Here is a problem most simulator owners have and few solve: the sim is bad at short shots, and not for the reason people assume.
The hardware is usually fine. The issue is that a simulator range hands you an open field and a carry number, and there is no structure to short-game practice without a target. So people hit forty wedges at nothing, watch the numbers, and get no better inside 30 yards. Then they play a real round and find their 15-yard pitch is a coin flip.
There is a fix sitting in a dropdown on a sci-fi course most owners have never loaded.
What it is
Chipping Warmup on the Outpost 87 range asks you to clear targets from 6 to 27 yards in order, in 3-yard increments. Eight rungs: 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27. The screen prints "Points needed: 8", so finishing is unambiguous.
The targets are holographic rings projected on the turf, stepping away from you in a line, with the yardage marked on each.
Two numbers here do the work. The 6 is where it starts. The 3 is how fine the steps are.
Why those two numbers matter
GSPro's own built-in short-game ladder begins at 25 yards. Over on the standard practice range, the Ladder Challenge has a Short Game preset, and 25 is where it opens.
So Outpost 87's ladder finishes at 27, roughly where the software's own short-game practice starts. The entire band below 25 yards is covered by this one game and nothing else in GSPro. That band is where most amateurs quietly leak strokes, and it is the one the software otherwise skips.
Then there is the 3-yard resolution. Most golfers can feel the difference between a 40-yard shot and a 60-yard shot. Very few can reliably separate 12 yards from 15. That is exactly the gap where a bad guess turns a routine up-and-down into a bogey, and three-yard steps are fine enough to expose it.
Why a ladder beats a bucket of wedges
Three reasons, all about structure.
A ladder has a pass or fail. An open range gives you a carry number and lets you decide whether it was good. A ladder decides for you. That removes the part of practice where you quietly grade yourself generously.
It forces variable distance. Hitting the same shot forty times feels productive and transfers badly. Stepping 6, then 9, then 12 means you never repeat a shot, which is what actually builds distance feel.
It ends. You either clear eight rungs or you do not. A session with a finish line gets done more often than one that ends when you get bored.
The in order part is the underrated bit. You cannot skip the rung you are bad at, which is precisely the rung you would skip on your own.
Getting to it
- Load Outpost 87 through Local Match.
- On the Round Settings screen, click HEAD TO THE RANGE! on the bottom bar.
- Open the GAME dropdown in the bottom left.
- Select Chipping Warmup.
The complete access path for every course with hidden range games is in how to find GSPro's hidden range games.
A 20-minute warm-up built around it
Outpost 87 has seven range games and four of them chain into a genuinely good warm-up. The order matters: shortest to longest, finishing on the club you actually need warm.
- Chipping Warmup - the eight rungs from 6 to 27 yards. About 5 minutes.
- Wedge Warmup - clear 30 to 100 yards in order, in 10-yard steps. This is where you find the gap you cannot cover. About 5 minutes.
- Simon Says - a random target between 30 and 150 yards, with a penalty for hitting the wrong one. No two shots in a row use the same club. About 5 minutes.
- Straight Shot - driver into a 3-yard centre band, scored on where you land rather than where you roll out. About 5 minutes.
Twenty minutes, most of the bag, a target and a score on every single shot. That is a better warm-up than most people get at a real range, and once you own the course it costs nothing.
Full detail on all seven is in Outpost 87: all 7 range games.
The honest limitation
Two things worth saying plainly.
Simulator short-game practice has a ceiling. Your mat is not a fairway lie, and no launch monitor reads a 6-yard chip with the confidence it reads a driver. What this trains well is carry-distance control and club selection. What it cannot train is the contact you get out of real turf and real rough. Treat the number as the lesson and the feel as approximate.
The second thing: this is buried inside a themed sci-fi course with glowing alien spiders on another of its game modes. It is very easy to write the whole course off as a gimmick and never open it. That is most of the reason the best short-game drill in GSPro is one almost nobody uses.
Related
- Outpost 87: All 7 Range Games
- Every Hidden Mini-Game in GSPro, Ranked
- Riverwalk Skills Challenge: All 7 Games - Top Flop is the other real short-game drill in the set
- Mats and Injury - the mat is the limiting factor on short-game practice, and the wrong one hurts
