Handicap golfers get into trouble by hitting shots with clubs they can’t handle well. I’m thinking of the longer clubs, the driver and the long irons/hybrids. Because these clubs have a straighter face, sidespin is accentuated, exacerbating your slice or hook. Because you’re aiming at targets fairly far away, identical errors in accuracy are magnified relative to shorter clubs.

The longer swing makes it harder to contact the ball squarely. It’s harder to get the ball in the air, too. There are too many ways to go wrong. You will therefore save yourself strokes if you follow this rule:

If you aren’t breaking 100 (28 over par), the 5-iron (32 degrees of loft) is your big gun. Break 90 regularly and you can move up to a 2-iron/hybrid. Drivers are for golfers who break 80.

By following this rule, the ball will be in the fairway much more often because you will be hitting straighter shots. Trade occasional distance for habitual accuracy, and you will get to the green in fewer strokes than you do now.

Yes, you won’t be shooting for par on every hole, but since you’re a handicap golfer anyway, par is not always your expectation. What you will remove from your scorecard are the doubles and triples.

You will also learn more about playing the game because your ball will more often be in a position for you to play a hole by attacking it rather than by recovering from wayward shots.

I know the driver is loads of fun and it feels great and you impress your buddies when you nail a long one. But if you want to shoot a lower score than they do, this might be the way to go.

See also Ten Easy Ways to Play Better Golf

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

Recreational golfers throw away shots every round by not being prepared to play the course. Every shot has options. Choosing the wrong option or the wrong club causes you to play extra strokes that didn’t need to be taken.

The best way to prevent this from happening is to make a plan, before you get to the course, for how you’re going to play each hole, for better or for worse. The fewer on-the-spot decisions you make the better.

Base your plan around the shots that you hit well. Plan your round to hit those shots as often as you can. Your plan should consist of the club you’re going to tee off with and where you’re going to hit the ball, and the club you’re going to use from the fairway and where you’re going to hit it, that is, favoring which side of the green. That might not be the side where the pin is if the price for missing on that side is too high. That’s Plan A.

You also need a Plan B, which you pull out if Plan A doesn’t work. When you’re in trouble is not the time to be thinking. Know ahead of time what you’re going to do if you tee off into the trees on the right on #10. Know which club you’re going to use and what shot you’re going to hit to get the ball back into play. You might have two options prepared, one for when there’s a way to advance the ball, and another for when you just have to punch out. Either way, know what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it before you ever get to the course.

All eighteen holes should be thought out in advance like this. Plan B is not that hard to figure out, because if you play a course often enough, you know where your misses go and where they don’t go.

If you’re playing a course for the first time, you can’t make plans, so rely heavily on your best shots. Hit them as often as you can and see what happens. As you do, plot out the course by writing down which clubs you would like to use next time and where the safe spots to hit to are. Mark these spots with a felt pen on the course map on the back of the scorecard.

If making detailed plans is not your thing, at least keep a notebook in your bag with a list of clubs you use off the tee, hole by hole, of every course you play. That in itself puts you way ahead of the game.

Better Recreational Golf  has more good playing tips. check it out.

If you would analyze every round you play, stroke by stroke, I would bet you give away two strokes per side for no good reason. It doesn’t have anything to with how well you hit the ball, but with how well you play the game. 

Recovery shots off the tee shot – if your course has heavy rough or lots of trees, you can waste several shots per round just chipping the ball back into the fairway. If you play a tight course, leave your driver home. What you give up in distance is more than offset by keeping the ball in play.

Trying to get it all back with one shot – Say you dumped your drive in a fairway bunker. The green is in sight, but you have to hit a clean shot to get it there. Better to hit out with a shorter club to up near the green, which is an easier shot, so a good chip can give you a par putt. Playing from a hazard as if you were playing from the fairway invites a large score unless you know the shot well.

Playing over water – Bad things happen when you play over water if you don’t have to. Figure the longest club in your bag that you’re sure you can get in the air. If you have to hit a longer club than that to clear the hazard, go around or lay up, unless the course gives you no other option. 

Hitting your driver too often – go the the range and set yourself up in a spot where there are landmarks in the distance that mark about a 40-yard-wide fairway. Get warmed up with a short iron, then hit a drive into your “fairway.” Take your time, hit one driver, and a few short irons before the next drive. If you got fewer than seven drivers inside the boundaries you picked out, your driver is costing you strokes. 

