The First 90 Days: Golf Swing Drills for Beginners and What to Actually Practice

In your first 90 days of golf, practice five things in this order: setup, contact, low point control, swing direction, and consistency.

The right golf swing drills for beginners build those skills one at a time, over three months.

This guide assumes a right handed golfer. If you play left handed, swap left and right.

You also need a way to see what happens when you hit the golf ball. That is where Divot Board stands apart. The full size Divot Board training aid for irons shows where the club hit on each strike, so your next adjustment comes from a mark you can see, not a guess.

What Should a Beginner Practice First in Golf?

A beginner should practice five things first, in this order:

1. Grip and setup

2. Basic ball striking

3. Low point control

4. Clubface and swing path awareness

5. Short game and putting fundamentals

Days 1 to 30: Build Your Golf Fundamentals

The first month is about three things: a grip, a setup, and a short swing you can repeat. For extra guidance, browse these golf swing tips organized by skill level, starting with the beginner section.

If you can, book one or two lessons with a PGA professional early. A coach can fix a grip or setup problem in minutes, before it becomes a habit.

Don't try to hit the ball as far as possible. Your priority is consistent contact and a predictable starting direction.

1. Start With Your Grip

Hold the club in your fingers, not your palm. Your grip is your only connection with the club, so get it right from the start.

Use this basic grip checklist:

• Lead hand. Place the lead hand so the V between your thumb and index finger points toward your trail shoulder. For a right handed golfer, that's the left hand and the right shoulder.

• Trail hand. Cover the lead thumb with the trail hand.

• Pressure. Hold it lightly, about a 4 or 5 on a scale of 10.

Don't change your grip after every poor shot.

2. Build a Repeatable Setup

Set up the same way for every shot, so your swing starts from the same place. Practice these checks:

• Stance width. Feet about shoulder width for mid irons, a little narrower for wedges.

• Ball position. Ball in the center of the stance for short irons and about a ball forward of center for mid irons.

• Posture. Bend from the hips with a slight knee flex and let your arms hang naturally.

• Distance from the ball. Hold the club where your hanging arms put it. Don't reach.

• Alignment. Lay an alignment stick on your toe line to check you're aimed at the target.

• Shoulders and hips. Set them parallel to the stick on your toe line.

• Pressure. Put about 55 to 60 percent of your pressure on the lead foot at address.

3. Learn to Make Ball First Contact

Ball first contact means the club strikes the ball before the ground, so the divot starts at the ball or just past it. For a deeper walkthrough, read our guide to ball first contact with your irons.

Your practice goal is simple: ball first, then ground. The towel drill later in this guide trains it.

4. Practice Short Swings

Start with short swings, not full swings. Use a wedge or short iron and take your hands back to about waist height, then through to about waist height.

Hit in groups of five and look at where the club hit the ball and the ground each time. A Divot Board Mini for chipping and wedge swings suits these shorter motions well.

Once ball first contact shows up across two groups of five, lengthen the swing a little at a time.

Why Divot Board Gives You More Than a Regular Practice Mat

Divot Board gives you more than a regular golf practice mat because it shows where your club hit. A mat gives you a surface to hit from.

On the board you can see:

• Fat shots, where contact starts behind the ball

• Thin shots

• Ball first contact

• Toe or heel contact

• An in to out swing path, where the mark points right

• An out to in swing path, where the mark points left

That matters because beginners often know that they hit a bad shot, but don't know why.

You Don't Swap Your Mat for the Board

You don't swap your mat for the board. The board sits on carpet, turf, or grass (or on a hard floor with a Grip Pad), and it fits into the Turf Mat. It adds the feedback a mat can't give you.

A firm mat hides a fat shot. The club bounces and slides into the ball, and the result looks fine. Our post on golf hitting mats vs grass explains why.

You don't need an app or a screen to read the result. Hit the shot. See the mark. Make one adjustment. Hit again.

Days 31 to 60: Learn to Control Contact

In month two, learn why your strikes differ and control where the club hits the ground.

1. Understand Your Low Point

The low point is the bottom of your swing. Where it falls decides whether you hit the shot fat, thin, or clean.

A low point behind the ball is the fat shot. If the club is still low when it reaches the ground, you hit it fat. A thin shot, also called a blade or a skull, means the club caught the ball above its middle. On the Divot Board, most thin shots show the mark starting well past the ball. The low point is too far in front, so the club is still coming down when it meets the ball, but too high. Standing up or lifting through impact and a ball that has crept too far back in your stance are the usual causes. Less often, the club bottoms out early and is already rising. That shows as a mark behind the ball, so treat it as a fat shot first. For a fat shot, move the low point forward. For a thin shot, stay in your posture through the ball, and check that the ball hasn't crept too far back in your stance.

