AUGUSTA, Ga.—Every shot players hit on Augusta National's pristine $140 million practice area is on record this week via a new feature in the Masters app.
"I think it's really, really cool," Nicolai Hojgaard said, "You can follow every shot and also see the numbers and how players prepare."
That's right, Nicolai, we can. It's truly delightful news for the most hardcore of golf fans, and even in the range-shortened practice we could glean some interesting insights from the data. We got a fuller look at players' practice sessions. Here's a couple of interesting insights that popped up.
JD Cuban
1. Pace yourself like the pros
The first, most interesting is how comparatively few golf balls the pros hit to the rest of us. The players who hit the most golf balls on Tuesday—Max Homa and Bryson DeChambeau—hit about 240 golf balls each. And those 240 balls were hit across two different range sessions, over multiple hours.
240 golf balls is simply not that many by many range rats' standards. A large bucket at your local driving range usually has about 100 golf balls in it, and many amateurs rip through that in less than an hour.
The lesson here? That even the biggest range rats on tour aren't rifling thoughtlessly through golf balls. They're diligent, with each and every ball they hit.
"It's planned. It's strategic," Bryson said of his practice sessions. "So I know what I'm going to do during the week based on where I need certain things to be."
2. Work in some chippy wedges
It was also interesting to see how pros worked in baby wedge shots, especially between drivers. They'd never hit too many drives consecutively without working in some shorter shots.
Here, for instance, was a common pattern you'd see in Bryson's range session. He was testing drivers at the time (those white bars). After 15-20 drives he would put the big stick away, get the wedge out, then hit short wedge shots (the green bars) then build slowly back up to hitting drivers again.
Stephan Jaeger does something similar and even more interesting. Jaeger ends each session with a handful of drives that he hits as hard as he can. But notice here how he ended his session:
- Four drivers
- One chipped wedge
- Five drivers
- One chipped wedge
- Three drivers
- One chipped wedge
- Two drivers
- One chipped wedge
- One driver
"Practicing like that, it just ebbs and flows," DeChambeau said. "It's based on what I sense I need. It's a requirement that I have for my own personal feeling of comfort."
3. Phase your practice sessions
Although the exact details change, each player's practice session follows a similar flow:
First, a wedge-focused warm up. They average about 60 yards in length, and this only lasts about five shots.
As they're getting warm, players then clip into swing improvement mode. Drills, feels, and other things to get their technique in order.
JD Cuban
Then, players start hitting different shots. This is where you see some interesting things happening with players' curve numbers. Here's a three-shot sample from Ludvig's session:
- Shot 1: 176 yard, 0 ft (straight shot)
- Shot 2: 179 yards, 26 ft curve to the right (fade shot)
- Shot 3: 174 yards, 13 ft curve to the left (draw shot)
"If I'm working on some things I like to spend a little bit of time on that," Aberg says. "Then I always like to go in to hit different shots. I hit a draw 8-iron right of this pin, hit a fade 7-iron to this pin because that keeps my swing very matched up."
A little technique, a little artistry, then they work up to drivers and call it a day. A structured practice session for better results—and something the rest of us can learn from.