7 STRATEGY MISTAKES EVERY GOLFER NEEDS TO AVOID!

Are you hitting the right shots at the wrong time or making some silly mental errors that are costing you shots? Well some of the scenarios in this video, presented by Golf Monthly Deputy Editor Joel Tadman, may well be familiar! He runs through the seven biggest strategy mistakes golfers make and suggest ways in which you can make better decisions to ensure your good swings are rewarded with good results!

► Skip to different mistakes:
Introduction 0:00-0:29
Not aiming correctly on tee shots 0:32
Under valuing second shots on par fives 2:18
Following a bad shot with another 4:28
Chasing tight flags 6:08
Letting a bad hole effect the next tee shot 8:41
Not having a system for long putting 10:29
Not tracking shots 12:18

► We teamed up with GolfShot, makers of a GPS and shot tracking app trusted by over 5 million golfers to create this video. Check out its website for more info: https://golfshot.com/

► Video shot on location at Peterborough Milton Golf Club. Visit https://www.pmgc.org.uk/ for more information.

► Do you make any of these strategy mistakes sometimes? Have we missed any out? Let us know in the comments below! 💬

► Watch more on Golf Monthly…
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now golfers can save a surprising amount of shots by eliminating some basic strategic mistakes which we are going to highlight in this video we’ve come to the amazing Peter rilton golf club and teamed up with golfshot makers of one of the leading golf GPS apps that attracts over 57 million shots last year from thousands of golfers to provide you with the crucial Data Insights that should help frame a golfer’s decision making in order to shoot lower scores so let’s head out into the course and explain exactly what they are [Music] looking at the golf shot data it tells us that three out of the four ability levels in terms of categories of handicap Miss more to the right than they do the left so that’s an important distinction what’s also interesting is that higher handicappers Miss more to the right than any other ability level so if you are a high handicapper you’re probably going to be missing more to the right and also when you factor in that scratch golf is are only hitting around 50% of Fairways I think what we can deduce from this data is that as golfers we’re going to miss Fairways right so it’s important that we allow for that with our strategy and our aim to make sure we’re going to miss it in the right spot accordingly so on this particular hole it’s clear that um the 13th hole at pet Milton there is a little bit more room down the right than there is down the left so it’s important to allow for that in terms of your aim aim a little bit further to the right to give you a wider margin for error and then the other thing you can do when it comes to strategy on your t- shots is make sure you’re teeing the ball in the right part of the te so this hole in particular you can see there’s a lot of trouble down the left hand side and if you are someone who moves it from left to right you need to give yourself the most amount of room possible so this is a great example where teing it up right on the right hand side of the te is going to really open up the hole especially if you hit a left to right shot it’s going to give you a lot more room to play with and hopefully you can execute the shot more successfully so I’m going to aim just on the right edge of those left hand bunkers and allow for my slight fade it’s going to really open up the hole and give me a bit more room perfect so follow those t-shot tips and hopefully you’ll find more Fairways but more importantly miss it in the right [Music] spot so as you can see I’ve had a cracking drive down this par five left myself in a perfect position and most golfers would view par fivs as a scoring opportunity but the big strategic mistake golfers make is not thinking about the importance of the second shot on a par five it’s the crucial shot to get right to set you up for making a par or maybe even a birdie you look at the stats from golf shot it’s really interesting to see that the three ability levels of categories of golfer they all average over par on par fs and high handicappers in particular average over 6 and a half on a par five so clearly you could deduce that those every golfer isn’t really making the most of the opportunities that par FES present them and especially on the second shot it’s a crucial thing to get right and the kind of consensus among teaching pros and the data would suggest that the thing that you need to do is try and get as close to the green as you can on your approach shot there’s some golfers out there that might think oh actually I’d rather be 100 yards out and have a full shot in with my sandwich than I would be say 40 or 50 yards or I’m not really comfortable on those particular shots but actually for the vast majority of golfers trying to get as close to the greed as possible is the best thing to do obviously you want to avoid hazards or any scenario where to get where you’re going to get penalty shots so if if there’s out of bounds or penalty areas you need to make sure you choose a club that avoids those and on particular holes