The 50-Ball Blueprint to Lower Scores with Shy Desai

What if you could make just 50 golf balls at the range more productive than an entire bucket of mindless practice? In this episode of The Mark Tribe, Mark sits down with Shy Desai, creator of Cure My Swing, to talk about how golfers can practice with more purpose, transfer their work from the range to the golf course, and ultimately shoot lower scores. Cure My Swing has grown into a community of roughly 400,000 followers across its platforms, curating golf tips, drills, and ideas designed to make improvement easier to understand and apply. At the center of the conversation is Shy’s 50-Ball Practice Plan — a structured range session designed to replace random ball-beating with intentional practice. Rather than grabbing a bucket and hitting the same club over and over, Shy breaks practice into specific stages that address warming up, technical development, course simulation, and the mental side of the game. The 50-Ball Practice Plan:  Shy walks Mark through a practice session built around: Properly warming up before hitting balls. 5 wedge shots to loosen up and establish solid contact. 5 short-iron shots while progressively changing clubs. 20 balls of technical work and drills. 10 fairway-finder shots using a driver, fairway wood, or hybrid. 9 balls simulating three par-5 holes. 1 final shot with your favorite club. The goal isn’t simply to hit better-looking range shots. It’s to make practice resemble the decisions, routines, and pressure golfers experience on the course. Shy explains why golfers should combine block practice — working intentionally on a particular skill — with random practice that requires changing targets, clubs, and situations. That transition becomes especially important in his 10-ball fairway challenge and simulated par-5 exercise, where golfers are asked to visualize an actual hole, choose targets, go through their full pre-shot routine, and react to the outcome of each shot. The conversation also explores why golfers should keep notes after practice sessions. Tracking what worked, what didn’t, and where your common misses appeared can reveal patterns that help both future practice and on-course strategy. Mark and Shy then move into five areas golfers can focus on to lower their scores. 5 Ways to Lower Your Golf Scores: 5. Course Management. Know your tendencies instead of constantly fighting them. Shy discusses learning to “own” his natural fade and using that knowledge to make better decisions around the golf course. Good course management means knowing your strengths, weaknesses, distances, and common misses — and sometimes taking your medicine instead of attempting the heroic shot. 4. Driving Driving isn’t just about speed. The tee shot should set up the next shot. Shy encourages golfers to develop a reliable fairway finder and think about where they want to play their approach from before deciding what club or target to choose from the tee. As Shy explains, golfers may play the game from tee to green, but they should learn to think about the hole from green to tee. 3. Approach Play Know your actual distances. Shy explains why golfers need to understand both carry distance and total distance while also paying attention to dispersion. The objective isn’t necessarily firing at every flag. Sometimes simply finding the middle of the green — or leaving yourself in a manageable position for the next shot — produces much better scores. 2. Short Game Simplify your options. Golfers can become overwhelmed by the number of wedges and different short-game shots available. Shy recommends becoming extremely comfortable with one reliable club — for him, the pitching wedge — before adding more specialized options. Develop confidence from 100 yards and in, and your ability to recover when you miss a green improves dramatically. 1. Putting. Shy’s number-one priority is simple: Eliminate three-putts. Distance and speed control are critical, especially on long putts that many amateurs rarely practice. Instead of spending an entire putting session rolling 10- or 15-footers, golfers should practice long lag putts and learn how to leave the ball within a manageable distance of the hole. If a golfer can improve lag putting and become more confident from short range, three-putts begin disappearing — and scores can fall quickly. In This Episode: Why most golfers waste practice balls, The complete 50-ball practice routine, Why you shouldn’t start every range session with driver, How to warm up more effectively, Why changing clubs during practice matters,</li