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Practice swing or swing drill — which one actually works?
Most golfers take a practice swing before they hit the ball. It feels purposeful. It feels like preparation. But if you have a repetitive fault in your swing, that practice swing is doing almost nothing — because you're just rehearsing the same habit you're trying to break.
There's a better way. And one of the best players in the world has been using it for years.
The problem with the practice swing
A standard practice swing is fine if your technique is already where you want it. But for most club golfers, it isn't. You have a pattern — maybe it's coming over the top, maybe it's an early release, maybe it's a tendency to flip through impact — and that pattern is deeply grooved. Your nervous system knows it. It's familiar, it's comfortable, and a casual rehearsal swing will almost always drift back towards it.
The practice swing gives you a feeling of preparation without actually changing anything. You step in and hit — and the habitual move takes over.
"By over-feeling a stretch or a move, you give your body a stronger, more specific sensation to hold onto when you actually play the shot."
A swing drill is completely different. Rather than trying to make your normal swing, you exaggerate a specific feel — a stretch, a position, a movement — that directly counteracts your fault. The exaggeration is the point. It creates a stronger neural signal that can actually compete with your habitual pattern when the pressure of a real shot kicks in.
What Justin Rose does before he hits
Justin Rose is one of the most consistent ball strikers on tour. He has a classic, repeatable swing — but watch him closely before he plays a shot and you'll notice he doesn't take a casual practice swing. He has a very specific drill feel that he uses every time.
Rose works on keeping his hands low through the transition while holding his shoulders closed as long as possible before delivery. This isn't a swing thought — it's a physical exaggeration he rehearses deliberately before stepping into the shot.
The effect of this is significant. By keeping the shoulders closed longer, Rose ensures the club is dropping into the slot from the inside rather than being thrown over the top. The low hands reinforce a shallow attack angle and help him maintain control of the clubface through impact. Together these two feels keep him in control of his ball flight, which is why his shot dispersion is so consistently tight.
The key insight here is that Rose isn't practising his swing — he's rehearsing the specific corrective sensation that keeps his pattern honest under pressure.
How to apply this to your own game
You don't need to copy Justin Rose's drill. What you need is your own equivalent — a drill feel from your range practice that you know makes a genuine difference to your strike or your flight.
Think about it this way: you probably already have one. There's likely a drill your coach has given you, or something you've discovered yourself, that when you do it on the range you hit the ball noticeably better. Most golfers leave that drill on the range and go back to their standard pre-shot routine on the course. That's a missed opportunity.
Identify your drill feel
What is the one practice drill or exaggerated movement that consistently improves your ball striking on the range? If you're not sure, that's worth exploring with a coach.
Replace your practice swing with it
Instead of making a casual rehearsal swing, perform your drill feel deliberately before stepping into the shot. Make it a real, committed movement — not a token gesture.
Step in and trust it
Once you've done the drill, step in and hit without overthinking. The drill has done its job — it's primed the sensation. Now let the swing happen.
Test it on the range first
Before taking this onto the course, spend a session on the range consciously replacing every practice swing with your drill feel. Get comfortable with the routine before the pressure of a round.
Why this works — the science of feel
The reason exaggerated drill feels work better than standard practice swings comes down to how the nervous system processes movement. When you repeat a fault over thousands of swings, that pattern becomes the default — it's the path of least resistance. A gentle practice swing doesn't provide enough of a contrasting signal to override it.
But an exaggerated feel does. By deliberately amplifying the corrective movement, you create a strong enough sensation that the nervous system can reference it when the real swing fires. You won't actually produce the exaggerated movement in your full swing — that's not the goal. The goal is that the exaggerated feel pulls your pattern towards where you want it to be.
This is why the best coaches in the world don't just tell their players what to do — they find the specific feel that makes the right movement accessible under pressure.
"The drill won't produce an exaggerated swing. It produces a feeling that pulls your real swing in the right direction."
The bigger picture
This principle — replacing generic preparation with specific, targeted drill feels — is one of the most underused tools in the amateur game. Tour players do this instinctively because their coaches have given them the feels that work for their specific patterns. Club golfers rarely have the same clarity about what their corrective feel should be, which is why so much range practice doesn't translate to the course.
If you're working with a coach, ask them directly: what is the one drill feel I should be using as my pre-shot routine? The answer to that question is worth more than almost any other swing tip.
And if you're not sure where to start — that's exactly what a coaching assessment is for.
Find the drill feel that works for your swing
Through data-led online coaching, we identify your specific fault pattern and build a set of drill feels that you can take onto the course — just like the one Justin Rose uses.
- Full swing analysis via CoachNow
- Personalised drill programme each week
- Weekly video call to review and adjust
- Available to golfers worldwide