Here’s what’s in the bag.

Today’s quote:

“You swing your best when you have the fewest things to think about.”

-Bobby Jones

Subscribe now

Brandt Snedeker’s Pop-Stroke

After Brandt Snedeker’s win last Sunday, I couldn’t help but relive some old-school Sned footage. One of the first clips I came across was this classic where he explains his throwback putting stroke which many have referred to as a “pop-stroke” style.

My favorite part is when he casually drains 3 straight 15-footers.

Subscribe now

Be Careful at PGA Events

There is a viral clip going around of Wyndham Clark pulling an iron shot directly into a group of spectators. Pretty scary stuff. Watch the video first and then I’ll go over two things that I thought would be useful for you all.

1. Most of you reading this are pretty serious golfers, so I’m assuming you’re all aware of how dangerous an errant shot can be. But if you do go to a PGA event, don’t risk your life for a cool video. These guys are insanely good, but they aren’t machines. Someone is eventually going to take a golf ball straight to the dome on live TV and it’s not gonna be pretty.

2. The more actionable advice for you: those ugly lies with an awkward downhill stance are a perfect recipe for pull hooks — like Wyndham hit. I can’t be certain where he was intending to hit it, but I’m assuming it wasn’t directly at the spectators lol. Nonetheless, the key with those shots is to stay unbelievably still in your posture. If you come up out of it at all, you’ll have a real chance of hooking your ball into trouble. Or worse maybe OB. Stay still and deliver solid contact.

   Subscribe now

   ---

This Week’s Premium Post

This week’s premium post will be on flyer lies.

A preview:

“The flyer is unique because it’s the only shot where gaining distance is a bad thing. No one wants to gain distance if it means sacrificing control and predictability.

Where amateurs get into trouble is lie assessment. Pros build entire pre-shot routines around reading flyers. Amateurs barely glance at the grass behind their ball.”

The post will be for paid subs only. If you haven’t already, you can upgrade HERE.

Lag Putting Visual

Lag putting is one of the few areas of the game where visualization can have a major impact. When I first started playing I used the old trash can lid visual, and now I visualize the entire putt rolling along the green into the side of the cup. It’s helpful to develop a consistent mental routine for how you want to roll these longer putts.

I saw this great post by @drakesmith_ on X and thought some of you might find it useful. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the 3 feet in front/back visual, but I’m sure it will be helpful for some.

Subscribe now

Alignment Vs Intent

This is a concept I’ve talked a lot about in this newsletter. Alignment does not always equal aim. You can read the full article on it here:

The video below is of Chris Gotterup aligned at what looks to me like the right side of the trees. Watch the clip and you’ll see his ball take off way right of the screen. There is no denying Gotterup is very unique in this regard. He plays somewhat of a push draw. But the point is that there’s no hard rule that says swing path needs to follow feet path.

If you’re going to stand open to your target, just make sure your intent is where your eyes are looking. Trevino and Fred Couples are a couple of names that come to mind.

Subscribe now

That’s it for today. Hope you all have a great week and can get out and play.

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to email me at tourswingstommy@gmail.com. I read everything.

Social Media: Make sure to follow me on X here.

If you haven’t read them yet, check out some of the most popular Scoring Letter posts below:

Go Premium

I bet you’ve never heard that one before…

But seriously — learning to miss well is a real skill. More specifically, learning where to miss around greens. Every golfer misses them. If you’re a 15-handicap, you miss roughly 13 per round.

The breakthrough comes when you realize no two misses are created equal. Every hole has a miss carefully designed to punish poor decisions.

This week’s post focuses on one of the most common green side misses, and maybe the most damaging:

The short-sided miss

(Cue the dramatic music)

Subscribe now

How Common is a Short-Sided Miss?

Before I get into how damaging a short-sided miss is, let’s first figure out how often they occur. You could track your own short-sided misses per round — and you should — but that would take considerable effort and I don’t blame you for not doing it… So you can assume your percentages based on my math (risky).

I’ll use Scottie Scheffler as the benchmark since he’s the only player I can find with a legitimately tracked short-siding stat. Luke Kerr-Dineen at Golf Digest hand-charted 1,353 of Scheffler’s shots from a 2024 stretch. So massive thanks to him. He only tracked his short-siding on back pin locations, so that’s what we’ll work with.

(Also side note, he is a great follow on Instagram. Follow him here if you haven't)

Based on his data, Scottie short-sides himself 2.82% on back-left pins, and 3.23% on back-right. Unbelievably low.

Spoiler alert: the amateur rates are going to be much higher.

It’s slightly difficult because no one publishes amateur short-sided miss rates. Measuring them would require miss direction and pin location for every shot. So we have to kind of deduce what the rates would be based off of other publicly available data.

A 15-handicap misses around 13 greens per round. Shot Scope’s data says 80% of those misses finish short. 47% short-right, 33% short-left. We’ll assume a third of pin placements sit on the right side, a third on the left, and a third in the center. Your miss only becomes short-sided when it matches the pin’s side.

The math:

• 13 missed greens

• 80% finishing short on a side (47% right + 33% left)

• Roughly 33% of pins matching the miss side

That works out to roughly 3 to 4 short-sided positions per round for a 15-handicap. You can scale up or down for whatever your index is: assume 2 to 3 for a 10-handicap, or 4 to 5 for a 20 etc…

This comes out to a 17-22% short-sided rate for a 15-handicap. That's 6 to 7 times Scheffler's rate. He short-sides himself once every 30+ shots. You probably do it once every four or five.

You’re free to challenge my math/assumptions if you think I’m way off. I won’t be offended.

Side note: The short-sided miss is most common with a front right pin location since it directly coincides with the stock amateur miss — a little “flared” mis-hit short and right. You get a little excited, come over the top and catch it a hair heavy. Now you’re behind a bunker with zero green to work with because you thought you could take on the flag.

Subscribe now

The Cost Per Miss

Ok so now we know roughly how often you’re faced with this miss. Now let’s figure out how many strokes it’s costing you. Similar to the frequency of the shot, we will have to make some assumptions based on the only data publicly available.

There are really only two data points available to us. The Mark Broadie research, and the Lou Stagner research.

Let’s start with Lou Stagner.

What Stagner did was pull real amateur shots out of the Arccos database, and sorted them by how much green sat between the ball and hole and then assigned a percentage.

For example, a 20 yard chip with the hole 16 yards from the edge is 80% green to work with. 20 yards with the hole 2 yards from the edge is 10% and so on.

The number Stagner got was +0.17 strokes for being short sided.

The 0.17 stroke figure comes from chips with 39% or less green to work with. That’s what he considered a “moderate to difficult” short sided chip.

He stopped at 39%. So we can assume that the penalty grows as the % of green to work with gets smaller.

One huge piece of context that is missing from the data (since it would be way too much work to gather) is that we don’t know anything about the penalty for each type of short-sided lie. All we have is the +0.17 strokes as an average of all the shots.

What I mean by this, is that let’s say some of those short sided chip shots were from behind a bunker with 20% of green to work with. I want to know what the penalty is for that shot. That way when I’m playing with a front right pin location and I see a bunker next to it, I can accurately weigh the risk/reward. As opposed to a front right pin with no bunker. In that case, maybe taking on the pin is worth the risk.

Broadie on the other hand measured something slightly different.

He built a Short-Side Index for the PGA Tour measuring moderate short-sided positions, and severe short-sided positions. From 29 yards in the rough, a tour pro in a severely short-sided position averages 3.06 strokes to hole out. From the same distance, same lie, in a moderately short-sided position: it takes them 2.72.

That’s a 0.34-stroke penalty per shot comparing one bad position to a slightly less bad one. For tour pros.

Here’s what’s interesting though. The penalty doesn’t scale upwards the worse the golfer gets. You would naturally imagine the 0.34 stroke penalty for pros would be something like a 0.5 stroke penalty for a 5-handicap. But Stagner's amateur figure is actually smaller. The reason is because amateurs were most likely going to bogey from either position anyway. The gap between bad and very bad matters more when you're capable of converting the bad one.

All of this is to say, the data isn’t as catastrophic as I thought it would be. Some of that is due to the fact that we just don’t have great data on it. But the data we do have certainly doesn’t point to short-siding being a scorecard wrecker in general.

Which means maybe the question isn’t “how do I avoid short-siding myself at all costs?” but instead “when is the risk worth it?”.

Subscribe now

How To Identify The Truly Dangerous Short-Sides

Read more

Anyway…

Here are a few things I liked (or didn’t like) from last week.

Today’s quote:

"You only hit a straight ball by accident. The ball is going to move right or left every time you hit it, so you had better make it go one way or the other."

-Ben Hogan

Subscribe now

Scottie’s Plugged Lie

During last Sunday’s action, the broadcast caught a cool conversation between Scottie Scheffler and his caddie. They were faced with a plugged bunker lie, and in it, you can hear Scottie say, “I don’t have to smash it.” as he proceeds to hit it to 4 feet.

But what I found more interesting was his decision to use a 56-degree wedge. I think a lot of us amateurs automatically reach for the 60-degree from the sand no matter the lie. Always a good reminder that there are no hard rules for club selection. I may have to try some 56-degree bunker blasts from heavier bunker lies.

Share

Cameron Young’s Penalty Shot and Composure

In the final round of the Cadillac Championship, Cameron Young self-reported a one stroke penalty after possibly causing his ball to move as he addressed it. The rules official confirmed it. There was no debating or arguing. He quickly moved on and stuck his 8-iron to 15 feet and saved his par. He went on to win by six shots over Scottie Scheffler for his third PGA Tour title.

The lesson for you. Bad bounces happen. Bad breaks happen. The ball finds the divot, the wind kicks at the wrong moment, the putt lips out on a perfect line. None of that is yours to control. But what you do have control of is whether or not you stay composed, refocus, and execute the NEXT shot.

