There are more golf drills on the internet than there are golfers, and most of them are missing the only two things that make a drill work: a fault it addresses and a number attached.
A drill is only a drill if it fixes something specific and tells you whether it worked. Everything else is a way of hitting balls while feeling productive. These are organised by the part of the swing they address, with reps, frequency and a definition of what good looks like, so you can pick the two that apply to you and ignore the rest.
What separates a drill from a distraction
Three things, and most internet drills have none of them.
A fault it addresses. A drill for a fault you do not have will introduce one. This is the commonest way golfers get worse from practice.
Feedback you cannot argue with. A headcover you either hit or miss. A towel you either touch or clear. A stick you either strike or rotate away from. If the only feedback is how it felt, it will not change anything, because a fault feels normal by definition.
A dose. Reps, frequency, and a review date. Without these you are hoping.
Setup and takeaway
Backswing
Downswing and sequence
Impact and low point
Feel vs real
What it feels like
A drill that is working usually feels wrong and exaggerated, like you have overdone the change by a mile and the ball is about to go somewhere terrible.
What actually happens
You have moved a few degrees. The exaggeration is the mechanism, not a side effect: your normal position feels normal precisely because it is what you always do, so correct will feel extreme until it is not. Expect that to fade over about two weeks.
How to fit them into a session
Drills belong in the technical block, not spread across the whole session. The structure that works is in how to practice golf, and briefly it is: warm up, one drill with repetition, then randomised play where you change club and target every shot, then something with a consequence.
The randomised block is where the drill gets tested. If the change survives a different club and a full routine, it is real. If it only exists during the drill, it is a rehearsal.
Fault
Drill to use
Weeks before judging
Swaying off the ball
Alignment stick barrier
3
Coming over the top
Headcover gate
2
Fat and thin strikes
Towel behind the ball
2
Poor sequencing, armsy swing
Step drill
3
Off-centre contact
Foot spray, then the matching drill
Diagnostic first
General inconsistency, loss of balance
Feet together
2
Key takeaways
A drill needs a fault it addresses, feedback you cannot argue with, and a dose. Most have none.
The best drills make the fault physically impossible rather than asking you to remember.
Do one drill, not six. Contradictory feelings cancel each other out.
Feet together is the most universally useful drill in golf and fixes several faults at once.
Diagnose with foot spray before choosing a drill, so you work on the fault you actually have.
Give any drill three sessions a week for two to three weeks before judging it.
Test the change in randomised practice. If it only exists during the drill, it is a rehearsal.
Common questions
What are the best golf swing drills?
The feet together drill for balance and rotation, the headcover gate for coming over the top, and the towel behind the ball for low point control. Those three address the faults most common in amateur golf and all give feedback you cannot argue with.
How do I know which drill I need?
Diagnose first. Spray your clubface with foot powder and hit twenty shots to see where you are striking it, and film yourself face-on and down the line. A drill for a fault you do not have will introduce one, which is the most common way practice makes golfers worse.
How many drills should I do in one session?
One. Each drill asks the body for something different, and doing several at once means none gets enough repetition while you accumulate contradictory feelings. If you have two genuine faults, work on the earlier one in the swing first, since later faults are often compensations for it.
How long before a drill works?
Three sessions a week for two to three weeks before you judge it, and about six weeks before it holds under pressure. Anything that improves within a single session is usually a compensation rather than a change, and compensations expire.
Can I do golf swing drills at home?
Many of them, yes. Position and rehearsal drills, the pump drill and slow-motion work all need no ball. What you cannot do at home is confirm the strike, so pair home rehearsal with range sessions where you test it against a ball.
Why does a drill feel so exaggerated?
Because your normal position feels normal by definition, so a correct position will feel extreme until it becomes familiar. The exaggeration is the mechanism rather than a side effect. Expect the strangeness to fade over about two weeks of consistent work.
Should I use training aids or just drills?
Start with drills, because a headcover, a towel, a stick and foot spray cover almost everything and cost nothing. Training aids are worth it when they give feedback a household object cannot, and worth avoiding when they simply hold you in a position without teaching you to find it.
What is the feet together drill for?
Balance, rotation and centre strike, all at once. With your feet almost touching, any lateral sway or lunge costs you balance immediately, so the body has to rotate around a stable centre. It is the most generally useful drill in golf and takes ten shots.
Do position drills actually work?
For breaking a specific defined fault, yes. For general improvement they are less useful, because a swing is a continuous motion and training checkpoints can produce a golfer who can reach a position and not swing. Use them to fix something specific, then get back to hitting shots at targets.
Should I hit balls while doing drills?
Both. Rehearsals without a ball let you feel the movement without the pressure of contact, and shots with a ball confirm whether it survives at speed. The usual pattern is ten rehearsals, five shots, ten more rehearsals.
Tom Ashworth is a PGA Professional who has taught golf since 2012, working mainly with beginners and mid-handicappers at club level in Surrey. He reviews the instruction guides on Learn Golf for technical accuracy before they publish.
Most of his teaching is with players in their first three years of the game, and most arrive having been told too much: six swing thoughts collected from videos, half of them contradicting each other. His approach is to check the grip and the alignment before touching the swing, on the basis that most bad ball flight is decided at address.