obviously you’re better off leaving yourself with a 40 yard pitch from the Fairway than you are a 40 yard bunker shot cuz that’s when you can really rack up a big score so in this particular situation I can see there’s a bunker short left on this power five so I want to make sure I avoid that with my with my second shot I’ve got the Freewood it’s the perfect club for me I’m okay with hitting this on The Fairway let’s see if we can get down there and maybe even on the green and give myself a chance at an eagle so I’m pretty happy with that one so don’t underestimate the importance of the second shot on the par five leave yourself as close to the ingredients as possible in a favorable lie and you should help your scores come down now one of the big things that separates good golfers from average ones is the ability to keep those big numbers off the scorecard double bogeys triple Bogies or Worse those are the scores that you don’t want to have on your scorecard if you look at T Pros Elite Pros rarely do they follow a bad shot up with another and if you look at the stats from golf shot you can see that actually uh high handicappers are making double bogeys 59% of the time and mid- handicappers are making double Bogies or Worse 35% of the times which I think is quite high and with a few strategic tweaks in terms of how you approach certain shots I think we can see those numbers come down significantly so the really crucial Point here is to not follow up one bad shot with another uh and this particular hole you can see I’ve pushed my drive down the right hand side and there’s trees in my way there’s a bunker in the way yes I do have a gap but there’s overhanging branches there’s a lot of stuff in the way that could go wrong so it’s important to make the sensible decision as I said don’t follow one mistake up with another take your medicine give yourself the best chance of keeping off those double Bogies off your card and this and if you’re chipping out sideways like I’m going to do here you should be able to make worst of bogey move on take your medicine and it’s not going to ruin you round so rather than going for this hero Shot Through the Trees there’s too much danger there I’m going to adjust my aim to the left you can see I’ve got a lovely clear shot here to the left of the tree get it back in play give yourself a chance to get on the green for your next shot and that’s in perfect position just stop short of the heavy rough there it open up the hole I can hit the green and hopefully make it Bogey and move on now the next strategic mistake comes down to approach shots and specifically missing greens or chasing type Flags I think most golfers have unrealistic expectations about how close they should be hitting their irons and their wed shots if you look at the data it’s really interesting you’ll see that uh every ability of golfer is missing more greins than they’re hitting even those single golfers as well which then feeds into the scramble percentage you look at those numbers which I’ll flash up on the screen here you can see uh even the best ability of golfer are only getting up and down from around the green when it Vis the green up to 33% of the time so clearly missing greens is a problem if you want to shoot lower scores and there are a few things you could do with your strategic kind of decision making to help improve the put the odd into your favor I think the first thing on an approach shot is really just to aim at the middle of the green so ignore where the flag is if it’s on the left on the right don’t go chasing those flags it’s going to give you more chance of missing the green not get a down leading into a bogey I actually think most golfers regardless of your ability would probably score better if there were no flags on the green and you just had to hit to the middle of the green so that would be my kind of one option my second option would be to think about where the trouble is on that particular green and if you’re going to miss it make sure you’re missing it on the appropriate side or the side that’s going to give you the best chance of getting up and down so for example Le you if there was a flag at the back and there was a big runoff Behind the Green obviously going long is an absolute noo so make sure you’re choosing a club that’s going to leave you short of that pin and therefore it’s going to eliminate that trouble and give you the best chance of making a pod hopefully keeping those Bogies off your card so those are the two ways you can approach it I’m going to you can see here on this particular hole there’s Tree on the right bunker on the right so I’m going to favor the left hand side here that’s clearly a much easier up and down if I am going to miss the green uh so really be specific with your aim and Zoning on that that spot just left of the pin the safer side should give you the better chance of making a good score I’m happy with that one it’s just left of the pin cutting back nicely oh I’m happy with that one I’ve got a makeable birdie chance there one thing to also think about with the golf shot GPS app in particular is it does offer Club recommendations based on your real time data so what shots you’ve actually been hitting on the