Anyone else's golf game actually getting worse from sim practice?
Semi-serious question here 😅
I've been hitting 200+ balls a day on my sim for 3 months. Finally got out to the course last weekend and shot my worst round in years.
Theories:
- I'm grooving bad habits without realizing
- The transition from sim to real turf is jarring
- I'm practicing but not actually working on anything
- My sim setup has issues I don't know about
Anyone else experience this? What did you do to fix it?
Starting to wonder if I should just go back to the range...
3 Replies
Experienced the same thing! Here's what I realized was happening:
- I was hitting off a perfect lie every time, so my "good" contact on the sim was actually fat on real turf
- I stopped thinking about trajectory - just hit and watch. On course you need to plan the shot
- I never practiced punch shots, trouble shots, or recovery shots on the sim
Now I intentionally do "real world" practice sessions where I play through scenarios.
200 balls a day is A LOT. You might be grooving bad habits with fatigue.
Quality over quantity. Better to hit 50 focused balls with specific goals than 200 balls on autopilot.
The putting is the biggest difference. On a sim you can putt fearlessly because there's no real penalty. On the course that 4-footer matters.
I started spending more time on the putting green IRL even though I have the sim for everything else.