M L GOLF
ON COURSE STRATEGY & MANAGEMENT
BY TOM ATKINSON , PGA GOLF PROFESSIONAL
Improving your golf course management is one of the simplest ways to improve your golf , no need to slog it at the gym or the range , you just need to think differently about how you play golf and make your score .
What is strategy ? Golf course strategy is an a blueprint that will give you the best possible chance of achieving your goals , be it on the day or for the season ahead .
What is course management ? In order to implement your strategy you need to have good course management , this involves thinking your way around , mostly when you ’ re out of position , mapping out each shot and plotting your way around the course . Ultimately , of course , everyone ’ s goal is to shoot lower scores .
Lowering your scores is not about how good your good shots are , but rather , how good your bad shots are and how many strokes those bad shots cost you . I ’ ll very often open a lesson with a new student by saying “ Golf is a game of bad shots and how you manage them .”
This knowledge is key when it comes to your strategy and course management decisions . Tour pros and scratch players don ’ t play flawless golf , but their bad shots and mistakes rarely cost them more than a bogey . As a matter of fact a scratch player only makes 1.8 more birdies in a round of golf than an 18 handicap player … but has 18 less shots on average .
You are far better off picking easy shots and making confident swings than you are picking shots that a tour pro wouldn ’ t play and quitting on them . You ’ ll be amazed how easy scoring becomes with this approach .
One of the most common mistakes I see on the course is when a player faces a shot that under any circumstance they can ’ t get to the green because of the distance , take this example of the 15th at Heswall , it ’ s a long par 4 , 474 yards off the back , the vast majority of players will have 250 + yards left to the green after their drive , now , they know full well that their strategy now is for 2 more shots before the green is reached yet those 2 shots are not broken up nearly even enough .
Diagram 1 shows the most common result having managed your game properly , a good tee shot and 2 more shots of more equal proportion with an easier club to use .
A 125 yard club hit twice is much easier to execute than a 200 yard club to leave a 25 yard shot .
Whereas on Diagram 2 , the player has bitten off more than they can chew with the second shot by taking a 3 wood for example , the result is extra unnecessary shots to get to the green .
1 .
2 .
The moral of the story is to break up the distance into more sensible portions . Of course there will be the odd occasion where the more difficult shot comes off , but this is likely to happen less than 10 % of the time .
Strategies and course management practices are of course all relative . If your goal is to break 80 , you could do this with 6 bogeys and 12 pars ( 78 for a par 72 ), or 5 birdies , 6 pars , 4 bogeys , 2 doubles and a treble ( again 78 ) – both work equally well .
You can ’ t control your scoring , but you need to choose the strategy that you think gives you the best possible chance of succeeding .
Francesco Molinari gave us a master class in course management on the Sunday of the 2018 Open , he was 3 shots behind but as he did on the Saturday his goal was to go bogey free , hopefully make a few birdies but above all let the players ahead of him make the mistakes . His course management plan was to fire at the middle of the greens , not the flags . A superb tactical decision that duly paid off as he won by 2 .
On course lessons are available at Heswall Golf Club , Wirral , please get in touch for more information .
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