Good golfer vs average golfer?

[dfreuter415]

  akpklarson said:

What separates a great golfer vs an avg golfer?

From golfsmith.com:  What is the Average Golf Score?

http://golftips.golfsmith.com/average-golf-score-1916.html

[thefinlex]

"great" golfers are the ones on TV."good" golfers are the guys at your club off less than 5.The rest of us are varying degrees of average to poor with a wonderful mixture of styles and methods.Consider a common scenario....Medal play on a Saturday,guy in full $$$$kit ,aesthetically beautiful swing on the 1st tee,obviously fancying his chances ( we all do, hey,with that swing he must be good... right?) then the gangly guy standing next to him in the bad shirt swinging like Trevino with cramp (euughh look at that swing,that must hurt..he must be a hacker...right?)goes on to whip him with complete control of his game and capabilities.....happens every week everywhere me thinks!

aah the beautiful game.Until we draw pictures not numbers on the card the guy who can score with what hes got is the man to beat.

[DrvFrShow]

I'd like to play bogey golf consistently to be honest and break 90 on occasion. I started late. I can't expect to be really good. My joints and stuff won't take the punishment of all the practice needed to do that. That's reality. I can hit a very decent length drive and keep it in play. That's half the battle. Now WTF is going on with my iron game? Why am I chunking everything? It's lesson time again. If I could put it together, I could play this elusive bogey golf with about a 18 HC. I'm playing like a 30 HC right now.

And I've seen that "Trevino with a cramp" swing wearing a bad shirt and wearing denim shorts and running shoes guy shoot a 79.

[Dave2512]

Yeah all of that continues into single digit golf. If I go too long between lessons I cringe when I see the videos. I never know if I am going to shoot 75 or 95. There is always luck involved too.  So as long as I am striking the ball half decent, meaning the end result is close to the intention, I am good with it.

[Moppy]

  DrvFrShow said:

And I've seen that "Trevino with a cramp" swing wearing a bad shirt and wearing denim shorts and running shoes guy shoot a 79.

Ha, I play with that guy sometimes, but he usually shoots in the high eighties. I can't for the life of my figure out where his power comes from to look at his swing.

[DrvFrShow]

  Moppy said:

Ha, I play with that guy sometimes, but he usually shoots in the high eighties. I can't for the life of my figure out where his power comes from to look at his swing.

Some of these guys have been playing for years and they have a consistent repeatable motion . They may have a bazillion compensations in it, but if they're repeatable it doesn't matter. They don't care. They're never going to play on the tour and they know it. And they never really practice at getting better. They go to the range and practice their repeatable  motion. They know where the club is going to end up in relation to the ball and they don't miss it very often. They find 'the slot' with their motion. That's all I can figure out.

The rest of us just don't have a repeatable motion. We don't have the muscle memory to know where the club head is going to end up in relation to the ball every time. And the more we futz around changing things the less likely we're going to end up with a repeatable motion.

I guess this is the idea behind working on that one thing and getting consistent at it, and keeping things as simple as possible. Who cares about learning how to work the club or work different types of shots. We're not there yet. We may never be there. Just do our job. Just swing the club.

[Lihu]

  DrvFrShow said:

I'd like to play bogey golf consistently to be honest and break 90 on occasion. I started late. I can't expect to be really good. My joints and stuff won't take the punishment of all the practice needed to do that. That's reality. I can hit a very decent length drive and keep it in play. That's half the battle. Now WTF is going on with my iron game? Why am I chunking everything? It's lesson time again. If I could put it together, I could play this elusive bogey golf with about a 18 HC. I'm playing like a 30 HC right now. And I've seen that "Trevino with a cramp" swing wearing a bad shirt and wearing denim shorts and running shoes guy shoot a 79.

Even if you cut your distances to 70%, you could play to a single digit female player. I play some ladies who barely drive 200 yards and hit hybrids to 150 and still scramble for pars. We have a strong ladies club, and many play this way.

[rkim291968]

Good golfers are the ones who fix their divots, ball marks, don't shoot over front group's head, don't spit sunflower seed on greens, etc..

[John S]

An average golfer 3 putts, a good golfer does not.

[DrvFrShow]

  Lihu said:

Even if you cut your distances to 70%, you could play to a single digit female player. I play some ladies who barely drive 200 yards and hit hybrids to 150 and still scramble for pars. We have a strong ladies club, and many play this way.

Right now the long stuff isn't the problem. My driver has been accurate. lol. I'm hitting fairways and first cut. Sure I'll block a couple or duck hook one a round. The blocks I can recover from. The duck hooks aren't in that bad of shape either. What's killing me is hitting fat shots on my approaches. Hit a great drive then take three or four more shots to get on the dance floor. That'll kill any game. It's lesson time. Tell me what to do coach.

