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In a golf slump

jefrazie

jefrazie

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So for the past year, I have been seeing my scores consistently drop from the 110's down to the low 90's. That being said, I now cannot get out of the 90's. I frequently bounce between (low this year) 91 and (high) 98. Can never seem to drop below that magical 90.

On the rounds where I shoot sub 95, my driver tends to find the fairway and vice versa for 95+. My short game (chipping/wedges) is decent but not great. Short irons tend to find the green but not as close to the pin as I'd like. Mid irons (5-7), I tend to have a tough time finding GIR's. Putting is OK, average around 2 putts per green.

This being said, where can I focus my time on improving my scores? 90 is getting pretty ugly :bulgy-eyes:
 
A few stats would be helpful. From what it sounds like, you could try a few different things. One would be to improve driver accuracy, but it sounds like that's not too bad. Since your missing GIR, the easiest way to knock shots off your score is to get really good at green side chipping. Figure out your average distance from ball to green after you missed the green on your approach shot, and spend hours chipping around the green from that distance and in. Do this for a couple weeks.

By the time you have done this, you will know how to manipulate ball flight and ball spin to the point that chipping will seem as natural as picking the ball up and tossing it onto the green. This should in turn lead to a lot more up and downs.

As a secondary item to the chipping, really work on your 5-10 foot putts. You will find that it doesn't take too long to always chip the ball within 5-10 feet, so if you are good at the length of putt, your up and down chance is higher.
 
This is actually a pretty normal thing. As golfers begin to see success and go from the 100s to the 90s they start to see steady improvement and see it fairly quickly. It is then that you hit a hurdle and trust me its the same hurdle you begin to hit each time you look to break 95, then 90, then 85, then 80. It gets harder as you go lower.

In the end, I usually just tell people to stick with it and not get upset. Two things changed my game for me for the better and that was course management and short game.

Course Management - Keep the big numbers away. If you get in trouble, take your medicine. On tough shots, play to a number. Off the tee, be looking at the 150 stake, not blasting away. These are all things that changed my game and brought me to my goals. If you eliminate all 7s from your card, you move to the next step of eliminating all 6s. Now I shoot for nothing higher than a 5 ever.

Short Game - Its the one that you will hear most about. Two things come into my mind when seeing big improvements from people. 4-8 foot putts and getting up and down. When you get to the course before your round and hit the putting green you always see people work on putting from 15-25 feet to gauge speed. Work on putts from 5 and 8 feet and you will see a big difference. When off the green, do not be bashful to use a putter. Even out of the rough. Most amateurs will get it closer with a putter in their hands from there then they will with a wedge or something else. Its about eliminating the wasteful numbers

This is just my thoughts, because they worked for me.
 
On an average round, how many penalty shots do you score? When I was able to eliminate those from my round(although never entirely) I found myself scoring much better. The key for me was knowing my limitations. Course management. It is nice when you can fly the hazards, but a layup may score better than a penalty stroke or two or three. Where do you feel the weakness lies? Do you log your rounds? Look at your stats and see where the numbers build. Do you make use of hybrids? When I added hybrids to my bag, my playing from the weeds got much better. I hope you can add more to what you want work on and I am sure this great group here will be more than happy to add their opinions and wisdom.
 
I would start by finding a PGA teaching professional in your area and working on each part of the game, driving, woods, irons and putting. Nothing better than having a qualified set of eyes looking at what you are doing right and wrong.
After that if you have not done so, you need to look at your equipment and make sure everything fits you and your style of play. Ill fit clubs can make bad things happen.
I started young and never had proper lessons until I was in my late teens (late seventies). By then I had many bad habits that took lots of time working with a professional to fix. Once I was on the right track swing wise, I began to get better each year. The next big move for me in the early nineties was getting fit for my first new set of clubs. OTR clubs just simply are not for everyone. Fittings while not free, are easier than ever today and are a very important part of playing to ones potential.
I would look into getting some swing help with a professional and getting your clubs checked.
 
Short game. Short game. Short game. The quickest way to reduce scores is the short game. Work on all parts of the short game from 50 yards and in.
 
Beowulf said:
On an average round, how many penalty shots do you score? When I was able to eliminate those from my round(although never entirely) I found myself scoring much better. The key for me was knowing my limitations. Course management. It is nice when you can fly the hazards, but a layup may score better than a penalty stroke or two or three. Where do you feel the weakness lies? Do you log your rounds? Look at your stats and see where the numbers build. Do you make use of hybrids? When I added hybrids to my bag, my playing from the weeds got much better. I hope you can add more to what you want work on and I am sure this great group here will be more than happy to add their opinions and wisdom.
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Thanks for the replies everyone.

