isn’t just about golf. The concept was coined by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers, based on research by psychologist Anders Ericsson. That Ericsson himself later objected to how his work had been characterized is something we’ll get to later, but both cited case studies that proved the hours spent practicing matters: Ericsson’s original paper identified elite violinists who practiced on average 10,000 hours; and in Outliers, Gladwell described how the Beatles became musical masters thanks to the marathon sessions earlier in their career playing gigs in Hamburg, Germany.

>In time, the 10,000-hour rule took off as a catchy phrase with a simple message: If you want to be great, you simply need to put in the time.

>My latest Mind Games video explains why this concept has been largely misunderstood, and how this ties to the flawed way many of us practice golf. By the laziest interpretation of the 10,000-hour rule, the recipe to a scratch handicap involves a sufficient number of jumbo buckets at your local driving range. Hit enough balls, and do the same thing chipping and putting, and watch the strokes melt off your score.

>Neither Ericsson nor Gladwell suggested it was that simple, however, and Ericsson eventually began to resent how often his research had been quoted without including the most important part. What he said really mattered was “deliberate practice,” which he defined as a very focused, individualized type of training that is dependent on feedback and ongoing adjustments. In a golf context, it isn’t about banging balls at a range and trying to hit the picker, but paying close attention to how the ball behaves with every shot, and obsessing about the difference.

>Watch tour players practice and this is how they train. In fact, if they spend a lot of time on a driving range, they still might not hit many balls because every shot has a specific purpose.

>“I think the obvious thing is it's more specific, right?” two-time PGA Tour winner Ryan Fox said. “I think most amateurs get up there and tend to just hit a bunch of shots and then just smash drivers a lot of the time. But when I do practice, it's wedge tests, working on specific yardages, working on different shot shapes and everything like that. I want to see the ball come out the right window.”

>RELATED: You’ve been practicing wrong

>The absence of deliberate practice is not the only reason I don’t play on the PGA Tour, but it does explain why much of the time many of us spend working on our games can be misleading, and even counterproductive. Why? Because this incomplete version also creates a false impression that the way we hit balls in a driving range setting will translate seamlessly to the course. But consider the differences. On a driving range, we stand on a perfectly flat lie, tend to hit the same shot repeatedly, and can neglect to even identify a specific target. Plus, we’re not stressed in the same way we are on the golf course because, let’s be honest, it doesn’t really matter if we hit a good shot or not.

>All of these elements are counter to the principles of deliberate practice, and come with the added wrinkle of convincing us we’re better prepared for competition than we are. This explains that age-old golfer frustration, “But I hit it great on the range,” when we fail to understand why our tight draws off a driving range mat become weak cuts off a sidehill lie on the course.

>If anything, the Golf Digest Best Young Teacher Will Robins says the advancements in modern golf practice facilities have been to our detriment, and argues golfers of an earlier era were better at this out of necessity. With fewer balls to hit, and no one but themselves left to collect them when they were done, they were more invested in each shot as a result.

>“Back then a Trackman was a shag bag,” Robins says of golfers in the 1940 and 1950s. “You went out to a field, and you put your umbrella out there, and you hit at that target, and you learned your distances to your umbrella and your towel. Everything had a purpose because you’re like, ‘I have to go and pick this thing up. I have to go and find it afterwards.’ We’ve totally taken that away with the driving range. There’s just absolutely no accountability there.”

>The solution isn’t to boycott driving ranges, but to make better use of your time there by incorporating the necessary ingredients of effective practice. My video outlines other factors like variety, accountability, and a certain amount of stress—which is to say, if your practice sessions are perfectly enjoyable and relaxing, you’re probably doing something wrong.

>Speaking of which, this is also a main reason Golf Digest devised its series of Stress Tests, which are a series of practice games meant to approximate the competitive element of real golf simply. If you’re going to log hours practicing, this is one way to make sure it’s time well spent.

Golf Digest Stress Tests Golf Digest Logo The tour pro windows test Golf Digest Logo The credit card short putting test Golf Digest Logo The 'easy' up-and-down test