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For a while now I've been saying chipping & putting is the main weakness of my game. But let's look at some stats from a 2016 MGS article (https://mygolfspy.com/2016-report-ov...e-by-handicap/) compared to my stats in GolfShot.
Putting:
I averaged 31 putts per round over my last 20 rounds. So I'm actually doing OK there.
GIR:
This is an area I've been pretty happy with lately, and this backs that up. Over my last 20 rounds, I've averaged 46%. That's pretty good.
FIR:
So as a 4 handicap, this suggests I should be hitting above 50% of fairways per round. My average? 35%. And that's being bumped up a bit by me taking a driving iron off the tee a bit more often because my driver has been poor. Ouch. My average over the last ~2 years of keeping stats is 41%, which is only marginally better. I know "effective" fairways is a better stat, but my home course isn't exactly tight off the tee, so these numbers are a pretty good indication of my driver performance.
Just looking at recent rounds, it's fairly obvious to me that my (in)ability to get in the fairway off the tee is costing me shots. Sure, I'll miss a couple of putts, and hit a few average chips, but if I could place my ball in the middle of the fairway on all 14 par 4/5s, I'm going to shoot pretty close to even par.
So there's something I need to work on, and drawing some inspiration from Flavzz's thread on driver improvement, here's mine. My goal: I want to get to 60% FIW.
I'm going to make a serious effort over the next few months to work on my game off the tee, and post my progress here.
I don't have a really solid plan yet. Step 1 is probably to just hit more balls with driver/3w/3i, because that's not something I've been focusing on much when practicing recently. I'm also going to work on target selection - all the experts seem to think you need to pick a precise target, but I'm pretty slack there, usually just making a half-hearted attempt at picking a target line.
Looking at the size of the Greens at Links Lady Bay made me think off how irrelevant just hitting GIR is a metric to measure for handicap players. You could easily fit 5-6 Greens from my home course into one of the LLB Greens.
Many of the stats are only relevant to the width of fairways and size of Greens when it comes to handicap golfers.
Last edited by Hatchman; 28th January 2021 at 05:27 PM.
I guess my personal experience is a bit different, recently anyway. Shots from 150m in have been alright in terms of ball striking alone. I might come up a little short or miss to the side a bit, cop a bad bounce or whatever, but not many sprayed way off line and hardly any chunks, so those short irons and wedges aren't really a huge part of costing strokes for me. The past couple of rounds more than half of these shots found the green. What's costing me is these shots are third or fourth on a hole a few times a round instead of "regulation" because the tee shot found trouble. I'm working on that as well and also seeing improvement, even if it is slow. I have bad days like anyone does but on average I'm finding trouble off the tee less and less.
Reaching for my Laser cos I'm a few paces off the green... :)
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Originally Posted by Kelsey86
I guess my personal experience is a bit different, recently anyway. Shots from 150m in have been alright in terms of ball striking alone. I might come up a little short or miss to the side a bit, cop a bad bounce or whatever, but not many sprayed way off line and hardly any chunks, so those short irons and wedges aren't really a huge part of costing strokes for me. The past couple of rounds more than half of these shots found the green. What's costing me is these shots are third or fourth on a hole a few times a round instead of "regulation" because the tee shot found trouble. I'm working on that as well and also seeing improvement, even if it is slow. I have bad days like anyone does but on average I'm finding trouble off the tee less and less.
How bad are you driving it to take 2 or 3 shots to get back in play?
How bad are you driving it to take 2 or 3 shots to get back in play?
I'm not taking two or three shots to get back in play, unless I hit a tree on the way out and have to do it again. My point was that it doesn't help me score lower to mainly focus on those shots if my tee shots are all over the place, because even if I hit them well if it's the 4th shot or whatever then the shots are being wasted elsewhere. Since I am already reasonably consistent with the approaches and improving there too, I'm working more on being more accurate off the tee, where I am also seeing gradual, albeit slow, improvement. As a result my scores are slowly coming down. I do have bad days where nothing works for whatever reason and the score blows out but overall I'm getting better and having fewer blowout holes each round. I'm not expecting it to happen quickly but it is nice to see improvement and my round average dropping.
Haven't posted here in a while. Results haven't been good, but a swing fix/change is showing some improvements, especially reducing the 2-way miss. I've also started working on my 3 wood - I've neglected it for too long, and want to get back to it being a reliable tee club.
I feel like I might’ve turned a corner today, hitting 6/7 effective fairways in a 9 hole practice round at a pretty tight course. And the one I missed was the only hole I didn't hit driver on. Let's see if I can do that a few rounds in a row now...
Things are definitely looking up at the moment - 10/14 fairways today, 12/14 effective. Unfortunately lack of attention is starting to hurt my approach game