The easiest ways for high handicappers to save strokes

They say hindsight is 20/20, and you can find evidence on full display in 19th holes at golf courses around the country.

“If only I hadn’t made double there, I would’ve broken 90!”

“I wish I hadn’t tried that shot.”

“If I could’ve stopped three-putting, I’d have shot my personal low.”

It’s very easy to be self-critical in retrospect, but it’s not so simple in the moment. If you can start doing so during the round, though, you can shave lots of strokes off your card.

Below, we asked some of GOLF.com‘s resident low handicaps what mistakes they often see their high-handicap playing partners make. Keep them in mind next time out — and do your best to avoid them. If you do, you’ll be amazed at how much lower you score.

1. Emphasize course management

I think going lower often comes down to course management. When you miss the fairway it can be tempting to feel like your hole is already ruined, simply pull out your longest club and try to make up as much distance as you can on your next shot. But if you don’t have an ideal lie, you can end up compounding your mistake with another botched shot. Instead, make it a priority to get back into the fairway or out of trouble with a club you’re confident in. That could be a 7-, 8- or 9-iron, even if the green is still 300 yards away. A confident swing back into the fairway will enable you to minimize the damage. Also, on holes with forced carries, don’t try to stretch too far! Make it a goal to get on the green in four shots instead of three. Playing for a 6 on a par-4 or 5 is a lot more palatable at the end of the day than blowing up and taking an 8 or 9. —Jessica Marksbury (9.6 handicap)

If I were going to lean strictly on stats, I’d borrow from the father of strokes-gained, Mark Broadie, who says the fastest path to improvement for the average player is to focus on 150-yard-and-in approach shots. His stat-tracking has shown that most 90s shooters leave those shots a club short. Distance, not direction, is the biggest issue. One solution is to work on getting clean contact on those shots. The other is even simpler: club up. —Josh Sens (5.6 handicap)

3. Don’t be a hero

In general, golfers always try for the hero shot. And that doesn’t just mean trying to carry a water hazard or aiming for a gap in the trees. It means that they always try shots that need perfect execution to pull off. If they’re short-sided, they go for the full flop and miss the green. If the flagstick is in a skinny part of the green, they take dead aim and put themselves in a terrible spot. High handicappers (and plenty of low handicappers, too) need to understand when to take their medicine. Sometimes hitting a chip to 20 feet is the best play. It takes a bit of discipline to adopt this mindset, but doing so will save you several strokes per round. —Zephyr Melton (4.6 handicap)

4. Play the right clubs for you

I agree with my colleagues on everything above, so I’ll go with one that’s in my wheelhouse and say a lot of higher handicap players have clubs that might be too aspirational. People want to play clubs that the pros play and not what is best for their games. To that point, a lot of golfers are so stressed when they go to get fit about putting on a stripe show. But in reality you’re probably better off not swinging your very best and getting a set of clubs that will help you out when don’t have your A game. Check your ego at the door when you go for a fitting and go in with an open mind. You’ll end up with golf clubs that are not only optimized for your best swings, but also your worst! —Jack Hirsh (2.1 handicap)

5. Find a way to get driver in play

Within the first two hours of your golf career it is likely that a well-meaning-but-kinda-condescending golfer uttered in your direction the insipid phrase “drive for show, putt for dough”. This is a nice rhyme and it’s sort of true for a subset of the game’s very best players, but for most of the rest of the world it’s useless. Being able to drive the ball in play is absolutely essential, not just for your score nor your golf ball supply but for your sanity. Hitting it out of play, searching for balls, dropping, counting by two — it’s all just a real bummer. I’m not saying you have to hit the fairway every time! Nobody does that, and you’ll make some memories from the trees. But you need to be able to hit it in play a reasonable percentage of the time so you have a shot to get around the green with your second.

So work on driver at the range. Find a quiet, low-pressure time to hit some drivers on the course. If you hit a snag (and most people do!) get a lesson from a PGA pro, or consider getting fitted just to make sure it’s not your club holding you back. But whatever you do, make sure you find a way to hit it in play off the tee. Then we can get the putter dialed in. — Dylan Dethier (+2.4 handicap)

“>