100 yds and in is where you can score well. Right there with you on the dedication.
learn to love the wedge when practicing. I would guess that around 60% of my shots on the practice range are wedges (I carry 4), or punch shots.
I sometimes play par 3 and executive courses for this reason. I can practice my short game and approach shots.
Tbh as a fellow bad player I disagree.
PW to 8i are the easiest clubs to hit and the only ones that go straight pretty much every time.
Driver is the hardest club to hit and needs the most practice, 5-7i need more practice than short irons, and chipping is way harder for us than hitting a 100 yard shot.
A perfect practice day for me would be 10% short iron (warmup), 30% long irons, 40% driver, 20% chipping.
I love hitting wedges at the range. Def my fav clubs to hit.
I spend 50% of my time hitting targets within 100yds. Also probably half my rounds of golf are on a par 3 course with longest hole being 100yds. Helped me score lower. A lot less 3 putts now and I get quite a few hole outs or lip outs from chipping.
See if there’s a range nearby that has InRange or some other similar; there’s games and targets on there that makes it more bearable.
The great thing about not having kids is I can go spend 2 hours at the range and not feel bad about it.
The other day I went and spent 45 minutes smacking the driver, 30 minutes on the irons, and the rest of the time chipping and putting.
I choke down on almost every short iron.
Hit more greens in regulation than my playing partners. I’ve weaponized tap-in pars.
The driver is certainly going to give you more bang for your proverbial buck if you can rein that beast in, but for most of us, it’s just an impossible task to tackle on our own.
By contrast, working on your short game is something we can all improve on ourselves without any real assistance from anyone else.
It would absolutely benefit to have lessons on either, but if you’re learning to play the game, working on your short game early on will pay dividends immediately.
One short game lesson dropped me from 25ish to 20ish. Used to be awful within 70; now I am a killer (for a 20) within 130.
I have been using Operation36 to practice lately. There’s different levels and the goal is to shoot a 36 to advance to the next level over 9 holes. I have a few friends newer to golf and they harp on ‘if I could hit my driver’ yet they couldn’t make a consistent 4 starting from 50/75/100/150 yards out. We all want to nuke the ball but what’s the point in a perfect drive if you can’t hit a green with a wedge in your hand?
This is one of the huge things that separates the pros (and separates the top pros from the mid-level pros) from everyone else, in golf and a lot of other things. They are obsessive about it.
I get to frequent the nicest club in a town where there are a lot of professional golfers. You will routinely see them there in the short game area, on the putting green, and on the range. I get really bored of putting after about 20 minutes of practice. Those guys can do it for HOURS on end.
I’m reminded of this article about Eddie Van Halen.
In your Clapton days, I’m sure you did some intense studying on the instrument. Do you still work as hard to improve your playing?
"Yes, but I don’t call it practice. This will sound real funny to you, but we tour for eight weeks and then take eight days off. When I’m home on a break, I lock myself in my room and play guitar.
“After two or three hours, I start getting into this total meditation. It’s a feeling few people experience, and that’s usually when I come up with weird stuff. It just flows. I can’t force myself. I don’t sit down and say I’ve got to practice.”
https://www.guitarworld.com/features/eddie-van-halen-first-guitar-world-interview-1981
Welcome to practicing like a low handicap golfer. Only poor golfers spend most their sessions hitting drivers. Unless you’re actively working on something with the driver, 15 balls max.