How to Score Lower

When I play golf my goal is to score as low as possible, within a margin for error. Beginning every golf season, I use the first few rounds to test what my golf game looks like and then I start to make adjustments. Scoring well requires an understanding of statistics. For example, would you rather have a 15ft putt up the hill for birdie, or a 10 ft putt down the hill? Many players would take the shorter distance putt but statistically it’s more difficult to make.

On top of being more difficult to make, if a player continues to allow themselves to play the ball past the pin, regardless of how close, they reinforce always being in tricky and tentative situations. A player could hit most of their greens in regulation but still be out of position, which leads to a higher score. Their golf swing is producing solid shots, but at the same time not helping them score efficiently.

Many of us have played with others who don’t hit the ball necessarily as well as we do, but yet they end up scoring the same or better. It’s such a common misconception in golf that “if I hit the ball better I will play better.” Striking the ball well obviously is helpful, but only if you leave the ball in areas of the course that allow you to score the easiest.

You may think that watching Tiger or Phil get out of horrible situations and winning tournaments is an outlier to the rule. That‘s only true in a narrow sense. I look at guys like Fred Couples, Louis Oosthuizen, and Zach Johnson, who are all major championship winners while playing an easier game. They also seem much more content with life outside of golf. Tiger and Phil are two of the best to ever play the game, but that narrow tightrope of success makes falling off balance in their overall life inevitable. That’s not easy to accept as someone who tells others the reason I started playing golf was because of Tiger, but I digress.

A few Cardinal Sins for scoring:

1) Don’t compound one mistake with another. Play the smart shot to recover. 2) Leaving the ball above the hole. 3) Trying to play golf shots you haven’t proven you can hit during practice. 4) Using clubs you don’t hit well most of the time. 5) Trading distance for accuracy.

These are all common statistical errors that players make, which creates a misunderstanding of why their scoring is higher than it should be. Golf should be routine. Your routine and process should dictate your score. That way you can let go of a result oriented mindset and switch to a process oriented mindset. Forcing results, even if successful, creates an insatiable desire for more. The inevitable crash that follows requires recalibration, which will be frustrating for most of us.

Controlling results is impossible, because the future is unknown. We are endlessly in a present moment. Would you feel more or less stress when you play golf if you have to hit a perfect golf shot, or an OK golf shot? Are you more likely to hit a solid shot with more stress or less stress?

I wouldn’t trade my entire life for 100 championships if it meant that losing was more painful than winning was pleasurable. We see this happen all the time with great athletes or people that are “highly successful.” They are impressive to watch on a narrow landscape, but peaking behind the curtain often leads us to wonder, “was it worth it?”

All that matters is where you are now in your process and what adjustments you can make in the moment. Once you start the chase, it doesn’t end, and it doesn’t get easier. The quality of you game, is mostly dependent on your routine programming.