4 areas you must improve to shoot lower scores, according to data

Golf instruction is ever-evolving, but the best advice stands the test of time. In GOLF.com’s series Timeless Tips, we’re highlighting some of the greatest advice teachers and players have dispensed in the pages of GOLF Magazine. Today, we have four simple tips for shooting lower scores from our August 2007 issue.

Golf is an impossible game to perfect. No matter how good you get, there’s always room for improvement.

This axiom is what makes the game so tantalizing — and so frustrating. Even on days when you’ve got everything working, there are still ways you could’ve done better. That’s what keeps us coming back.

Because of this, golfers are obsessed with learning ways they can improve. Back in 2007, legendary instructor Dave Pelz capitalized on this and joined with GOLF Magazine for a little research project in which he identified four areas of focus golfers can improve to shoot lower scores.

Check it out below.

4 key areas to shoot lower scores

If you want to improve your playing skills, you have to know exactly what needs improving. It won’t help to empty a bucket of range balls with your driver when it’s your putting that’s killing your scores.

I understood this 30 years ago, when I first began measuring the skills of the PGA Tour players worked with. This was before laser rangefinders, so I had to walk off distances before tournaments then run outside the ropes during events to chart where players hi their shots. I used the shot patterns and scores to identify weak areas and help the players turn those weaknesses into strengths. This research-based instruction formed the foundation of my teaching career and Scoring Game Schools, and today it remains a driving force within both.

Last summer, the PGA Tour offered me its ShotLink laser technology and software to study the games of amateurs. With their help, the Pelz Golf Institute staff measured every shot from more than 300 amateurs on four holes over four rounds at Arrowhead Country Club during the PGA Tour Superstore World Amateur Handicap Championship, in Myrtle Beach, S.C. This data allowed us to assess amateur skills with an accuracy never before possible. (And I didn’t have to do any running!) The purpose of our research was to compare amateur skills to those of PGA Tour players (which ShotLink measures) and use this data to help you assess where your game lies within that skill spectrum. Knowing this, you can accurately identify where your game needs the most work and how hard you must goat it to become a better player.

1. Driving

Your big problem: Poor balance, direction and target selection are killing your accuracy and distance.

3 reasons your numbers are bad

1. Poor balance: Pros don’t lose balance — or change foot position — until they complete their swing and walk away. You swing your driver so hard you fall off balance.

2. Over-swinging: Pros rarely swing their driver at 100 percent. You try to hit the ball as far as you can with your driver, trying to squeeze every inch possible out of your swing.

3. Bad aim: Pros aim down the right or left sides of the fairway, anticipating that the ball will draw or fade back to the center. You have no bias in aim direction, nor do you favor a side of the tee box to compensate for your tendency to hit drives left or right of your setup alignment.

3 ways to improve

1. Throttle back: Commit to “swinging within yourself” and finishing in balance without moving your feet. This may mean only using 85 to 90 percent of your available power (or effort), but your results will improve because of it. Good balance is fundamental to good golf. You can’t hit drivers repeatedly in the fairway without it.

2. Favor the fade: Aim left if you usually slice. I know you don’t want to play for a slice and you’d rather take a chance on hitting one straight (or even with a draw), but this attitude hurts your scores. Always play the best you can with the game your brought to the course that day. If you want to eliminate your scale, work on it during practice at the range. On the course, aim down the left side and get your drives to stop in the short grass.

3. Play for accuracy: Do whatever it takes to hit the fairway, even if that means hitting 3-wood or a hybrid off the tee. If you give up 10 percent of distance for 10 percent more accuracy, you’ll shoot lower scores.

2. Par-3 play

Your big problems: Under-clubbing, toed shots, and poor target selection.

3 reasons your numbers are bad

1. Poor contact: Pros make contact in the center of the clubface more often, making it easier to control the distance they hit their shots. You make contact out on the toe of the clubface. As a result, variable and less than maximum energy is transferred from club to ball. (More than 90 percent of the amateurs came up short of the flagstick, no matter what club they used.)