Here is the full video:

Share

This Week’s Premium Post

This week’s premium post will be on the dangers of the short-side.

A preview:

“Shot Scope’s database reports that when amateurs miss a green, they end up short roughly 80% of the time…

Read that again.”

The post will be for premium subs only. If you haven’t already, you can go premium HERE.

Go Premium

Cross-Hand Chipping

I’ve been seeing more and more cross-hand chipping lately. It started with Matt Fitzpatrick, then Stewart Cink, and now it’s found its way into Vijay Singh’s game.

Here is Vijay chipping in using the new technique. I’d be lying if I said this didn’t tempt me to try it out…

Share

That’s it for today. Hope you all have a great week and can get out and play!

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to email me at tourswingstommy@gmail.com. I read everything.

Social Media: Make sure to follow me on X here.

If you haven’t read them yet, check out some of the most popular Scoring Letter posts below:

Get 30% off for 1 year

It wasn’t how to best attack Sunday pin locations. Or some Amen Corner secret passed down through the fraternity of past winners.

It was: “No f*cking double bogeys.”

Rory won his career grand slam.

The belief most amateurs hold is reasonable. Birdies are below par. Below par is the goal. Therefore: more birdies = lower scores.

That belief isn’t wrong. It’s just kind of irrelevant.

The greatest player who ever lived (arguably), gave one piece of advice to the man chasing a green jacket and a career grand slam, and the advice was the same your 15-handicap buddy gives you at your home Muni.

“Hey man, you should try to cut back on the doubles.”

There’s a reason.

Subscribe now

The Proof

Arccos holds roughly nine hundred million amateur shots and eighteen million rounds. Lou Stagner is their lead golf data analyst, and is responsible for compiling and contextualizing most of their data, so huge kudos to him for this.

Here is their data on birdies and doubles per round by handicap:

• Scratch: 2.2 birdies, 0.9 doubles or worse

• 5-handicap: 1.2 birdies, 1.4 doubles or worse

• 10-handicap: 0.7 birdies, 2.9 doubles or worse

• 15-handicap: 0.4 birdies, 4.7 doubles or worse

• 20-handicap: 0.3 birdies, 6.5 doubles or worse

I bolded the top and bottom lines because I want you to read them again.

A scratch player makes 2.2 birdies per round. A 20-handicap makes 0.3.

That is a difference of only 1.9 birdies per round.

A scratch player makes 0.9 doubles or worse. A 20-handicap makes 6.5.

That is a difference of 5.6 doubles or worse per round.

Sit with that for a moment...

This is transformative information. It should give every amateur hope. More importantly, it should reframe the entire way you think about scoring.

The gap that defines handicap is not the birdie gap. It’s the double bogey gap. By a factor of three.

Another way to view this: A 20-handicap who magically gained scratch-level birdie-making would save roughly two strokes a round. A 20-handicap who magically gained scratch-level bogey-avoidance would save six.

You’re chasing strokes in all the wrong places.

Subscribe now

Why Birdie-Hunting Backfires

I know it stings. But unless you’re a very low single digit handicap, outright playing for birdie will probably produce more bogeys than birdies. There are a couple of realities you need to understand that will continue to help you reframe your thinking around this.

Birdies are rare. Doubles are routine

A 15-handicap makes about one birdie every three rounds. That’s roughly one birdie every 54 holes played. So even when one happens, you can’t magically engineer the next one. You simply cannot count on them to lower your score.

But what you CAN do is engineer fewer doubles.

The data shows there are five times as many opportunities to NOT lose strokes as there are to gain them.

AKA: Don’t be stupid.

Asymmetric risk/reward

Let’s take a flag tucked behind a bunker on the edge of the green. If a Tour pro gets aggressive and misses on the short side, on average it will cost him close to half a stroke. Not horrible.

He’ll probably be forced to hit some sort of 10-foot flop shot, and worst case have a 15 footer coming back to save his par. The risk may have been worth it.

But for most amateurs, being stuck short sided because they tried to take on a flag will cost them a whole lot more than half a stroke.

Factor in the chunky flop into the bunker, or the thinned wedge over the green. Now you’ve made double when you thought you could make birdie.

Start treating a bogey prevented the same as a birdie made. Your scorecard at the end of 18 holes will shock you.

Before we continue:

If you’re enjoying this week’s post and want access to the entire Scoring Letter archive, I’m running a little promo to receive 30% off an annual subscription for one year HERE.

Get 30% off for 1 year

The Tour Data

If hunting for birdies were the path, the Tour leaders in scoring average would be led by the birdie-makers.

But they aren’t.

The PGA Tour actually tracks this. There is a stat called Bogey Avoidance — the percentage of holes a player finishes worse than par. Lower is better obviously. Tour average sits around 16-19%.

Since they started tracking the stat in 1987, only three seasons have produced a bogey rate below 10%. You may recognize them. That's not a coincidence.

- Tiger Woods, 2000

- Scottie Scheffler, 2024

- Xander Schauffele, 2024

Across the 16 rounds of the Tiger Slam, he made 23 bogeys total. The next-best player who made all four cuts had 41.

In 2024, Scotty Scheffler led the PGA in birdie average AND bogey avoidance. He is the only modern player to do both in the same season.

I’ve heard many golf fans actually express how they don’t enjoy watching Scotty or Xander for this exact reason. They just hit the fairway, land on the green, and then two-putt. Sometimes one-putt. They are the opposite of the Jordan Spieth experience in this regard. It’s the reason why Jordan is so likable — he’s relatable.

When he lands in the trees and is fighting for his life to save par, it makes us feel seen. The only difference is he somehow turns the mess into a birdie while you make double.

Share

So What Can You Do?

Ok so you’re probably thinking, “Sounds great. I’d love to make fewer doubles. Easier said than done. Can we stop with the vague abstract mindset stuff?”

Yes we can. Here is some specific and actionable advice you can use tomorrow to help eliminate doubles.

Read more

This will be a new edition called The Sunday Bag that I’ll try to release most Sundays where I review a few things I liked or didn’t like in the world of golf from the past week. All with the aim of helping you become a better golfer. No filler golf news. You can get that anywhere.

Let’s get into it.

Subscribe now

Playing Downhill Lies

The Champions Tour X account posted a great video of Ben Crane giving a tip for playing downhill fairway lies. If you’ve ever played nicer/more difficult courses, it feels like every fairway tests you. It wasn’t enough to hit a perfect drive. Now you have to go prove you can hit a 6-iron off an uneven lie…

He “walks you through” how to play the shot. Check it out below.

Filming at US Open Qualifier Events

For those who follow the golf social media world, you may have noticed an increase in the number of golf “content creators” who are filming their US Open qualifier rounds.

Many seem to be outraged (rightfully). I’ve never competed in a US Open qualifier, but if I did, I’d imagine I’d be pretty upset if my playing partner had a camera man following our group.

For one, it’s distracting. And secondly, seems to be slightly disrespectful to the traditions of US Open qualifiers.

What do you guys think?

Share

This Week’s Premium Post

This week’s premium post will be on learning to play golf from a “bogey avoidance” perspective, instead of a “make birdie” perspective. It’s a simple mental shift that has an amazing impact on how you view every shot.

A preview:

Another way to view this: A 20-handicap who magically gained scratch-level birdie-making would save roughly two strokes a round. A 20-handicap who magically gained scratch-level bogey-avoidance would save six.

You’re chasing strokes in all the wrong places.

The post will be for paid subs only. If you haven’t already, you can upgrade HERE.

Will Zalatoris Advice

I saw this clip on X and found it to be very practical and actionable advice. I feel like you always see pros getting asked “how do you lower your handicap?” And they usually give some solid but slightly generic advice. But not Will Zalatoris lol.

If you’ve never seen this clip I highly recommend you watch it.

"Get on the green as fast as possible” is one that has helped me tremendously.

LPGA Swings

Last week, the LPGA X account posted a swing compilation of a few of their popular players. As expected, the swings were a masterclass in tempo and fluidity.

So I quoted the tweet and said:

“Watching and emulating LPGA swings instead of PGA swings would do most amateurs a lot of good.”

People seemed to agree, as the tweet quickly surpassed 1 million views.

I have always felt that the best swings to study and model were the LPGA swings. They hit “textbook” positions more often than their male counterparts it seems. They also don’t display the same freakish swing speed as guys like DJ or Rory etc… So it’s a little easier to emulate.

You can view the original post below.

Share

That’s it for today. Hope you all have a great week and can enjoy some springtime golf.

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to email me at tourswingstommy@gmail.com. I read everything.

Social Media: Make sure to follow me on X here.

If you haven’t read them yet, check out some of the most popular Scoring Letter posts below:

Upgrade Subscription

Nothing is more rewarding to me than standing on a tee box, assessing the pin, the fairway, the trouble, the bailout — and then executing based on all of it.

But still, it feels like I’m always learning something new each week.

The research I do for this newsletter surprises me constantly. New trouble I’d never considered. Predicaments that subtly set you up for failure. The kind of stuff you don’t realize until after you’ve walked off with a double.

I really pride myself on knowing all of the trouble before hitting a shot. So when I tell you how surprised I was to learn about what I’m about to share, I mean it.

I want to talk about a shot that costs amateurs nearly as much as hitting it in the water.

It’s a shot you may find yourself faced with multiple times per round, yet rarely consider the chaos it creates. Most of you probably don’t even think of it as a hazard. Just a mild inconvenience on the way to the green.

The data says this shot costs amateurs 1.4 strokes every time they find it. To give you some context, a penalty area costs 1.5.

And the most annoying thing about this shot? It hides in plain sight.

You see pros hit it all the time. It doesn’t derail their game at all. But for you it’s essentially a penalty shot hiding in your scorecard, disguised as a non-event.

I think it’s important that you learn what it is.

The Shot

The shot is the fairway bunker.

