5 Ways You Can Lower Your Scores Without Changing Your Swing

1. Club Up on Your Approach Shots
Seriously… club up

According to a study done by Game Golf’s CEO John McGuire on different handicap levels, the vast majority of approach shots into greens are left short. How many is “the vast majority”, you ask? He found that over 65% of approach shots are left short of the green entirely, and 90% of shots are short of the intended target!  Most shots that are left short are hit by a golfer that is… let’s just say, a little overly ambitious. Just because you flushed your 8 iron 160 yards that one time downwind and downhill doesn’t mean that it’s your new go-to club from this distance every time! 

Below is the data that was collected in the study of an 18 handicap player hitting shots into a green from around 120 yards - most of their shots were short of the target! Club up!

There are so many ways to improve your approach shots, but the easiest way is to simply club up. Unless you’re dead by going long, hitting an approach shot with a soft 9 iron instead of a pitching wedge will not only give you a better chance of not leaving it short, but it will also make it easier to hit it straight!  Also, how cool is it when you see someone hit a three-quarter follow through and it lands soft on the green? Be cool - club up into greens!

2. Avoid Hazards / Lost Balls
Shooting low scores is hard enough, don’t give away free shots

One thing the pros do exceptionally well is avoid penalty shots - after all, no one likes to just give away free shots back to the course. Avoiding hazards, out of bounds areas, or penal thick rough areas on the course is perhaps the easiest way to knock a few strokes off your score!  Start by not only identifying where the hazards are on the golf course, but understanding your shot dispersion and typical misses.

If your typical miss with the driver is a big block out to the right but there’s water on the right, aim WAY out to the left. Most people have up to a 60 yard wide dispersion pattern with their driver, and we know from the data that the rough on most golf courses isn’t nearly as difficult as what you see at the U.S. Open. So why not aim 40, 50, even 60 yards out to the left? If you hit your block to the right, you’re likely in the fairway!

Here is a video from Sam Vickers Golf Performance that shows how identifying shot patterns and using that information to avoid penalty shots can be a great way to lower your scores!

Pro Tip: If you really want to dive deep on dispersion patterns, visit your local simulator facility and get your dispersion patterns drawn out in ovals with each club. Then you can overlay your ovals on top of the actual course layout and know your target lines and margins for error on each hole.

3. Stay in Control of Your Emotions
Temper tantrums are only making your scores bigger

Golf is not a game of perfection, and bad shots are inevitable. The only thing we can do is recognize that they happen, and when they do, let them go and move on.  Being prone to error isn’t the end of the world, but compounding your errors and making consecutive follow-up mistakes because you’re pissed off is totally avoidable. As the great Payne Stewart said - “a bad attitude is worse than a bad swing.”

One of the best ways to hold yourself accountable for any emotional flare-ups in a round or to keep yourself from dwelling on past mistakes is to simply keep track of them. Every time you feel that you emotionally explode, or if you catch yourself dwelling on a bad shot earlier in the round, put a tally on the bottom of the card.  Can you keep it under 5 tallies in a round? Don’t try to get that number immediately down to 0; it’s not a light switch you can simply turn off. Just aim for 4 tallies the next round, and so on.

4. Don’t Take Unnecessary Risk
Choose the high-percentage shot when taking on risk on the course

We’re all guilty of being stuck in the trees and thinking to ourselves, “I could punch out sideways… but I see a 3 foot gap in the trees that would leavs me much closer to the hole!” Unfortunately, this cavalier attitude is hurting our scores WAY more than it’s helping. Taking on the hero shot is the easiest way to make a bad hole even worse.  

A great way to approach these situations is to ask yourself one question before each shot - if I drop 4 balls in this spot, would I be able to hit at least 3 of them successfully (i.e. 75% success rate)? If not, it’s probably best to punch out and take your medicine!  Unless you are one shot behind in your club championship on #18 - then FIRE AWAY AND HOPE FOR THE BEST!

Here is a video by Decathlon EN that discusses what he refers to as the “Three-Fourths Rule.”

5. Stop Putting So Aggressively
3-putt avoidance is a great way to save shots around the green

Whenever you are on the putting surface, your only goal for any putt outside of 8 feet should be to control your misses and avoid the dreaded 3-putt.  The reason I say anything outside of 8 feet is because statistically, the make percentage of an 8 foot putt is 50% on the Pro Tour, and apologies for the reminder, but you’re NOT a Pro. Beyond 8 feet, your mindset should shift from trying to make everything to simply hitting it close and giving yourself a tap in.

Practicing speed control on the putting green before a round sets you up for success with the flat stick. One great drill that tour professional Maverick McNealy does before every competitive round he plays is called Leap Frog. Pick a flat part of the green and put a tee in the ground 5 feet out from where you are standing and then another at 20 feet out, so 15 feet apart. The goal is to see how many balls you can putt into the tee gap, but the trick is that each putt has to go further than the ball before it. If you putt a ball shorter than any previous ball, you lose! Try it once, set your target score, and then see if you can beat it!

TODAY’S TRIVIA
Answer to Win 5 Dozen Custom Titleist ProV1 Golf Balls
(1 winner chosen on 4/30/25 across all April trivia entries, 1,000 correct respondents minimum)

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