THE LONG GAME
By Jon Sherman
Golfers love to believe that lower scores come from moments of brilliance. The uncomfortable truth is that most players don’t shoot higher scores because they can’t make enough birdies, but rather from making too many mistakes.
And having these backward scoring expectations holds many players back, including yours truly, for quite some time.
I’ve always felt that watching pro golf on TV was one of the biggest reasons golfers have unrealistic expectations of what getting better actually looks like. We’re shown a highlight reel of the best players in the world who are in the best form that week.
Seeing birdie putt after birdie putt drop makes us think, “Well, I just need to make more birdies to lower my handicap.” This leads to a romanticized (and unrealistic) notion of golf where we feel we have to play spectacularly well to drop our handicaps.
If we look at the stats, it tells a far different story. A typical PGA Tour player makes about 3 1/2 birdies per round, which is really incredible. Though most would assume they make more.
However, when we look at stats of normal golfers, the birdies start to disappear rather quickly. Scratch golfers, who represent less than 2% of the general golf population, only average somewhere around one to two birdies per round. When we get to more normal handicaps, like the 10–20 level, the birdies only come once every few rounds.
So, you can’t explain why one golfer breaks 90 or 80 more often than another through birdies. There isn’t a meaningful enough separation between birdie rates.
The real culprit is double bogeys (or worse). A scratch golfer typically only makes a double once every few rounds, whereas the 10 handicap will make three of them every round, and a 20 handicap is closer to seven doubles per round.
Golf is really about minimizing disproportionate errors rather than hitting more spectacular shots. And this leads me to my next point …
Another situation we continually see on TV is the “green light,” where a tour player has a wedge in their hands from about 100–125 yards in the fairway.
Announcers set up the shot where they should knock it within tap-in range for a birdie, and anything less than that will be a disappointment. According to Shotlink, however, the absolute best player on tour most years averages about 15 feet from the hole in that scenario, while a typical tour player averages about 20 feet. Even they need to re-adjust their expectations!
As you’d expect, the benchmarks for recreational golfers are far different. Here are a few proximity numbers by handicap level:
Scratch: 34 feet
5 HCP: 43 feet
10 HCP: 52 feet
20 HCP: 72 feet
The 100–125-yard proximity stat is very important to understand because it reveals the truth about approach play from any distance – this is not a contest of knocking down pins.
Instead, it’s more about hitting more greens in regulation (the traditional statistic most correlated with scoring), but more importantly, what happens when you do miss a green. Leaving yourself a straightforward chip shot just off the green is far easier to execute than a 30-yard wedge shot from the rough or a fairway bunker.
So don’t get caught up in defining good shots by how close you get to the pin. Start judging yourself more by leaving yourself manageable wedge shots around the green and bumping your GIR percentage up. This is how you make more stress-free pars and good bogeys, and avoid the main thing holding you back from reaching your scoring goals – doubles.
Every time we see a tour player in the trees on TV, they somehow magically escape with an amazing shot and make a routine par. This is another clever television trick. Yes, we routinely see these shots, but what we don’t see is plenty of players at the bottom of the leaderboard making bogeys.
One of the most powerful statistics from Mark Broadie’s book Every Shot Counts is that PGA Tour players make bogey roughly 80% of the time when faced with a recovery situation like being in the trees. So, the truth is that they are not pulling off that amazing escape most of the time.
When the rest of us face these situations on the course, which is quite often, we can’t help but listen to that voice in our heads that wants to take the gamble and still try to make par, so we try to thread the ball through that tiny opening in the branches, or hit a massive slice, and often, we’re right back where we started. And then 10 minutes later, we’re kicking ourselves for making that triple bogey.
What’s interesting is that these situations are actually an opportunity to save strokes rather quickly if you have the right mindset. Just choose the shot that gets you back to safety more often, and your scores will plummet because … well, you guessed it, you’ll make fewer big numbers!
It’s honestly that simple. But the discipline required to make that decision when your mind is racing and your emotions are heightened is the difficult part.
If it hasn’t become abundantly clear at this point, don’t step on the golf course feeling like you need a highlight reel to shoot your best score! If anything, that mindset works against you.
Jon Sherman is the author of The Four Foundations of Golf. He also co-hosts the Sweet Spot podcast and coaches on the PGA Tour. As a “player-coach,” he offers perspective on topics beyond the golf swing, including expectation management, strategy, practice, and the mental game. Sherman is also a regular competitor in MGA tournaments.
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