Hitting when you’re not ready – You have to feel that the shot you’re about to hit can only have the best possible outcome. The thrill of anticipation must cover you. If you feel anything about this shot that is off, like something is different, but you don’t know what it is, that’s the little voice telling you to step away because you’re not set up to hit a good shot. Listen to that little voice, for if you don’t, you will find yourself saying in about four seconds, “I knew I wasn’t ready. Why didn’t I step away?”

Playing with the distance you want, not the distance you have – It is true that golf is a distance game. The longer you can hit the ball the easier it is to play well, but you only have the distance you have. That’s the distance to play with. If 155 yards with a 6-iron is a good shot for you, and you’re 153 yards from the pin, don’t hit six! Take out the five and put a smooth swing on the ball. With the six, you’re thinking that you have to hit it just right. The extra club in your hand takes the pressure off and you’ll hit a better shot. Use the right club to get the distance you need, not your swing.

Two short shots in a row – At the professional level, the short shot takes the place of the approach putt. At the amateur level, the short shot is meant to get the ball on the green. Getting the ball close to the pin is a secondary consideration. Whatever it takes, get your first short shot on the green, two-putt close at least. That fourth shot you have to take because your first short shot didn’t get on really hurts.

Not aiming your greenside chips – When the ball is close enough to the green that you truly can give it a run at the hole, aim yourself first. Stand behind the ball to find the line on the ground from the pin to your ball. Align yourself to this line and play away. This avoids hitting your chip hole-high but four feet to the left. If you had taken the time to align the shot, you could have had a tap-in or given the ball a chance to go in.

Ignoring contours around the hole – These are the ones to pay attention to. Where will the ball go when it gets six feet from the hole? When the ball gets that near to the hole, it won’t be rolling very fast, and will thus be greatly influenced by contours. 

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Most golfers try to hit the ball a long way whenever they see the room to. The trouble is, that strategy leads as often as not to poor shots that wouldn’t have gained much even if they were successful. Instead, try planning the way you play a golf hole by doing the math.

There’s a hole on my home course that is 502 yards long, par 5, with a narrow fairway, and a creek that crosses the fairway about 175 yards from the tee. There is a tree on each side of the fairway, next to the creek, that frames the tee shot and tightens it up even more. There’s a lot of room to go wrong with the tee shot, but you can find a way out if you just do a few math problems.

First of all, there are only 175 yards to clear the creek, so take a club that you can hit 190 yards and use that one off the tee. Odds are you hit that club much straighter than your driver, so you will likely end up in the fairway, across the creek, with 312 yards to the green. Divide that yardage by 2. If you hit two shots that are 156 yards long, you’ll be on the green.

Say that’s two 6-irons. You would also rather not hit something as long a a 6-iron into a green if you can help it, so instead of two 6-irons, hit a 5 and a 7. Or a 4 and an 8. Do you see how this works? All this hole asks you to do is cover 502 yards in three shots. How you do that is up to you. There is more than one way to cover that distance, some of them easy ways, and they don’t all start off with a driver.

By the way, the next time you step onto the tee of a 312-yard par 4, you know now that you don’t really need to tee off with your driver, don’t you?

Here’s another example. You tee off from a 386-yard par 4 that runs uphill, and flub the drive. That happens. You’re 260 yards from the green now, so out comes the fairway wood. Think about this for a moment. You’re still two shots away from the green because you can’t hit your fairway wood that far. So divide the distance by 2 and you get two 130-yard shots — two easy 8-irons. Maybe a 7-iron and a 9-iron, or a 6 and a pitching wedge.

Do the math to take high-risk shot out of your hands, especially when there is no real payoff for hitting them well. If you’re worried about what your playing partners will think about you if you keep the longer clubs in the bag, don’t be. You’ll get more respect from them because you’ll be the lone golfer of their acquaintance who actually thinks.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

Everybody knows that the easiest way to get a good score is to hit the green in regulation. Let me suggest to you an equipment strategy that will help you do that.

I would imagine that you have one club which you like to hit more than any of the others. Whenever you pull this club out of the bag, you know good things are going to happen. If you’re smart about it, you will hit that club as often as you can.