I’m assuming the big reveal was a little bit of let down for you? Maybe you expected something more dramatic. Which is kind of my point. The fairway bunker doesn’t register as a threat for most amateurs. And still despite me telling you that it costs nearly as much as water, you’ll still discount it.

You’ll walk up to your ball, see the sand somewhere down next to fairway grass, and file it under “not ideal, but fine.”

You probably won’t even aim away from it on the tee. Or pick a more cautious club. You certainly won’t treat it like water.

But you probably should.

Shot Scope aggregated tee-shot outcomes across amateurs between an 8 and 20 handicap level. They attached an average stroke penalty to each possible result.

• Light rough: 0.3 strokes

• Trees: 1.1 strokes

• Fairway bunker: 1.4 strokes

• Penalty area: 1.5 strokes

(Obviously these numbers can be slightly lower or higher depending on your exact handicap. But you get the point.)

Then there’s green in regulation (GIR). Across their full database, Shot Scope reports amateurs hit the green in regulation from a bunker just 26% of the time. From the rough, that number is 55%.

The fairway bunker cuts your green in regulation rate in half compared to light rough. That’s not something to ignore.

Share

The Arccos Study

Arccos ran a great study that I think illustrates very clearly how much fairway bunkers affect a player’s shot.

They compared a 3-handicap to an 18-handicap from 50 yards. But here’s the catch: The 3-handicap had to hit out of a bunker, and the 18-handicap got to hit on the fairway.

From 50 yards in the fairway bunker, a 3-handicap hit the green 62% of the time at an average proximity of 44 feet.

From 50 yards in the fairway, an 18-handicap hit the green 62% of the time at an average proximity of 44 feet.

So from 50 yards, a 3-handicap in sand performs exactly the same as a bogey golfer on grass…

But here is where it gets worse. Fairway bunkers don’t punish all players equally. They punish the weaker players more.

PGA Tour players hit the green in regulation from fairway bunkers about 48% of the time. The yearly leaders clear 75%. Meanwhile amateurs sit around 26%. The best players are essentially playing with a minor distance tax, not a hazard.

The reason for this is simple. Pros are really really good lol…

Fairway bunkers demand precise, clean contact. Hitting ball first with minimal sand interference. There is very little room for error. It requires unbelievable low-point control and angle of attack. And to do it consistently? Well, you’d probably have to be a pro.

I’ll get into mechanical stuff later in the article which you can use to improve at these shots.

Before we continue:

If you’re enjoying this week’s post and want access to the entire Scoring Letter archive, I’m running a little promo to receive 30% off an annual subscription for one year HERE.

Get 30% off for 1 year

The Ceiling

Lou Stagner is Arccos’s Data & Insights lead. In March 2024 he published a newsletter that should have been required reading for every amateur golfer. (You can check it out HERE)

Stagner pulled the median distance advanced from fairway bunker shots, broken down by handicap and by yardage to the hole.

From 140 to 149 yards from the pin, a 10-handicap in a fairway bunker hits the ball a median of 125 yards.

From 200 to 209 yards from the pin, a 10-handicap in a fairway bunker hits the ball a median of 125 yards.

Yes you read that correctly lol. Exact same distance.

From 140 to 209 yards, the median distance a 10-handicap advances a fairway bunker shot is roughly the same…

For most amateur golfers, there appears to be a ceiling at around 125 yards, and no matter what club they grab or what yardage they are facing, the ball travels about the same distance.

The ceiling is real. You cannot swing harder to get past it. You cannot club up to get past it. The wall exists because of the unique difficulty of delivering clean ball-first contact out of sand. It’s just too easy to hit these shots fat or thin. And many amateurs do. A lot.

Let’s get into why.

Share

The Skill Gap

Read more

Team “Aggressive” believed that proximity to the hole was always more valuable, no matter the lie. Bomb driver, deal with the consequences. Team “Lay-up” argued that setting yourself up with a comfortable wedge in the fairway was the more prudent play.

Then came the strokes-gained revolution in the 2010s, and with it, a clear answer.

It basically said: Hit driver, go for the green, proximity to the hole increases scoring opportunities.

Most of the evidence comes from Mark Broadie’s research (inventor of Strokes Gained), along with Shot Scope data. But the sentiment I hear most is: go for it every time because closer beats farther, even if closer means rough or minor trouble.

And they aren’t wrong. The data does favor pulling driver and advancing the ball as far as possible.

But still, it feels like the lay-up argument got lost somewhere along the way. Even now when I play with strangers, I hear the proximity argument being used to justify pulling driver on holes that really don’t call for it.

I don’t entirely buy it. There have to be situations where the data skew towards laying-up. Especially for the average amateur who may not have full confidence in their driving ability or their scrambling.

Besides, the data is just a starting point, not a hard rule. Every golfer brings a different set of strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies to the tee box.

The aggregate numbers don’t know your game. You do.

Subscribe now

The Data Behind the Rule

Before I get into when you should NOT use driver, let’s first look at why the data generally says that you should.

According to Shot Scope data, every ability level (including 30-handicappers) gain +0.10 to +0.16 strokes on average by hitting driver versus a shorter club off the tee on short par 4s. The benefit is biggest for better players, but even higher handicaps see gains because getting the ball closer outweighs the risk for most.

Mark Broadie states “If you are playing a par 4 or par 5 where the penalty for missing the fairway is not too great, then being longer is better than being shorter, so driver always tends to be the better choice. But if you are playing a par 4 or a par 5, where gaining 20 yards with the driver brings deep rough, a bunker, trees or another hazard into play, then being on the fairway is far better than being off it.”

I posted this question to X and received some insightful comments you may want to check out.

This was my favorite:

“Match play, pull driver all day. Stroke play, nothing wrong with an easy par or guaranteed birdie putt if there is significant risk. Data may say going for it is better but I am personally thinking about managing the stress levels and overall mood of my round in a tournament.”

Before we continue:

If you’re enjoying this week’s post and want access to the entire Scoring Letter archive, I’m running a little promo to receive 30% off an annual subscription for one year HERE.

Get 30% off for 1 year

When To Leave Driver in The Bag

Ok, let’s now get into reasons why you might want to ignore the rule, and pull out an iron so all of your friends can laugh at you. Some of the reasons are obvious. Others will require you to think a little harder about your own game. It’s vital that you know all of them.

Read more

Any given week on tour, a 16-year-old and a 60-year-old can tee it up against the best players on the planet and have a legitimate shot at competing. Try saying that about the NFL lol.

So I was curious: who were the youngest and oldest players to ever make the cut at Augusta? And more importantly — what does the answer tell us about the nature of the game itself.

Before we continue:

If you enjoy the content and want access to all of the premium posts, I am running a little promo to receive 30% off an annual subscription HERE.

Get 30% off for 1 year

Who Were The Golfers?

In 2013, a 14-year-old (yes 14!) from China named Guan Tianlang showed up to Augusta National and made the cut. He drove it about 250 yards. and only hit 44% of greens in regulation.

Additionally, he received the first slow play penalty in Masters history on the 17th hole of Round 2, and still made the cut…

Just to reiterate. A child, on the cut line, receiving a one-stroke penalty in the final round at Augusta National, still made it through to the weekend. Fourteen years old. Unbelievable.

Now onto the other extreme.

In 2023, Fred Couples made the cut at Augusta at 63 years old. He drove it 280 yards in a field averaging 305. He was older than most of the caddies.

He finished T50 and walked off Amen Corner extending a streak of 23 consecutive cuts made at Augusta, tying Gary Player’s all-time record. Thirty-one career cuts at Augusta National.

I think we will continue to see Freddie play the Masters for a long time.

Fifty years separating these two. Same test. Same result.

How can you not love this game?

Subscribe now

“Golf Isn’t a Real Sport”

You often hear golf getting dismissed for not being a “real” sport. The argument is that it lacks contact, explosiveness, sustained cardio output etc... Let’s say that I agree (I don’t). Golf certainly isn’t a lesser sport because it lacks those things. It’s just a different sport because of what it demands instead.

Sure the ball doesn’t move. There’s no reactive opponent. No one is closing on you at full speed.

The only thing standing between you and a good score is the decision you make before you swing, and the ability to execute it.

Every other major sport filters out older players through physical attrition. The NBA doesn’t care that a 38-year-old has superior court vision if he can’t defend on the perimeter. Good luck defending Anthony Edwards old man lol.

The NFL doesn’t care about experience if getting tackled will result in you being placed in a wheelchair for life.

Tennis is unforgiving to the legs regardless of the mind.

Golf is the only sport where the mind can outrun the decline of the body. Or it can show up before the body even develops (see Guan Tianlang).

Subscribe now

The Test of Augusta

Alister MacKenzie didn’t design Augusta National to necessarily punish bad swings. He designed it to punish bad decisions.

The rough is minimal. A missed fairway doesn’t completely bury you. What buries you is the wrong angle into a green, the wrong tier, the wrong side of the hole.

Augusta separates players not at the point of contact, but at the point of thought — thirty seconds before the swing.

Miss the wrong section of the green and you’re looking at a two-putt from hell, maybe worse.

Amen Corner demands three consecutive correct decisions in a row. One of the best shows in sports.

Maybe this is what both Guan and Couples understood — maybe for different reasons. Guan, at 14, played targets that looked cowardly. Laid up on the par 5s. Aimed for the middle of greens instead of flags. Played for the 30-foot birdie look, not the 10-foot one that required a risky line. He had zero three-putts for the entire tournament. Zero. His driving accuracy was abysmal. His GIR was below 50%. He made the cut anyway.

Couples, at 63, hit 82% of fairways. Hit the middle of greens. Used the slopes. Never chased.

“I can’t compete with Rahm or Hovland,” he said, “but I can compete with myself.” He understood his game, played within it, and outlasted dozens of players thirty years younger who didn’t.

