Tag: greens

Categories
Hit More Greens

Hit More Greens in Regulation by Playing it Safe

By Shooting 90

It’s fun to watch pro golfers on television attack the pins and setup easy birdies. It would appear they are attacking the pin on every hole. Next time you watch professional golf, pay close attention to your favorite golfer as they complete their round. You will see that they are very selective in which flags they go for and those they do not. On some holes even the pros will avoid danger and hit their approach shot to the safe side of the green, two putt for their par and move on to the next hole.

High handicap golfers need to be even more selective in which pins they choose to go for. High handicappers simply do not have the required consistent accuracy to go for every pin. There’s nothing wrong with going for only some of the flags during a round. In fact, high handicap golfers need to be hitting greens in regulation to setup pars rather than firing at pins to setup birdies.

The ultimate goal of the high handicap golfer is to reach the level of playing bogey golf. Making birdies, while an awesome feeling, has very little to do with reaching this goal. Hitting greens in regulation to make pars is extremely important to offset any double bogies or worse. There is too much risk in aiming at protected pins. Many times pins will be placed on the side of a green protected by water, rough, or sand. Hit your approach shot in the water and you’re risking a blow-up hole – a round killer. Hit your approach shot in the sand or rough and you’re scrambling to make par, most likely looking at a bogey. It’s much more important to hit the safe part of the green in regulation than to shoot for protected pins.

The safest part of most greens is the middle on the side away from trouble. If’s there’s trouble on the right, shoot for the left side of the middle of the green. From here, the goal is to lag putt to avoid three putting the green. Effective lag putting is essential to improving your golf game. Taking protected pins out of play and aiming for the safe area of the green will leave some longer first putts. This is OK as it is much better than missing the green. It does however require that you become an effective lag putter.

One piece of equipment I believe every high handicap golfer should have is a golf GPS system. Knowing the distance to the front and back of every green is critical to hitting more greens. Thinking of the yardage remaining to the hole as a range instead of a single yardage makes you consider every possible club and helps you choose the correct one. Invest in a golf GPS system today if you do not have one.

Hopefully you do not think I’m taking the fun out of the game by suggesting to not go for protected pins. The truth is there will be plenty of holes where the hole is cut in a very favorable area of the green. Be aggressive and take dead aim for these flags. On the holes with protected pins, remove the risk and lower your score by hitting the safe area of the green.

Categories
Golf Tips

How Statistics Can Improve Your Golf Game

By Shooting 90

Statistics from your round can help determine what area of your golf game should get priority at the practice range. There are a large number of stats you can track, but because too many stats just become noise, I like to track only a few simple stats for each hole.

  • Fairways Hit (Driving Accuracy)
  • Greens in Regulation
  • Number of Putts
  • Number of Penalty Strokes

These four statistics are easily tracked on a scorecard.

Example of Scorecard Stats

There’s one stat missing here that is commonly tracked by others and that is sand saves. A more appropriate stat, and one I may begin tracking, is green side saves. It is the percentage of times you get up and down when in close proximity to the green. The short game – pitching, chipping and putting – is the biggest area in which high handicap golfers can shave strokes off their game. I already track number of putts and tracking green side saves will not only provide feedback on my pitching and chipping but will also help further clarify my putting stats.

Let’s dig a little deeper into the stats I currently track.

Fairways Hit

This is called driving accuracy on the PGA Tour. You track whether or not your drive stopped in the fairway on each hole. At least in the way I presently track it, this is the least beneficial stat I track.

The quality of your shots off the tee can not be fully justified by a yes or no answer. You can miss the fairway to varying degrees. Your ball can be just off the fairway sitting up nice in the first cut of rough or it can be 100 yards back in the woods. Both of these count as a missed fairway. Golf Digest published a different system a few years back to track driving accuracy. It involves scoring missed fairways on a scale of zero to four. Find more information on this system by following the link below.

The Real Measure Of Driving Accuracy

This is an interesting system that does a better job of tracking driving accuracy. However, I choose not to use it. It’s more work and I prefer to keep things simple while I’m out on the course.

