Training Aids
Best Short Game Training Aid: Physical and Digital Tools That Actually Work
A Buyer's Guide for Every Budget
April 13, 2026 · 9 min read · Stephen Pickering
A Buyer's Guide for Every Budget
April 13, 2026 · 9 min read · Stephen Pickering
Key takeaway: The best short game training aid isn’t always the most expensive one — it’s the one you’ll actually use consistently. Physical aids fix technique. Digital practice adds accountability and tracking. The strongest setup combines both.
The best short game training aid isn’t a single product — it’s a combination that covers chipping, putting, and most importantly, accountability. Sixty percent of golf shots happen inside 100 yards. Most amateurs spend 80% of their practice on the driving range. That gap is where your handicap lives. The right short game practice aids won’t fix everything overnight, but the wrong ones — or no structure around them — mean you can practise for months without actually improving. This guide covers five categories of training aid across putting, chipping, and digital practice. Physical tools get an honest look. So does the question most golfers never ask: how do you know if any of it is working?
A 20-handicap converts roughly 10% of up-and-down chances. A scratch player converts around 50%. That’s not a technique gap alone — it’s a practice quality gap.
Most golfers chip into a net, roll a few putts, and call it practice. There’s no structure, no scoring, no consequence. Without those three things, you’re ingraining habit but not building skill. You need repetition with feedback, not just repetition.
That’s what the best short game training aids provide — each in their own way.
The PuttOut is one of the genuinely excellent putting training aids on the market. It’s a curved return ramp that gives you micro-feedback on strike quality and speed — hit it too hard and the ball rolls back past you, too soft and it doesn’t reach the top. Perfect weight and the ball returns to your feet.
What makes it useful is that it eliminates the cup. On the practice green you can miss the hole but still convince yourself it was “close enough.“ The PuttOut forces honesty. It also works on any flat surface, which makes it the go-to for putting practice at home.
Cost: around £30–40. Worth every penny.
These are the most underrated chipping and putting training aid in golf. For putting, lay two parallel to your target line to check your path and face angle at address. Gate them at six inches apart behind the ball to remove any in-to-out or outside-in tendencies from your stroke.
For chipping, use them as landing zone markers. Place one on the ground where you want to land the ball — you immediately have a target worth practising to.
Cost: under £15 for a pack. Use them every session.
Building a putting practice routine around these tools? Start here.
How to Practise Putting at Home →A decent chipping net gives you a repeatable target and protects your garden, living room, or garage from stray chips. The better nets have multiple target pockets at different heights — which forces you to adjust trajectory, not just repeat the same shot.
What to look for: a net with a central small target (roughly 30cm) that you’re aiming for specifically. Hitting the net anywhere doesn’t count as practice. Hitting the centre pocket, ten times in a row, does.
Cost: £30–80 depending on size and build quality.
Pair the net with a target mat that simulates fairway or rough lies. The mat gives you a consistent strike reference — if your club is digging, you know immediately. Some mats have colour-coded landing zones, which turns any chipping session into a scored challenge rather than idle repetition.
The combination of net + mat gives you the feedback loop that random chipping off the lawn doesn’t. You can set up Par 2 — chipping to a specific target and trying to finish inside a defined zone in two strokes — and run it for 9 holes of simulated short game play.
Here’s the problem with every physical short game training aid: they don’t track anything. You can spend 45 minutes with the PuttOut and walk off the mat not knowing if you’re better than you were last week. No baseline. No trend. No way to know if your practice is working.
That’s where a structured practice app changes the equation. Scoring Zone is built specifically for short game practice — 50+ scored drills across putting, chipping, and bunker play, with automatic scoring and a Short Game Handicap that tells you exactly where you’re losing shots.
Every drill in the app has a setup, a target score, and a benchmark against your handicap. The Five-Foot Circle challenge, for example, requires you to sink 10 putts in a row from five feet — miss any and the streak resets. The Lag King tracks how many of ten 40-foot putts finish inside three feet. These aren’t arbitrary exercises. They’re structured tests with scores you can compare week to week.
