Over winter, you can take some time to think about the year and what you did well on the golf course. It is always good to focus on the positives. However, if you want to improve you must be prepared to look at what went wrong.
You should be keeping statistics when you play golf. Recording basic information is key to improvement and one important statistic in golf is greens hit in regulation. This means the number of times your ball lands on the green in the expected number shots for that hole. On a par-4 hole for example, this will be two shots.
If you find you are hitting around four greens in regulation per round, this is an area of your game which needs improvement and doing so could improve your score. It does not matter how good you are with the putter, if you are hitting four or fewer greens in regulation on average per round, you are up against it.
If you could raise this to seven or even eight greens per round, you will see an improvement on your score.
The major reason why many golfers have low green in regulation statistics is because of the pin. When you see the pin, all you can think about is aiming your shot at the flag as you know if you can stop the ball close, you will have a simple putt for birdie.
However, if you are hitting four or fewer greens in regulation, aiming for the flag is severely damaging your potential score. The best way to avoid this happening is to aim for the middle of the green on every hole.
This is easy said than done as when you are on the fairway and you see the flag in sight, everything is telling you to aim for the pin. You must get into the correct frame of mind before stepping onto the first tee. Tell yourself that today you are going to be playing no pin golf. As far as you are concerned, for this round of golf, the flag does not exist when playing approach shots.
By aiming for the middle of the green, it does not matter if you are slightly off centre with your shot as you have margin for error either side. Even if you catch the shot a little heavy, you still have a chance of landing the ball on the green.
You may find that occasionally the ball still lands close to the hole even when aiming for the centre but if you are struggling to hit greens in regulation try using this tip. Compare your scores at the end of the round and see how they compare when you are aiming for the pin.
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