A year or so ago I posted an article on the importance of arriving–getting the ball up to or past the hole when you hit a shot into the green. That was all based on theory, with a generous assist from the writings of Vivien Saunders.

Now I have some actual data. Yesterday I was prowling around the Internet (why is that word capitalized, anyway?) looking for data on the average leave for recreational golfers’ shots into the green because I was writing about the interplay of swing improvement and short game and putting improvement. What I found forced me take a U-turn and revisit arriving.

The image below is a chart of the dispersion of the AMA (average male amateur) from 160 yards away. What I don’t know is whether the dots represent shots hit only by male golfers who are of average skill, or if the dots show the average compiled by male amateurs regardless of skill. That difference probably isn’t relevant to the point I’m making in this piece, though.

I divided the chart into a sixteen-cell grid. Four columns separate shots that missed left, hit the green left, hit the green right, and missed right. Four rows separate shots the missed long, hit the green long of center, hit the green short of center, and missed short.

Because the green is round and not square, there are a few shots in the corners of the four grid cells for hitting the green that did not hit the green, but I accounted for those.

An eyeball inspection shows two things: most of the shots that missed the green missed short, and most of the shots that missed short were on line to hit the green.

Here are the actual numbers, which I got by counting the dots:

I won’t make your eyes glaze over by throwing bunch of numbers at you. You can make whatever you want to out of what’s in the table. I will say just two things with numbers that I already said with words.

(1) Eight out of ten of the shots in the chart finished short of the center of the green (GS+S). That means that only two out of ten shots into the green finished beyond the center of the green.

(2) Of the 574 shots that finished short of the green (S), seven out of ten of them (411) would have hit the green if they had been hit far enough: S: GL+GR.

What does that mean? Four out of ten of all shots hit the green (green cells). If you push the shots in the (S: GL+GR) cells into the GS row, now over six out of ten shots will have hit the green: (S: GL+GR) + (GS: GL+GR). The actual percentages here are 38% and 64%.

If you apply these percentages to every hole (which doesn’t match reality, but this is all the data we have) you get 6.8 and 11.5 GIR, respectively. THAT’S ALMOST FIVE MORE GIR JUST BY HITTING ENOUGH CLUB INTO THE GREEN.

And that is just getting the ball onto the green, never mind getting the ball onto the green past the hole.

Maybe some of the shots at the green that ended up short were mishits. Well, not maybe. Were. But that’s only a small portion of them, and not enough to take away from the following point.

The average male amateur (that’s you) can GREATLY increase the number of greens he/she (you) hits JUST BY USING ENOUGH CLUB.

Why doesn’t that happen? Either you don’t really know how far away the green/pin is, or you don’t really know how far you hit your irons, or do know but base club selection on how far you are capable of hitting that club rather than how far you usually hit that club. Or you don’t take your lie into count. Or the wind. Or the condition of the turf. Or how you’re hitting today. Or the green is elevated.

All of those are easy problems to solve. They do not require you to be one bit better of a ball-striker than you are now. They just require you to think.

Maybe you won’t get five more GIR. Maybe four, maybe three. But you’ll get more.

I’m not going to listen to any excuses.

In an earlier post, I talked about arriving. A shot to the pin must finish past the pin. It must arrive. It doesn’t matter how good your good shots are. It matters that they arrive.

Your long game sets up your green game (short game and putting) if you have the habit of arriving. But you’ll never really know if that is a problem if you don’t see a picture of how you really bring the ball to the hole.

This blog post is about making that picture.

You might keep statistics as you play. Fairways hit, greens hit, number of putts, are the basics and you can get as detailed from there as you want.

I ask you to not do that the next time you play. Instead make a picture. If you never keep stats, you get to make a picture, too.

You know the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. It’s so true. Looking at a collective picture of where your shots into green end up will tell you in an instant what a row of numbers might only suggest.

What you do is draw a big circle in the center of a 3×5 card. As you play into each green, put a dot where the ball ends up, and draw a line from the ball to the approximate location of the pin. After nine holes, start in on a second card or draw a chart on the other side of the same card (eighteen holes on one chart makes too much clutter).

The picture below is my chart from the last round I played.

I was short of the pin four times, past it (way past!) once, and about even four times. Not bad. For the times I was short, it took ten strokes to get down. For the other five times, it took eleven strokes to get down.

Just nine holes doesn’t tell you that much. But if you get charts for four or five rounds, they should show a clear pattern of how you’re playing the ball into the green. I’ll leave it to you figure out what to do with that information.

There’s a class of golfers who are on the cusp of breaking what I call a milestone score—100, 90, or 80. (If you’re trying to break 70, you don’t need my help.)

I’ll tell you right now, that if you’re flirting with that 99, 89, or 79, you’re already good enough to get there. What’s keeping you back is not be coming a better shotmaker, but a better player.

Golf is a game you play. Good shots get you in the ball park you want to be in. The right shots bring you home.

Example. I was playing a few days ago and my second shot on a par 4 ended up on a mound about five feet above the level of the green, maybe 30 feet from the hole. I took out my sand wedge and pitched on. The ball landed about three feet from the hole, but rolled about ten feet past.

That sounds all right, maybe, but it was the wrong shot. I had released to clubhead, that is, let my hands turn over. That puts a moderate amount of spin on the ball, which is why it ran so far past.

