5 Things Scratch Golfers Do That You Don’t

Why do scratch golfers make less mistakes than you out on the golf course? In this video, I use ShotScope statistics to run through five habits of scratch golfers that will help you lower your scores.

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Hi, I’m Hannah Holden; welcome to my channel!

I am a +2 golfer from Leeds

This YouTube channel aims to help you improve your golf by offering up-to-date reviews on the latest golf equipment, stats on how scratch golfers shoot low scores, and course vlogs to help improve your course management.

I also partner with PGA Golf Professionals such as @jrbackhousegolf to bring you tips to improve your golf game.

If that wasn’t enough I’ll make sure you’re on top of the latest rules of golf!

Why do scratch golfers make less mistakes than you out on the golf course today I’m going to be running you through five habits of scratch golfers to help you lower your scores now when it comes to t- shots scratch golfers are typically a lot better at knowing where

They miss now some of this comes back to actually collecting the shot scope stats or stats with whatever software you like to use or even just manually with paper because you can see where you’ve been missing more which means when you come to holes like this we’re on the 18th at

Alcanada you can think oh for me I definitely miss it more up the left I can see there’s loads of bunkers there I’m going to block myself out if I get in them I’m not going to be able to get up to the green so how can I think about

Kind of changing my strategy or my a to make sure I’m not in that really bad spot that one I know where I miss more often and two where’s not very good for the hole so one I’m analyzing what’s in front of me and then two I’m taking the

Shot or the Mist that I know comes in the most and kind of moving my shot shape on my dire around cuz of that I saw a coach doing this drill before with some players and it’s one that I quite like a lot for visualizing and actually

You can take kind of three points so what is the furthest left ainm and what is the furthest right ainm so here I don’t really want to be going anywhere near that bunker so kind of my red line is like here and I don’t want to be any

Further left of that now actually on the right Point here there is some trees that come in back and fly it over that and the hole does open up a little bit there so I’ve got a little bit more room up the right than you might actually

Think I think that just gives you a nice visual nearer the ball of where you need to in now then what I’m going to do is take an alignment stick and think what is my short shap okay I’m going to draw a little bit I’m going to move it more

Right to left so actually I probably need to be more in this portion over here and then moving the ball towards the left side of it just a better way to think about your shot shape and the area you’re trying to hit the ball and now I’m not suggesting you do this every

While out on the golf course you’d probably wind your playing Partners up but it’s quite a good visual to do maybe on the driving range set a fairway do a similar thing or just do it for one or two holes when you’re out practicing and just think about your target more and

What you’re trying to do relative to your Miss hopefully you’ll hit more faers that way I mean I’ve actually left the face massively open on that which is the opposite of what I normally do but because I’ve got that more extra space on the right it’s still in play so I can

Hit my shot I’ve still got a good angle into the green I’m not in a pesky bunker or behind a tree so it’s just all about that strategy how can I hit probably one of my worst shots and still be in play don’t be thinking about am I going to

Flush it and hit my perfect shot and everything else is going to be fine now a big thing scratch golfers are better at than the rest of the handicap range is not firing at the pin it can be so tempting especially when it’s like a

Front pin to think oh I can just drop it on the front of the green and give myself a nice birdy put but in the reality we’re just not that good now if we look at the shot scope stats scratch golf is a missing the green sh 25% of

The time now if we move to like the average handicap so the average handicap in the UK is 17 for a 15 handicapper 54% of their shots are finishing short of the green so over half of the time they pull a club out of the back they’re not

Getting the ball back to the green so a really simple way to lower your scores is to stop trying to go for the pin on the front edge try to get you ball to the middle or even the back of the green cuz actually in reality it’s probably

Going to end up on the front edge now here is a great example we’ve got the pin on the front it’s upper slight slope I’ve got my shots got Blazer out and I’m going to look at just how much the slope is affecting it play here because I

Think that’s a big thing people don’t think about so I’ve got 113 yards this is the new Pro ZR so this has the slope function that you can turn on and off here and this is telling me I need an extra six yards because of the slope so

That’s 119 already then taken into the fact the pins the front I probably want to pay 10 past that I’m looking at like a 130 shot for a 113 pin so that is a big amount of difference and definitely something that I think most golfers wouldn’t think to go up that amount add

