How our staff is turning golf improvement into a friendly(ish) competition

You might be surprised to hear this, but the GOLF.com staff is not exactly flush with scratch golfers.

Far from it.

Just like millions of other amateurs, we fight a variety of flaws, from faulty swing paths and angles of attack to underwhelming swing speeds and less-than-pure contact.

We do, however, all have one thing in common: a burning desire to improve.

In Season 2 of Room for Improvement — our game-improvement video series powered by GOLFTEC — we’re channeling that shared passion into a season-long competition, with the goal of quantifying which of our editors and writers show the biggest improvement gains. Mercifully, we won’t be doing it alone. Each competitor has been paired up with a GOLFTEC coach, who will help us optimize our games in various skills categories.

In the spirit of March Madness, we’ve organized the contest into a three-round bracket format. Round 1 will pit four sets of our staffers in head-to-head battles in one of four categories: driving, long game, iron play and short game. Each contest will begin with a participant taking a GOLFTEC Skills Challenge in his or her assigned skills category. The resulting score will become the baseline upon which our staffers will attempt to improve over the course of a series of lessons — and, in some cases, club-fittings — with our personal coaches.

At the conclusion of the multi-lesson training regimens, each golfer will once again take the same skills challenge. The player who shows the most improvement, as determined by their new skill rating, will advance to Round 2.

The second round will follow a similar format, but with the four semifinalists competing to see who can most improve in a more comprehensive “tee to green” skills challenge. From that final four will emerge two finalists, who will square off in a high-pressure on-course skills showdown that will test all elements of their games, with the champion earning the coveted crown of Most Improved Golfer.

There will be seven episodes in all, beginning with the Round 1 Driver Challenge, which you can check out in the video player above.

Inspired to improve your own game? Book a GOLFTEC swing evaluation or club-fitting below.

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