I was playing solo, so I dropped another ball and this time held off the release so at the finish, the clubface was still facing to the sky. That puts a lot of spin on the ball. The ball flew the same, landed close to the same spot as before, but rolled out less than one foot. Tap-in par.

The first shot was a good shot. It was just the wrong shot, which added a stroke to my score, whereas hitting the right shot would have kept my score down.

Now there’s a difference between the wrong shot and a bad shot. We all miss shots, make bad ones, even if they were the right shot. That’s why we’re handicap golfers.

But the more you know about how to play the game, the lower your score will be with the same skills.

Raymond Floyd wrote this in his book, The Elements of Scoring, which I highly recommend: “If somehow I was given your physical (golf) game and we had a match I would beat you 99 times out of 100, because I know how to play the game better than you do”

Got that?

Here’s another example. Earlier in that round, I was on a sharp upslope in front of the green about 40 feet from the pin. Since an upslope adds loft to the club, I chose a 52-degree wedge to chip on with. I hit a good shot that finished about 15 feet past the hole. So I tried another shot, with a 56-degree wedge. Same stroke, different club. The ball finished about four feet past the hole.

In the first example, it was the right cub, but the wrong stroke. In the second example, it was the right stroke, but the wrong club.

Do you see what is going on here? These little things are what can add strokes to your score that you don’t reflect your skill level. Your score doesn’t reflect how well you hit the ball so much as how well you play.

In that nine holes, there were four occasions where I hit a wrong-shot do-over that saved a stroke. The bad shots I let lie. All that turned a 42 into a potential 38.

Four shots in eighteen holes is a lot, but four shots in nine holes is enormous.

I strongly recommend that you find time, on occasion to play a solo round when the course isn’t busy and do what I did. You will learn a ton about being a better player, which is all you need to be to break that milestone score.

There’s a golf blog I recommend you give a look to, called 3Jack Golf Blog. It concentrates on professional tournament golf, but occasionally has instructional relevance for us. Find it at https://3jack.blogspot.com/.

One post that struck me presented Richie’s analysis of the telling skills for professional golfers. He called them the 4 Cornerstones of the Professional Game.

They are,

1. Driving Effectiveness
2. Red Zone Play (175-225 yards)
3. Short Game shots from 10-20 yards
4. Putting from 3-15 feet

Players that rank average or better in all four these areas do well on the Tour. Recreational golfers who do well in these area will do well overall, too.

Driving Effectiveness is a combination of length and accuracy. For us, accuracy would be more important than length, but don’t discount distance. My par rate is clearly related to being the fairway. I don’t think about distance, because the ones I hit straight are my longest drives.

I would reduce the yardage of Red Zone Play to 125-175 yards for recreational golfers. This is about hitting greens from distances we can realistically have a chance. I once wrote about the yardage gap for recreational golfers, the distance from 175-200 yards that we don’t have a realistic chance of hitting the green with any consistency. Take a look at that post.

By the way, I have this rule of thumb for hitting greens. It is just my guess, with no data to back it up at all, but it makes sense to me. Add a zero to the number of the club you are using. That is the percentage of greens you should hit with that club.

The standard for a 9-iron then is to hit 90% of greens, and with a 5-iron, 50% is a reasonable expectation. Thinking along these lines can help you plan you approach to the green, as in what are my chances of missing, and if I miss, where is the best place to do that?

Numbers 3 and 4 are obviously just as important for us, without modification, as they are for the pros. The short game metric is measured in yards from the green, not from the hole. Putting? How many putts from 3-15 feet do you sink? Just two more per round would help, don’t you think?

I know these cornerstones sound obvious, because when you take them out, there isn’t that much of the game left. Long-range pitching, bunker play, and approach putting is about it.

But you might want consider concentrating on these four areas in your practice sessions and see how it works out. I’m focusing on #3, because those are great places from which to steal a par, and there’s no reason I can’t get good with those shots. Or you, for that matter.

Here are some easy ways to save a shot here and there which do not require you be any better than you are now. Each one can save you one stroke per round. They are taken from the upcoming edition of Bob’s Living Golf Book.

Play from the right set of tees.

Off the tee, use the longest club with which you can reliably hit the fairway. If that’s your driver, go for it. If it’s not our driver, don’t just assume it is your 3-wood.

Every shot at the hole (iron, pitch, chip, putt) must pass the hole. If the iron into the green requires a longer club than you can reliably hit straight, lay up. It is easier to chip on from the unobstructed fairway than from problematic ground on the sides of the green.

From 10-20 yards off the green, getting the ball on the green in one shot is a higher priority than getting the ball close to the pin.

For any putt of under roughly 20 feet (you have to determine the exact distance) look at the hole when you putt.

For putts beyond 20 feet, use the Triangulated Approach Putting technique.

Realize that some holes are too hard for you. Play them for an easy bogey instead of a hard par.

When you’re in trouble, think first about hitting the ball back into the fairway and playing on from there.

Put more importance on having fun with your companions and enjoying the day than you do shooting a low score.

Carry these playing tips with you, use them, and see how many strokes they save you. There are nine of them. What if each one did save you one stroke per round?

Please see my post on arrival, which I have just updated.