Penalties range from 3-6 per round. I tend to lose a shot or 2 off the tee and then 1 or so in the water pretty consistently. I feel my weakness seems to be in getting rid of 7/8's. I seem to have 2-3 of those per round. I do log my rounds through OOB and am a member of the THP group on there if you would like to check a few of my scores out. (just transitioned from a different HC tracker so very limited scores) As for hybrids, I have a 3H but honestly get more reliability out of my 4I than the 3H with similar distances. Recently, I have been focusing on shorter putts on the practice green (<10ft) and it seems to be helping my putting out quite a bit. I am seeing the 3 putts dwindle down to 1-2 a round and more 1 putts pop up on the score card.
 
When I got my clubs, I was custom fit for the irons and the driver. I have always been nervous about going to a teaching professional simply because of friends bad personal experiences. Recently found out that our Golfsmith has a GolfTec so I may begin to check into that...
 
I have found that if I lay up to yardages that I am strong at rather then just hitting it as far as I can every time has helped me. For example I like to hit shots about 120 yards out so I sometimes try to lay up to that yardage instead of having to hit a 75 yard shot. Just a thought.

also as many have said its all about the short game. less putts and chipping closer to the hole. not hitting it out of bounds also helps a lot. :D
 
Yea, in addition to my comments above on good greenside chipping and 5-10 foot putts, your penalty shots need to be gotten rid of. I understand the slicing driver OOB, but what is it about the water that you lose a ball in? You may want to think about that and either lay up behind it or club up and carry the water.
 
McRock said:
Yea, in addition to my comments above on good greenside chipping and 5-10 foot putts, your penalty shots need to be gotten rid of. I understand the slicing driver OOB, but what is it about the water that you lose a ball in? You may want to think about that and either lay up behind it or club up and carry the water.
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Normally its just bad course management. I'll carry my driver a bit too far or I'll snub an iron shot and dribble into a creek. Just dumb stuff but it always seems to happen at least once.
 
JB said:
This is actually a pretty normal thing. As golfers begin to see success and go from the 100s to the 90s they start to see steady improvement and see it fairly quickly. It is then that you hit a hurdle and trust me its the same hurdle you begin to hit each time you look to break 95, then 90, then 85, then 80. It gets harder as you go lower.

In the end, I usually just tell people to stick with it and not get upset. Two things changed my game for me for the better and that was course management and short game.

Course Management - Keep the big numbers away. If you get in trouble, take your medicine. On tough shots, play to a number. Off the tee, be looking at the 150 stake, not blasting away. These are all things that changed my game and brought me to my goals. If you eliminate all 7s from your card, you move to the next step of eliminating all 6s. Now I shoot for nothing higher than a 5 ever.

Short Game - Its the one that you will hear most about. Two things come into my mind when seeing big improvements from people. 4-8 foot putts and getting up and down. When you get to the course before your round and hit the putting green you always see people work on putting from 15-25 feet to gauge speed. Work on putts from 5 and 8 feet and you will see a big difference. When off the green, do not be bashful to use a putter. Even out of the rough. Most amateurs will get it closer with a putter in their hands from there then they will with a wedge or something else. Its about eliminating the wasteful numbers

This is just my thoughts, because they worked for me.
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I would print this and keep a copy in my golf bag if 1) I wasn't too lazy to walk to the printer 2) it was so creepy to do so. Great advice.
 
Its all about putting. But if you want to break 90 the only real solution is to just golf as much as possible!
 
JB said:
This is actually a pretty normal thing. As golfers begin to see success and go from the 100s to the 90s they start to see steady improvement and see it fairly quickly. It is then that you hit a hurdle and trust me its the same hurdle you begin to hit each time you look to break 95, then 90, then 85, then 80. It gets harder as you go lower.

In the end, I usually just tell people to stick with it and not get upset. Two things changed my game for me for the better and that was course management and short game.

Course Management - Keep the big numbers away. If you get in trouble, take your medicine. On tough shots, play to a number. Off the tee, be looking at the 150 stake, not blasting away. These are all things that changed my game and brought me to my goals. If you eliminate all 7s from your card, you move to the next step of eliminating all 6s. Now I shoot for nothing higher than a 5 ever.

Short Game - Its the one that you will hear most about. Two things come into my mind when seeing big improvements from people. 4-8 foot putts and getting up and down. When you get to the course before your round and hit the putting green you always see people work on putting from 15-25 feet to gauge speed. Work on putts from 5 and 8 feet and you will see a big difference. When off the green, do not be bashful to use a putter. Even out of the rough. Most amateurs will get it closer with a putter in their hands from there then they will with a wedge or something else. Its about eliminating the wasteful numbers

This is just my thoughts, because they worked for me.
Click to expand...

