Course management: five shots you can save without changing your swing
Play your real distances, aim at the middle, plan three shots when the hole needs three, and take two more clubs into the wind.
Five shots are available without touching your swing. They are not in the technique but in the decisions taken between shots, and those belong to everybody, 28 handicap included.
Your distance, not your best distance
Most golfers plan around the one perfect 7-iron that once flew 160 yards. The honest number is the average of the last ten, usually ten to fifteen yards shorter. Play the average and you land on the green instead of in the front bunker.
The middle of the green as the default target
On British courses, particularly on links, flags are frequently tucked behind a bunker or close to a runoff. Attacking every one is playing against the arithmetic. The middle gives two putts and no trouble; attacking is justified only when the miss finds neither sand nor gorse.
Plan three shots when the hole needs three
A 500-yard par 5 is a three-shot hole for most players. Rather than forcing a 3-wood: driver, comfortable iron to 100 yards, full wedge. That is not defensive, it is arithmetic.
Out of the trouble, not through it
The most expensive shot of a round is almost always the second mistake. A ball behind a tree costs half a shot played sideways, and two shots when you aim at the gap and hit the trunk. The rule: the next shot must be playable from the fairway.
Use the width of the tee
The markers define an area, not a point. A player who knows their slice tees up on the left and aims right. Those two yards are free and almost never used.
Wind first, club second
On an exposed course, and most British courses are exposed, the wind is the largest single variable of the round. Into the wind, take two clubs more and swing at eighty per cent: a hard swing adds spin, and spin climbs into the wind. Downwind, land the ball short and let it run — an approach that stops dead downwind was struck too softly.
What it adds up to
- One double mistake fewer per round: roughly two shots.
- Middle instead of flag on the four most awkward greens: roughly two shots.
- One par 5 played as three deliberate shots: roughly one shot.
None of it requires a lesson. It requires knowing your numbers and believing them.
