Yes, we have our goal and our time frame set up to achieve our goal. (Lower Your Golf Handicap) We should have our Strengths and Weaknesses identified. You should also now have software to help track all the statistics that we feel will help identify our Strengths and Weaknesses. I feel it is not enough to just look at our scores and say yes I am improving. We should know exactly how we are improving and what we still need to work on. We need to know this for a lifetime. I know it takes a little extra effort to do this, but I also know you will love seeing all the statistics on your own golf game. Let us now look at the different ways we can improve our golf game and yes, our golf handicap. We must make some kind of change in our golf game if we are looking at improving it. Some changes will cost money and some changes will cost time. You must decide for yourself which kind you can afford. Our golf handicap will not get lower just because we have decided that it will. We must make some changes. For me personally, I decided to spend more money than time. I never really have had the time to dedicate to my golf game the way I would like to. The list below is in the most important order to the least important order.
: Play More Golf Each point in our list has advantages and disadvantages. Let us look at each action we can take to assist in our improvement of our golf handicap and see how we can apply each action to the different parts of our golf game. When you look at the list, I am sure you will say not all are for me. I know not all of the actions listed above are for me. Unfortunately most of us do not have the time and the money to do them all. We must decide for ourselves which ones will be right for ourselves. Maybe the most important reason to decide which action we want to take will be what part of our game we have decided to work on to improve. So let us look at the different areas of the golf game that we can work on to improve and ultimately start to lower our golf handicap.
Play More Golf
: Driving
Let us look at each part of the game of golf and see which action is the best to take to help you improve your golf handicap. Of course you must decide this for yourself.
Improve Your Golf Handicap - Driving : We start almost every hole with a drive, so let us start here. The drive can definitely setup the entire hole for us. The drive is usually not the deciding shot for a nice hole, but it can be the shot that will ruin the hole. What a nice way to start lowering your golf handicap by starting off each hole the right way. So if we have decided that this is the part of the game that we want to improve now, then let us see the options that we have. Of course anything that involves actually hitting the golf ball is the most obvious. Therefore, playing more golf, practice and golf lessons are the obvious choices here. Nothing will help your game and golf handicap like hitting the golf ball. Another major factor in driving and maybe the most important is your equipment. You can be swinging very nicely but with the wrong equipment, your results are not good. A good example could be your hitting your drives nicely but almost every drive is drifting off to the right and everything you try is not making a difference. There are a couple of ways using different equipment can help with this. A nice light weight driver can allow you to get that little extra around on your swing to help you not loose the ball off to the right all the time. The flex in the shaft of your driver can bring major results to. If you are constantly loosing your drives off to the right (for right handed players, to the left for left handed players) you can change the flex in your shaft of your driver. If you feel your swing is solid and you still can not stop the ball from drifting off to the right, then look at the flex of the driver you are using. It most likely is too stiff for you and your swing and the driver you are using. The same could be true if you are always hooking the ball. The flex in your driver shaft might need to have more stiffness. The loft of your driver can make a big difference in your driving results. I personally like a low lofted driver which results in a lower drive that works great in wind or non windy conditions. All these factors can contribute to your decision on how to improve the driving of your golf handicap. The biggest factor with your driving is with your equipment. Your driver needs to be right for you, or all the practice and playing will only help your driving so much. Your driving requires you to have the right equipment for you more than any other part of your game. The right driver for you can affect your driving almost overnight.
I know when I was looking for a new driver or even irons, the way I decided which was best for me was to try them while playing golf. Usually while playing on the weekend I would just ask one of the players I was playing with if I could try their club. I almost always was playing with friends so there was no problem doing this. I personally did not care for going to a pro shop and asking a salesman to try one or more of their clubs. It is a nice way to try new ones, but I really did not care for the sales pitch that usually came next. I wanted to be the one who decided what I liked the best and not a salesman who is really just looking for a sale. Once I decided on the clubs that I liked then I shopped around for the prices. What a difference the internet allows us to find the lowest prices available.
Your iron game is such an important part of the whole package that makes up your golf game. If you are hitting your irons good, what a difference in your confidence you will have on each hole. Your iron game can even improve your short game. If you are hitting your irons better, then when you do miss the green you will most certainly be closer to the green. Nothing puts more pressure on your short game than when you are hitting poor iron shots. With this in mind then you can help 2 parts of your game at the same time if you improve your iron game.