[Lihu]

  DrvFrShow said:

[QUOTE name="Lihu" url="/t/83674/good-golfer-vs-average-golfer/18#post_1180182"] Even if you cut your distances to 70%, you could play to a single digit female player. I play some ladies who barely drive 200 yards and hit hybrids to 150 and still scramble for pars. We have a strong ladies club, and many play this way.[/QUOTE] Right now the long stuff isn't the problem. My driver has been accurate. lol. I'm hitting fairways and first cut. Sure I'll block a couple or duck hook one a round. The blocks I can recover from. The duck hooks aren't in that bad of shape either. What's killing me is hitting fat shots on my approaches. Hit a great drive then take three or four more shots to get on the dance floor. That'll kill any game. It's lesson time. Tell me what to do coach.

Fat shots are possibly from swinging too hard. Irons should be swung with control. If you think to yourself "I'm going to swing at 70% effort" then you might avoid the terrible mishits?

[Hatchman]

  DrvFrShow said:

Right now the long stuff isn't the problem. My driver has been accurate. lol. I'm hitting fairways and first cut. Sure I'll block a couple or duck hook one a round. The blocks I can recover from. The duck hooks aren't in that bad of shape either. What's killing me is hitting fat shots on my approaches. Hit a great drive then take three or four more shots to get on the dance floor. That'll kill any game. It's lesson time. Tell me what to do coach.

[quote name="Lihu" url="/t/83674/good-golfer-vs-average-golfer/18#post_1180364"] Fat shots are possibly from swinging too hard. Irons should be swung with control. If you think to yourself "I'm going to swing at 70% effort" then you might avoid the terrible mishits?[/quote] If I may golf friends, due to leg necessity, I started using 1-2 clubs up then taking controlled partial swing along path with shaft lean and hold off the flip. Probably not the right technical answer but a thought I use.

[Moppy]

  DrvFrShow said:

Right now the long stuff isn't the problem. My driver has been accurate. lol. I'm hitting fairways and first cut. Sure I'll block a couple or duck hook one a round. The blocks I can recover from. The duck hooks aren't in that bad of shape either. What's killing me is hitting fat shots on my approaches. Hit a great drive then take three or four more shots to get on the dance floor. That'll kill any game. It's lesson time. Tell me what to do coach.

I am no expert, so take this for what it is worth, but I was right where you are and started focusing on my grip, per the famous grip thread on here somewhere, made sure it was "strong" to avoid the push sliced that had bedeviled me, and that I wasn't gripping too tightly, and that my clubface at address was correct, and my approach shots improved like magic, and I parred the first par 3 I came to with a sweet little draw 10 ft from the pin. It also somehow magically fixed my fat shots.

[edit]  I think lessening the grip pressure was the biggest change that helped with the fat shots.

[RandallT]

  rkim291968 said:

Good golfers are the ones who fix their divots, ball marks, don't shoot over front group's head, don't spit sunflower seed on greens, etc..

This reminds me of the old Goofus and Gallant meme:

Goofus (Average golfer): "My ball mark is on the other side of the green. Screw that!"

Gallant (Good golfer): "I not only fix my ball mark, but I look for other ball marks to be courteous for the next groups behind me."

That could be a funny parody thread by itself, for those of us that grew up on Highlights magazine.

[NJpatbee]

I would say average golfers will break 90 on occasion, and have days where they surpass 100.  Basically 90's shooters, 15-22 handicaps, capable of good swings many times but not most.  Good golfers have a more reliable swing with each club and stay in the upper 70's to mid 80's.   It wasn't asked but I would propose that there are also very good golfers and great golfers that play a different game than most of us.

[pumaAttack]

  NJpatbee said:

I would say average golfers will break 90 on occasion, and have days where they surpass 100.  Basically 90's shooters, 15-22 handicaps, capable of good swings many times but not most.  Good golfers have a more reliable swing with each club and stay in the upper 70's to mid 80's.   It wasn't asked but I would propose that there are also very good golfers and great golfers that play a different game than most of us.

I would strongly disagree with that.  No way an average golfer breaks 90, even occasionally.  That would be a good golfer.  The Average golfer maybe gets down in the low 90s on a good round.

Join any random twosome or threesome on a public course, I am willingly to bet 90% of them won't break 90.  That includes playing by all the rules.  OB, no mulligans, no gimmie putts.  It's really easy to shoot under 90 when you take mulligans and don't get penalized for OB.  Not to mention the gimmie putts from 4 foot bending putt.

[Moppy]

I think the difference between good and average is consistent solid contact. If you hit the ball well every time, you are always sniffing around a green in regulation, and if you can do that, even an "apron in regulation" (my own made up stat), you can shoot 90 or better regularly, which I  agree that the average golfer cannot do.

[phan52]

I don't knock down pins when I hit it solid but I keep the ball in front of me and give myself a chance.

On Saturday, I struck the ball pretty solidly all day and was able to score. On Sunday, not so much. Saturday I was a good golfer and Sunday I was average. It was all about consistency.