Best tools to practise golf at home
Alexandre Coulay · Published on 2026-09-08
Golf reviewed by Josh Cassin, +3.7 handicap index
Home practice fails for one reason: golfers try to practise the parts that need a ball. What transfers from a living room is narrower than most people hope and more useful than most people think. Here is the split, and the small number of tools worth owning.
What transfers and what does not
| Transfers indoors | Why | |
|---|---|---|
| Putting | Almost perfectly | Stroke, distance and surface all reproducible |
| Positions and setup | Well | About your body, not the ball |
| Sequencing and tempo | Well | Measurable without ball flight |
| Short-game technique | Partly | Movement yes, distance control no |
| Ball flight control | Not at all | Needs a ball going somewhere |
Read the bottom row twice. Trying to learn shot shape indoors is the main way home practice gets wasted, and a net encourages exactly that.
Disclosure: FlyAway publishes this. Two of the five items below cost nothing and are more useful than any app, ours included.
The mirror, which beats everything for the price
A mirror is the cheapest tool that reliably changes a swing, and it beats recording for one specific reason: the feedback arrives while the movement is happening rather than afterwards.
A video tells you your takeaway was inside. A mirror tells you as it goes inside, which is when you can still do something about it. For any position-based change — grip, posture, takeaway path, top-of-backswing — this is the highest-return object in the house.
Use it for the halfway-back and top positions specifically. Those are the two that most reliably survive the trip to the course.
The putting mat, because putting is the one that fully transfers
Putting is the only complete skill in golf that reproduces indoors. The stroke is the same, the distances that matter most are short, and a flat surface is a flat surface.
That matters more than it sounds, because putting is also the largest single component of your score. A corridor and a mat give you the one practice environment where what you build indoors is exactly what you take to the course.
Structure it the same way you would outdoors: a target, a way to fail, and a number written down. Ten balls from three distances, scored, compared next week.
Filming indoors: the constraint is the ceiling
Phone-based swing analysis works at home for half swings and often not for full ones, and the limiting dimension is height rather than floor space.
Where indoor filming is actually better than outdoor is consistency. Pose estimation infers joint positions from pixels, so anything that changes the pixels — angle, distance, light, clothing — changes the numbers. A living room lets you mark a spot on the floor and use the same one every time, which is harder on a range. Two analyses that differ should differ because your swing did.
FlyAway returns 26 named faults with the frame range for each, and marks as not applicable whatever the filmed angle cannot support rather than producing a plausible number — our method page lists what that covers. GolfFix suits the indoor case differently: it records and analyses hands-free while you repeat a movement, which matters in a room where walking to the phone between swings breaks the rhythm.
Filmed demonstrations, for when nobody is watching
The specific weakness of practising alone is that nobody tells you the drill is being done wrong. TeechGolf's filmed demonstrations partly close that — seeing the movement performed properly removes an ambiguity that written instructions leave, and indoors there is no one else to remove it.
What about hitting nets
A net solves the wrong problem for most golfers. It lets you make full swings at home, and removes the ball flight that told you what the swing did. You get volume without feedback, and volume without feedback reinforces whatever you already do.
Worth owning if your goal is a physical movement pattern — building strength, groove, or a new feel through repetition. Much less useful for correcting a fault whose result you cannot see.
The session that actually works
Ten minutes most days beats an hour at the weekend, and not marginally. A movement pattern is built by repetition spread over time; a single long session mostly builds fatigue.
A workable weekly shape: mirror work on one position, five minutes, most days. Putting on the mat, ten minutes, three times. One filmed half swing a week from the same marked spot, to check the position you have been rehearsing has actually moved.
That is under three hours a month, costs almost nothing, and targets exactly the skills that survive the trip outdoors.
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Frequently asked questions
Does practising golf at home actually improve your game?
For some skills, clearly. Putting transfers almost perfectly because the stroke, the distance and the surface are reproducible indoors. Positions and sequencing transfer well because they are about your body rather than the ball. What does not transfer is anything that needs ball flight — you cannot learn to control a fade in a living room, and time spent trying is the main way home practice gets wasted.
What is the single most useful thing to have at home?
A mirror. It is the cheapest tool that reliably changes a swing, because positions are the one thing you can verify without a ball and the feedback is instant. A recording tells you what happened; a mirror tells you while it is happening, which is when a correction can still be made.
Can I analyse my swing indoors, or is there not enough space?
Usually yes for a half swing and often no for a full one, and the limit is the ceiling rather than the floor. Film from the same position every time, because a system that infers joint positions from pixels reports differences when the camera moves — which then look like changes in your swing. A consistent indoor setup is actually easier to keep than an outdoor one.
Are hitting nets worth it?
They solve the wrong problem for most golfers. A net lets you make full swings, but removes the ball flight that tells you what the swing did — so you get volume without feedback, which reinforces whatever you already do. Worth it for building a physical movement pattern, much less so for correcting a fault you cannot see the result of.
How long should an indoor practice session be?
Short and frequent beats long and occasional, and by a wide margin for anything involving a new movement. Ten minutes of mirror work most days does more than an hour at the weekend, because a movement pattern is built by repetition spread over time rather than by volume in one sitting.