Getting better at golf as an amateur takes a lot practice, perseverance and resilience – but there are also a number of steps high-handicappers must take to improve their scoring (that many currently ignore).
As the golf season starts, you will surely be looking for ways to cut your handicap in 2026 – but did you know that much of that success (or failure) will come down to what you do before you hit the golf ball?
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5 Steps All High-Handicappers Must Take To Improve Scoring
1. Assess The Lie
The lie is the most important thing that amateurs should check before hitting every shot. It’s what dictates whether or not you can select your 150 club from 150 – or not.
Lots of amateurs play the same golf course over and over and they will walk up to their ball with a club already in their hand or an idea of what they are going to hit in their mind before they get there.
The tendency is to think you should play the same shot you might have played from a similar spot or distance on that hole before, without even assessing the lie, and that error can be very costly.
So, if you’ve got lie ‘A’, which is the perfect lie on a lovely tight piece of turf, then you have scope to choose whichever shot you want.
If you have type ‘B’, where the ball is sitting up in the first cut or short rough like a gooseberry, you don’t actually know how much grass is underneath that golf ball.
Not all golf shots are the same, irrespective of distance, so check the lie before you choose your club
(Image credit: Baz Plummer)
We don’t know how high it is off the soil. So in an ideal world, you would go somewhere reasonably close by where you didn’t disturb the golf ball and put your golf club on the ground to see how far up the face the grass reaches. You then get an idea of what you’ve got underneath it.
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