Launch monitor or simulator
A launch monitor answers questions the range can only guess at: what every club really carries, and what your driver pattern really looks like. These drills only make sense because of the tech.
The Carry Map
25 minThe single highest-value hour a launch monitor offers: measure what every club in the bag actually carries — not what it carried once, downhill, in July. Approach play improves the day the guessing stops.
Virtual Worst Ball
25 minWorst ball — golf's most demanding practice format — without needing an empty course: the simulator replays any hole on command. Two balls a shot, always playing the worse, converts a sim session from range time into examination time.
The Spin Window
15 minWedge shots that hop and stop aren't magic — they're clean grooves, clean strikes, and spin numbers that repeat. Watching spin on fifteen half wedges teaches what actually kills it (grass between face and ball, thin strikes, slow swings) faster than any tip.
The Dispersion Oval
20 minOne drive tells you nothing; twenty drives draw a shape. Seeing your real left-right spread as an oval on the screen replaces wishful aiming with an honest personal fairway — and quietly retires the idea that your best drive is your normal one.
The Smash Ladder
20 minSmash factor — ball speed divided by club speed — is the launch monitor's purest strike grade: swing effort cancels out and only contact quality remains. Chasing smash instead of distance turns a driver session into a center-face session, which is where distance actually lives.
Start Line, By the Numbers
15 minThe launch monitor measures the one thing your eyes can't at a range: exact start direction. Twenty balls with a called start window and the machine as referee calibrate the clubface faster than a season of squinting.
Scoring-Clubs Par 3s
25 minMost sim rounds are driver shows. Playing a virtual par-3 course with nothing longer than an 8-iron turns the same screen into a scoring-clubs examination — the shots that actually decide your handicap, under card-and-pencil pressure.
Sim Skins
25 minA simulator round against friends — or your own best ball — with something riding on every hole is the closest home golf gets to tournament pressure. Skins format keeps every swing alive: one great hole wins the pot the way one great hole should.
How to practice with a launch monitor or simulator
Since consumer launch monitors arrived, more golfers than ever own the numbers — and most sessions still chase one of them: total distance. The monitor’s real gifts are humbler and worth far more. Average carry per club. Strike quality via smash factor. The true width of your dispersion. These are the numbers that choose clubs and targets on the course, and one honest session can map them all.
The rule that separates practice from entertainment on a sim: every ball gets a decision first. The drills here are built that way — call the carry before the screen reports, pick the start-line window before the swing, play formats (skins, worst ball, par-3 loops) where the next shot depends on the last.
And treat indoor numbers with one grain of salt: range balls and worn balls read low on spin and carry. Map your bag with the ball you play, and re-map each season — carries drift, and the chart should drift with them.