Let’s say it’s your 6-iron, and that you get 160 yards out of it. If that’s how far you are from the green, you’ll hit it, of course, but if you’re 150 yards away, you can grip down and hit from that distance, too. Say it’s a par 5, you’re 260 yards from the green, and you’re playing your second shot. Why not hit the 6? That will put you 100 yards away, which is an easy pitching wedge into the green. And so on.

You should follow a strategy of putting yourself in a position to hit that favorite club as often as possible. Use that one club to get your ball around the course.

Now what if you had four clubs like this, not just one? Four clubs that you knew you could rely on, that you never had to worry about? That would make the game really simple to play. It’s the way I play. I practice almost exclusively with my driver, 4-hybrid, 7-iron, and pitching wedge. I try to set up the hole so I can hit one of those three clubs into the green as often as possible.

The 4 goes 180 yards, which covers the longest second shots on a par 4 that I’ll have, the 7 goes 150 yards, and the wedge goes 120. That’s three clubs to cover a 60-yard interval, each of which is a good friend. It’s not that hard to take off distance, so that if I have 160 yards to the hole, I’ll still hit the 4. How about 155? OK, I’ll use a 6-iron, but for most of the yardages inside that 60-yard interval, it’s one of those three clubs.

There’s one hole on my home course where this strategy expands and pays off in spades. It’s 423 yards long, par 4, dogleg right, with water right and OB left. The landing area for the drive is very narrow. The golfers I play with are happy to walk off the green with a 5, and a 4 is as good as a birdie.

I tee off with a 4 into the fairway, short of where the fairway narrows between the water and OB. I play my second shot with the 4 over the corner of the water hazard and am left with about 35 yards to the pin. I chip on and have a par putt. What could be simpler and safer?

I have committed my game to this four-club strategy and it works great. I have found a way to get the ball into the hole in as few strokes as possible by narrowing down the shots I have to hit to just a select few that I hit very well. Earlier this year I took these four clubs, along with a 2-hybrid, a 54-degree wedge, and a putter, to a course I hadn’t played before, and shot 81. Not bad.

See also How to Master the Short Game

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I’ve written before about analyzing your round stroke by stroke in order to learn how to make better shot selection decisions, and to identify which strokes need work next time you go the range. Here’s my latest round analyzed, with par in parentheses.

1. (4) 2H, 9i, sand, putt, putt. Hit the 9i thin, first iron shot of the day is always difficult. Think about the destination, not the task.

2. (4) Driver, 8i, putt, putt.

3. (3) 8i, chip (30 yds.), putt, putt, putt. First putt went way past the hole. The greens are faster than they look.

4. (5) 4H, 4H, 7i, putt, putt. Par 5, no need to try for too much off the tee.

5. (5) 2H, 2H, 6i, chip (30 yds), putt. Hit both the 2H pretty poorly. 8i chip didn’t get in the air enough – clipped a mound. ~35-foot putt.

6. (3) 9i, chip (10 yds), putt, putt. Pin in front, eased off on the 9 too much. Get on the green, beyond the flag is OK.  Hit the chip more firmly. As with the 9i, past the flag is OK.

7. (4) 6i (there’s a ravine you have to lay up to), 3i, chip, putt, putt.

8. (3) 7i right, putt, putt.

9. (5) 2H right, 4H (sand), 9i right, chip left (15 yds), putt, putt. 9i – alignment issue that would keep showing up for a few more holes; chip – align, align, align!

10. (4) Driver right, 9i, putt, putt.

11. (5) 2H right, 4H, PW, putt, putt.

12. (4) Driver, 4H, 4H, chip (30 yds), putt, putt. Hit the driver and the first 4H very thin. The chip was way to tentative.

13. (3) 6i, putt, putt, putt. First putt was downhill and to the right, played far too much break. Second putt from four feet played outside the hole and it stayed outside. Don’t give away the hole!

14. (5) 2H, 4H, PW, putt, putt.

15. (4) Driver (duck hook), 5H (sand), pitch, chip (20 yds), putt, putt. 5H – went for the green, should have played a 7i to the front of the green. Hit the pitch real fat – that happens.

16. (4) Driver, 3H right, sand, putt. I would have taken a bogey, but a ~30-foot putt went in.

17. (3) 7i, chip (6 yds), putt, putt. 7i was long, and a 6i chip out of the rough was tentative. Should have chipped with a PW, but should have hit an 8i off the tee, which I had thought of. Short would have still been on the green.

18. (4) Driver, 6i, putt, putt.

