Golfers can save a surprising amount of shots by eliminating some basic strategic mistakes which come about from poor decision making and not factoring in your tendencies. Whether it’s chasing flags, hitting shots aimlessly down the hole or not using shot tracking technology to assess your play, we can all make better decisions on the course which should knock off a shot or two, which can make the difference between a good round and a great one.
1. Not allowing for your common miss off the tee
A lot of amateurs are guilty of aiming straight down the middle of the fairway without putting much thought into their typical shot shape and how that’s going to affect where the ball will end up on a given hole. The Golfshot driving data tells us that three out of four ability levels miss more to the right than they do the left. High handicappers miss to the right more than any other and 5% of golfers miss the fairway to the right more than 50% of the time.
So don’t assume the stars will align and you’re going to hit that frozen rope straight down the middle off the tee even if that’s the shot you intended – be realistic, allow for your typical shot shape – and remember, this could be different on any given day (some days we hit balls on the range before we tee off and for whatever reason, you might be hitting draws instead of fades). Don’t ignore this, go with it – allow for it and also use the teeing area to your advantage by pegging your ball up on the side that’s going to provide you with the most amount of room for your shot shape.
2. Making too many double bogeys
One of the biggest things that separates the good golfers from the average ones is the big numbers – the double bogeys, triple bogeys and others – rarely do you see tour players, elite players compound an error on a hole with another on the very next shot. Good players are able to stay in the present, forget about the previous shot if it was a bad one and focus on what is required for the next one. Golfshot data tells us that high handicappers make double bogeys around 59% of the time.
Now obviously higher handicappers don’t necessarily have the skill level to hit two high quality shots in a row but if you can eliminate those mental errors where a lack of concentration creeps in and you go from bad to worse on a hole, you should start to see those big numbers disappear from your scorecard. Some GPS apps like Golfshot will provide 3D hole flyovers to get a clearer view of what lies ahead…
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