The 50-ball session.
A small bucket, an hour, and a plan. This walks you ball by ball from "swing at it and see" to a repeatable motion and a set of distances that are actually yours.
One ball, one idea, one thing to feel. Tap through it at the range on your phone.
Warm up first. Small bucket, not large. 50 balls, not 200.
Balls 1 to 5 teach you everything: grip, posture, ball position, alignment, swing. Balls 6 to 47 drill one idea at a time through the bag. Balls 48 to 50 play an imaginary hole.
Write your distances down before you leave the parking lot. That's the thing you're actually here for.
Before you start
🥋 Get a small bucket
50-ish balls. $5–$12 at most ranges. Don't get a large one. You'll get tired and start swinging badly, which is worse than not swinging at all.
⏱ Take your time
An hour, not twenty minutes. Rapid-firing balls builds nothing. Between each one, actually reset. This isn't a race.
📱 Phone in your pocket
Tap through as you go. Read the ball, hit the ball, tap next. Don't read ahead. One idea at a time is the whole design.
A golf swing is a fast, violent rotation of your spine, and yours is about to do it for the first time. Golf hurts a lot of beginners, mostly lower backs, wrists, ribs, and elbows, and almost all of it comes from swinging hard while cold.
Five minutes before ball 1: arm circles both directions, torso twists with a club across your shoulders, a few bodyweight squats, and ten easy half-swings with a wedge, building slowly. That's the whole prevention plan.
Sharp pain is not soreness. Soreness is dull and shows up tomorrow. Sharp is your body telling you to stop, so stop for the day. And expect the day after to be worse than the day of. You'll find muscles you've never once thought about. That fades after a few sessions.
Totally fine. Every step lists alternatives, and you should use the closest thing you own. These steps exist to get you comfortable with the clubs in your bag, not to make you buy more. Skip anything you don't have.
The session
Just hit it.
// Driver
The whole session at a glance
| Balls | Club | What you're building |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Driver | Your baseline. No instruction at all. |
| 2 to 5 | Driver | Grip, posture, ball position, alignment, and the swing. Everything you need to know, in four balls. |
| 6 to 15 | Driver | One idea at a time: tempo, tension, hips, finish, rhythm. |
| 16 to 20 | Hybrid / 3-wood | Sweep vs. hit down. The most useful club in your bag. |
| 21 to 26 | 5-iron | The big one: hitting down to make it go up. |
| 27 to 29 | 6-iron | Proving it's one swing, not fourteen. |
| 30 to 33 | 7-iron | Your reference club. Repeatability over everything. |
| 34 to 39 | 8 and 9-iron | Aiming at things. Accuracy over distance. |
| 40 to 42 | Pitching wedge | Full wedge distance, your short-game anchor. |
| 43 to 47 | Wedges | The clock-face method. Four distances from two clubs. |
| 48 to 50 | Mixed | Play an imaginary hole. Full routine. One shot each. |
You don't need to run all 50 every time. Once you've done it once, a good maintenance session is: 10 wedges, 10 7-irons, 10 hybrids, 10 drivers, and 10 balls playing imaginary holes. Always end on a club you like.
And spend ten minutes on the practice putting green. It's free, it's a third of your strokes, and almost nobody does it.
Write your numbers down
The most valuable thing you take home from this session isn't a swing, it's a table of numbers. Fill it in before you leave the parking lot, while it's fresh.
The chart lives on the Clubs page. Type your numbers in, they save in your browser, and they'll show up on the Cheat Sheet in place of the generic ranges.
Method: hit five, throw out the best and the worst, average the middle three. That's your number. It's more honest than the one you want it to be, and the honest one is what helps you on the course.
Numbers in hand? Then you're ready to go play.
Your first round →