Indoor golf practice ideas, ranked by what they actually do

First, be honest about what indoors can teach you

A golf swing has two halves: the movement and the strike. Indoors you can train the movement completely and the strike barely at all, because the strike is defined by where the ball ended up and indoors there is nowhere for it to go.

That is not the limitation it sounds like. The movement is the half that decays between rounds, and it is the half a range trip is worst at fixing, because you spend a range trip hitting rather than rehearsing. Indoor work and range work are complements, not substitutes.

1. Movement work with no equipment

The highest return of anything on this list, and it costs nothing.

Rotation, tempo and posture are the three things that decide most amateur shots, and none of them need a club. Rotation needs about two feet of floor. Tempo needs no space at all because there is nothing in your hands. You can do both in a hallway, an office or a hotel room, which means they survive a week when nothing else does.

The catch is feedback. Reps without feedback reinforce whatever you already do wrong, which is covered properly in practicing golf at home without clubs. A mirror gives you one angle and moves the position you are checking. Filming yourself works and takes fifteen minutes, so you will do it twice.

This is the gap Rakou fills. You hold the iPhone like a grip and make a real swing, and the phone reads where its face pointed at impact, how fast your hands moved against your own usual swing, and your tempo. It is not a launch monitor and does not pretend to be: the ball is simulated, and what moves it is measured. That is the half indoors is good for anyway, and swinging your phone takes no more room than your arms need. It works as a phone golf simulator: each swing plays a hole.

2. Putting

The most underrated indoor practice in golf, because a carpet is a genuinely realistic surface for a six-foot putt and putting is roughly forty percent of your shots.

• Gate drill. Two coins slightly wider than your putter head. Roll through without touching either. Trains a square face better than anything you can buy.
• Distance ladder. Putt to a wall from increasing distances, stopping the ball as close to it as you can. Three-putts come from the first putt, not the second.
• Short ones, endlessly. Four feet, repeatedly, until holing them is boring. Boring is exactly what you want it to be on a Sunday.

3. Chipping into a target

Needs more room and a tolerance for risk, but soft foam balls into a laundry basket from ten feet is real practice. You are training contact and distance control at a scale a room can contain. Check what is behind the basket first.

4. Mobility

Boring and quietly the highest ceiling-raiser on the list. Thoracic rotation and trail hip mobility set the limit on how far you can turn, and both decline over a sedentary winter. Ten minutes of rotation stretches through the cold months is why some golfers arrive in spring better than they left, which is the argument in winter golf practice.

5. A net, if you have the room

Last, deliberately, despite being the first thing most people buy.

A net lets you make full swings with a real ball, which feels like proper practice. The problem is that it tells you nothing about where the ball went. You can hit a hundred balls into a net with a face wide open and finish the session pleased with yourself. Without ball-flight feedback you are rehearsing, not correcting.

Also check your ceiling before you swing anything. Most homes cannot take a full swing with a mid-iron, and finding out at speed is expensive.

How to build a session out of this

1. Two minutes of rotation mobility, to set what is available today.
2. Three minutes of tempo work, no club needed.
3. Three minutes of rotation reps, slowly, quality over speed, or swing your phone through a hole.
4. Two minutes of putting on the carpet, or a position check on camera.
5. Stop while it still feels easy, so you come back tomorrow.

That is ten minutes and needs no equipment beyond a phone. The full reasoning for why short and frequent beats long and rare is in the ten-minute daily routine.

The short version

Indoors you can train the movement and not the strike, and the movement is the half that fades between rounds. The best indoor golf practice ideas are the cheap ones: rotation, tempo, putting and mobility, all of which fit in a normal room and a normal evening. The net most people buy first belongs last, because it lets you practice a fault without ever finding out.