Tips for lowering golf handicap?

Seanf999

This is both for myself personally and anyone else hoping to lower his or her handicap.
Firstly I'm 17 got a handicap of 16 about 6 months after hitting balls down the back field since the age of 4,
I'm an alright player usually 2 putt at most but I never seem to walk away with birdies..
My drives are 260ish and usually a fade
And irons have always been the finest.

That being said I can't lower my handicap! I got fitted for a driver and the pro thought I was playing off around 3! (Maybe he's just brown nosing so I'll buy from his shop?) but he's a long time friend of my dad anyway.,

So any tips on lowering handicap?

princess poppy

Short game, short game and short game

Danny dyers double

You drive it 260 and never 3 putt ?? What's the weakest part of your game ?

If you're irons are good it could only be short game that's letting you down

PARlance

You may need to get real.
Don't mean that in a bad way but if everything is as good as you say then it's hard to see any reason.

The only ambiguity is around the short game as you don't mention it, but if your irons are "the finest", and taking that as relative to a 260y fade with the driver, then you'll be on more greens than not. So if you're on 50%+ of greens and not 3 putting then you would be single figures.

Do you keep stats?
Fairways hit, greens hit, putts etc?
Keeping stats can be a real eye-opener.

FixdePitchmark

listen to him ^

FixdePitchmark

I think the best way to improve is work out what you are bad at.

Golfers are delusional as a man once said to me. Most of them hide from their weak game. And practice what they are good at.

But - you have to have an honest chat with yourself. And do the things that are hard.

Rikand

You hit it 260, are you always in the fairway ?

Your a fine iron player so would hitting the ball 240 and always being in the fairway work for you ?

Aside from that short game short game short game.

I became a 9 handicap without ever owning a driver. A 3 wood that I always hit straight and a good short game was all I needed.

Seanf999

My short game is sketch, I mean it's not like if I'm off by 40 yards or so but truth is I tend to leave myself too far from the pin to one putt regularly.2 putt seems to be my average even when chipping from just off the edge of the green,

Any tips on getting it closer to the flag? Haha a big ask but ye seem to know your stuff!

Rikand

What kind of chipshots are you playing now ?

Probably best not to be trying high lobbed shots. They are a high skill shot and not really beneficial to really lowering your handicap from 17. Maybe take a look at the " hinge and hold " chipping method. Promotes getting the ball on the ground running as early as possible and running the ball towards the hole. Phil Mickelson describes it well. Youtube it

FixdePitchmark

Rikand wrote: »

What kind of chipshots are you playing now ?
Probably best not to be trying high lobbed shots. They are a high skill shot and not really beneficial to really lowering your handicap from 17. Maybe take a look at the " hinge and hold " chipping method. Promotes getting the ball on the ground running as early as possible and running the ball towards the hole. Phil Mickelson describes it well. Youtube it

I'd say at 17 just get weight on left foot and do this

You can try more fancy stuff when you get to 12.

I'd also say use a nine iron or 8 just off greens and do chip and runs when you can - try avoid using s/w at all. Unless bunker in way.

If you use a 9iron and practice it - you could drop 2 or 3 shots by doing nothing else. Again weight on left foot avoids fat chips.

Key is to have a good short game area and get onto it. This is something so many golfers fail to do - yet will bang 43 drivers at the range.

PARlance

Rikand wrote: »

What kind of chipshots are you playing now ?

Probably best not to be trying high lobbed shots. They are a high skill shot and not really beneficial to really lowering your handicap from 17. Maybe take a look at the " hinge and hold " chipping method. Promotes getting the ball on the ground running as early as possible and running the ball towards the hole. Phil Mickelson describes it well. Youtube it

There's an important stage before that, well, for me anyway....I would say the most important thing is pressure.

It's probably so ingrained with you at this stage Rik that it might be hard to imagine, but when you've a shot on every hole and are lying just off the green in regulation.... there's a massive comfort zone of "sure a pitch and a two putt for me and I'm walking away with my 2 points"

For me, you can practice every method out there but until there is this "pressure" on yourself to get up and down, then the practice can be fairly aimless. It was in my case.

