Somewhere between 40 and 60 balls, hit with a clear purpose, is the sweet spot for most golfers. That surprises people, because the instinct at a driving range is to buy the biggest bucket available and swing until it is empty. But practice quality drops off sharply once fatigue and autopilot set in, and the golfers who improve fastest are almost always the ones hitting fewer balls with more intention. Here is how to structure a session that actually moves your game forward.
By The Hertsmere team4 min read
There is no magic number that suits everyone, but there is a reliable pattern. Coaches tend to agree that a focused session of 40 to 60 balls, spread over 45 minutes or so, produces better results than 100 balls rattled through in half the time. The reason is simple: your body and your attention both have limits. Once you pass them, you are not practising your swing any more, you are practising your tired swing, and that is the one you least want to groove.
Why more balls usually means worse practice
Watch anyone empty a jumbo bucket and you will see the same story. The first 20 balls get real attention. The middle 30 get half attention. The last 50 are raked over and hit within seconds of each other, with no target, no routine, and no idea where the previous one finished. On the course you get a full minute or more between shots, a fresh decision every time, and consequences for a miss. Rapid-fire range golf trains none of that, which is why so many golfers hit it beautifully in the bay and then wonder where it all went on the first tee.
Fatigue matters too. Grip pressure creeps up, tempo gets quicker, and posture slumps as a long session wears on. If your last 40 balls are hit from a tired setup, you have spent the back half of your bucket rehearsing faults.
A 50-ball session that actually works
Rather than counting down a mountain of balls, give each portion of the bucket a job. A structure like this turns 50 balls into a real training session:
- Balls 1 to 10: warm up with wedges and short irons, smooth swings, no judgement
- Balls 11 to 30: block practice on the one thing you are working on, same club, same target, full routine
- Balls 31 to 45: play holes in your head, switching clubs and targets on every shot as you would on the course
- Balls 46 to 50: finish with five pressure shots to a specific target, and keep score
The final five matter more than they sound. Giving yourself something to pass or fail at the end of a session is the closest the range gets to the feeling of a real shot, and it tells you honestly whether the work is sticking.
Let Toptracer do the counting for you
All 26 bays at The Hertsmere are fitted with Toptracer, which takes the guesswork out of every ball you hit. Instead of squinting into the distance and deciding a shot was "about right", you get carry distance, ball flight, and dispersion on the screen in front of you. That feedback is what turns repetition into improvement: 40 balls with data will teach you more than 100 without it. The range is floodlit and open until 10pm, so a full session fits around work rather than the other way round, and with over 250 free parking spaces you can be out of the car and hitting balls within minutes. We are in Elstree, inside the M25 and around 20 minutes from London, so an evening session is genuinely doable.
When to bring in a second pair of eyes
If you have been grinding through buckets for months and the scores have not budged, the problem is usually the plan rather than the effort. That is exactly what our free 30-minute coaching assessment is for. A PGA professional will watch you hit, tell you what is actually costing you shots, and help you decide what those 50 balls should be spent on. And if the assessment shows your equipment is working against you, Srixon custom fitting is available on site, using the same Toptracer data you practise with.
Start with a free coaching assessment
Thirty minutes with a professional will tell you more about your game than a month of unstructured buckets. It is completely free, and it gives every future range session a purpose.
So the honest answer to the question is not a bigger bucket but a smaller, smarter one, hit with a target, a routine, and a scoreboard. Do that twice a week under the floodlights and you will feel the difference on the course long before your playing partners work out why.