To the fact here I’m playing into the grin and also I’m on a slight up slope so if you’re on an up slope that’s going to add more Loft to your Club so this nine is going to play a little bit more down towards a pitching wedge so we need

To take all that into account when we’re playing to that pin so this is like a 135 club for me I think given the little bit of slope this is probably going to end up pretty perfect and hopefully leave me in the middle of the green played out just as I wanted

Although not going to lie I did pull it a little bit I wasn’t going dead at the pin but sometimes your bad shops end up near the pin by accident now it might be hard to believe that just changing your Club selection can actually lower your

Scores but if we look at the stats like people are missing left and right under 10% the really big misses are short of the green so next time you play in just think a little bit more about what club you’re pulling out the back so scratch golfers get up and down around the

Greens a lot more than the average hand toap golfer but there’s a few different reasons for that and one of them is they’re just much better at shot selection now I think some of us watched so much T off it’s just like instinct to pull out a lob wedge and think right

That’s the shot to go don’t even think about it just hit the Chip Shot and then you end up with like your duffs your thins inconsistent strikes because we’re not t Pros we don’t chip it like they do so we shouldn’t really expect to use the

Same club and get the same results now there’s so many ways you can chip a ball onto the green and in terms of like the mid and higher handicappers a lot of the time it’s just about getting the ball somewhere on the green and then giving yourself the chance to two put because

Actually getting down in three is really taking any big scores off the scorecard and we don’t want that situation where you get one up the slope here it’s a bit grainy grass we’re out of the roof we fat it and it runs back to our feet and

Suddenly we’ve got the same shot all over it again and we know any again up and down now if we look at the shats from shot scope the best club to be using most of the time is actually a putter because scratch golf is getting

Up and down 81% of the time using the putter regardless of the LIE which kind of mindboggling isn’t it if we compare that to using their lob wedge it drops down to 43% of the time now obviously some of that’s going to come into lie it

Can be easier to use a putter sometimes and you’re in an easier location but actually a lot of the times even like in the rof like this you can be using a putter now if you move into that mid- handicap range 15 handicap start you’re still getting up and down 71% of the

Time with putter which is only 21% of the time with a lob wedge so if we stood here with five balls and got 15 handicap they might get one up and down with a wedge but nearly three or four with a putter so why are we not trying

Different options so what I’ve got here is I’ve got a putter I’ve got my lob wedge I’ve got a 99 and also I’ve got a hybrid because I think a lot of people maybe don’t feel comfortable using a putter in this situation where it’s a

Bit of rough it looks a bit silly but actually playing a bumper run with a hybrid can be really effective so let’s just go through a few different shots and show you how you can be saving shots around the green rather than just using

The Y BL so what I’m going to do here is just get hybrid grip down and use it like a putter but it’s going to give me a little bit more ball space which it’s going to be easier to get it up to the pin and out of this

Roof now you can see how easy that was I barely had to make any length of stroke it’s running really quickly and it’s up on the agree and in this case I’ve actually hit it pretty close probably about 6 7t but what this shot is really good at is taking out any really

Inconsistent strikes it’s getting the ball moving towards the pin really quickly really easily and just giving you a nice easy two push you’re getting out there with three no problems and also I’m giving my realself a really good look up and down now this is going to be really similar with putter I’m

Probably going to have to hit this a little bit harder to get it up the hill but if you’re someone who just likes to put everywhere this is still a great option you can see how much softer that came out than hybrid but actually it’s on the

Green it’s not really causing me any problems okay 9 time shot scope actually say the scratch golers get up and down the second most with their eight iron I forgot to bring my eight iron so nine iron is similar thing low shot put in Str bump and

Run feel like I showed the stats were correct there that was nice obviously with this you can fly a little bit further if you’ve got more stuff in front of you but still gives you that nice release out and gets it near now love wedge this is obviously still a

Good option if you’re skilled with this club but in this instance here we’re obviously playing out the roof we’re uper slopes so potentially if we hit it heavy it could run back to us also the greens like really sloped to the front but then flattens out so there’s not

Much Landing space to get it near the pin now I love chipping in the practice a lot so I’ve played that show all right but there’s a lot less margin for with this and it could go wrong so if you want to get up and down more even you