There are a normal amount of lucky shots and ones that I should have hit better, but the parts that stand out are the playing errors. On 1, I was worried about making clean contact. Just hit the ball. (More on that in a coming post.) On 6, I had enough club in my hand, but played it too fine. No. 9 -align the chip! This one finished hole high – exact distance, six feet to the left. On 13, I over-analyzed the first two putts. On 15, I chose the wrong shot out of the bunker. On 17, I chose a club to chip with that did not give me confidence.

Could you say that I gave away six shots because or poor thinking? Yes, you could. Also, those intermediate-length chips need work, too. They all ended up short. I might have gotten one stroke back, maybe two, by being better with that shot.

So you see that there are seven or eight shots that I could have saved, and there’s no reason why I can’t learn to get them. If this is a typical round for you as well, let’s both lower our score by thinking better so that all the work we do at the range finally pays off.

That chip on 16? I went to the range yesterday and figured out how to hit it with a gap wedge. Problem solved.

Perhaps, no, not perhaps, but really, your score could go down just by learning how to play the game and make better decisions. I’ve been writing these tips for two years now. If this is the only one you pay attention to, that would make me happy.

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com

Everybody wants to shoot lower scores without working that hard to do it. Why wouldn’t they? Most recreational golfers have busy lives that leave them barely enough time to play, and even less for practicing. Here are ten easy ways to shoot lower scores in the time you do have to play and practice.

1. Off the tee, play a game of Get the Ball In the Fairway. That means keep your driver in the bag unless you’re sure you can hit the fairway with it. Most of the time, you don’t need the extra distance the driver gives you. In fact, leave your driver home one day and see what happens when you’re hitting your second shot from the short grass more often that you might be doing now.

2. Work real hard at making good contact with your irons. If you do, straight shots follow. Hitting fat, and most recreational golfers do hit behind the ball, is the major cause of poor iron play, not slicing or hooking. Learn to hit the ball first, the ground second.

3. Your short game goal is to get the ball on the green and reasonably close to the hole. Don’t get cute. Just get the ball on the green with your first short shot so you can start putting.

4. Practice approach putting a lot. More 3-putt greens are caused by leaving the first putt too far away from the hole than by missing short putts.

5. Always feel good about the shot you’re about to hit, especially around the green. If you don’t, then pick another shot or a different club. Having full confidence in what you’re about to do is a critical golf skill.

6. Never give up on a hole. You can still make par even with a mediocre shot or two, or even one bad one.

7. Get real good at letting go of the past and not getting ahead of yourself. Never berate yourself when you hit a bad shot and never moan over having to play the next one from a less than ideal place. Never think farther ahead than the hole  you’re playing on.

8. Don’t think about the score until the round is over. If you’re playing poorly, thinking about your score makes things worse. If you’re playing well, you’ll cut yourself off from the frame of mind that got you there.

9. Don’t rush to judgement about which shot you are going to hit, or to where, or with which club. Take a few extra seconds to find the right option. If you do this with a calm mind, the right option for you will become clear.

10. If there’s a hole in your game, get a lesson to get it fixed. Most golf shots are easy once you know the secret. The pro will show you simple things in fifteen minutes you would never figure out in a million years.

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com.

The scoring clubs are the ones you hit the scoring shots with. The scoring shots are the ones that make the biggest difference in getting the ball into the hole as quickly as possible.

The three most important clubs are the driver, wedge, and putter. (See The three most important clubs.) Let me add two more.

One is an advancement club. Say you’re in the fairway, but too far from the green to get on with the next stroke. Play an advancement shot.

This shot eats up yards, but with a club that isn’t hard to hit, and still gets you close enough to the green so you can have an easy shot to get on.

I like to use my 24-degree hybrid for this purpose. Say I’m 260 yards from the hole on a par 5. This club will leave me a medium-length pitch for my third.

Or if you want, 260 yards is two easy 8-irons. (See The mathematics of club selection.)

The second club I want to add is a chipping club. For garden-variety chips, essentially approach putts from off the green, use a 6-iron. It gets the ball on the green and running, which is how you chip the ball into the hole.

So you have five clubs: a club for the tee (not necessarily the driver), two clubs for shots around the green, a club to eat up distance from the fairway in a controlled manner, and a putter.

