Spending hours hitting drivers at the range may feel like good practice, but it does not always help lower your scores. Sometimes, the real problem lies elsewhere in your game. Even the best players have learned this lesson. In 2023, Scottie Scheffler had one of the best ball-striking seasons on record but ranked 162nd on the PGA Tour in putting. Rory McIlroy faced a similar problem in 2018. He ranked first in driving distance but was 124th in putting when he arrived at Bay Hill. Now, years after first working with McIlroy in 2010, sports psychologist Dr. Bob Rotella is sharing a similar message with Amateur golfers: stop practising what you already do well and focus on where you are losing shots.

In a GOLF.com video, for which writer Nick Piastowski spent a night at the Rotella home in Charlottesville, Virginia, Dr. Bob Rotella gave amateurs this advice: “At some point, you can practice all you want. If you’re practicing stuff that isn’t gonna change your score, like if you’re a good driver and you’re giving away other shots in short game, but you spend all your time hitting drivers, why would we expect it to get better?”

That is Bob Rotella’s advice to amateur golfers in one line. It also carries weight. GOLF.com says golfers he has worked with have won some 80 major championships, a list that includes McIlroy, Padraig Harrington and Pat Bradley.

Why Plateaus Are Part of the Deal

The segment opens with a familiar complaint: a golfer who loves the friends, the family and the outdoors but is stuck at 85. Rotella starts with patience. “If you’re going to go on a mission to get better at golf, you are going to have constant plateaus,” he says.

He adds that after months, or maybe a year, of persistent practice, a big jump comes before the next plateau. A flat stretch, then, doesn’t prove the work failed. It may only mean the work is pointed at the wrong target.

Rotella says the answer sits close to the green. “And what most people are going to find is most of the shots are going to be from 100 yards and in or less,” he says. For newer readers, that means wedges, chips, bunker shots and putts.

From there he gives a homework assignment. “You need to look at your stats and say, where am I giving away shots in my game?” he says, after telling golfers to stop leaning on tour stats. Driving distance is a good example of a number that makes a highlight reel but says little about a weekend player’s 85.

This is analysis, not Rotella’s words. For an amateur, the most useful tally may be a simple count of strokes lost inside 100 yards over the last few rounds. Most players never keep one.

The World No. 1 Who Went Looking for Strokes

Scheffler’s 2023 shows the idea at the top of the game. The day after the Tour Championship, he called putting coach Phil Kenyon. Scheffler has said Kenyon told him he “sucked” with the putter as soon as they started working together.

The work paid off. With Kenyon’s help and a claw grip on shorter putts, Scheffler reached a career-best 22nd in strokes gained putting in 2025. At that year’s Open Championship, he was best in the field in putting.

Scheffler didn’t need more help with ball-striking. He went to the one area that was costing him wins.

McIlroy has described the same gap in his own game. After an injury-hit 2017 he turned to Faxon, and he has said his putting “has never matched up to the rest of my game.”

After a few hours with Faxon in 2018, he won the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Years later, putting had gone from weakness to strength, and he won a second Irish Open at the K Club in 2025. That year he also beat Justin Rose in a playoff at the Masters to complete the career Grand Slam. In April 2026 he went back-to-back at Augusta, holding off Scheffler by one shot for his sixth major.

None of that proves one practice session caused it, and no source says McIlroy overworked his driver. The parallel is the audit, not the range habit. The top two at that Masters were both players who went looking for strokes where they were leaking.

For golfers stuck at 85, the message is uncomfortable. The club you love hitting may not be the one costing you shots. If players with this much length and ball-striking still needed outside eyes on their weak spot, a weekend golfer probably does too.

So the next time you reach for the driver on the range, ask where last Saturday’s shots really went. If the answer is 100 yards and in, you already know where Rotella would send you.