How to Practice for Drive, Chip and Putt

Drive, Chip and Putt scores nine total shots: three drives, three chips, and three putts. Each skill is judged on its own terms, not just whether contact was solid, so a normal range session does not automatically train what actually gets scored. Accuracy decides the drive station. Proximity to the hole decides chipping and putting. Practice that mirrors those specific tests is worth more than volume for its own sake.

For the full rules on how each station is scored and how the qualifying ladder works, see our Drive, Chip and Putt qualifying guide. This guide is about what to actually do in practice once you know the format.

Only a drive that comes to rest inside a marked fairway grid counts at all. A long ball that sails past the edge of that grid scores nothing, while a shorter, straight drive that stays inside it scores every time. That flips the usual range priority. The goal in practice is a swing that repeats down a target line, not a swing built for maximum distance.

• Practice to a grid, not a target line. Pace off a width on your own range or use existing range markers as a stand-in, then count how many swings out of ten would have stayed inside it. That number matters more than carry distance.
• Use alignment aids. Sticks or a spare club laid on the ground for start-line feedback catch the small directional misses that a wide-open range hides.
• Back off max effort. A junior swinging at less than full speed almost always finds the fairway more often than one swinging for every last yard.

The chip station is played from a set spot 10 to 15 yards off the green, and scoring is based on proximity to the hole using rings around the cup, not on whether the ball goes in. A chip that finishes close scores well even if it never touches the cup. Practicing for holed chips trains the wrong skill.

• Land on a spot, repeatedly, from that same 10-to-15-yard window, rather than firing at the flag hoping for a hole-out.
• Run a ladder drill. Alternate a chip from 10 yards, then 12, then 15, so your golfer learns to adjust trajectory and speed inside the exact window the competition uses.
• Measure proximity, not makes. Pace off or tape measure how close each chip actually finishes so practice tracks the same thing the scoring does.

Putts are attempted from three set distances: 6, 15, and 30 feet. Each length asks for something different, so lumping them into generic putting practice misses the point of the station.

• 6 feet: closer to a pressure make than a lag putt. Practice this length as a "must convert" putt, since it is short enough that the scoring rewards actually holing it.
• 15 feet: speed control matters as much as line. A putt that finishes close still scores well even if it misses.
• 30 feet: pure lag putting. The goal is leaving a tap-in, not draining it, so practice speed to a landing zone rather than the hole itself.

Rehearsing all three lengths in the same order the competition uses builds the specific speed memory each one asks for.

This is the single biggest difference between useful practice and a normal range session. The real competition gives exactly three attempts per skill, cold, with no do-overs and no practice swing that counts. A junior who only ever practices in large volume, fifty balls at a time, can be genuinely surprised by how different three cold attempts feel.

Rehearse it directly: three drives, stop and note the result, three chips, stop and note the result, three putts at each of the three lengths, stop and note the result. Score each set honestly using the same in-the-grid or proximity logic the real event uses. That single change, going from unlimited reps to counted sets of three, does more to prepare a young golfer for the actual pressure of the format than any amount of extra range time.

Do not try to rebuild a swing or fix a fundamental in the days before a qualifier. Keep practice to the same three-shot rehearsal described above, get normal rest, and expect some nerves the first time out, that is completely normal for a first competition and fades with repetition, not with more range balls.

For what the qualifying day itself is actually like, from check-in to results, see our guide to a Drive, Chip and Putt qualifying day. And if the goal this season is simply to keep golf enjoyable while your golfer builds these fundamentals, our guide to keeping golf fun for young juniors is worth reading alongside this one.