This is great info. I think I'm going to really dedicate myself to improving my short game over the next few weeks. I think this will end up helping me the most in the long run. Thanks everyone for the help!
 
jefrazie,

First I would suggest getting a handicap tracker that keeps stats that are enter-able after the round if you haven't done so already. What I do is keep my home club computer handicap for my official and then use one online for stat entering. I will post an example of what I have going on here and give a pretty thorough breakdown of what I take from each stat. Although it's not giving you specific advice, hopefully I give you some solid examples on what you can perhaps incorporate into your game as well. Okay lets get started:

For the basics of my post I used my stats from my home club White Tees which I do not play very often but still contain some useful information:

2vtwec5.jpg

Now if you notice here it's evident the white tees are rather shorter than what I usually play, you can see my FIR %'s are at 60% rather than at a 52% total for all the other courses. Short lengths obviously increase fairways hit. Across the board here you can see everything has increased because of length. My GIR's % has increased because I am hitting more fairways and have a shorter approach, my average putts have decreased because I am hitting the ball closer to the hole on the approach, and I have limited my wayward shots with the shorter irons because my approach is a hell of a lot closer, leaving more room for error and because of the shorter distance to approach, my up and downs aren't that difficult because my mistakes are minimal. Long story short all of these stats relate to eachother and it first starts out with hitting fairways, like you mentioned. My first argument is if you are having troubles I suggest moving down a tee, if you are hitting 5-7 irons into most greens, try make it so you are hitting 8-PW's for greens for a couple of rounds.
2v84qab.jpg


Here is an example of some in depth stats here from the Blue tees actually. Just a visual image for yourself to see a good example of how you can analyze what you are doing each hole. Too give a thorough analysis of this would take wayy to long but you can see a general idea of where I am hitting fairways and missing greens (Hole 1 is a great example) and where I need to improve, as you can see Hole 7 I am hitting the greens a whooping 21% of the time, and because of that fault, I am .96 strokes over par on average. Fairways and greens are a stat I feel you just gotta keep so you can see where you are going wrong. Because I have a good amount of scores in here it is hard to tell but my main assumption from this graph is that while I do hit fairways, I don't capitailize on my GIR %'s. Again going back to the tee length problem, perhaps my GIR's are so low because I am hitting a longer club on the approach. I can't tell you what you are doing wrong, because we aren't given numbers, but what I am trying to show you is how you can look at your own game with these numbers.

One last image:
2dkwgv6.jpg


I am giving you mixed signals here but here is one of my last 9 holes of the year last year. As you can see I hit every fairway which automatically led to a good score. Although I only hit 4 or 5 greens, my chances of hitting a possible 9 were high because I hit every fairway. Even though I missed the first 3. I didn't elaborate much on short game with this post, but more of a heads up on what to look for. I did ramble a bit so if you can just grab bits and pieces from what I say and work with it. Best of luck!
 
I'm not an expert. But I have been able to break the 90 mark after golfing for 1.5 years (off and on). First putting is where most of us beginners lose most strokes. I aim to 2 putt each hole. Three putting will definitely keep you from breaking 90 (in most cases).

Second, as other posters have mentioned, Course Management is key. I am a female golfer, so my average drive is about 230. What I did during the rounds I broke 90 is to leave myself my best club for my approach to the green. In my case my 7 iron is my most accurate club. So after I hit my drive my second shot is taken with a club I know will leave me a full iron shot into the green. When I leave myself the 7 iron, I know in most cases I will land on the green. If I leave myself a shot with a partial back swing I run into issues.

EDIT: Also, when I can I don't chip with a wedge, but my 7 iron around the green because I have more control. Also, I putt around the green, not chip, when I can.

After all that is said, the best piece of he gave me is split the 18 holes into groups of three. Focus on the three holes and then forget about them and move on to the next three.

I was able to break 90 late last season consistently and never had a lesson.
 
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JB said:
This is actually a pretty normal thing. As golfers begin to see success and go from the 100s to the 90s they start to see steady improvement and see it fairly quickly. It is then that you hit a hurdle and trust me its the same hurdle you begin to hit each time you look to break 95, then 90, then 85, then 80. It gets harder as you go lower.

In the end, I usually just tell people to stick with it and not get upset. Two things changed my game for me for the better and that was course management and short game.

Course Management - Keep the big numbers away. If you get in trouble, take your medicine. On tough shots, play to a number. Off the tee, be looking at the 150 stake, not blasting away. These are all things that changed my game and brought me to my goals. If you eliminate all 7s from your card, you move to the next step of eliminating all 6s. Now I shoot for nothing higher than a 5 ever.

Short Game - Its the one that you will hear most about. Two things come into my mind when seeing big improvements from people. 4-8 foot putts and getting up and down. When you get to the course before your round and hit the putting green you always see people work on putting from 15-25 feet to gauge speed. Work on putts from 5 and 8 feet and you will see a big difference. When off the green, do not be bashful to use a putter. Even out of the rough. Most amateurs will get it closer with a putter in their hands from there then they will with a wedge or something else. Its about eliminating the wasteful numbers

This is just my thoughts, because they worked for me.
Click to expand...

JB that is some fantastic advice right there. I should print it out and paste it on my driver head cover. Say you have a 350 yard par 4. Are you still playing to the 150 stake or are you playing to say the 100 yard stake?
 
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