2. Incorrect numbers: Pros know how far they hit each club in their bag, and seldom overestimate how much distance they will generate with the club they select. You select clubs based on an expectation of hitting them almost perfectly and having the ball carry precisely to the hole. The problem is, most amateurs don’t hit perfect shots very often. (Even the amateurs who hit a solid tee shot mostly came up short of the hole.) 

3. Bad target selection: Pros calculate pin position and hazard locations when selecting their landing targets. You aim directly at the flagstick regardless of how close hazards are to the target.

3 ways to improve

1. Cut out the cut: As you swing through the hitting zone, move your clubhead down and out toward the target. This will curb your tendency to cut across the ball and hit it on the toe. Practice this by hitting balls from three inches inside a three-footlong two-by-four piece of wood aimed exactly at your target.

2. Go long: Select the club that will get you to the back edge of the green. The ball will end up past the flagstick if you catch it pure, but no harm done since your shots are rarely straight enough for you to make the next putt anyway. Choosing a stronger club will carry your average shots closer to the hole, leave shorter putts and keep you out of hazards short of the green.

3. Be scatter-brained: Study the shot patterns at right. Imagine hitting 100 balls to this par 3; which pattern would your shots fall into? From now on when you play a par 3, look for the safest area on the green for your shot pattern (not your perfect shot) to fall into, no matter where the flag is.

3. Bunker shots

Your big problem: You make “funky” swings in the sand

2 reasons your numbers are bad

1. Poor technique: Pros play the ball forward in their stance and use an almost standard wedge swing. They open the clubface and slap the sand to get the ball out, but otherwise the mechanics of their swing are smooth and normal. You make unique, funky swings in sand. (In analyzing play at Arrowhead Country Club, we saw hard swings, vertical-V swings, reverse pivots, players falling backwards, players stopping their swing immediately after impact, etc.)

2. Poor low-point control: Pros practice making sure their club enters the sand the same distance behind the ball every time. You never hit the sand in the same place twice. Sometimes you contact the ball before sand — or hit very close behind it — and send it flying over the green. Other times you hit too far behind the ball and leave it in the hazard.

2 ways to improve

1. Play it forward: Try this: Hit a normal wedge shot from grass. Notice how your divot is forward (toward the target) of the center of your stance. This exact same swing which contacts the ball before it hits the ground on fairway shots can also serve as your sand swing. It will correctly hit two inches behind the ball in sand if you simply position the ball forward, out from the instep of your left foot.

2. Give yourself room: Play to reasonably safe sections of the green. Based on ShotLink data, Tour pros should take dead aim at this flagstick because they’ll end up within about 10 feet of the hole. But if your average leave distance is longer, you’d be wise to aim out to the right where there’s more green to work with.

4. Putting

Your big problem: Touch for distance, getting line-locked and not reading enough break are hurting your putting performance.

2 reasons your numbers are bad

1. Leaving it short: Pros rarely leave makeable putts (10 to 25 feet) short of the hole. You leave many makeable putts short. You’d score significantly better by not leaving so many makable putts short. Look at the scatter patterns of second putts remaining after the first makeable putt is missed. This “leaving-it-short” phenomenon was surprisingly consistent across the handicap range of amateurs but almost absent for pros.

2. Playing it low: Pros play more break and miss more putts on the high side of the hole. You almost never play enough break and leave a high percentage of missed putts below the hole.

1 way to improve

1. Focus on speed: Too many golfers complain of pulling or pushing after missing a putt. These complaints are indicative of too much focus on line, with not enough attention paid to speed or distance. The truth is, a putt’s speed determines how much it breaks, and therefore usually controls its line (left or right) as it approaches the hole. In addition, most golfers don’t read the right line in the first place.

Having said this, do me — and your game — four favors this season: (1) Focus on rolling putts beyond the hole on average; (2) Allow for a little more break on every breaking putt you see; (3) Recognize that for every putt you leave short you’ve thrown away a chance of holing it; and (4) Realize that until you miss as many putts above the hole as below, you’re STILL not reading enough break on average. Do these things for me and you just may start putting like a professional.