Just want to bring down how many shots you have around the green increase your consistency with your chipping I would recommend trying some more clubs what if I hit the camera played it don’t do that so I think a massive area where scratch golfers gain on the average golfer is actually with their

Expectations of what is and isn’t a good shot it’s so easy to go out on the golf course on a Saturday and see people so frustrated at shots they’ve hit and sometimes that’s valid but a lot of the times the shot you’ve hit actually wasn’t that bad compared to your

Handicap and what actually is a good shot now you might think getting annoyed with yourself is irrelevant and it doesn’t really matter and that’s not going to affect my score I’m not going to score any better but actually the more and more you get annoyed through the round you’re just getting more tense

Getting more aggravated you’re then getting more aggressive trying to go for more shots that you definitely can’t pull off and that’s not going to help you score at all like we know the best I ever play my golf is when I’m very relaxed I’m not really thinking about

The score I’m just playing and not thinking about anything so actually getting really tense getting angry at yourself it’s not going to help anything and it’s definitely not going to make it enjoyable we’re on the 16th here at alcanada I’ve got 150 yards to the pin

As a scratch golfer using my seven iron from this distance I should only hit the green 41% of the time that means on a par four where a scratch go has a seven9 into the green statistically they’re going to score over par every time so actually if you’re getting anywhere near

The green with the 79 you’re doing a really good job now if we go into that mid- handicap range and look at the stats for a 15 handicapper you should actually only be hitting the green with a 79 20% of the time so if you stand

Here and hit 10 balls you’re only going to hit that green twice in fact fact your distance from the pin on average will be 146 ft most greens aren’t wider than 40t so actually if you’re anywhere within like 10 20 yards of the green you’ve hit a really good shot with your

79 and telling yourself off and having to go at yourself in the Fairway is pretty dumb because you’ve hit a better than average shot if you’ve got the ball like within 10 yards of the green with your 79 so if you want to lower your scores maybe dive into the

Stats understand what a good shot is and just be a little bit less harsh on yourself now scratch golfers are much better at analyzing holes and understanding the risk associated with certain misses so if we take a look at this part three here we’re on the 17th

Alcanada there are a lot of bunkers short left and we know statistically mid to high handicappers are not great from bunkers if if a 15 handicap misses a green they’ll get up and down on average 34% of the time if they miss in the bunker that drops down to

18% likewise if we moved up to a 25 handicap this should get up and down about 20% of the time but when they get in the sand that drops down to 10% so if you to get drop 10 balls in the bunker up there you’d only get one of them up

And down now obviously that’s severely affecting how you’re going to score on this hole and that’s not even taken into the fact that you might not hit a great sh leave it in the bunker thin it out leave yourself another really difficult shot so actually when we’re looking at

This hole those bunkers should be really big red flags like red crosses through them we do not even want to look at that we’re moving our Target much further over to the right and thinking even if I miss this green short right there’s loads of Short Grass that’s Fairway

There that I can get my putter out and just roll it up to the pit sometimes it might be best to miss long but in this instance we’re going down over a hill we’re probably going to leave oursel a chip up over Hill down the green which

Could be faster not necessarily the best option but what you need to really think about out on the course is where are bad spots that are going to drive my score up and where can I hit the ball that’s actually going to make me shoot the lowest score and in this scenario you

Might actually be aing to miss the green sh right which sounds stupid but if we go back to further in this video you can remember we got over 140 ft average for a 79 so actually most of your shots are going to miss the green so just bringing

Your ball to an area where it’s less likely to be in that really severe Hazard that’s going to drive the scores up high is a really sensible thing to do so in this instance what I’m going to do is use that Tower that’s on the right

Edge of the green as my target line it means if I push it a little bit I’m going to miss the green right if I hit a good shot it’ll just catch the right Edge and if I pull it it’s going to end up on the green but what that means is

Even if I hit a really bad pull shot it shouldn’t end up anywhere near those bunkers golf is really about managing your bad shots and getting yourself around the course it’s not about hitting perfect shots every time cuz scratch golfers do not play perfect golf they do not hit

Perfect shots every time but they do get the ball round the course and they do get around in a lot less shots from you so sticking to these habits that we’ve talked through in this video today can make you a better golfer and the good news is a lot of them don’t actually

Require any upgrade to your Technique