PLAN to Lower Your Handicap

You will never lower your handicap if you don’t set a plan to make it happen. Hank Haney recently released an interesting program called “Tour Consistency Clinics”, which reminded me of the ideal way to lower your scores. Just eliminate your BIG MISS — one at a time. It’s that easy!

You, like every other Weekend Worrier, have had some great rounds of golf followed by a number of high scoring rounds of golf. To lower your scores, your plan has to centered around DETERMINING your BIG MISS. You CAN correct it (with training and practice) and then determining your next big miss and repeating this process to drop your scores by 10 strokes. Consistently good shots will produce consistently lower scores. It’s that simple.

Imaging playing St Andrews Old Course in Fife Scotland. Don’t waste your money to get there until you eliminate Your BIG MISSES.

Set Your Plan
1/ Record Every One of Your Scores on a Handicap System: Members of private golf clubs enter the score from every round to establish a true handicap in order to balance-out scores for weaker players against better players in tournaments. Golf associations around the world have now adopted a consistent handicap system using the average score from 8 of your last 20 rounds of golf. The only scores entered are limited to a maximum of 2 strokes over your handicap for every hole.
2/ Obey the Rules of Golf and Be Honest: You can’t tip up a ball to improve the lie and you can’t ignore a mishit. Mulligans don’t exist. Every swing counts. You will never improve your game if you are not entering an honest score for every hole as well as only entering your maximum handicap allowance on your handicap system for a permanent, accurate record. (You may want to use: www.ghin.com or your local Golf Association handicap systems)
3/ Record Your Misses on Every Hole: On holes where you score a bogie, double bogie or worse, they were caused by a missed shot. To keep a simple record of your poor shots, enter a letter in the scoring box for each hole on your score card in the lower left corner. (ie “W” for water, “T” for tree, “R” for rough, “M” for mishit, “S” for sand etc). You also need to mark a “1” in the upper left of each box for the Fairway Hit on your drive (or greens hit on par 3’s), a “1” in the upper right of the box for Greens Hit in Regulation and the number of putts in the lower right.
4/ Analyze Your Card: After your round, sort out your worst big miss which caused your blow-up holes. Knowing this fact is the perfect starting point to improving your next round of golf.

Take Action!
Do something about your worst big miss. Find solutions on the internet or take lessons with a professional golf instructor. Get out to the practice range and make sure that you hit some great shots to overcome your BIG MISS before your next round of golf. Don’t expect miracles. Focus on your solution for your worst BIG MISS and you will eliminate those blow-up holes.

You may also want to purchase a GOLFSTR+ to practice 6 swing fixes with your straight leading arm or flat wrist. Put some effort into your game to eliminate your BIG MISSES. Buy one today at www.GOLFSTR.com

Thought for the Day: Golf appeals to the child in all of us. This is proven by our frequent inability to count past the number 5.