Share

The Only Skill That Doesn’t Age

Distance declines. Flexibility declines. We know this. But the ability to recognize what shot to hit, where to miss, and when to lay up — that sharpens.

Maybe being 14-years old was an advantage in some strange sense? He had no scar tissue or terrible memory of a particular hole. He saw a shot and played it without the weight of consequence.

But being 63-years old is much different. He’s seen every lie, every wind, every scenario. He doesn’t need to weight his options as much (similar to the 14-year old). He executes what he knows without too much internal deliberation. This is a major advantage.

Ignorance and wisdom can be two different paths to the same result in this game. You stay within yourself, do what you know, and the results may follow.

Subscribe now

Who Was The Oldest Winner?

Sure making the cut is impressive. But what about actually winning?

We would have to go back to 1986, where Jack Nicklaus won the Masters at 46 years old.

He shot 65 on Sunday, made six birdies on the back nine, and walked off 18 as the oldest major champion in history. The field that week included players half his age with twice his distance.

It didn’t matter. He had played Augusta more times than most of them had played competitive golf.

The Final Takeaway

There is no doubt the physical component of golf is real. You need to be able to execute the shot you’ve chosen. But execution is always downstream of decision. And decisions don’t require a 40-inch vertical or a 5-second 40-yard dash.

Golf isn’t easy. It’s extremely demanding. You know this lol…

But a large part of that demand is mental — which is what allows this rare convergence of young and old at the highest levels of the game.

A 14-year-old and a 63-year-old walked the same 18 holes, read the same greens, made the same good decisions.

The scorecard just records the number and moves on.

Until next time,

Tommy

Subscribe now

Works Cited

“Fred Couples, 63, Becomes Oldest to Make Masters Cut.” PGA Tour, 8 Apr. 2023, https://www.pgatour.com/article/news/latest/2023/04/08/fred-couples-63-becomes-oldest-to-make-masters-cut-augusta-national-bernhard-langer.

“Fred Couples, 63, Oldest Player to Make Cut at the Masters.” ESPN, 8 Apr. 2023, https://www.espn.com/golf/story/_/id/36117415/fred-couples-63-oldest-player-make-cut-masters.

“Tianlang Guan Youngest to Make Cut at Masters.” ESPN, 12 Apr. 2013, https://www.espn.com/golf/masters13/story/_/id/9164772/2013-masters-tianlang-guan-shoots-75-penalty-slow-play.

“Tianlang Guan Adds Low Amateur Honors at Masters.” ESPN, 14 Apr. 2013, https://www.espn.com/golf/masters13/story/_/id/9170500/2013-masters-tianlang-guan-14-adds-low-amateur-honors-75.

“Youngest Golfer to Make the Cut at the US Masters.” Guinness World Records, https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/youngest-golfer-to-make-the-cut-at-the-us-masters.

“Tianlang Guan Makes Cut at 2013 Masters.” Bleacher Report, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1602449-tianlang-guan-makes-cut-at-2013-masters-by-shooting-3-over-75.

“2013 Masters Tournament Winner and Scores.” Golf Compendium, https://www.golfcompendium.com/2018/11/2013-masters-tournament.html.

“Who Is the Oldest Player to Make the Cut in the Masters Tournament?” Golf News Net, 10 Apr. 2026, https://thegolfnewsnet.com/ryan_ballengee/2026/04/10/who-is-the-oldest-player-to-make-the-cut-in-the-masters-tournament-128884/.

“Course Management at Augusta: What Separates Masters Winners from the Field.” Splash Sports, https://splashsports.com/blog/course-management-at-augusta-what-separates-masters-winners-from-the-field.

And this repeatability we hope, will come from eliminating variables in our golf game.

We work tirelessly to reduce the variability in every facet of our game. Our pre-shot routine. Our takeaway. Our putting stroke. All in hopes of squeezing just a few more good shots out of the round.

And then we reach into our golf bag and grab whatever ball our hand touches first…

You may be one of the few amateur golfers who doesn’t do this. And if that’s the case, I salute you. But far too often do I see golfers playing with multiple different golf ball brands throughout the round.

They open with a Pro V1x off the first tee, switch to a Chrome Soft after losing the first one, and then somehow finish the round with a Vice ball? And also who hit this Kirkland?

The pro shop receives your money. The range receives your time. The golf course receives your attention. And then the poor little golf ball receives whatever’s left after that. Just an afterthought…

You need to understand this:

The golf ball is the only piece of equipment in play on every single shot.

It is the one variable you can absolutely control!

Read more

This isn’t a tournament preview or player analysis. That’s been written about 100 times and I personally find it boring. So I won’t be doing that.

Instead, I want to share the 3 shots that I’m most excited to watch from a course management and scoring perspective. They are the shots that I believe require the most intentional planning and perfect execution.

Let’s get into it.

Subscribe now

1. The Approach Shot on the 13th (Azalea)

Ahh Azalea. Arguably the most beautiful hole on the course. A hole which Geoff Ogilvy referred to as the “perfect golf hole”. He’s not wrong. It’s one of the best risk reward holes in golf, and the approach shot is one of my favorites.

Let’s start with the tee shot. Players can cut the corner left and they’ll be rewarded with a much shorter approach shot into a relatively “gettable” par 5. Additionally, if they can find the left side of the fairway, they’ll be rewarded with a flatter lie, which allows them to actually go after the pin with the shot they want — which you’ll see proves to be extremely valuable on this hole.

The only problem with trying to cut the corner off the tee is that Rae’s Creek runs directly off the left side of fairway. So if the tee shot drifts slightly too far left, the ball is swimming.

If they decide to hit the safter drive off to the right, they trade one problem for another — a terribly uncomfortable lie with the ball above their feet to a green that sucks everything left towards the creek—and this is where it gets fun to watch.

The green is protected by Rae’s Creek, which wraps from the front left around to the back right. The issue is that because of the slope of the fairway, you’re pretty much forced to hit a lower draw into the green, which brings the creek heavily into play. Additionally, because the creek wraps around the back right side of the green, if a player sets up for a draw, and the ball doesn’t draw… they’re swimming.

Essentially if the player decides they want to go for it in two from the right side of the fairway, they will be forced to hit a perfect draw that lands softly.

Good luck lol.

It’s an amazing shot to watch, and one where tournaments have been won or lost.

2. The 3rd Shot from the Fairway on 15 (Firethorn)

Everyone will be talking about the 2nd shot on this par-5. And no question that’s one of the best risk-reward shots on the course. But the ones who choose to lay back are faced with one of the toughest wedge shots in golf — and I’m gonna love every second of it.

Because if you don’t go for it, it’s not just a matter of laying up to a good number. It’s laying up to a particular spot on the fairway where you have the best angle to not hit it long into the water, or short into the water…

The wedge shot from the right side is an awkward lie that runs downhill, over water, into a firm green, which makes it extremely difficult to hold. You’ve all seen clips of players catching it fat and landing in the water, or catching it slightly thin and going long. The left side of the fairway is known for giving a better angle and a more forgiving lie.

A tricky short shot which is every bit as dangerous as it is fun to watch.

Subscribe now

3. The Approach Shot on 9 (Carolina Cherry)

It’s a straight-forward tee shot with a deceptively difficult approach shot. The hole tempts you to hit a drive down the left where the fairway opens up. The only issue with that is the green is guarded by 2 bunkers on the left which makes getting the next shot anywhere close extremely difficult to do. So most don’t go left.

If a player hits a long straight drive, they’re rewarded with a flatter lie and an easier approach. Finally.

The last option is hitting down the right side of the fairway. This allows for a much bigger window into the green on the approach. But there’s a catch. And this is the shot I will be watching.

If the player comes in from the right side, he’s forced to hit an uphill wedge shot from a downhill lie. Brutal! Additionally, it’s a tiered green. So if they come up short, they roll off. And if they go long, they’re left with one of the most difficult lag putts on the property.

Makes you thankful for your home course lol.

The approach shot is usually hit with a wedge, and it tests the player’s distance control, and spin control. Hope their grooves are clean :)

Subscribe now

Final Takeaway

I’m sure you could make the case for any shot at Augusta and win me over. But these were the three that stuck out in my mind.

I’m curious to know what you guys think. If you have a favorite shot or hole, please share it below!

And also, happy Masters week!

Tommy

Share The Scoring Letter

And I agree. Wind is simple. But that doesn’t mean you understand it as well as you should. Because knowing just a few of the concepts I’m about to discuss could potentially save you multiple strokes the next time you encounter a windy round. That is my hope for you after reading this.

The reality is that wind doesn’t just change how far the ball travels. It changes how the ball behaves in the air, how it lands, how you think about the shot, and essentially how much control you retain over the outcome. These are entirely different problems than simply adjusting your club selection for carry distance.

Let’s get into it.

Join The Scoring Letter

Hitting Into The Wind

Let’s start here, because most golfers don’t know this and it’s simple and helpful.

Hitting into the wind is not the equal opposite of having wind at your back. It’s worse.

According to TrackMan data, a 10 mph headwind costs a mid-iron roughly 15–17 yards. But a 10 mph tailwind adds only 10–13 yards. At 20 mph, the gap widens further.

Additionally, hitting into the wind doesn’t just cost you distance. You lose predictability. The ball climbs, stalls, and falls short in ways that are more random. A tailwind nudges the ball forward in its flight in a more predictable way. A headwind actively works against you. These are not equal opposite problems.

The Physics

Three things matter when the ball is in the air: speed, spin, and time. Wind interferes with all three.

Im not a physicist. I’m an amateur golfer. So here’s my understanding of the physics in amateur golfer terms.

First let’s start with this: A headwind increases airflow over the ball and essentially causes the ball to balloon in the air. It doesn’t really cause the ball to spin more per se, it just makes the existing spin matter more.