So how do we improve our iron game? We have the same options available and once again, playing more golf or anything that involves hitting more golf balls is an excellent choice. When I lowered my handicap I used playing more golf and I purchased new irons. I found out this combination was just perfect for me. This turned out to have the biggest impact on my game. It does take some time to get used to any new irons. You should immediately start hitting them more consistently and possibly farther. The new distance can cause you the biggest trouble. You now will need to possibly change your habits that you have had for so many years. For me, my rule I found was that if I hit a 9 iron before, I should now use a pitching wedge. I could use this as a general rule with almost all the irons. My biggest difference, and I think with most of us, was with the longer irons. I was now hitting the longer irons much more consistently and longer. For me this was the perfect action for me to take. If you are satisfied with your irons, then you definitely will need to play more golf and/or practice more to improve your iron game.
I consider the short game to start at 50 yards from the green. From this distance you should be able to get the ball in the hole in no more than 3 shots. Obviously the closer you are to the green the better the chance you will have on improving. This is one point that I made with improving your iron game. A better iron game will always help your short game. For me, I expected myself to get the ball in the hole with 2 shots. It was asking a lot of me but I now had a goal that I thought I could achieve and a goal to help lower my scores and handicap. This was true unless there was something out of the ordinary in the first shot to the green. Such as trouble that would demand such a precise shot to get the ball close to the hole that I could put me in even more trouble. An example would be you need to hit the ball directly over a sand trap and the pin is extremely close to the sand trap. In this case, I accepted the fact that I will have to first get the ball on the green and then most likely make a longer putt. This is where I would blame my iron game for putting me in this position and putting too much pressure on my short game. Of course I always wanted to keep my 2 shot standard but not if it meant I was risking that it might now take me more than 3 shots to get the ball into the hole. In this example I always told myself to just get the ball on the green and do not allow myself to make matters worse by trying to get too close to the hole with such a high risk shot involved. I always tell myself in this situation to just get the ball on the green and we will try to make the longer putt.
How do we improve our short game? This is the part of the game where practice is required. Yes you can have the best wedges made, but you will need to practice to make your short game improve. I am so sure that most of us will decide to start with improving our short game first. We all waste more shots with our short game than with any other part of our game. As mentioned before, if we are getting closer to the green by improving our iron game and of course our driving too, then yes our short game will definitely benefit too. This is one way, but I feel that practice is the very best way to improve on your short game.
The easiest way to practice this is to simply arrive at the golf course 15 minutes earlier than you are used to and use this time to practice your short game. This will make a huge difference if you get into this habit each and every time you play.
Putting can be considered part of your short game. I like to break them apart and treat them separate, since we use different equipment and practice different for both. Putting can make up for a poor or difficult chip. We will use more stokes putting than with any other part of our game. For this reason I feel we should separate putting and our short game. If we want to improve our scoring, we will have to improve on our putting. Everyone can improve on their putting. But, this does not mean we should all start by trying to improve our putting first. If we feel our putting is our strongest part of our game, then we most likely should look to improve on another part of our game first. Putting is similar to chipping, because we will need to practice more than anything to improve our putting. Yes we can buy a new putter and maybe change our putting stroke or theory of putting, but no matter what we do, we will need to practice to truly improve. Once again we can do this by spending as little as 10 to 15 minutes every time we play just practicing our putting prior to playing. While practicing, a little advice would be to practice making 10 foot putts and shorter, while only trying to get the longer ones close to the hole. It is great to make the longer ones, but you will improve your putting by practicing to actually make the shorter ones. You will lower your golf handicap if you improve your short putting. Step 2 and step 3 should be working together. As we are working on a particular part of our game, we should continue with keeping our statistics and hopefully we can see improvement in our golf handicap. We can work on more than one part of our game at the same time, but we should be concentrating on one. We must always remember that our golf handicap will take time to change. If we lower our golf handicap over a period of time, then our immediate goal should then be to make sure that we can maintain our new golf handicap. Remember that we have set our goals and hopefully we have given ourselves a fair amount of time to achieve these goals. Our goals can be adjusted at any time we feel we need to. This is your process and you use it the best way for yourself. Finish all the steps while you continue to work on step 2 (Know Your Strengths and Weaknesses) and step 3 (Improve Your Game). Step 2 will be continually changing, which will cause you to change your efforts in step 3. The last steps will always be of great assistance to you while you are working on improving your game and your golf handicap. We need to re-assess our Strengths and Weaknesses periodically. I would look at your statistics as often as you like, but only change focus on the part of your game you wish to improve on, only once or maybe twice a year. We must give our efforts to improve our game the time it will need. I just love writing the Lower Your Golf Handicap Steps. I can see myself reading and following the steps. And yes, I see myself improving my golf handicap, just like I see my next golf shot before actually hitting it. We hope you are enjoying yourself and most of all we hope you have made progress with lowering your golf handicap.
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We can not wait to hear how you are doing with lowering your Golf Handicap.
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Step 3 - Improve Your Game