Get good with these clubs, and the shots they hit, and see how easy golf gets.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

Recreational golf is primarily a social game. The most important part of the day is having fun with the people you’re playing with and making their day as enjoyable as yours. It is possible, though, that socializing can prevent you from playing your best golf. Here’s how to be a good friend and a good player at the same time.

Between shots your mind will be on the people you’re playing with. When it comes time to hit, all your attention need to be placed on your shot. The danger that the social aspects of golf create is that when that time comes, you won’t switch your focus from your friends to your shot.

We don’t want you to spend the round in a little cocoon, of course. But when it’s your turn to hit, that’s exactly what you have to do so that your best performance can emerge.

The requirements for hitting your best shot are first, to figure out what that shot should be, that is, what shot from here makes the most sense in getting my ball up to the hole the quickest and easiest? Next is getting your mind ready to hit that shot by convincing yourself that you can do it. Finally, you set up to the ball, aim yourself, and swing away.

You can’t do any of this while you’re still having a conversation with a playing partner or thinking about something someone else is doing. You really need to spend about forty seconds being a bit self-centered.

Don’t think that this is being selfish, because it’s not. It’s really a matter of respect. By withdrawing from pleasantries to hit your shot, you’re respecting yourself by giving yourself the best chance to play well. By quieting the conversation with another player who is getting ready to hit, you give that person the same respect.

One of the ways we help our playing partners have a good day on the course is to do whatever we can to help them play their best. Golf has a unique set of etiquette rules designed in part to make sure that players do not disturb each other when a stroke is being made. Good golfers know these rules and follow them.

Beyond that is respecting each other as athletes. Golf is a sport that everyone wants to do well at. When everybody in the group understands that, the athletic and social halves of the game combine perfectly for everyone’s benefit.

What do you do if there’s a talker in your group? One day I was paired with one. I stood on the tee behind my ball looking down the fairway. He kept talking and I kept looking. Talking, looking. More talking, more looking. Finally he realized that I wasn’t going to move until he quieted down. I don’t know about the others in our group, but I didn’t have a problem with him again for the rest of the day.

Enjoy golf, enjoy it with your friends. Just remember that too much of the social whirl isn’t what makes you a better golfer. Don’t be afraid to step out of it when you need to.

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Good golf is not only a matter of hitting good shots. If it were, we would play it on the driving range instead of the golf course. Golf is about getting the ball into the hole in the fewest number of strokes. That’s such an obvious point, but the way I watch some people play, you would think they didn’t know that. Here’s how not to be one of them.

Let’s expand that statement about golf a little bit. The question is, from here, from where you’re standing now, how are you going to get the ball into the hole in the fewest number of strokes, given your skills? That’s what you have to be thinking, and if you are, you’ve come up with a shot sequence from tee to green that you will attempt to play out. The wrong way is to hit the ball somewhere and then decide what to do next when you get up to it.

To create this plan, work from the hole backwards.  From where on the green do I want to hit my approach putt? From where on the fairway is the best place to hit the ball to that spot on the green? True, you might not be able to see from the tee where the pin is, but most holes have a preferred angle of approach, and you can try for a spot off the tee that gives you that angle. Once you get to the fairway, you can complete your plan.

Few of us, however, are good enough to put the ball exactly where we intend. When you miss the spot you were aiming for, you might have to modify your plan. Here are three scenarios that illustrate the point.

1. On a fairly easy par-4 hole, you planned a drive into the fairway and a short iron onto the green. But you muffed your drive, and now you have 280 yards to the green. You could bang away with a fairway wood and pitch on, or hit two 7-irons and cover the same distance.

2. You wanted to stay left off the tee of a par 5, but you went right and now must hit dangerously close to water to have the pitch onto the green that you planned on. Or, you can advance the ball to the left and away from the water, but you’ll have an 8-iron into the green.

3. You’re about 40 yards off the green and the pin is behind a deep bunker on the left side that you’ll have to pitch over, off a tight lie. Or, you could chip the ball to the center of the green, which is wide open to you, and get down in two putts.

Again, the question you should ask yourself in each case is, which sequence is the most likely to get the ball in the hole in the fewest strokes, given your skills?

When you play like this, golf becomes a game of strategy, rather than a game of this shot followed by that shot. Now you’re thinking all the time, connecting your shots into a single plan so that they work with each other, feed each other. By doing so, you get more out of the skills you have, you become a better player, and the game just gets to be more fun.

Visit www.therecreationalgolfer.com