Good Scoring Vs Good Ball Striking

Because most players struggle with their golf swing technique, it makes sense that their first goal is to improve their swing. While the golf swing is essential for consistency, it is not in direct correlation to scoring. It’s honestly a little bit of a ”Chicken or the Egg“ issue. Should you begin playing golf with scoring as the priority, or ball striking?

The argument that I would make for training yourself to score first is that you train your mindset to play the game Vs swing the golf club. Of course it depends on your goals. Are you more focused on hitting good looking golf shots, or scoring? Many players believe that if only their swing was more consistent, they would score better. Unfortunately that only becomes true if you’re going from a lot of miss-hits or lost golf balls. We can hit any shot solid and at the same time miss-calculate the distance and end up in a penalty area. Doesn’t mean you don’t have a good swing, but yet your score goes up anyway.

The potential to score your best requires a consistent technique that’s predictable within a margin for error. That does not mean it has to “look right.” Being concerned with how a golf swing looks is a recipe for disaster, if your goal is to score better.

I’ve never heard anyone say they shot their best score ever but was upset that they didn’t hit the ball better. When I play golf, I play to score. If I shoot -2 under par, but my ball striking wasn’t great, that’s still a win for me. That means I was able to overcome a bad swing with good scoring which feels a hell of a lot better than hitting every shot well and shooting in the 80s, which I’ve done plenty of times.

Try playing scoring games with your swing. One example would be a 9-hole putting game on the practice green. You give yourself a score of 18 as Par and try to 2-Putt on average or better. Even if your technique is terrible and you 3 or 4 putt some of the holes, it’s a lot easier to fix your technique than your mindset. In my experience, change becomes harder as you get older.

When you play golf, you would score better if you only used the clubs you know you can hit better more than half of the time, instead of going for the 1 out of 10 shot. Again, it depends on your goal. If you only play a few times per year, then go for the jackpot. If you want to improve your game, you’re going to have to train your mentality so that when things go wrong, and they will, you can reset much easier.

Swing mechanics and fundamentals are important, but most people have an inconsistent swing because of conceptual issues in the beginning that turn into compensations, which turns into swinging too hard, which leads to more frustrating results.

Golf is very challenging game, which makes playing well very rewarding. Take notes about what your intentions are when you play. If your goal is simply to hit it straight, understand that’s a perfect motion every time. That’s a lot of pressure. You can still make Par with 3 ugly shots and 1 good Putt 🙂