Our guide on how to find the low point of your golf swing walks through it step by step.

A fat shot has three usual causes, and each one has a check:

• Weight staying back on the trail foot. Set about 55 to 60 percent of your pressure on the lead foot at address and finish on the lead foot.

• Scooping to lift the ball. Run the towel drill in the drills section below.

• Ball position crept too far forward. Move it back to the center of the stance for short irons.

Don't overcorrect. Start with only a slight lead foot bias at address, about 55 to 60 percent, and let the rest of your weight shift during the downswing. Too much weight forward at address, or a ball that has crept too far back, can push the low point past the ball and turn fat shots into thin ones.

Coach Arlen Bento Jr.'s lesson on mastering your low point covers this in more detail.

Instead of asking only:

"Why did I hit that shot badly?"

Ask:

"Where did the club hit the ground?"

2. Learn From Your Divots

Your divot shows where the club hit the ground and which way it was traveling. The Divot Board makes both easy to see. Once you start hitting shots, this article on how to read your Divot Board divots helps you read each mark.

A mark that starts behind the ball is a fat shot. A mark that starts at the ball or just past it is ball first contact.

Judge five shots, not one. Then hit a second group of five to confirm the pattern before you change anything.

3. Don't Chase Distance Yet

Leave distance alone for your first 60 days. Adding speed before you have reliable contact makes your misses bigger and harder to diagnose.

Work in this order:

Contact, then direction, then consistency, then speed

Days 61 to 90: Turn Practice Into a Routine

In month three, give each part of every session one objective. Don't hit 100 balls without a plan.

A Simple 60 Minute Beginner Practice Session

Split 60 minutes like this: 10 minutes setup and grip, 15 minutes short swings, 10 minutes irons, 5 minutes driver or fairway wood, and 20 minutes short game and putting.

10 minutes: Setup and grip

Run the grip checklist and the setup checks from month one. Then make slow practice swings, counting three beats back and one beat through.

15 minutes: Short swings

Use a wedge or short iron and hit in groups of five. Look for a mark that starts at the ball or just past it, in the same place each time, with no toe or heel marks.

10 minutes: Iron practice

Move to a mid iron, such as a 7 iron, with the ball about a ball forward of center. Reproduce the contact pattern you built with shorter swings.

5 minutes: Driver or fairway wood

Hit five shots with a longer club. Make a balanced swing and look for a predictable starting direction, not distance.

20 minutes: Short game and putting

Finish with 10 minutes of chips and pitches and 10 minutes of putting. Chip to one target in groups of five. Then putt five balls from 3 feet and five from 20 feet.

What Should a Beginner Practice Each Week?

A beginner should mix technical practice, short game work, rest, and real playing time across the week.

You don't need to follow this exact schedule. Thirty focused minutes beat an unfocused two hour range session.

The Most Important Golf Swing Drills for Beginners

You need four golf practice drills in your first 90 days: a ball first contact drill, a half swing drill, a divot direction drill, and a target practice drill.

Ball First Contact Drill

Lay a towel or headcover two to three inches behind the ball and hit the ball without touching it. This teaches the club to bottom out in front of the ball.

If you clip the towel, shift more pressure to your lead foot and go again.

Half Swing Drill

Make controlled half swings with a wedge or short iron. Stop the backswing when your lead arm is about level with the ground.

Swing to the same length every time, strike the ball first, and hold your finish until the ball lands.

Divot Direction Drill

After each iron shot, look at where the mark starts and which way it points.

Five marks that start behind the ball are a fat pattern. Your low point is behind the ball, so move it forward with the towel drill. This divot guide to fat, thin, toe, and heel patterns shows what each common pattern looks like.

Then read the direction:

• The mark points left. That means an out to in path. Confirm with ball flight: a pull or a slice backs it up. Place a headcover just outside the ball line, a few inches behind the ball. If the club hits it, you're over the top.

• The mark points right. That means an in to out path. Confirm with ball flight: a push, or a ball that starts right and curves left, backs it up. Check that your alignment stick is aimed at the target and that the ball hasn't crept back in your stance.

The mark is a rough guide to your path, not an exact reading. Where the ball starts tells you about the clubface, which sets roughly 75 to 85 percent of the start direction. The difference between face and path sets the curve. Our post on divot direction and ball flight paths puts the two together.

