Welcome to Play Smarta regular GOLF.com game improvement column that will help you play smarter and better golf.
Everyone wants to get better at golf. Even the best players in the world are always looking for any advantage they can find to score lower scores.
The problem with most recreational players is that they don’t fully understand why they shoot higher scores than the best players. Sure, they recognize the macro-level differences—longer swings, closer approaches, fewer putts—but they don’t always understand how the best players consistently put themselves in position to succeed.
The last one Arccos Annual Distance Report shed light on the subject, and everything starts right off the tee.
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1 big difference between good and bad golf
As you might expect, handicap players are more accurate off the tee than their handicap counterparts. But the gap between the two is smaller than you might think.
According to Arcco data, low single-digit handicaps (0–5) scored 50 percent of fairways across all age groups, while high-handicappers (30+) accounted for 40 percent. So, over the course of an average round, a low-handicap player will hit only one or two more fairways than a high-handicap partner.
This is likely a much smaller discrepancy than you expected (it probably surprised me). But if you dig a little deeper into the data, you’ll see that the biggest difference between these groups comes from the severity of their mistakes.
Percentage of unfair movement
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Arcos Golf
The table above shows the percentage of foul moves in the handicap groups and highlights one of the clearest differences between good and bad players.
According to arccos, an “unfair drive” is any tee shot that results in either a penalty stroke or a recovery situation, such as a punch or layup. And as the chart shows, top players hit far fewer foul moves than higher handicap players.
A golfer with a handicap only hits about 12 percent of his tee shots in this foul category, while high handicappers hit 45 percent of their tee shots. During a typical round, this means that a low-handicap player only hits one or two drives in serious trouble. A player with a handicap, on the other hand, hits six or seven tee shots – nearly half of all tee shots.
So what does this mean for you? If you want to shoot scores like a golfer with a handicap, you have to drive the ball like one – and that means keeping the ball in play. You don’t need to hit every freeway, but you do need to avoid the big loss. Do it over and over and lower results will follow.