I quickly found the best chipping method to achieve it after I realised I needed to improve.
It took little over an hour on the chipping green to see what was working best after messing around with a few different methods... And yes, flop shots were the first ones I tried haven't done one since

So OP, repeat "up & down" 1,000 times (in your head is advisable) and another 5 or 6 times before every chip, even when just practicing.

PARlance

Worth giving this method a try OP
Takes a while to get used to but it's very safe

http://youtu.be/ARiOlNeJPco

ForeRight

If you drive it 260 onto the fairway you don't need a strong short game. On an average course you will have no more than a wedge or 9i to the green.

There's no logical reason for you not to be a low single figures player if everything you are saying is true.
Not saying you are lying but rather you are over estimating your game.


If suggest some playing lessons if you can afford it. A pro will find your weakness very quickly

galwaylad14

Would have to agree that you're definitley over estimating your game a bit alright.

But if you are a decent ball striker as you seem to suggest then your short game and/or putting must be extremely poor to be playing off 17 becuase any 17 handicappers I know are very inconsistent in all parts of their game really but from what you suggest your long game seems to be decent enough.

To start with 2 putting every green is not good enough, that's 36 putts per round. Far too many. Pros would look to be around 29/30 putts per round which is probably unrealistic for us but there's no reason to be over 32 putts I would say. And the best way to improve these? Work on your pace putting and your short putting. So maybe practice putting to the fringe of the practice green from 20/25/30 feet until you really start to get the pace right, pace is much more important than the line on longer putts. And then loads of practice from 4 feet and in. These are the ones you'll have a lot of for par (or maybe bogey for the moment off your handicap). Make a little game out of it. Maybe try hole 10 in a row from this range and anytime you miss you back to zero (great for simulating pressure too when you get to 8 or 9). Get that putting sorted and you should be able to trim 2 or 3 shots straight away.

Just hazarding a guess here that your chipping is an issue too. As others have said, learn to love the chip and run, it's the easiest shot to get right and it's very forgiving too. Hit a poor chip and run and you might end up 10 feet away, hit a poor high floaty sort of shot and you could thin it into the bunker at the back of the green.

I'd say try treat every chip as the same chip and run shot, this is a method I settled on last year and got from a 10 hcap to a 5 and this was a big contributing factor. What I mean by this is, I play basically every chip as a chip and run, so I will basically try to land the ball maybe 2 feet onto the green and then let it release from there and I'll just vary the club (but never the technique(ball back in stance, weight forward)) I use for the shot. So if I have lots of green to work with I might bump it on with a 7 or 8 iron and let it release, if I have very little green I may be using a lob wedge but it's still the same shot, just the amount it releases that varies. Of course there are times you have literally no choice but to open up the lob wedge and slice under it but this doesnt happen nearly as often as you'd think.

So they'd be my few short game tips anyway, good luck with getting the handicap down!

spacecoyote

have a read of this earlier thread on here, lots of good stuff on it

http://touch.boards.ie/thread/2057052360/1/#post86822802

agusta

Seanf999 wrote: »

My short game is sketch, I mean it's not like if I'm off by 40 yards or so but truth is I tend to leave myself too far from the pin to one putt regularly.2 putt seems to be my average even when chipping from just off the edge of the green,

Any tips on getting it closer to the flag? Haha a big ask but ye seem to know your stuff!

Chipping and 2 putting on average is just not good enough if you want to improve your handicap.I would think you should be getting up and down better than 30 percent of the time and breaking 31 putts on average if you want to reach single figures.If you could post a video of your chipping swing we could have a look,it just might help.Or else go for a lesson including video analysis on your chipping action from a pga pro.

FixdePitchmark

How often do you practice your chipping and putting ?

Sean_pop

Seanf999 wrote: »

This is both for myself personally and anyone else hoping to lower his or her handicap.
Firstly I'm 17 got a handicap of 16 about 6 months after hitting balls down the back field since the age of 4,
I'm an alright player usually 2 putt at most but I never seem to walk away with birdies..
My drives are 260ish and usually a fade
And irons have always been the finest.

That being said I can't lower my handicap! I got fitted for a driver and the pro thought I was playing off around 3! (Maybe he's just brown nosing so I'll buy from his shop?) but he's a long time friend of my dad anyway.,

So any tips on lowering handicap?

