What is the most important aspect of golf that you think can improve your score?

[Golfingdad]

Like most shooting sports, the golf shot is done one shot at a time. Once you've made the shot it's done. You can't turn back time.

"Swear, punch the air, let loose a volley of abuses at your club,. . . whatever" get it out of your system and play the next shot as if it is your first shot of the day.

I've never heard golf referred to as a "shooting" sport.  Next I was going to crack a joke about "skeet golfing" but that jogged my memory ...

Oh, and @iacas I know it's a bit of an off-the-wall analogy, but watching this video made me think of your "Don't accelerate" putting thread.  The reason:  after only a couple of tries, they all realized that their best chance at hitting the clay was to try and time it for the top of the arc.  (At first they were trying to get it on the way down.)  It's basically your graph in real life and 3-D.

[Lihu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lihu

Like most shooting sports, the golf shot is done one shot at a time. Once you've made the shot it's done. You can't turn back time.

"Swear, punch the air, let loose a volley of abuses at your club,. . . whatever" get it out of your system and play the next shot as if it is your first shot of the day.

I've never heard golf referred to as a "shooting" sport.  Next I was going to crack a joke about "skeet golfing" but that jogged my memory ...

Oh, and @iacas I know it's a bit of an off-the-wall analogy, but watching this video made me think of your "Don't accelerate" putting thread.  The reason:  after only a couple of tries, they all realized that their best chance at hitting the clay was to try and time it for the top of the arc.  (At first they were trying to get it on the way down.)  It's basically your graph in real life and 3-D.

[JonMA1]

Amen brother!

If distance is only slightly more important than accuracy, and if both improve as your swing mechanics improves, then the whole distance vs. accuracy debate seems almost purely academic. It certainly is for me, until I start hitting my driver consistently.

As far as practice is concerned, I agree it's academic. Since I don't play in leagues or play for money, every round is practice. What I started doing the last couple of months of the season was to move back from shorter men's tees to the middle tees. That forced me to use my driver on almost all par 4s and 5s. My scores suffered but it allowed me to get a bit better with that club - in distance and accuracy.

It's not academic. It's about club selection off the tee. Those in the "accuracy camp" are probably not hitting driver as often as they should to maximize scoring potential. Fairways hit is an overrated stat. You should hit driver unless your shot dispersion oval gives you a good chance of hitting into a penalty zone. That's it.

I don't know how anyone can argue this, but I don't think it's always a black and white decision as to what is considered a reasonable risk. Different players will use different clubs on the same tee, even on tour. I'd guess it would be due to an individual's strengths or weaknesses??? All I can do is worry about my game and I believe my decisions are usually logical. My execution on the other hand....

On the courses I play, the fairways seem generous and the rough isn't bad, so yeah, I'll use the driver almost every time. In addition, I want to play the longest club I can get away with on my second shot (unless I'm hitting into a tight green). Anything that will leave me a closer approach shot, as you stated, taking shot dispersion and hazards into consideration. Having said that, there's nothing wrong with laying up when the situation calls for it.

Finally, as for developing a good swing, I just think that at some point we all reach our potential for distance. If the gaps between my clubs are consistent and I don't have a glaring weakness (not that it will ever happen), the practice ratios of 65/20/15 seem reasonable with accuracy becoming more important. But I'm relatively new and my views are likely to change.

[Jakester23]

Like most shooting sports, the golf shot is done one shot at a time. Once you've made the shot it's done. You can't turn back time.

"Swear, punch the air, let loose a volley of abuses at your club,. . . whatever" get it out of your system and play the next shot as if it is your first shot of the day.

The big difference between shooting sports and golf is once you miss a target shooting its gone.  At least in golf you can birdie to make up for a double or whatever.  Shooting is more mental IMO.

[RFKFREAK]

My Evolvr instructor has me working on Key's 1 and 2, and, in particular, post impact, not having my weight fall forward.  I'm hoping it will lead to consistent contact and fewer wayward shots.

I also have to lock down my distances better because as my swing got less gross, I was hitting the ball over the green on my approach shot.  I also should get an idea of how much distance my pitch shots go depending on the wedge I use so have to map that out, too.

The other thing that would probably help my score is course management.

[chipandcharge]

I apologize if I'm repeating something already posted.  I just discovered this thread and have not had time to read through its entirety.

For me, the most important aspect of golf for the past three years has been ball contact.  Prior to 2011, I hit very few fat or thin shots in a full round.  Then within a few months in 2011, when I lost most of my depth perception, my scores went up six strokes a round.  I read an article in Golf Digest that was based on statistical analysis of thousands of rounds, where they found that each bad contact added 1.4 strokes to a round.  This statistic fits my golf performance very closely.  If I make four bad contacts in a full round on a course with 123 slope when playing at or near my best, I shoot 84-86.  On the other had, at or near my worst,  I make 14 bad contacts, and I I shoot 98-100.  The ten additional bad contacts would statistically add 14 strokes, which is very close.

So, my goal is to get back to where I was prior to 2007 in terms of reducing bad contacts.  The difficulty is that I can't simply go back to the swing I used back then because my vision was better at that time, ignoring that I aged from 69 to 72 in the mean time.

[Lihu]

I apologize if I'm repeating something already posted.  I just discovered this thread and have not had time to read through its entirety.

