Graham Averill will turn 50 this year and he’s freaking out. Instead of buying a motorcycle or getting a tattoo, he’s decided to try to get really, really good at golf. He started this project as a 13 handicap attempting to reach scratch in a year. Welcome to his midlife crisis.
Is there any more satisfying shot in golf than hitting a wedge shot to two feet from the pin for a tap-in birdie?
That’s not a rhetorical question. I legitimately want to know because I don’t think I’ve ever done it. Usually, I take a gap wedge from 125 yards out, take dead aim for the pin and leave it short or just wide right, then try to pull off a bump-and-run to scramble for par. Most of the time, I walk away with a bogey.
I have the data to prove it, too. Look at the numbers and you can see that approach shots have become my achilles heel. Over my last 10 rounds, I’ve lost an average of 3.7 shots per round to a scratch golfer on approach shots from 50 yards and beyond. I’m only hitting 50 percent of greens in regulation from 50 to 99 yards. Scratch golfers are hitting 77 percent from that distance. And my percentages only get worse further from the hole.
So, yeah, I want to know: What does it feel like to throw a dart with your wedges? Is it awesome? I bet it’s awesome. Sam Hahn, my golf life coach, wants me to stop trying.
“You’re aiming at pins and you’re not accurate enough yet to aim at pins,” Hahn says. “You have to forget the pin is even there and try to put your ball in the middle of the green.”
He went on to tell me about a study that compared scores of golfers who played rounds with pins in the holes and rounds with no pins at all. I couldn’t find the study online but Hahn says every golfer improved their scores when the pins were removed. Aiming for the center of the green is basic course strategy but it’s easier said than done. It’s like when someone tells you not to think about a zebra.
You’re going to think about a freaking zebra.
But I’ve played four rounds since my last column and I’ve gotten better at ignoring the pins with each round. I just finished playing 18 at my home course here in the mountains of North Carolina and I shot 80, my best score to date. It was a good day. I kept the ball in the fairway, made some bad decisions when I rushed through a couple of holes as I was playing through some foursomes, but played straightforward safe golf. And the biggest difference was my strategy on approach shots. I aimed for the fat part of the greens when I was beyond 75 yards out and I hit 10 out of 13 par-4 and par-5 greens in regulation. That’s the 77-percent GIR rate scratch golfers achieve.
I didn’t always land the ball in the spot I was aiming at and I had some pretty long lag putts. But shooting for the center of the green minimized the risk of my miss. Take a look at the dispersion rate of your various wedges and then put the center of that dispersion in the center of the green. It’s like a big safety net that hopefully takes most of the danger out of play. That’s how it worked for me today.
I didn’t sink any amazing putts so there were no birdies and I didn’t have a single one-putt situation, either, because my average putt distance was significantly further from the hole than usual. (Hahn said my putting metrics might shift with this new strategy.) Ultimately, it was boring golf where I found myself safely on the green with reasonable two-putt scenarios in front of me and I wasn’t having to scramble from the edges to hold it together.
I did miss a five-footer for par on 18 which would have given me my first “breaking 80” situation. That putt will haunt me but I’m going to stay positive. I shot my best score to date and I did it by playing safe, smart golf, which feels far more repeatable than relying on a perfect swing.
Obviously, my course strategy will evolve as I (hopefully) continue to get better with each aspect of my game and I look forward to the point where I can get more aggressive on certain holes depending on the pin placement. But, right now, I want to see where this new magic trick of ignoring the flagstick can take me. An 80 today. Maybe a 79 tomorrow?
Dare to dream.
Dig deeper into one golfer’s struggle to get better at golf in middle age and read last week’s Scratch By 50 where Graham discusses assisted stretching in search of high swing speeds.
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