For any golfer who wants to play great golf
Posts tagged Game Sense
Golf perfection is impossible and not needed to play good golf
Apr 26th
You ever get mad when you don’t pull off a shot, that realistically you had no business trying? Happens to me too. Just because we hit that shot once in our life we think we should be able to do it on command.
Of course, that’s not even close to reality. Perfect golf is impossible even for the players at the very top of their game who are the best in the world.
But you don’t need to play perfect to score well. When I look back on my best scoring rounds, I wasn’t playing perfectly. I was leaving myself with good opportunities to score and was able to cash in on enough of them to end up with a good score.
Aside from perfection in golf being unattainable, the main problem with trying to get it is that it puts pressure on every part of your game. That is the quickest way to score badly.
Getting the most out of your golf GPS rangefinder
Apr 17th
GPS rangefinders are wonderful things. They give you the distances you need to make smart decisions. They give you the distances to hazards, to carry over the hazards. They give you distances to fairway targets, and of course the front, center and back of the green.
This information is vital if you want to make good decisions on the course. What they don’t give you is the strategy based on the conditions of the day, how you’re striking the ball, and the pin placements. They also don’t take any pressure into account if you’re playing a Nassau, a match against a buddy, or a tournament.
Some of you are lucky enough to play with caddies and if you to have a good caddy, he or she, can save you many strokes. But for those who don’t have our own caddies or get to play routinely with caddies we need some help making those decisions. If I’m playing a par 5, and I have 245 yards to the pin, 230 to the front, and 260 to the back I will know the distances I need to reach the green, but the rangefinder can’t tell me if it’s a smart decision.
Mickelson setting course management back for the average golfer
Apr 16th
Phil Mickelson’s miracle shot on 13 on Sunday will go down as one of the great shots of Masters history. It will also be a big setback for the average golfer.
There is no doubt that Phil Mickelson has an overload of talent. He has shown that over years pulling off incredible shots. But he has taken risks that have cost him tournaments, most notably the US Open at Winged Foot.
The problem isn’t that Phil tries those shots and sometimes pulls them off. The problem is that he influences golfers and they begin to think they can do the same. We’d all love to be able to strike the ball like Phil but even most golfers in the field at Augusta on Sunday would have laid up. With Phil’s talent he would have scored a birdie 80% of the time laying up, and he in fact scored a birdie.
Was it a heroic shot? Absolutely. Was it smart? Probably not. The par 5 13th had been giving up lots of birdies. Phil’s mistake is that he brought bogey into play. Luckily for him it didn’t turn out that way, but pine straw is not easy to hit out off. He could easily have ended up in the creek, pitching onto the green for an un-guaranteed par. The conservative route wouldn’t have brought bogey into play unless something disastrous had happened.