This is a vital concept for you to understand: Spin is your enemy in a headwind.

You’ve all heard the phrase “When it’s breezy swing easy”.

Now consider what most golfers do when they feel wind in their face. They grip it tighter and swing harder. More swing speed produces more spin. More spin produces the ball to balloon more. The cure makes the disease worse.

Read more

Hope you’re having a nice start to your week. The Scoring Letter has gained quite a bit of new subs over the past couple of weeks, so I figured a good free post would serve as the proper welcome.

I’ve been spending time brainstorming new and creative content to produce for you all, and after some thought, I’m excited to say I’ve landed on something I think will be just as fun to read as it is to write.

It’s going to be an occasional series called Lessons From a Vintage Golf Magazine.

The idea is pretty simple: dig up golf instruction from an old school magazine and hold it up against the game today.

True to Scoring Letter standards, these won’t be swing tips per se (although some of the content does lightly touch on it). The primary focus is on how older golfers approached the game — and what we can still learn from them. Because despite all the advances in golf tech and equipment etc, the core objective of the game has remained the same: put the ball in the hole in the least amount of strokes.

The series will be for premium subs only going forward, but I’ve decided to post the first one for free today.

If you like it and want to upgrade, I’m running a little promo where you can get 30% off your first year HERE.

Get 30% off for 1 year

Ok no more plugs, let’s get into it.

For the first entry of my new series, I decided to start with a 1,200-word column from the March 1981 issue of Golf Monthly titled The Importance of Feel.

The column was written by Dai Rees — a Ryder Cup captain, nine-time Welsh PGA champion, and one of the most respected players of his era.

His words are 45 years old, yet remain devastatingly relevant today.

If you want to read the original column, I’ve attached the image below.

Paralysis by Analysis

Rees had been observing the instruction of his day and arrived at a conclusion that has only grown more true with time: golfers don’t struggle because they don’t know enough. They struggle because they know too much of the wrong things at the wrong time.

He watched it constantly. Players walking to the first tee juggling dozens of technically valid swing thoughts in their head, yet all of them completely useless the moment a shot actually needed to be hit.

His verdict was simple: high handicappers fail to improve not because they lack instruction, but because they are, in his words, “tying themselves in knots”.

I feel personally attacked by Dai Rees…

Join The Scoring Letter

Make it Simple

Rees opens with James Braid, five-time Open Champion, being asked how he would teach the game. Braid’s answer was three words.

“Make it simple.”

Not build a comprehensive swing system. Not teach technical positions. Not optimize sequencing in the downswing. Just… make it simple.

If you’ve ever found yourself in that lowly position — hunkered down in a dark room, hunched over a laptop, clicking through shallowing drills at midnight — you already have learned that every force in modern instruction pulls in the exact opposite direction of “making it simple.”

That’s not to say you don’t need swing thoughts or drills. You do. But how many do you actually need?

It does feel like the more you try, the more complicated it gets. And the more complicated it gets, the more you try. And on and on…

What does Rees mean by “Feel”?

He divided feel into four things: relaxation, awareness of the clubhead, a pendulum motion of the arms and hands, and the sensation of throwing the clubhead at the ball.

No positions. No checkpoints.

In the column, he seemed to be pretty deliberate about one word in particular:

Elusive

He stated that feel is elusive for a very specific reason: you cannot cultivate it by concentrating on technical thoughts.

He argued that “feel” and “analysis” are mutually exclusive in the golf swing.

The second you shift your attention to something more technical like club path or hip sequencing, or whatever math equation you’re solving in your head, you’ve effectively lost feel. Instead, you’ve replaced it with analysis. The two cannot coexist.

His argument was that you cannot play golf thinking about positions. You can play golf by feeling motion.

I don’t totally disagree. I have found that both sometimes work for me. But let’s continue.

Join The Scoring Letter

The Baseball Analogy

This is the part of the piece that interested me most, and the part I suspect will linger in your mind after reading this.

Rees argues that the throwing action in baseball naturally produces good positions — and that the mechanics required are nearly identical to what’s needed in a golf swing.

His prescription for beginners: use that throwing sensation as your mental model. Let it make you more feel-conscious rather than position-conscious.

Here’s the really interesting part. He observed that top American golfers of his era had a uniformity in their swings that their British counterparts lacked. He attributed it to baseball being baked into their childhoods. They’d spent years developing an athletic throwing motion before they ever picked up a golf club. The feel was already there. The golf swing had something natural to attach itself to.

In an era where we hand beginners a launch monitor and some sort of shallowing gait belt on day one, we’ve essentially stripped out the athletic intuition Rees was pointing to.

The First Tee Problem

Every golfer knows this feeling all too well... You’ve been striking it beautifully on the range. You step onto the first tee. Then all of a sudden everything goes to shit…

What just happened?

Rees’s diagnosis: Mental congestion — too many thoughts running simultaneously, crowding out the natural motion you actually possess.

His remedy? The golf equivalent of some sort of hippie essential oils — forget everything, relax, let the swing happen.

But this only works if you built your game around feel in the first place. A swing built around positions has nothing to fall back on when pressure arrives.

Unfortunately you can’t think your way through a golf swing under stress. But according to Rees you can feel your way through one…

Get 30% off for 1 year

Fast Forward to Modern Golf

If Rees thought 1981 instruction was overly complicated, the current landscape would cause his head to explode.

Launch monitors. Face angle. Club path. Attack angle. An infinite supply of video breakdowns dissecting positions frame by frame.

None of this is inherently useless. For the record I think data can be invaluable. But most golfers are using it backwards — building from data first, instead of building feel first and using data to refine it afterward.

The result is that they become hyper-aware of everything, yet capable of executing nothing.

Did technology fix amateur golf? Or did it give confused players more sophisticated ways to stay confused.

How Feel Actually Shows Up in Your Scorecard

I understand how talking about feel can be kind of abstract and intangible. So let me give you a few concrete and tangible ways in which feel shows up in your golf game.

• Distance Control. You can’t always hit wedges with mechanics. You sometimes need to hit them with feel.

• Short Game. There is no spreadsheet for how a chip comes off the face.

• Putting. If you don’t think great putters have great feel, then you haven’t been playing long enough.

• Tempo Under Pressure. Natural athletic feel can become a great fall back option when swing thoughts lead you astray under pressure.

What Rees Thought About Practice

Rees made the point: Practice is for thinking about the golf swing. Playing is not.

Most golfers, along with myself, are guilty of doing the exact opposite. We mindlessly beat balls on the range (the auto-pilot often times leading to great ball-striking) and then overthink every shot on the course.

The correct inversion: On the range: explore, build, think. On the course: trust, react, simplify.

Join The Scoring Letter

Final Takeaway

Make it simple. Not because the swing is simple — it isn’t. But because playing golf demands simplicity. You can study complexity. You cannot perform it.

The average golfer today has more access to instruction than any generation in history. More video. More data. More coaching. And yet most of them feel less natural over the ball, think more during the swing, and trust themselves less than they ever have.

Dai Rees understood in 1981 what most golfers are still working to learn today: golf is not played by perfect mechanics. It’s played by a body that knows what to do — and a mind disciplined enough to get out of the way.

Hope you’ve enjoyed the first post in this new series. I’d love to hear your feedback. Did you like concept? Should I do more? Please let me know below.

Until next time,

Tommy

Join The Scoring Letter

• Social Media: Make sure to follow me on X here.

Mission complete. Time to hit.

But hold on… Not so fast buddy. You only used your rangefinder for about 20% of its total capacity. You just left a lot on the table.

You pulling out the rangefinder and zapping the flag was more of a reflex. A ritual. Nowhere in that did you use it to perform any sort of course management — which is exactly what it should be used for.

The rangefinder is the most misused piece of equipment in the bag — not because golfers don’t know how to operate it, but because they’ve underestimated its complete use. They use it for a number. A number is only part of the puzzle. The rangefinder’s real job is to find a decision.

The pin distance doesn’t tell you everything. It doesn’t tell you where you can’t miss. It doesn’t tell you where the shot needs to land. And it certainly doesn’t tell you whether the club you’re reaching for makes any sense at all.

A quick word before we continue: The Scoring Letter crossed over 500 subscribers last week and I wanted to take a moment to thank you all. It truly means a lot to me.

That being said, I’ve decided to run a little promo offering 30% off annual subscriptions to celebrate. That’s a full year of ideas designed to help you shoot lower scores for less than a box of ProV1s lol.

The promo will run until the end of this week.

I want you all to read the premium content because I truly believe that’s where a lot of the game-changing and actionable info lives, while also still making it worth my time to produce.

If you’re interested, you can access the promo HERE.

Upgrade Subscription

The Wrong Use of a Correct Number

Here’s the problem with the “zap and club” approach: it assumes the pin yardage is the only relevant yardage.

The pin yardage gives you one piece of information. Where the hole is. It says nothing about where the trouble starts, how deep the green runs, whether that bunker is actually in play, or that there's twenty yards of safe bailout long. The full picture requires more than one number.

The Three-Step Framework

Every good approach decision follows the same chain of logic. Most amateurs skip directly to Step 3.

Read more

The strike is cleaner. The flight is tighter. The ball holds its line. And the yardage — which you thought you’d lose since you slid your hands down the grip — barely changes.

Most golfers have experienced some version of this, but never really stop to understand it — and instead go back to gripping the full club. That’s a mistake. What they felt was no accident.

Choking down on the golf club is one of the most underused weapons in the amateur arsenal. But it has been dismissed by many as something you only do when you need less yardage.

That is wrong, and I’m going to explain why it should matter to you.

Club Head Speed or Ball Speed

The logic goes like this: choke down, shorten the club, lose leverage, lose speed, lose yards.

Makes sense right?

But that line of reasoning only optimizes for only one variable — club head speed. It ignores the variable that actually determines how far the ball goes: ball speed.