A yes or no answer to whether or not you hit the fairway still provides valuable information. After all, the goal is to hits as many fairways as possible. Just remember to look back on the fairways you missed. Did you still leave the ball in a good position? Did you strike your drives well today? Or did you mishit your shots of the tee and incur penalties? You need to focus on both proper club selection off the tee (you don’t always have to bomb your driver) and hitting these clubs at the practice range if you are getting into trouble off the tee.

Greens in Regulation

Greens in regulation, in my opinion, is the most important stat any golfer can track. Hitting a green in regulation means you are on the green and have a birdie putt or better. The ability to hit greens, along with putting, is the key to scoring low in golf but it also plays a big role in taking a high handicap golfer to shooting 90.

Missing too many greens puts a lot of pressure on your short game. When you hit greens in regulation, unless you four putt, the absolute worst you can score is a bogey. As an improving high handicap golfer, you should be hitting between 25% and 50% of greens in regulation depending on where you are at in your journey to shooting 90. If you are not in this range, you need to work on both club selection and hitting those clubs at the practice range.

Number of Putts

The number of putts you make on each hole is an important stat. After all, the putter is the most used club by a wide margin. It makes senses that putting provides the most opportunity to improve your scoring.

But this stat can also be misleading. A three putt from ten feet is much worse than a three putt from fifty feet. Also, a large number of holes with one putt does not necessarily mean you are scoring well. It could mean you are missing a lot of greens, chipping on and leaving yourself short putts.

There are other ways to track putts that have been developed. One is to count the length of the last putt on each hole and totaling them up for the round.

The more feet of putts you make during a round, the better you are putting. This isn’t fool proof either as one long putt can skew the numbers. Keeping things simple, I just count the number of putts per hole. I do however make sure to look at all my stats in relationship to one another.

Number of Penalty Strokes

Minimizing penalty strokes goes hand in hand with moving towards shooting 90. I track the number of penalty strokes I have on each hole.

At the end of the round, I can look back on the holes I had penalties on. There can be several different causes of penalty strokes. Sometimes you just hit a poor shot. Emphasize that club the next time you’re on the practice range. Sometimes it might be choosing the wrong club. Try hitting 3 wood off the tee on holes where your driver is getting you into trouble.

Keeping stats for your rounds is a good way to target areas for improvement in your golf game. Keep the number of stats manageable and remember to look at all of your stats in relationship to each other.

Categories
Hit More Fairways

Create a Proper Pre-Shot Routine

By Shooting 90

You may be like me and enjoy watching professional golf on television. At the very least many of you watch at least part of the majors. Professionals spend an incredible amount of time working on their game. There are not many things you can watch pros doing on TV that can be directly applied to your game. There are a few however, and the pre-shot routine is one of them.

Take an hour or two to watch a professional event on TV. Watch the players’ pre-shot routines. You’ll notice they differ from the pre-shot routines of many amateurs. Many amateurs take a few practice swings along side the ball and then address the ball. Unless they need to test the lie by the ball, professionals do very little along side the ball besides addressing and hitting it. Most of the professional player’s pre-shot routine is spent behind the ball facing the hole. They are visualizing their perfect shot and aligning their target.

After selecting the right club, stand a few yards behind the ball facing your target and visualize the shot. Visualization is imagining the ball flight of the shot you have planned. Professionals know their confidence grows with the positive affirmation of visualization. With so much of the game of golf being mental, visualizing every shot is important to your success.

After visualizing your shot, take a practice swing. One practice swing, a few yards behind the ball, is plenty if you have a good lie. The only time you need to take a practice swing next to the ball is when you have an unsure lie, which includes sidehill, uphill and downhill lies.

