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Course and game management.

Lots of great info in here.

Rage keep at it and you will break 100 soon. I suggest playing each hole as par+1 (shoot for bogie as your par). If you play this way and actually do it 90 is par for the round. I did this my first yr and it took away a lot of stress and pressure off my rounds.

I also suggest not tallying your score till your round is over, NOT even at the turn.

Play each shot as it comes (read individually)

Pick a spot where you want the ball to land/end up on every shot to include drives and lay up shots. Do not just say up there or out there somewhere in the fairway.

Keep working hard and breaking the century mark will come!
 
I'm tired of throwing away strokes on the course. Typically occurs with driver in hand or leaving myself a yardage I'm not great with like 90-110 yards.

Tomorrow's round will be driverless. Longest club will be 2h or 3h. I'm comfortable with the 3h but haven't hit this 2h yet so range time pre-round will determine if I game the 2h or not.

Goal will be to leave myself 120-150 for approaches into greens on all par 4 & 5's.

I have done this intermittently in a round with good success but inevitably pull driver where I shouldn't, leaving it at home fixes that.

Looking forward to seeing how it goes and I will report back tomorrow with the results. For reference my last 5 rounds or so have been 85-88 with an average of 50% FW's and 30% GIR.
 
Good luck, cookie. Are you adding a club on the bottom or just going with 13? I know I should work on thinking about the next shot when playing and focus on my comfortable distances instead of just hitting as hard/far as I can.
 
#Cookie said:
I'm tired of throwing away strokes on the course. Typically occurs with driver in hand or leaving myself a yardage I'm not great with like 90-110 yards.

Tomorrow's round will be driverless. Longest club will be 2h or 3h. I'm comfortable with the 3h but haven't hit this 2h yet so range time pre-round will determine if I game the 2h or not.

Goal will be to leave myself 120-150 for approaches into greens on all par 4 & 5's.

I have done this intermittently in a round with good success but inevitably pull driver where I shouldn't, leaving it at home fixes that.

Looking forward to seeing how it goes and I will report back tomorrow with the results. For reference my last 5 rounds or so have been 85-88 with an average of 50% FW's and 30% GIR.
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Do you hit 3W's decent off the tee well enough to try those over the hybo and give yourself a few yards?
 
Nebgolfer said:
Good luck, cookie. Are you adding a club on the bottom or just going with 13? I know I should work on thinking about the next shot when playing and focus on my comfortable distances instead of just hitting as hard/far as I can.
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I'll just roll with 13. Adding another club would probably get me trying crap I shouldn't be trying.

mikedean441 said:
Do you hit 3W's decent off the tee well enough to try those over the hybo and give yourself a few yards?
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I just hit hybrids consistently better than FW's off the tee and deck.

3h is 200 or a tad more off the tee so the 2h could put me at 215 max.

The good thing is that I'm completely comfortable hitting an approach from 160-200 because of my play with the hybrids.
 
I love the attitude #Cookie. Playing a smarter game is very high on my to do list this year.
 
One of the things that I always tell my friends who are trying to get better at golf is to "make good decisions" as much as they can. Think about it this way, how many times have you made a bad decision that ended up costing you a couple extra strokes on a hole, when you could've made the right decision? Make the smart plays most of the time and be aggressive only when it makes sense. Also, never get down on yourself because of one bad hole. I see that all too often with golfers, one bad hole ends their day. Pro's make double and triple bogeys, too...ALOT! Always keep it simple. Lastly, live on that practice green putting and chipping, that's where the money is made!
 
Report time on my post from a few days ago. Got out yesterday on a chilly and very windy day (20-30) here in north Texas. Course was playing just north of 6,000 yards so not too long for a little course management testing to take place.

Pulled out the Adams Super S 2H on the range for the first time and was hitting it pretty darn well so decided that would be the play off the tee the majority of the day to get me into that 120-150 range where possible.

1st hole was 400 downwind and I started with a nice top/thin to start the day but it ran out leaving me 185 yards to the green. Top/thin 5H got me to 5 yards short of the green. Was NOT hitting the ball well at all obviously like I was on the range but a nice wedge to 5 feet and the 1 putt left me with a par to start the round. I'm the first to acknowledge that if there was water to carry on this hole I would've been in trouble. But, 2 hybrid misses left me in MUCH better position than a driver miss would have.

That kind of set the theme for the day. Ended up hitting 10/14 FW's and 7/18 GIR's. The lack of distance off the tee on a few holes especially into the wind led to some missed GIR's but playing the hybrid kept me in play very well for the most part and minimized the penal bad swings.

Shot a 40/44=84 (which is 3-4 strokes lower than I have been recently) in worse conditions than I have been playing in. The 84 included 3 doubles and a quad. Irony of the quad is that it was on a hole that requires hybrid off the tee regardless of the day and I hit a well struck shot that clipped a tree on the right before starting the draw back to the fairway. This basically forced me to try a hero shot because of where it left me and I failed to pull it off. Not sure I would've changed anything in hindsight for me.

I strongly believe that moving forward, even with a driver that I'm striking well, the hybrid will get MUCH more use off the tee than normally. With the driver working, I likely would've hit it 3 or 4 times yesterday compared to the typical 9-10.

Told my playing partners yesterday that I learned quite a bit doing this....I scored better and was even on the verge of a *potential* personal best yesterday until the 15th hole where the quad happened.
 