Ball speed is a function of two things — club head speed, yes, but also how cleanly you strike the center of the face.

The technical term is smash factor. It’s essentially how efficiently you transfer energy from the club to the ball.

Remember that term. I will refer back to it.

Here is the problem with the conventional wisdom.

A mis hit (toe, heel, anywhere off-center) costs about five to ten miles per hour of ball speed. That lost speed becomes lost yards. And in most cases, the yards you lose from a poor strike exceed the yards you'd give up by choking down an inch.

Hopefully you see where I’m going with this.

You are not just trading speed for control. You are trading the illusion of speed for actual distance.

Subscribe now

What the Data Says

TrackMan testing studied six golfers ranging from scratch to a ten handicap. Each tested their normal clubs alongside clubs choked down. The results were very clear.

Every single golfer improved smash factor when choking down.

Mid-irons and wedges lost very little distance in the testing. The 7-iron showed about 2 yards lost on carry, but much tighter dispersion pattern. I would call that a win.

Wedges lost almost nothing at all. Choking down a full two inches on your sand wedge and making a normal swing was basically the same.

Longer clubs are a different matter. The 4-iron lost twelve yards in SkyTrak testing. Longer clubs already produce a lower launch angle, and choking down suppresses it even further, robbing carry.

The logic is this:

1. Shorter club makes the swing arc easier to control.

2. Shorter/easier arc produces more centered contact.

3. More centered contact improves smash factor.

4. Improved smash factor offsets the marginal loss in club head speed.

5. Net result: essentially the same distance, significantly tighter dispersion.

Makes you wonder…

The Paradox

Here is the concept that you should take away from this.

Take a golfer hitting a 7-iron with a full grip. If a slight toe strike produces a lower smash factor, and a choked-down swing produces a higher smash factor due to a cleaner strike — the ball speed may actually be higher on the shorter swing.

In other words: A centered strike with a slightly shorter lever can outperform a faster swing that misses the sweet spot.

The golfer who chokes down and finds the middle of the face has not compromised his shot. He has improved it.

Most amateur golfers are losing far more distance to mishits than they would ever lose to a shorter grip.

Upgrade Subscription

The Mechanics of Choking Down

Three things change when you choke down, and understanding all three may help you understand why you should do it.

Read more

But what if I told you that you could become a better golfer yourself just by changing how you watch?

Most casual golfers will watch a golf broadcast for hours and learn absolutely nothing. They track the leaderboard. They admire the drives. They watch a sand wedge spin back twenty feet and lose their minds.

It’s enjoyable. Don’t get me wrong. I get lost in it all the time. But running underneath every broadcast, invisible to the casual viewer, is an entire education on how the game is actually played at the highest level. The routines. The shot selections. The safe shots. The aggressive shots. All of it.

And it’s all right there in front of you. All you have to do is tune in.

From Fan to Student

If I could get you to remember one thing it would be this: stop watching golf for outcomes and start watching for decisions.

Once you see that, a tournament broadcast shifts more from entertainment to a free four-hour practice session. And you don’t even have to move. Unless you want your wife to yell at you.

And if she does, just tell her you’re studying. It’s “educational”.

A quick word before we continue: We’ve just crossed over 500 subscribers this week and I wanted to take a moment to thank you all. It truly means a lot to me.

That being said, I’ve decided to run a little promo offering 30% off annual subscriptions to celebrate. That’s a full year of ideas designed to help you shoot lower scores for less than a box of ProV1s lol.

I want you all to read the premium content because I truly believe that’s where a lot of the game-changing and actionable info lives, while also still making it worth my time to produce.

If you’re interested, you can access the promo HERE.

Get 30% off for 1 year

Tip #1: Go In With Intent

The range is not the place to wander aimlessly and beat balls without a plan. Neither is the couch!

Before you sit down, pick one or two focus areas — pre-shot routine, tee shot strategy, short game decisions, etc… It could be anything. Then track what you see. Hole, situation, what you would do, what the pro does, result.

Tip #2: Watch the Routine

Every tour player operates from a system.

Behind the ball, they are assessing lie, wind, and slope. All of this happens before they select a club. Watch closely.

They are choosing a specific target — not a general direction. They commit to a shot before they ever step into their address.

Into the ball, it is the same number of looks, the same tempo, the same trigger. Doesn’t matter if it’s Sunday with a one-shot lead or Thursday at 7 in the morning.

Tip #3: Course Management

If you’ve watched a golf tournament on TV, sometimes they will show the same hole a dozen times. And if you watch closer, most of the pros miss in the exact same spot. That’s no coincidence.

Golf is a dispersion game. Hit 50 balls with a 7-iron. They don’t all land in the same spot — they form a pattern. That’s true even for pros (their pattern is just a lot tighter than yours lol).

That pattern is your dispersion. Tour players understand their dispersion intimately. They do not aim where their best shot goes. They aim where their entire pattern stays out of danger.

Unless they are in a position to go for it, or need to play aggressively on Sunday, they hit the safe side of a green. They take bunkers and water completely out of play. When a shot finishes close to the hole, that’s the exception, not the rule. Golf broadcasts usually only show the best shots. Remember that. They rarely show the average shots.

How to use this while watching: before every shot, ask yourself where you would aim, where the danger is, and where the safest miss is. Then watch the pro. See if you’re correct. It’s actually fun to do.

Tip #4: Short Game Lessons

Ignore the highlight reel short game shots. Take note of the regular ones.

What casual viewers see: flop shots, spin, creativity, highlight reel.

What you will notice when you start looking: most pros choose the simplest available shot, keep the ball low whenever the play allows it, and land it on a very specific spot. Count it during the next round you watch — how often do they hit a low runner versus a high-risk flop.

Also take note of run out. The highlight real only shows the hard hit pitch shots that check up and stop. Pay attention and you’ll see all the bump and runs that roll out and finish inside 3 feet with easy tap ins.

Tip #5: Putting Pace

Tour players almost never blow a putt six feet past the hole. It’s actually incredible.

They are elite at pace control, consistent routine, and committed reads. Watch how many looks they take, how long they stand over the ball, and how far past the hole lag putts actually finish.

Pick one player’s routine and match it — rhythmically. Incorporate their routine into yours. Their number of looks. Number of practice strokes. The time they stand over the ball.

Routine and consistency in putting is highly underrated.

Side Note: Featured Groups

I highly recommend subscribing to ESPN+. They offer a feature for a dedicated solo group broadcast, followed hole by hole.

I find it way more enjoyable than watching the main feed. It’s not even close.

The full pre-shot routine is on camera. The walking pace, the caddie conversations, the reads, the deliberation — all of it. None of the editorial cuts to leaderboard graphics or commercials for new drivers lol. Just unfiltered golf.

And here is the part that makes it incredibly instructive: you see the bad shots. You see the scrambling in real time. The recovery planning, the lie assessment, the adjusted target. You almost find yourself rooting for trouble because watching a tour player problem-solve from a difficult position teaches you more than watching a perfect shot.

The main broadcast shows you the highlights. The solo feed shows you the raw game.

If you have ESPN+ and have not used this feature, do it immediately.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Final Takeaway

If you know what you’re looking for, each weekend provides a masterclass on how the game of golf should be played, free of charge.

Every shot. Every decision. Every recovery.

I’m not saying to never watch golf as a fan. I’m also not saying that sitting and watching golf is better than playing — it’s not. But from time to time, if you find yourself relaxing watching the Sunday broadcast, tune in your course management ears, and note what you see.

Stop watching like a fan. Start watching like a player.

Hope you all have a great week. Get out and play! Or watch on TV! lol

Tommy

Before you go, it would help me out to know your handicap. I’m trying to gather data on which topics to cover in the future. Thanks

• PDF Guides: Are available by clicking here for paid subs

• Social Media: Make sure to follow me on X here.

• 30% off your first year here.

  ---

How the hell are you supposed to know which skills are worth spending time on?

Two hours practicing in a green-side bunker — two rounds later, you haven’t seen sand once. The flop shot you perfected on Tuesday evening — never needed it. The bump and run you ignored during your chipping session — the only play available all weekend.

Chances are you’re not a touring pro, and you have a regular life outside of golf. The range is not your office, and 9 to 5 on a practice facility is not an option. Your issue isn’t effort or commitment. It’s how should you allocate the practice time that you do have?

Most amateurs practice by feel and by memory. They practice the bunker shot because they struggled to get out of one last Saturday. Or they practice hitting a draw with their 6-iron because their home course sometimes has a pin location that demands it.

Practicing bunker shots and draws is not wrong. The question is whether those are the highest return-on-investment skills for your limited practice time.

For those of you who follow me on X, you may have seen I posted this very question to my followers. The post has close to 200 replies and there’s some great info in some of those comments for anyone who wants to check it out.

The scorecard is the only honest judge. If the goal is a lower number, practice should reflect that. So I decided to do the research, and the question I asked was this:

What does the data actually say about where practice time returns the highest ROI on your score?

The Highest ROI Skill

Ask most any golfer where he’s losing strokes. If he has some level of self-awareness, he’ll probably tell you it’s somewhere in the short game. And I’ll be honest — before I started this research project, I assumed short-game was the answer. No question.

It kind of makes intuitive sense. The short game is the last thing that happens on every hole. It lives in your memory. You bogeyed 18 because you missed the 6-footer or chunked your chip. So obviously if you were a better short game player, you wouldn’t have bogeyed it. Obviously.

But it turns out the real problem starts before you get to the green.

Mark Broadie (the Columbia professor who created strokes-gained) analyzed thousands of amateur rounds and explicitly stated:

“About two-thirds of a 10-stroke difference comes from shots outside of 100 yards… that’s pretty robust across hugely different skill levels.”

