Why Your "Stock" Yardages Are Way Off
“How long do you hit your 7 iron?”
Ask a weekend golfer and you’re getting a number pulled from the best shot they ever hit three summers ago on a downwind hole with dirt fairways. Meanwhile, they’ve been coming up short on approach shots ever since. And they have no idea why.
Here’s the thing: knowing your “stock yardages” is supposed to help you play better golf. But if your stock yardages are based on what you “wish” they were, you’re just setting yourself up to fail over and over again. And the data is pretty clear about this - most of us are living in a complete dream world when it comes to how far we actually hit each club.
What Your Stock Yardage Actually Means
Ok let’s make sure we can agree on the definition. Your stock yardage for a club is supposed to be the distance you TYPICALLY carry that club with a normal, full swing. Not your best shot ever. Not when you catch it perfectly. Your average. The number you can actually count on most of the time. And this matters if we are actually trying to score better.
But the reality is that the typical amateur remembers their best shots and chooses the club based on that. Instead they should remember their worst shots and pull the club based on THAT.
You need to stop planning for the ideal outcome instead of the realistic one. Don’t plan for the shot you want to hit. Plan for the shot you’re probably going to hit. I know that sounds entirely inverted. But this is about scoring better with what we have.