course it knows how far you hit each club and that should help you hit the right shot the right Club at the right time and make sure you don’t miss those greens now we’ve all done this haven’t we we make a bogey and the Red Mist sets in we storm to the next te pull driver and hit your ball in trouble you’re compounding one error with another and it’s really important in terms of not making that strategic mistake of ignoring what lies ahead on a particular hole after you’ve made a bad score you look at the stats from what world number one Scotty Sheffer he’s one of the best in the world because he doesn’t follow up a bogey with another bogey or worst if you look at the data from G shot it’s interesting that high handicappers they’re making around 12 Bogies around but more importantly they’re making consecutive Bogies 70% of the time which is quite a lot I would say actually High handicaps are making consecutive bogeys 59% of the time so clearly there is a problem with amateur golfers compounding one area with another and that’s why it’s important to not make that strategic mistake and really try and reset your minds when it comes to arriving on the te if you have made a bad score trying to start again in your in your head and you can see it here now this is a classic example of a golfer he’s clearly annoyed about what’s going on the previous hole he’s not looking and assessing what lies ahead on this particular hole he’s got his head down he’s reaching for the driver straight away he wants to release that pent up frustration and anger of what’s going on previously but that’s going to cost him on this particular hole cuz there’s some bunkers in play for him off the tea with driver and lo and behold hits the driver and he’s found those bunkers so I think what the the Strategic advice in this particular situation is try and start again uh when you get to a t obviously you know accept that bogy can be a good score on certain holes if they’re you know difficult holes and you get a shot um except that bogey can be an okay score don’t compound a bad score with another another strategic error off the te in terms of Club selection and hopefully you should see your scores get a little bit lower now the next strategic mistake golfers make is ignoring the skill of lag putting and how that directly correlates to the number of three putts you have during around the golf you look at the stats from golf shot it’s clear that every ability of golf is three putting at least some point during the round it’s especially prolific with high handicap golfers and those three parts can really kill the momentum of around they’re incredibly frustrating and obviously they’re going to hurt your scores so um it would be really important especially in your practice to come up with some sort of system where you can judge the pace and and control the speed of your PCH from long distance we know that the stats say that actually golfers are not hitting it that close on their approach shots and as the ability level or handicap uh goes up your proximity to the hole is really going to get quite wide and you’re going to be left with a lot of long putts from 40 50 ft so it’s important to have some sort of system that kind of is able to judge the distance that you’re hitting those puts so for example you could have some sort of system where you’re looking at the back swing length kind of where the the club goes back to your toes just outside your toes and that’s going to help you work out how far the putts are rolling at those different back swing lengths that’s a good starting point I think to be to um adjudge the distance and change the distance based on the the distance you have to the hole so for example in this particular part this is about a 35 footer I know I need to swing it just outside my toe to get it to the hole would you look at that oh it nearly went in just slipped out but it’s gone about 2ot past perfect pace so incorporate some sort of system into your practice to get a better control of distance and judge the pace a little bit better and that should help reduce the number of three PS now the final strategic mistake golfers make is not tracking their shots using technology or benchmarking their performance against golfers of a similar ability there’s an awful lot of Technology out there that allows golfers to gain really crucial insights into their play especially ones that utilize Strokes gain Strokes gain is the metric that all the leading tour players really use to understand exactly where their strengths and weaknesses lie and that allows them to dedicate practice time to the right areas of the game to ensure they’re proving on their weaknesses and making progress on their performance and golf shot is an example of an app for the offers uh Auto shot recognition and auto Strokes gained so you can seamlessly track your shot dots get some really crucial insights into your play it’s broken down into different areas of the game and you can see how you compare with golfers of a similar ability to you to really understand where you need to improve so if you go through that process invest in technology like golf shot it should really give you a much clearer window into where you need to improve