He breaks it down further:

• Driving ≈ 28%

• Approach shots ≈ 39%

• Short game ≈ 19%

• Putting ≈ 14%

AKA: Your approach shots are costing you strokes

In addition, the massive amateur datasets from Arccos and Shot Scope reveal a similar finding. The mid to long game (shots between 100-200 yards) account for the highest percent of scoring differences between players.

This is also known as Greens in Regulation, and it has the steepest drop-off of any stat:

• Scratch: 61% GIR

• 15 hcp: 24%

• 25 hcp: 10%

  Share

The Strokes Gained Framework

It would help to give a short explanation on what the strokes gained system is before we move on. Essentially it breaks the game into four categories: off the tee, approach play, around the green, and putting. Each shot is evaluated against the expected result from that distance, which allows analysts to determine precisely where strokes are gained and lost across an entire round.

The findings are pretty clear. Long game — tee shots and approaches combined — accounts for roughly 65 to 67 percent of scoring differences between players. Short game accounts for 18 to 20 percent. Putting accounts for 15 percent.

The biggest separator between players is not the short game. It’s in ball-striking quality — which shows up the most in approach shots.

Let’s Get Specific

Read more

I grounded the putter.

I put the sole behind the ball, saw my line, started my stroke. Nothing technically wrong with it. It’s what the guy ahead of you does. It’s what the guy behind you does. It’s what most of the guys on Tour do. It’s the “correct” thing to do.

But still, I kept mis-hitting putts. The putter head would get stuck to the ground during the takeaway and cause major inconsistencies in my stroke. And once I started feeling it, I started anticipating it. And that is the worst thing that can happen to a putting stroke. The moment your attention shifts from executing the putt to managing a flaw in the setup, the ball becomes an afterthought.

Lag putts were fine. Distance control, green reading. No issues there. But inside of five feet? I was sweating.

I genuinely did not know what the putter head was going to do when the stroke began. Those putts are supposed to be automatic. They are not automatic when you’re standing over the ball wondering whether your takeaway will behave itself.

Something had to change.

The Problem

My takeaway felt sticky. It felt like my stroke had to solve two problems simultaneously before it could actually begin. The putter had to first lift off the ground. And then it had to start moving backward. Somehow both at the same time?

It was a strange feeling that the stroke had to break free before it could truly flow. Like how in the hell do you begin the inertia of a putting stroke from being totally still?

Once I noticed it, I couldn’t stop noticing it.

A quick word before we continue: We’ve had over 200 new subs join this week and I wanted to take a moment to thank you all. It truly means a lot to me.

I want you all to read the premium content because I truly believe that’s where a lot of the game-changing and actionable info lives, while also still making it worth my time to produce.

That being said, I’ve decided to run a little promo offering 30% of annual subscriptions. That’s a full year of ideas for half the price of a box of ProV1s lol.

You can access it HERE

Get 30% off for 1 year

What Do The Pros Do?

So I did what all great amateurs golfers do when the wheels come off.

I consulted YouTube for confirmation bias.

I wanted to know that my putting woes weren’t unique, and that millions of other amateurs struggled alongside me.

But what I found was even better. It turned out many PGA pros hover the putter for this exact reason!

Rickie Fowler is one of the most prominent examples of someone who hovers his putter, and he’s explained it in detail during interviews. He adopted the habit to avoid the putter catching on the ground during the backstroke, which helps release tension and leads to a more fluid motion. In a 2017 Golf Digest article, he said: “The other lightness is hovering my putter just above the ground before I start my stroke. When the putter rests directly on the grass, it has a tendency to snag on the way back.”

Here is a close up of him doing it.

The legendary Jack Nicklaus has long advocated hovering not just the putter but all clubs. He started it partly to avoid penalties if the ball moved at address, but kept it for its benefits in maintaining grip firmness and reducing excess tension.

Even Greg Norman has said ““By hovering the club, you not only eliminate that risk [of regripping], you reduce the tendency to snag the club face in the grass, both on the takeaway and on the way down to the ball.”

Hideki Matsuyama does a version of the same thing — a small tap or bounce before initiating the stroke. Essentially unweighting of the club. In the video below it does look as though the putter is hovering before the takeaway.

So I Started Doing It

My stroke felt immediately smoother. The putter went from feeling like a door you had to pull open to a pendulum already in motion. It didn’t have to break free from anything. It simply began.

But there was a second discovery — one I have since become obsessed with.

Every great putter has a trigger.

Some small, repeatable action that tells the body: now. Jordan Spieth has his famous shaft lean forward before the stroke begins. The trigger removes the decision of when to start. The stroke doesn’t begin because he manipulated or willed it to begin. It begins because the trigger fired.

The hovering of the putter face didn’t just eliminate the possibility of the club dragging on the ground, it also created my new “trigger”. Which then allowed me to become more rhythmic and consistent in my stroke.

Should You Do It?

This is not a universal prescription. I want to be clear about that.

Some golfers find genuine stability in grounding the putter. They like a visual anchor, a face-alignment reference, a feeling of the putter being settled at address. For those players, hovering might actually cause tension rather than relieving it.

Some mallet designs are specifically engineered to sit square at the sole, meaning that lifting the head even slightly can alter the face angle in ways that create new problems.

Putting is deeply personal. The stroke that freed me may feel like chaos to you.

Test It

Maybe your putting is fine. Maybe it isn't. But if you’ve never attempted to hover it before address, just try it out and see what you think.

Find a straight five-footer. Hit two sets of ten balls.

First set: putter fully grounded. Note how the stroke initiates. Note how consistent the start-line is.

Second set: hover the putter just above the grass. Do not overthink the height. A millimeter is enough.

Pay attention to two things only: how the stroke feels at initiation, and how reliably the ball starts where you aimed it.

Most golfers feel the difference within a few putts. Some will prefer what they already had.

There’s no correct answer. Just your own personal experience and preference.

Final Takeaway

I did not hover the putter because someone told me to. I hovered it because a problem in my own stroke eventually demanded an answer, and this was the answer that fit.

What I learned is simpler than any technique:

The first milliseconds of the stroke matter more than most golfers ever consider. The transition from stillness to motion is not neutral. It is the origin of everything that follows.

Hovering the putter is one way to make that origin “cleaner”.

For me, it worked. The stroke is quieter. The short putts feel less consequential. The trigger is automatic.

So try it out, or don’t. Putting is about finding your hover or trigger, and then relentlessly perfecting it.

If you have any unique putting swing thoughts or triggers, share them below. I’d love to hear what they are, and maybe they will resonate with some of our readers.

Until next time,

Tommy

Share The Scoring Letter

• PDF Guides: Are available by clicking here for paid subs

• Social Media: Make sure to follow me on X here.

First you have to judge the speed. Then you need to read the overall break. Then you need to assess what the putt will do in the first 3 feet. Then you need to assess what it will do in the last 3 feet. Did I miss anything? Oh yea — then you actually have to execute a perfect putting stroke for any of this to even matter.

It’s no wonder we miss so many putts.

But this post is not meant to be about how to improve your putting stroke. I don’t give swing tips here, so we won’t cover that. Instead, this will focus on everything leading up to the putting stroke. Because if you can get all of that correct, it does make the actual putting part a whole lot easier.

When it comes to actually reading a putt, most amateur golfers skip it entirely. I mean sure, they walk up, crouch for five seconds, mutter something about “a little left edge,” and hit it somewhere on their line.

And then they miss it low.

I think green reading is one of the most underdeveloped skills in amateur golf. Usually the priority is mechanics first, green-reading second. And I understand that to a degree. You need a great putting stroke to hole putts — I agree. But if the data says 40% of your strokes happen on the green, then maybe doing everything you can to improve in all facets of putting is worth your time.

So let’s learn to read greens.

By the end of this, you’ll hopefully be more aware of every variable that influences a putt — and more importantly how to actually read them.

This is how I expect you to behave after reading the full post.

Under-Reading

Right off the bat, here is something that you need to know: PGA Tour players under-read left-to-right putts by roughly 30%. Right-to-left, about 15%. (This is for right-handed golfers).

The best putters in the world.

So if that’s at the top, and even they under-read putts, imagine where a 15-handicap is operating.

Take lag-putting. An under-read lag putt doesn’t just miss — gravity keeps pulling it offline with every inch it travels. The ball doesn’t slide past by a foot. It finishes dramatically wide and leaves a lengthy comeback putt.

Conversely, over-reading behaves differently. A putt played slightly too high often corrects itself, bending back toward the cup as gravity does its work.

What I want you to notice is that there is an asymmetry here. An under-read putt can finish up to six times farther from the hole than an over-read one.

Play more break. Almost always more break.

The Two Green Reading Pillars

Before getting into method, let’s get the physics straight. Every putt is a negotiation between two variables.

1. Slope

The primary driver. Greens are built for drainage — there is always a tilt from high to low. The shortcut that works: imagine pouring water on the surface. Where it flows, your putt breaks.

The insidious part: subtle slope is nearly invisible to the naked eye. A one-percent grade looks essentially flat. On a ten-foot putt at tournament speeds, that slope produces almost seven inches of break. Small slopes. Significant consequences.

2. Speed

Speed and line are inseparable. A firm putt spends less time rolling slowly across slope — gravity has less opportunity to work. A dying putt gives gravity more time, and more time means more break.

So if you’re moving from slow greens to fast greens, don’t just adjust your stroke. You also need to adjust your read. Fast greens don’t just require a softer touch. They require more break.

(I’ll add in an option #3 here: Grain)

This one is tougher to learn, but I’ll mention it anyway. Grain matters most on Bermuda, and it gets ignored constantly. The visual tells: shiny grass means you’re rolling with the grain, the putt runs faster. Dull or dark grass means you’re rolling into it, the ball slows down.

Check the cup. The worn, ragged edge of the hole typically points in the direction the grain grows. That’s more information.

Develop a System

It’s not that you aren’t “seeing” the break. You just never really had a process for reading the break to begin with.

