Stop Trying To Make Birdies
Ok, first things first, your scores are higher than you would like because you make at least one big number on a hole during your round, please understand that your scores are not too high because you did not make any birdies. I see players in trying to make birdies take silly, unnecessary risks, and as a result making a big number, so let’s start by managing your expectations and a little dose of reality.
The best player on tour averages around 5 birdies a round, the player in the middle of the field makes just over 3 a round, a golfer playing off scratch, will birdie just over one hole a round on average. So let’s not worry about making birdies. Making birdie is tricky, for example let’s take putting, which is difficult, so you remember a tour player makes 88% of putts from between 3-5feet, and from 15-20feet he holes out 19% of the time, so to make a lot of birdies you are going to have to hit your approach shots close, really close to the flag.
Now approach shots can be tricky, let’s look at the proximity to the hole from 100-125 yards on the PGA Tour, the number one player in this range averages just over 15 feet from the flag, the worst player on tour from this distance? 30 feet!! Most birdies on tour are made on the par 5s, nearly every player on tour is under par for those holes.
So for most of you reading, birdie should not be a part of your golfing vocabulary, don’t add additional pressure on yourself in your round by thinking about making birdies, just be thinking middle of the fairway, middle of the green, couple of putts and move on, just keep your ball going forwards and findable!
If you really want to lower your score, then you have to hit more greens in regulation, and to do that, you need to
1. Improve your tee shots-put yourself in a position to hit more greens in regulation-this is a function of distance and dispersion.
2. Approach shot strategy-this is easy, stop aiming at flags and aim for the middle of the green on every shot longer than 30 yards.
3.Ball Striking-this has to be improved to help with your distance control and dispersion-work on strike, can you hit the ball somewhere close to the middle of the clubface each time, are you using footspray every time when you practice to measure this?
4. Finally keep account every round of how many greens you hit in regulation, the average on tour is 12, just so you know.