70% of your practice needs to be concentrated from 100 yards an in to the green as 70% of your shots in a round are generally from within 100 yards of the green. You need to be able to turn 4 shots in to 3 shots and 3 shots into 2 shots!!!!

alxmorgan

Download golfshot. Enter your scores for 3-5 rounds and come back here with your stats. Then we'll have more to go on as to what to work on.

Wombatman

Seanf999 wrote: »

I got fitted for a driver and the pro thought I was playing off around 3!

Sounds like Declan in Golf Style. That lad will say anything to flog a club :pac:

mike12

Wouldn't agree about 36 putts being bad if you are hitting almost every green. Even hitting half of them and chipping and putting twice for the other 9 you are playing to a 9 handicap.
I'm guessing you are not being honest with yourself on how your long game is and i think it is where u will loose a lot more shots than you short game.
Simple terms is you are able to get down in 3 from inside 100 yards all the time you should be able to play close to single figures, providing you are hitting fringes and green where you are able to 2 putt from around 50% of the round.

gypsy79

Plus one on the golfshot!!

Mantis Toboggan

gypsy79 wrote: »

Plus one on the golfshot!!

Which golf shot?

gypsy79

Buddy Holly wrote: »

Which golf shot?

It is app for recording your score. It also has some nice functionality to record sand shots, putts per holes, fairway accuracy etc etc

Really find it great

GreeBo

Seanf999 wrote: »

This is both for myself personally and anyone else hoping to lower his or her handicap.
Firstly I'm 17 got a handicap of 16 about 6 months after hitting balls down the back field since the age of 4,
I'm an alright player usually 2 putt at most but I never seem to walk away with birdies..
My drives are 260ish and usually a fade
And irons have always been the finest.

That being said I can't lower my handicap! I got fitted for a driver and the pro thought I was playing off around 3! (Maybe he's just brown nosing so I'll buy from his shop?) but he's a long time friend of my dad anyway.,

So any tips on lowering handicap?

Your facts don't add up.
If your drives are that consistent, your irons the finest and rarely 3 putt, then why are you taking an extra shot per hole?
Are you missing fairways?
Greens?
If you are missing 17 fairways or 17 greens then your drives or irons aren't as good a you think, which is fine, but until you come clean to yourself you won't improve with any consistency.

Keano

OP you are 17. Concentrate on trying to get those 600 points you want in your LC and in a few years come back to the golf.

Rikand

Keano A Legend wrote: »

OP you are 17. Concentrate on trying to get those 600 points you want in your LC and in a few years come back to the golf.

Excellent! :clap:

We all assume handicap 17 and its age. WP keano

GreeBo

Rikand wrote: »

Excellent! :clap:

We all assume handicap 17 and its age. WP keano

Did he not get a handicap of 16 6 months ago?

Rikand

GreeBo wrote: »

Did he not get a handicap of 16 6 months ago?

Yep.

Keano

He did and is new to boards. He's full of hopes and dreams so I do hope he sticks to the studies and not worry about his golf!

Mantis Toboggan

gypsy79 wrote: »

It is app for recording your score. It also has some nice functionality to record sand shots, putts per holes, fairway accuracy etc etc

Really find it great

I'm seeing 3 apps with golfshot on the playstore. Golfshot classic, golfshot lite and golfshot GPS?

Tones69

Buddy Holly wrote: »

I'm seeing 3 apps with golfshot on the playstore. Golfshot classic, golfshot lite and golfshot GPS?

Golfshot gps

stitcheddepin

get yourself a GPS device. Figure out your iron distances (on the range). Have the confidence to go at the middle of the greens. relax and enjoy your game, handicap will fall. don't be obsessed by reducing your handicap like the majority of lads, youll find they are tormented in their brains by .1s and CSS.

gypsy79

I use GPS which is well worth the outlay. But even classic allows you to record most the stats without GPS obviously

MyProSwing

buy Grip practice and this shows where your strong and where you need to practice, this will help if you need but it kind of hard to know for sure with out seen your golf swing for both long game and short game. it could be something simple as a pre shot routine