Very good info Mr. Cook.
 
Great stuff Cookie!

I'm in Bandon next weekend for a three day competitive golf weekend. I was bumbed to see day 1 is at Pacific because it requires the most accuracy off the tee and my game doesn't support that right now. So I popped the hybrids back in the bag this week and have started working on this approach too. Except for 1 or 2 holes I expect to hit 3h or 4h off the tee.
 
Great information there Cookie & glad to see you had some good results.....this past year was my 'ego' check year. Realizing I am not as long as I would like to be off the tee box, my second shots were often to distances from 120 & in. this brought my scores down consistently to the mid/low 90's.....I only broke 90 once this past year, but that was more due to 3 putt issues than anything else....
 
Cookie, posts like that make me want to play less and practice more. And by that I mean, I've never taken the opportunity to have that mindset (no driver/just irons) while playing to figure out course management and more specifically--if playing something other than driver would actually benefit my score over 18 holes. Good stuff, and consider me intrigued.
 
I really love this approach
 
I really like what you are trying to do here and I'm glad it appears to be working.
I don't think it would work for me since my largest weakness is approach shots from 150-190 and my scoring is built on getting a wedge in my hands as soon as possible.
 
Nice work cookie! This is something I should have done most of the yr but didn't. I did have a few rounds were I played a bit more management with good results. This will be something I work on as the new season opens.
 
Good job Cookie.

When I'm thinking about playing smart I always think of where I want to hit my second shot from both in distance and angle to the green. I then pull the club from my bag that will get me to that spot. Thinking about playing the hole from the green to the tee and not tee to green has really helped in scoring better and making less mistakes and less blow up holes.
 
Seeing this thread again and the results that Cookie has had made me start to think how I am going to approach this season

Initially I am considering using nothing more than my 5w off the tee and playing every hole for bogey golf to aim for a score no worse than 90 for the first few rounds and then hopefully build on that by playing sensibly as the season goes on and trying to bring the scores down
 
I am not a good player and I just like to go out and hack it. I never had lessons but im young, athletic and i like to read. Here's some things that seem very basic but help your score card

The three tips/articles i've round that have helped my game the most are..

Big circle / little circle
-Basically pretned theres a big 5 foot circle around the hole and make that your top priorty. Cutting down 3 puts was HUGE for my person game
Playing backwards.
- exactly what you found out that day on the course. I feel confy shooting from 100-120. So if Im 280 out I could hit my 4I 200yards and have in my mind that I have to hit it far to get closer and still end up 70-85 yards out(something I dont like) or I could take out a 7/8I play it night and easy, laying up and taking the pressure off me and leaving myself with the 110yard shot I love to hit.
-Short Memory
 
So I was rolling around in of the MC threads and seen some of talk about course management. So I felt that need to bump one of the course management threads to get some discussion rolling on course management for discussion amongest the MC, The King, and regular shmo's.

I really feel like that course management might be the most important "mental skill" needed to score well at any course. And one that I'm constantly working on and looking at. Especially at the end of a round that I might have let get away from me.

So my question to the masses is, Whats you feelings on your course management skills and what are you doing to improve those?
 
Playdough said:
So I was rolling around in of the MC threads and seen some of talk about course management. So I felt that need to bump one of the course management threads to get some discussion rolling on course management for discussion amongest the MC, The King, and regular shmo's.

I really feel like that course management might be the most important "mental skill" needed to score well at any course. And one that I'm constantly working on and looking at. Especially at the end of a round that I might have let get away from me.

So my question to the masses is, Whats you feelings on your course management skills and what are you doing to improve those?
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Well, I could always be better at everything, but it's one of my few strengths. I have accepted my limitations, which is the first step I guess.
 
Hawk said:
Well, I could always be better at everything, but it's one of my few strengths. I have accepted my limitations, which is the first step I guess.
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I think its something that we can all get better at. I'm working at making it one of my strengths. I think that good course and game management is key to good scoring. I know I have seen some better scoring averages on a couple of holes at home course after managing my way down them better. Its something that I'm working on every round and finding what is truly the best way to play each hole at every course I play.
 
I'm getting better at it. My biggest issue is still probably going driver when I could get away with a lesser club. I'm much better than I used to be when I ALWAYS used driver on basically any par 4 or 5. But sometimes still, I'll know 3W or hybo is the smart play, but others in the group will pull out their driver and I think "Why the hell not?"
 
drp3434 said:
I'm getting better at it. My biggest issue is still probably going driver when I could get away with a lesser club. I'm much better than I used to be when I ALWAYS used driver on basically any par 4 or 5. But sometimes still, I'll know 3W or hybo is the smart play, but others in the group will pull out their driver and I think "Why the hell not?"
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I think thats the biggest hurdle to overcome in course management. I look at it like this. Even if I'm playing with a group, I still think of it as I'm playing as a single. I'm playing my own game, I'm playing the course how I feel my game plays the course the best. Case in point, I played with a group of guys a couple weeks ago and on the first 4 holes are Par 4,3,4,4. On the Par 4's, the other 3 went, Driver, Driver, Driver. I, playing back a tee went, 2Hybo, 3-wood, 3-wood. It made no difference to me, that they hit Driver, because playing my singular round knew what I hit was the correct plays for me. Its very easy to get caught up in hitting what everyone else is hitting, but manging your game is of upmost importance to scoring well, not hitting what the mass is hitting.
 
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