How High Handicappers Can Instantly Lower Scores

⛳ High handicap golfers can lower their scores by aiming for safer targets past the flag instead of directly at the pin.

📊 Choosing the yardage to the back of the green helps avoid hazards like water and bunkers, reducing the risk of double or triple bogeys.

🧠 Adopting a strategic mindset in golf—planning shots to avoid trouble—can improve scores without changing your swing.

00:00:00 - I've got some tips for the high handicaps out there to help you play better golf without necessarily even overhauling your swing. So, we're going to talk a little stats and strategy here.

00:00:17 - So, this is a this is a very well-known hole. This is 17 at Sawrass. This is the island green. What a lot of amateur golfers do, and this is why they tend to struggle and shoot high scores, is when you get to a hole like this, if the flag, let's say, is on this front part of the green, so I'll draw my nice handy dandy hole location. Uh, what they'll do is they'll take their rangefinder, they'll shoot the flag and get that exact distance, and then that's the club

00:00:42 - that they try to hit. The problem with that is when you're looking at your shot zone, what's going to happen for the average amateur is it's going to look something like this. So, it's going to go from long left to short right. And you can see a lot of those shots are probably going to end up short and in the water. So, even though you picked the club that goes the exact distance of the flag, you probably mishit it just a little bit. Maybe the wind came up, whatever the case may be. Ideally, you

00:01:05 - don't want your shot zone to be filling up the water. So, what the best golfers in the world do, and this is something that you can do without really even changing anything as far as like your technique. It's just how you think about things. What the best players in the world do is they actually pick a target that generally speaking is a little bit past the flag, so it' be in a more safe spot, more towards the center of the green. The cool part about this is everybody's shot zone is slightly

00:01:28 - different based on your skill level. If you're a really, really bad golfer or very new to the game, you probably have a very big shot zone. If you're a better player, your shot zone gets a lot narrower. But what's really cool is this. If instead of picking the flag as my target, I pick, you know, let's just say this white bullseye back here as my target. What would end up happening if I had that same type of shot zone is now my shot zone is going to be much more

00:01:51 - centered over dry land. So, yes, I'm going to have some shots that might end up really close to the flag. I might have some shots that end up a little deeper on the green. Maybe I've got a 20 30footer. But the whole point here is avoiding the biggest trouble. So, for those of you at home who maybe aren't a tour player, which is probably the vast majority of us, that's why I'm here and talking to you guys. Uh, this is really a way that you can plan around this

00:02:13 - stuff to help you shoot better scores. So, the best advice that I could give you would be this. You don't necessarily have to go map out your next round and figure out exactly where your targets are. What I would do is anytime you have a green where there's trouble up in front of it. So whether that's water, whether that's a bunker, a force carry, whatever the case may be, I would figure out the yardage not to where the flag is. I would figure out the yardage to

00:02:35 - the back of the green. And that would be the club that I would pull and that would be the shot that I would try to hit. So I'm trying to figure out exactly how far to get this golf ball to go to that spot up there instead of to the flag. And what you're probably going to find is that just because you don't hit every shot perfect, you're actually going to end up with a lot of balls that probably end up short of that and actually end up in a better spot to where you can make a better score versus

00:02:58 - what a lot of golfers do is they hit that shot, it ends up in the water and now you're looking at a double bogey or worse right square in the face. So try this the next time you play. Instead of aiming for the flag or picking a target that's the flag, take the yardage to the back of the green. Pick that club and see if that helps your scores because my guess is you'll end up with a lot more opportunities for par instead of those doubles and triples. [Music]