Next, you need to line up your shot with a target in the distance. Depending on the lie and the wind, the target may be the flag, a tree, a sand trap or just about anything. Standing a few yards behind the ball, draw an imaginary line through the ball to your target. Pick a spot on the imaginary line three to five feet in front of the ball. Address the ball by placing your club face behind the ball in line with the spot you just picked three to five feet in front of the ball. Line up your feet perpendicular to the imaginary line. Keep a relaxed grip and take the shot.

Developing a repeatable pre-shot routine is an important step in consistently hitting quality shots. A consistent pre-shot routine will improve your scores.

Categories
Hit More Greens

Selecting the Right Club Every Time

By Shooting 90

Proper club selection is required to increase the number of greens you hit in regulation. Hitting more greens is the fast track to improving your scores. It reduces the reliance on pitching and chipping which are arguably the most difficult areas of the game to master. There are several factors that go into selecting the right club for each shot.

The most important thing is to know how far you hit each club when making a good shot. This might sound obvious but it is something you need to accurately know. It is also something that can change from time to time. New clubs, swing changes or getting stronger can all change the distance you are hitting each club. The best place to find the distance you are hitting each club is at the practice range. Many ranges laser sight distances so you know they are accurate. If you are unsure of the distances and there is no one else on the range, you can use a GPS to measure the distances to the flags or walk them off manually. Pick a day with little or no wind. Hit ten or so balls with each club throwing out any bad shots and take the average as the distance for that club. I suggest doing this every year or after any of the factors mentioned previously.

Knowing the distance of each of your clubs is crucial for selecting the right one for each shot but there is another piece that is just as important. You also need to accurately know how far you have left to the green. The best way to know this is to use a GPS system or app. It is not enough to judge the distance using yardage markers and sprinkler heads. You could be several yards away from any of those. Besides accuracy, there is another huge benefit gained from using a GPS. Almost all GPS systems will not only tell you the distance to the center of the green, but they will also tell you the distance to the front and back of the green. Start thinking of the distance left to the green as a range and not a single distance left to the center. There will be times when it will be to your advantage playing to the front or back of the green.

Here are a few more reasons to use a GPS system or app if you are not already sold on one. GPS systems are not only used to find the distance left to the green. Many of them will give you an overhead view of the hole from which you can drag the target and determine the distance to any point on the hole! This is great for knowing how many yards you have to carry water and sand hazards. Par 5’s present another area where a GPS is highly beneficial. Many of us do not have the length to reach many par 5’s in two shots. We are laying up with our second shot instead of going for the green. I would rather have 100 yards left for my third shot than 50 yards. 100 yards is a full swing gap wedge for me. A 50 yard shot would be around a three quarter sand wedge. With a GPS system, we can know exactly how far to hit our second shot to leave 100 yards for our third shot. Using a GPS system or app will improve your game.

Knowing the distance you hit each club and the distance you need to hit your next shot are big factors in determining which club to use. Wind, the slope of your lie, and change in elevation will also all affect the distance your shot will travel. Just how much your shot will be affected by each of these factors is difficult to calculate. It is a case of the more you play, the more experience you will have to better judge the affects.

The wind can affect both the length; shots will be shorter into the wind and longer with the wind, and the direction of your shot. How much your shot will be affected depends on the wind speed and the trajectory of your shot. Lower trajectory shots will be less affected by the wind than higher trajectory shots. In other words, your driver will be less affected than 9-iron. The wind could affect your distance by up to three clubs in extreme cases.

The slope of your lie also affects how far your shot travels. Generally your shot will travel less far when you have an uphill lie. This is because an uphill lie adds more trajectory to your shot. Conversely, your shot will generally travel farther when you have a downhill lie due to it giving your shot less trajectory.

Finally, a change in elevation from where you are hitting your shot to the landing area will also affect the distance. A drop in elevation will add distance to your shot. Similarly, a rise in elevation will decrease the distance of your shot. The trajectory of your shot also determines how much of a factor this is. Low trajectory shots, your driver for example, will be affected more than higher trajectory shots such as your 9-iron.

Work on taking into consideration every factor when choosing the club for each of your shots. Diligence in this area will be rewarded with hitting more greens in regulation.