Target Practice Drill

Once your contact repeats, change your target on every shot. Pick a new target, go through your normal pre shot routine, and hit one ball.

What Beginners Should Not Spend Too Much Time Practicing

Don't spend your time on constant swing changes, a new drill every week, distance, or full swings only.

Don't Constantly Change Your Swing

Change one thing at a time. If you try five different swing changes every week, you can't tell which one worked.

Pick one. (a) Grip pressure at 4 or 5 out of 10. (b) Ball in the center of the stance for a short iron. (c) About 55 to 60 percent of your pressure on the lead foot at address. Hit five shots and compare, then hit a second group of five to confirm.

Don't Chase Every New Drill

Use a drill only when it fixes a specific problem you can name.

If you prefer a set program to follow, look at the Advanced Protocol Series video program with Mark Crossfield.

Don't Focus Only on Distance

One long drive doesn't mean you're improving. Track what you can count:

• Strike quality: how many of five shots were ball first

• Starting direction: how many of five started at your target

• Contact pattern: fat, thin, toe, or heel

Don't Ignore Short Game

Give short game and putting a third of your practice time, 20 minutes of every 60. Beginners often spend it all on full shots.

How to Know If You're Improving After 90 Days

You're improving if your strikes are more predictable and you can name your common miss. It doesn't have to mean 20 more yards. After three months, look for these signs:

• You can repeat your basic setup

• You make ball first contact more often than you did in month one

• You can tell whether contact was fat, thin, toe, or heel

• You have a consistent pre shot routine

• You can take your practice skills onto the course

The biggest improvement is better awareness. When you know why a shot happened, you can fix it instead of hoping.

Your First 90 Day Golf Practice Plan

If you're starting from scratch, the plan is three phases of 30 days each.

• Days 1 to 30: build the foundation. Grip, setup, alignment, short swings, and basic ball striking.

• Days 31 to 60: understand your contact. Low point, ball first contact, divot patterns, clubface awareness, and your common miss.

• Days 61 to 90: build consistency. Full swings combined with short game practice, target practice, and on course experience.

Final Takeaway

The best golf swing drills for beginners are the ones that develop the fundamentals in the right order: grip and setup, then consistent contact, then low point control, then speed. After 90 days, you need to know what your common miss is and what to practice next.

If you're practicing at home or on a golf practice mat, the Divot Board shows where the club hit and which way the mark points.

On carpet, turf, or grass, the board's spikes anchor it. On hardwood, tile, concrete, or vinyl plank, the spikes have nothing to grip, so use the Grip Pad made for the full size board. The Original and Mini Grip Pads don't swap.

Swinging a golf club can be dangerous. Be aware of your surroundings, especially indoors around children and pets.

Check ceiling height and swing room before your first swing. Use foam golf balls for indoor practice or limited flight balls in small rooms, hit real balls into a net, and keep people and pets out of the swing zone.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What should a beginner practice first in golf?

Grip and setup first, then ball first contact. After that, move on to low point control, swing path awareness, longer clubs, and short game practice.

2. How often should a beginner practice golf?

Two to four focused practice sessions per week is a good starting routine. Thirty to 60 minutes is enough when each session has one specific goal.

3. What is the most important skill for a beginner golfer?

Consistent contact. Learn to control where the club hits the ball and the ground before you chase maximum distance.

4. How can a beginner learn ball first contact?

Start with shorter swings using a wedge or short iron, and lay a towel two to three inches behind the ball. Hit the ball without touching the towel.

5. What does Divot Board do?

Divot Board shows where your club hit. You can see where contact starts (fat, thin, or ball first), which way the mark points, and toe or heel strikes. It works with or without a ball.

6. Is Divot Board better than a regular golf practice mat?

They do different jobs. A mat gives you a surface to hit from. The Divot Board shows where your club hit. You can use the board on a mat, on turf, or on a hard floor with a Grip Pad.

7. Can beginners use Divot Board?

Yes. Divot Board makes a hard to see part of the golf swing visible: where the club hit the ground.

8. Should beginners practice with a driver first?

No. Start with wedges and shorter irons, because they make it easier to build contact and control. Add longer clubs once your short iron contact is ball first across two groups of five.

9. How can I practice golf at home?

Putting, setup checks, slow swings, and foam ball hitting all work at home. Check your ceiling height and swing room first, and keep children and pets out of the swing zone. The indoor practice guide shows how to set up a full indoor station.

10. What should I focus on after my first 90 days of golf?

Keep building consistent contact, then add speed, shot shaping, course management, and more realistic target practice. Base your next step on your most common miss, not on fixing everything at once.