See how Scoring Zone compares with other practice tools.
Best Golf Practice App →The average amateur three-putts three to five times per round. Most of those happen because pressure triggers flinch — a tiny acceleration of the hands, a slight grip tightening. You can’t fix that by practising without pressure.
The best short game drills build consequence into the structure. The Clock Drill — eight balls in a circle at six feet, make all eight without missing — gets genuinely tense by the fifth or sixth ball. The Deathstar Drill places 16 balls at three, four, five, and six feet and demands all 16 in a row, with any miss resetting you back to zero. You hit ball number twelve differently than ball number two. That difference is the whole point.
On the chipping side, the Ladder Up drill uses alignment sticks as gates — chip through each gate in sequence, closest to furthest, then furthest to closest. Miss a gate and you restart. It sounds simple. By the time you’re three-quarters through and facing a restart, the pressure is real.
This is what separates golf short game drills that build skill from those that just fill time. Structure + scoring + consequence = practice that transfers.
A quality putting mat is the foundation of any home practice setup. Look for a mat at least ten feet long — anything shorter limits lag putting work. The surface should have some pace variation if possible, so you’re not only ever practising on one speed.
The key thing most golfers miss with a putting mat: they roll putts aimlessly. Have a specific drill every session. The Speedmaster challenge — five putts from 30 feet, scored by finish proximity — turns ten minutes on a mat into a meaningful session with a number at the end.
Home practice is brilliant for repetition, not for variety. You’ll always face the same angle, the same break (or none), the same surface. Build your home sessions around the skills that don’t need variety — stroke mechanics, pace control, short-range pressure putts. Leave the green-reading work for the practice green.
If you’re serious about short game improvement at home, read this next.
How to Practise Putting at Home →Here’s an honest summary:
If you want to fix your putting stroke at home — get a PuttOut and alignment sticks. Cheap, effective, immediate feedback.
If you want better chipping contact and landing control — get a chipping net and target mat. Set targets. Score yourself.
If you want pressure simulation — use drills with consequences built in. The Clock Drill, Deathstar, Ladder Up. These work because missing matters.
If you want to know whether any of your practice is working — track it. Scoring Zone gives you scored drills, trend data, and a Short Game Handicap so your practice produces evidence, not just effort.
None of these options are at odds with each other. The physical aids build technique. The app builds accountability. Used together, they cover what practising alone with a bucket of balls never will.
If you want to know more about how the short game affects your full scoring picture, it starts with getting up and down consistently.
→ How to Get Up and Down in Golf (/blog/how-to-get-up-and-down-in-golf.html)
The PuttOut pressure putt trainer is one of the most effective putting training aids available. It gives immediate feedback on strike and speed, and you can use it anywhere. Pair it with a quality putting mat for home practice and a structured challenge app to add accountability and track progress over time.
A chipping net combined with a target mat gives you clear, repeatable feedback on contact and landing zones. The key is having specific targets — not just hitting into a net — so you’re training accuracy, not just motion. Alignment sticks work equally well on the practice green as landing zone markers, and cost almost nothing.
Yes. A putting mat, a PuttOut trainer, and a structured practice app give you a solid home short game setup. You won’t replicate green-side variety, but you can absolutely build the stroke fundamentals, pressure resistance, and distance control that translate directly to the course. Keep home sessions focused on skills that don’t need varied terrain — pace control, short-range pressure putts, and stroke mechanics.
Track it. Without scoring and data, you’re guessing. Look at your up-and-down percentage, three-putt rate, and proximity from inside 100 yards round to round. A structured practice app that logs your drill scores over time is the fastest way to see whether your practice is translating into lower scores. Gut feel isn’t good enough — you need numbers.
Stephen Pickering
3-handicap golfer with 25 years on the course. Built Scoring Zone to bring structure and pressure to short game practice. Writes about what actually works from the practice green, not the press box.
Scoring Zone gives you 50+ structured short game challenges with automatic scoring, progress tracking, and a Short Game Handicap that shows exactly where you’re losing shots.
Download Scoring Zone Free →Full access to all drills, stats, and features. No payment required.
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