Graham Averill is turning 50 this year and he’s crazy. Instead of buying a motorcycle or getting a tattoo, he’s decided to try to get really, really good at golf. He started this project as a 13-year-old handicapper, trying to reach zero in one year. Welcome to his midlife crisis.
Is there any more satisfying golf shot than hitting a two-foot wedge from the pin for a birdie?
This is not a rhetorical question. I legitimately want to know because I don’t think I ever did. Usually, I take a space wedge from 125 yards, take aim for the pin and leave it short or just wide right, then try to make a bump and run to catch for par. Most of the time, I get away with a bogey.
I have the data to prove it too. Look at the numbers and you can see that approach shots have become my achilles heel. Over my last 10 rounds, I’ve lost an average of 3.7 shots per round to a golfer with a scratch on approach shots from 50 yards and beyond. I’m only hitting 50 percent of the greens in regulation from 50 to 99 yards. Scratch golfers are hitting 77 percent from that distance. And my percentages only get further down the hole.
So yeah, I want to know: what’s it like to throw a dart with your wedges? Is it great? I bet it’s great. Sam Hahn, my golf life coach, wants me to stop trying.
“You’re aiming for pins, and you’re not yet accurate enough to target pins,” Hahn says. “You have to forget that the pin is there and try to put the ball in the middle of the green.”
He went on to tell me about a study that compared multiple golfers who played rounds with pins in holes and rounds without pins at all. I couldn’t find the study online, but Hahn says every golfer improved their scores when the pins were removed. Aiming for the center green is basic course strategy, but it’s easier said than done. It’s like when someone tells you not to think about a zebra.
You will think of a scary zebra.
But I’ve played four rounds since my last column and have gotten better at ignoring pins with each round. I just finished playing 18 on my home course here in the mountains of North Carolina and shot an 80, my best score to date. It was a good day. I kept the ball in the fairway, I made some bad decisions when I rushed a few holes while playing through a few fours, but I played safe golf. And the biggest change was my approach shots strategy. I aimed for the thick of the greens when I was beyond 75 yards out and hit 10 of the 13 par-4 and par-5 greens in regulation. That’s 77 percent of the GIR rate that scratch players achieve.
I didn’t always land the ball in the spot I was aiming for and had some pretty long shots late. But shooting for the center of the green minimized the risk of my error. Take a look at the degree of dispersion of your various wedges and then place the center of that dispersion in the center of the green. It’s like a big safety net that hopefully takes most of the risk out of the game. That’s how it worked for me today.
I wasn’t sinking any amazing putts, so there were no birdies, and I didn’t have a single one-putt situation because my average putt distance was significantly further from the hole than usual. (Hahn said my putting metrics may change with this new strategy.) Ultimately, it was boring golf where I found myself safely on the green with reasonable two-putt scenarios in front of me and not having to scramble around the edges to keep it together.
I missed a five-footer for the first 18, which would have given me my first “broken 80” situation. This putt will haunt me, but I will stay positive. I scored my best score to date and I did it by playing safe and smart golf, which feels much more repeatable than relying on a perfect swing.
Of course, my course strategy will evolve as I (hopefully) continue to improve with every aspect of my game, and I look forward to the point where I can become more aggressive on certain holes depending on pin placement. But right now, I want to see where this new magic trick of ignoring the flagstick can take me. 80 today. Maybe a 79 tomorrow?
Dare to dream.
Dig deeper into one golfer’s struggle to get better at golf in middle age and read last week’s Scratch By 50, where Graham discusses assisted stretching in search of high swing speeds.