You need to build a repeatable system. Most golfers read putts from a single perspective — directly behind the ball — and call it a read. That’s not a read. It’s more of a ritual lol.

If you watch Tour players, they have largely finished their read BEFORE they reach their ball. Their process begins while walking toward the green.

The Multi-Angle System

A reliable read involves multiple viewpoints. Each angle reveals something different. Here’s the framework:

Read more

With just a few hundred bux, you can pretty much get all the same data from a launch monitor that used to be restricted to the very best in the world.

The question worth asking though, is how valuable is this data to regular golfer like you and me. Is the golfer who logs three simulator sessions a week in January genuinely better by April? Or is he just better at simulator golf?

That is question I hope to have answered by the end of this.

The Good and The Bad

I don’t think anyone is pretending that having access to a simulator wouldn’t help you in some measurable way. However, I do think that their usefulness to the average golfer is maybe overstated.

If you know how to use them and what you’re looking for in the numbers, they can be a fantastic tool. But at the end of the day, golf is a game where emotion, consequence and decision making end up being where a lot of rounds are lost.

So let’s go through what simulators do well, and what they don’t do so well.

The Good

They are Objective

A simulator won’t flatter you like your buddy will. If you hit a toe-draw down the center of the fairway, your playing partner might give you the “good drive”, but was it really?

That’s where sims can be of massive benefit. Face angle, club path, spin rate, attack angle, you name it. They show you exactly what happened, not what you felt happened.

Unless you’re a low single digit or better who truly understands their swing, you’re probably guessing in your self diagnosis at the range. On a monitor, you know for a fact that your face was three degrees open and your path was four out-to-in. That’s a shorter learning loop. This potentially saves you hours upon hours of reinforcing the worst habits.

Always Accessible

No bad weather. No backed- up tee sheet. No 45-minute drive to a range that is packed with Covidians. You can hit 80 balls on a Tuesday night in January.

Consistency is the most important variable for most amateurs. Ask anyone who has improved significantly at golf. They usually tell you that you need to be playing 2-3 times per week. And if you can’t play, at least be hitting balls and practicing. Launch monitors remove this friction entirely.

Golfers who practice indoors two or three times a week tend to improve faster than those who practice sporadically outdoors. The pattern holds even when you discount for self-reporting bias.

Distance Mapping

This is where I think they can be of the most use to you. Mapping your exact yardages for each club is difficult on the range or even when you play. Cheap range balls bleed distance — sometimes 10, sometimes 15 yards. And on the course, clean data is almost impossible to collect. You’re in the rough. You’re on a slope. You’re bleeding adrenaline on the 18th. Every number comes with an asterisk.

The simulator strips all of that out. Same ball. Same conditions. Repetition without noise. For pure club gapping — understanding exactly what separates your 6 from your 7, your 52 from your 56 — it’s the most honest environment you’re going to find in most cases.

The only thing better IMO would be if you could rent out a practice hole and practice on that. Where I live there is a 170 yard par 3 that you can rent out and hit as many balls as you want from any lie and any distance. This is the best practice, but not every course offers it.

Subscribe now

The Bad

Every Lie is Flat

No downhill stances. No ball above your feet on a sidehill. No buried balls deep in rough. Wind doesn’t exist. The simulator removes almost everything that makes golf difficult.

Apparently there are online threads filled with golfers who were playing to near-scratch on a simulator all winter and then shot 94 the first week outside lol. Those are probably extreme cases, however, the simulator wasn’t wrong. It just wasn’t measuring what they thought it was measuring.

Mats Are Forgiving

Slightly fat contact on a mat produces a passable result. The mat has some give. Real turf doesn’t. That same low-point position on grass produces a chunked iron or a heavy wedge. Some golfers report spending weeks recalibrating after a heavy indoor winter. The contact patterns the mat rewards are not identical to the ones the course rewards.

The Data Becomes The Goal

Swing speed. Ball speed. Launch window optimization. The list can be endless. Chase the metric long enough and you stop noticing whether the outcome is actually better. It can be a trap. Data is a diagnostic. It becomes a problem when you mistake it for the objective.

How To Use The Simulator Correctly

None of this should be a criticism of simulator/launch monitor use. If used properly, they can be transformational. There are numerous testimonials from amateurs claiming that regular use helped them shave anywhere from 3-6 strokes off their score.

The trick is knowing how to use one without getting lost in the simulator sauce — and actually taking the gains outside.

A few ways to make the sessions actually count:

1. Have a plan before you hit the first ball. Warm up with tempo work, not ego swings. Know what you’re working on.

2. Practice real shots. Shaped fades. Low punches. Varied targets. The simulator can handle it — most people just don’t ask it to.

3. Build a wedge matrix. Every yardage from 80 to 120, methodically. This is the highest-transfer work available indoors.

4. Add some friction. Worst-ball games. Ladder drills. Anything that introduces consequence. Pressure, even simulated, changes how you practice.

5. Track the right metrics. Smash factor. Dispersion window. Face control. Not max distance. Not your simulator score.

A few more things to remember:

The Simulator is a Lab, Not a Golf Course

Deliberate ball-striking work, dispersion control, face and path refinement, carry ladders — these transfer. Mindless 18-hole rounds and driver distance contests are entertainment. Both are fine. Be honest about which one you’re doing.

Get Outside Regularly

You have to play real golf. Every week ideally if you want to improve. Take your sim yardages to real turf. Hit some shots in the wind. Play from actual lies. Outdoor rounds are a check on your indoor work, and skipping them for months lets a gap open between what you think your game is and what it actually is.

Your Sim Score is Not Your Handicap.

Not even sure why I have to say this, but you’d be surprised at the number of guys I’ve heard tell me they shot a 75… on a simulator.

Treating it like an actual round of golf creates exactly the kind of false confidence that makes the real life recalibration worse than it needs to be.

Subscribe now

Should You Buy One?

Full disclosure: I’ve been eyeing a launch monitor for the last couple of months. The price drop in the recent years make it hard to ignore — budget units that were north of $1,000 a few years ago are now sitting under $500. The barrier is lower than it’s ever been.

Here are just a few options if you’ve ever considered pulling the trigger. I already researched the highest rated picks for each price point so you don’t have to. But these would be the ones worth knowing about if you’re willing to spend.

I linked each of them to the seller with the best price at the time of writing.

Budget Option

Link: Garmin Approach R10

Mid Tier Option

Link: Bushnell Launch Pro Ball Enabled Launch Monitor

Higher Tier Option

Link: Garmin Approach R50 Launch Monitor

Final Takeaway

Launch monitors can improve ball striking, distance awareness, and pretty much all mechanical feedback. Those are real gains. However they don’t improve uneven lies, wind management, green reading, real turf interaction, or any form of competitive composure.

Paired with regular outdoor play and honest session goals — they probably accelerate improvement more reliably than anything else available to the average recreational golfer.

So use the lab. Just remember — it’s not the course.

Until next time,

Tommy

• PDF Guides: Are available by clicking here for paid subs

• Social Media: Make sure to follow me on X here.

Get 50% off for 1 year

References:

Ace Indoor Golf. (2025). Study finds golf simulators help improve player performance. https://aceindoorgolf.com/blogs/news/study-finds-golf-simulators-help-improve-player-performance

Buenafe, J. (2025). Transfer of virtual reality putting practice to real-world performance (Master’s thesis).

Florham Park Golf Club. (2025). Why simulators outperform the driving range. https://florhamparkgolfclub.com/why-simulators-outperform-the-driving-range/

Frontiers in Sports and Active Living. (2024). Motor learning in golf: A systematic review. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspor.2024.1324615

GolfBays. (2025). Decoding the accuracy of golf simulators: Fact vs reality. https://golfbays.com/blogs/helpful-articles/decoding-the-accuracy-of-golf-simulators-fact-vs-reality

HackMotion. (2025). Do golf simulators help your game? https://hackmotion.com/do-golf-simulators-help-your-game/

Markwell, R., et al. (2023). Investigating transfer of learning using commercially available virtual reality equipment. PLOS One. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10547175/

MDPI Sensors. (2023). Validation of inertial measurement units for analyzing golf swing rotational biomechanics. https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/23/20/8433

MyGolfSpy. (2025). PGA professional Rupe Taylor qualifies using TrackMan simulator practice.

Ohio Golf House. (2025). Are golf simulators the secret to lower scores? https://www.theohiogolfhouse.com/post/are-golf-simulators-the-secret-to-lower-scores-an-expert-look

OptiShot / RS Golf. (2025). How accurate are golf simulators? https://rsgolf.com/blogs/lounge/how-accurate-are-golf-simulators-discover-the-truth

Parluxe Golf. (2025). Real-course vs simulator practice limitations.

Rain or Shine Golf. (2025). Launch monitor feedback benefits.

Golf Digest. (2025, March 27). Do golf simulators help or hurt your game? Panel discussion.

But slow play is different. Slow play is a special kind of torture.

There is something uniquely maddening about watching a man stand motionless behind his ball — no urgency, no awareness, no apparent understanding that the green ahead has been open for five minutes. It’s not just an inconvenience. It’s an affront!

If you’ve played this game more than a hand-full of times, you already know this. You know how long a pre-shot routine should take. You know the difference between reading a putt and performing a one-man theatrical production over it. The etiquette is not complicated.

And yet, here we are.

The slow golfer is not a new phenomenon. He has roamed the earth long before us, and will continue to long after we are gone. He is a permanent fixture of the game. No amount of frustration, whistles from the tee-box, or pointed throat-clearing has ever cured him.

Which leaves us with one viable option:

Learn to deal with slow play, and not let it affect your performance.

Does Slow Play Actually Cost You Strokes?

Ok, so you might be reading this and thinking: “Sure, slow play is annoying and makes me want to die. But does it actually make you worse?”

Fair question. Here is your answer.

Read more