This fun (but tricky!) range game is a great way to test your iron consistency

Among the many differences between professional golfers and the rest of us is the sheer consistency in the way they impact the golf ball.

Amateur golfers figure out all different kinds of ways to hit the ball. Sometimes they even catch it perfectly. Other times, they hit the ground first. Or they don’t hit the ground at all, only the golf ball. Sometimes they catch the ball on the hosel, or hit the top of the ball — or miss the ball entirely.

All these contact errors are conspicuously absent whenever you watch a pro player hit golf balls. They may not hit it straight every time, but they will, generally, hit the ball the same way every time: Ball first, ground second, with a pretty consistent divot size.

The good news is that improving your quality of strike is something you can work on relatively easily thanks to a game called the low-point challenge, which you can see pro golfer (and co-founder of Short Game Gains) Hannah Gregg demonstrate below.

To try it yourself, simply draw a chalk line in a straight line, using your club or an alignment stick, and place six golf balls on top of. The goal is simple: Hit each of the golf balls, making sure the divot is past the white line.

Here’s a video of me trying it (except I hit seven golf balls, for some reason, rather than six).

Overall I was pretty pleased with my results. The thin miss on the second swing wasn’t ideal, but the chunked sixth shot was pretty gross. I’d like to have hit all seven past the chalk line, of course. But if nothing else, you can’t go too far wrong having a consistent thin miss.

Try it yourself, and if you’re unhappy with the results, the solution is simple: Just keep doing it until you get better at it.

Luke Kerr-Dineen

Golf.com Contributor

Luke Kerr-Dineen is the Game Improvement Editor at GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. In his role he oversees the brand’s game improvement content spanning instruction, equipment, health and fitness, across all of GOLF’s multimedia platforms.

An alumni of the International Junior Golf Academy and the University of South Carolina–Beaufort golf team, where he helped them to No. 1 in the national NAIA rankings, Luke moved to New York in 2012 to pursue his Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University. His work has also appeared in USA Today, Golf Digest, Newsweek and The Daily Beast.