Noticing a trend...

[OCdude12]

Ok, so yesterday's round was not a bad round by any means, but it definitely could have been better. I shot a 6 over 77, but whats really starting to tick me off with my game is lack of consistency. I hit 7/14 fairways and only 2/18 greens in regulation, however had only 24 putts to salvage the round (technically 23, cause 1 was on the fringe). Anyways, this seems to keep happening, hitting less than 50% of fairways and always something like 5-7 GIR. My putting has been great the past few months, usually somewhere between 26-30/round, but my driver is what is really hurting me. I hate it cause I put myself out of the hole almost immediately with my errant drives, forcing myself to scrambe from lots of places to make par. I don't know if its time for a new driver or a couple lessons to correct this, but its really starting to annoy me considering if I could put myself in play more often I might be able to score much better. Anyone's thoughts/opinions?

[msd3075]

Ok, so yesterday's round was not a bad round by any means, but it definitely could have been better. I shot a 6 over 77, but whats really starting to tick me off with my game is lack of consistency. I hit 7/14 fairways and only 2/18 greens in regulation, however had only 24 putts to salvage the round (technically 23, cause 1 was on the fringe). Anyways, this seems to keep happening, hitting less than 50% of fairways and always something like 5-7 GIR. My putting has been great the past few months, usually somewhere between 26-30/round, but my driver is what is really hurting me. I hate it cause I put myself out of the hole almost immediately with my errant drives, forcing myself to scrambe from lots of places to make par. I don't know if its time for a new driver or a couple lessons to correct this, but its really starting to annoy me considering if I could put myself in play more often I might be able to score much better. Anyone's thoughts/opinions?

The way I always approach my rounds is that I realize that I'm going to bogey holes, I'm going to par holes, and that I'm going to have a handful of birdie opportunities; in other words, I'm not going to hit every GIR with a 3 foot birdie putt and that I need to let the birdies come to me. You can't force a perfect shot all the time. You are going to hit bad shots. You hit 7/14 fairways, but you only hit 2/18 GIR. Where the driver misses big misses or where they just a few feet off of the fairway? Were any of the 2 GIR's on par 3's? If you missed all the par 3 greens and didn't hit a GIR from the rough, that means you missed 5/7 approach shots from the fairway, much worse than your 50% fairway misses. A majority of people are going to come on here and tell you "don't hit your driver all the time and hit a fairway wood/hybrid/iron off the tee instead", but to me this goes against what you should be doing with your game. If you have the scrambling ability to shoot 6 over with only hitting 2/18 GIR , you shouldn't be trying to hold back off the tee. If there is anyone that should and could let loose with a driver, it's someone with stats like what you stated.

[mdl]

My first reaction was like msd3075 said it would be. If you think your driver's taking you out of holes, try the 3w off the tee, maybe hybrid-hybrid-7i on the par 5s, whatever. But looking at the stats like msd did, I'd say he's right on. 7/14 fairways isn't great, but 2/18 GIRs after 7/14 fairways means it's your approaches that are really holding you back. Unless like 5 of those 7 fairways were technically on the fairway but all short behind a tree on the dog leg or something, you should be getting more than 2/18 GIRs. Just for argument, say 1 of those was a par 3 GIR. Then you missed 3/4 par 3 greens and 6/7 approach shots, meaning you were 2/11 on approach shots, but 7/14 on drives. As someone who can clearly scramble and putt, taking an extra 30-40 yards off the tee with the driver seems worth it, but the assumption there is that it's worth it cause you're going to hit the green a lot more often with 8i-SW than with 4i-6i, but that doesn't seem to be the case for you right now.

[Supermanwoot]

Honestly you have very little it seems in order to be well under par with 23 putts. Sure your driver is a little off but hit the range and see what works to just hit it straight. Then work on the mid-irons since you missed basically every GIR and you'll "fall into" a lot more FIR and GIRs.

My golf partner (10 HCP) has been working on his mid irons a lot. Last time out he concentrated on hitting the fairways and hit all but 1 fairway. He hits driver straight so that wasnt a problem for him, but after hitting the fairways he let his practice do the work and ended 1 under par.

Seems like you just need to practice mid irons, then make hitting fairways a priority. I'm against putting the driver away, and yes my scores have suffered when I'm off my game. But when the driver is good my scores plummet, just hoping I have a round soon where EVERY driver shot is good.