For me, the most important aspect of golf for the past three years has been ball contact.  Prior to 2011, I hit very few fat or thin shots in a full round.  Then within a few months in 2011, when I lost most of my depth perception, my scores went up six strokes a round.  I read an article in Golf Digest that was based on statistical analysis of thousands of rounds, where they found that each bad contact added 1.4 strokes to a round.  This statistic fits my golf performance very closely.  If I make four bad contacts in a full round on a course with 123 slope when playing at or near my best, I shoot 84-86.  On the other had, at or near my worst,  I make 14 bad contacts, and I I shoot 98-100.  The ten additional bad contacts would statistically add 14 strokes, which is very close.

So, my goal is to get back to where I was prior to 2007 in terms of reducing bad contacts.  The difficulty is that I can't simply go back to the swing I used back then because my vision was better at that time, ignoring that I aged from 69 to 72 in the mean time.

Is 1.4 strokes for a specific handicap range?

[Lihu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lihu

Like most shooting sports, the golf shot is done one shot at a time. Once you've made the shot it's done. You can't turn back time.

"Swear, punch the air, let loose a volley of abuses at your club,. . . whatever" get it out of your system and play the next shot as if it is your first shot of the day.

The big difference between shooting sports and golf is once you miss a target shooting its gone.  At least in golf you can birdie to make up for a double or whatever.  Shooting is more mental IMO.

First of all, birdies are pure luck for me. My next question would be why are you not normally thinking of getting birdies more often, rather than to just make up for a blowup hole? So, make more of them!

I think golf is very mentally stressful, but your score is always made one shot at a time (maybe 2 with a penalty ).

[Jakester23]

First of all, birdies are pure luck for me. My next question would be why are you not normally thinking of getting birdies more often, rather than to just make up for a blowup hole? So, make more of them! :beer: I think golf is very mentally stressful, but your score is always made one shot at a time (maybe 2 with a penalty :-X ).

I think of birdies every hole I even get one every 30 holes or so. I guess I mean you have the opportunity to make up for a mistake in golf. Whereas in clays a miss is a miss. You can hit a terrible approach shot followed by a great chip and end up with par. Which is most likely what you would end up with after a decent to good approach shot.

[Osmond]

More yards off the tee. But not just by club fitting, so I guess my answer is "get a better swing". Working towards it as hard as I can...

[The Recreational Golfer]

Hitting accurate iron shots more often.

[Moppy]

I was in the accuracy camp for a while, then I was playing best ball with a guy who hits on average what amounts to my longest, luckiest shot.  I liked the view much better from his ball than from mine, and I got to realizing that I had to fix my swing mechanics so that I could swing faster while still not sacrificing that much accuracy. It is not like I couldn't hit as far as he did physically.  The way my swing was, I could only avoid the slice by taking a lot off of each swing. I thought this meant that I had "fixed" my slice, when really, I had only put a band-aid on it. If you are a slicer, accuracy always wins because balls sliced OB are usually not recoverable, at least on my home course, they are in the woods or tall weeds.

So I have been working a lot on being able to swing fast without an outside in motion and without pushing the ball right. This is mostly about grip to avoid the push, and takeaway to avoid the outside in. Just got to Florida so it will be interesting for me to see if the work I did with the Optiflex simulator pans out on the course.

[chipandcharge]

Is 1.4 strokes for a specific handicap range?

Lihu, the article said that the thousands of rounds included golfers from scratch on up.  I don't know how far up.  The article did not give the standard deviation, so I don't know how wide the probability distribution was for this research.  The figure 1.4 is a very good fit fit for my play.  If it wasn't though, I would collect my own data over many rounds and come up with my own figure, and then use it to estimate how much my score would have been lower on any given day if I had cut my bad contacts in half, or down to my goal of four a round.

[BallMarker]

Ball-striking. Hitting the shot that I intend with the correct direction, curve, trajectory, and distance.

That's all......

Yeah. Those the essences of golf, isn't it?

If I can just be more confident about awkward distance shots.

Between 20 and 105 yards. If I can just hit them better I'd be hitting lower 70s for sure.

[Abu3baid]

Driving the ball...  If I am able to put my self in manageable positions for my second shot I don't think I would be scoring between 99 - 110 ever.. The fact that I have no idea where my first shot off the tee is going makes this game very difficult.

Once I get that settled I can start talking about my irons :)

[DrvFrShow]

More GIRs, and that's solid contact and distance. If I can get 12 per round, and 6 at +1, I can suck at putting and still shoot in the low 80s.

[Lihu]

[QUOTE name="Lihu" url="/t/78598/what-is-the-most-important-aspect-of-golf-that-you-think-can-improve-your-score/108#post_1087936"]   Is 1.4 strokes for a specific handicap range? [/QUOTE] Lihu, the article said that the thousands of rounds included golfers from scratch on up.  I don't know how far up.  The article did not give the standard deviation, so I don't know how wide the probability distribution was for this research.  The figure 1.4 is a very good fit fit for my play.  If it wasn't though, I would collect my own data over many rounds and come up with my own figure, and then use it to estimate how much my score would have been lower on any given day if I had cut my bad contacts in half, or down to my goal of four a round.

It seems to be a little too general because the perception of "bad contact" varies with handicap. Interesting, though.

[bste]

I don't really know what advantage it is to start off right and end up more right?

Do you have an in to out swing with the face more open? It seems like if you turn the face in a bit you can turn it into a push-draw pretty readily?

Big shout out to @Lihu .

First check the date on this post.  12/12/14

Then about three weeks ago, I sez, hey maybe a stronger grip ? It has helped.

No, nothing wrong here, spudhead !!!

For all of you who say "check the fundamentals", thank you and just keep repeating it, eventually maybe it will sink in for me.

edit  4:16 by brian