Coaching yourself this autumn: the MyEG stats, nine-hole scores and drills that cut a UK handicap

Every club has one: the member who has never had a lesson in his life and still plays off single figures. Every club also has the other one, the golfer who is on the practice ground three evenings a week and whose handicap has not budged since the pandemic. Hours on the mat do not separate them. What separates them is that the first one knows exactly which shots cost him, gets a truthful picture of his own swing and sticks with a fix long enough to find out whether it works. With the clocks going back at the end of October and the winter programme about to start, this is a good moment to set yourself up the same way.

None of this is a case against your club professional. An hour with a PGA pro can save you a season of guesswork, and our piece on getting real value from lessons covers how to walk out of one with something you can use. But most golfers only see a pro now and again, and the real work happens on the evenings in between. Here is how to make those evenings pay.

Keep a notebook before you touch your swing

Left to themselves, most club golfers work on the bit of the game they enjoy, and for most that means the driver. The honest first step is duller: find out where your shots actually disappear. A pencil and the back of the card will do.

For five rounds, jot down a handful of things on each hole. Did the tee shot finish somewhere you could play from? Did you reach the green in regulation? How many chips, pitches and bunker shots did you need from inside 50 yards? How many putts? Circle every penalty drop, whether it came from a burn, a ditch or a ball lost in the gorse. After five rounds, you will usually be looking at a clear pattern. Someone averaging 37 putts has a completely different winter ahead of them from someone who loses three balls a round off the tee.

There is decent research behind this. In Every Shot Counts (2014), the Columbia professor Mark Broadie, who developed the strokes gained method the professional tours now use, compared golfers who shoot 90 with golfers who shoot 80. Roughly 40 per cent of the gap came from approach shots and 28 per cent from driving; shots from inside 100 yards accounted for 17 per cent and putting for 15 per cent. So the long game matters more than the old clubhouse wisdom allows. Still, those are averages across thousands of players. Your notebook is about you, and for plenty of handicap golfers the cheapest shots to save remain the penalty drops and the three-putts.

Three honest mirrors

What a coach mostly provides is not a secret move. It is a second pair of eyes that sees what you are actually doing rather than what you think you are doing. You can build a decent substitute from three things.

Your phone. Prop it on a small tripod or against your bag at roughly hip height and record two angles: face-on, square to your chest, and down the line, from behind your hands looking towards the target. Put it in the same spot every session so the clips are comparable, and use slow motion if your phone has it. Look only at a few big things: posture at address and at impact, where the shaft points at the top, and whether your head and hips wander. Record a baseline before you change anything at all.

The ball flight. Where the ball starts is mostly decided by where the clubface points at impact. Which way it bends is mostly decided by the gap between the face and the path of the club. A ball that starts left of target and hooks further left came from a face closed to a path that was already heading left. A ball that starts right and slices came from a face open to the path.

The clubface itself. A few strips of impact tape, or a quick spray of dry foot powder, show you exactly where the ball met the face. Strikes off the heel or the toe cost more yards than most swing faults, and you will spot them in seconds. On grass, read your divot: it should start just after where the ball sat and point roughly at your target. If your range has launch monitor bays, the numbers are a useful bonus, but none of this needs one.

One fix, one sentence, three weeks

The classic self-taught trap goes like this. A video on Sunday night, a new move on Monday, three duffed shots on Tuesday, a different video by Wednesday. By October the golfer has tried a dozen fixes and kept none.

Choose a single change that answers the problem your notebook showed up. Write it as one short sentence, such as “left hand turned a touch further over” or “hold the finish on the front foot”. Then give it at least three weeks before you decide anything. Expect things to get worse before they get better: any new movement feels awkward and throws up odd shots for a while. Judge it on your video and your strike marks first, and on your scorecard last.

Be just as choosy about where your advice comes from. One instructor whose explanations make sense to you beats a scrolling feed of fifty. And resist the urge to buy your way out: a new driver rarely cures a swing fault, so treat equipment as the last step, not the first.

Make the range feel like the course

Forty balls with the same club at the same flag feels productive and teaches surprisingly little once you leave. That kind of repetitive, blocked practice has a place when a movement is brand new. The course, though, never hands you the same shot twice, and motor-learning studies going back to the 1970s show that varied practice feels harder at the time and holds up far better later.

As soon as a change stops feeling strange, start mixing things up. Switch club and target for every ball. Run through your full pre-shot routine each time. Play your home course in your head: driver down the first, then whatever club that drive would leave, then a wedge, then on to the second. Our guide to getting more out of a range session sets out a full bucket built this way.

Keep score wherever you can. Ten balls, one point for each that lands in a chosen zone, and try to beat the total next week. A number turns a session into a test and tells you, without flattery, whether the change is holding.

The short game, where evenings pay back fastest

Everything from 50 yards in, plus putting, is the part of golf you can improve most easily without help. It asks for touch rather than strength, it costs nothing on most clubs’ short-game areas, and much of it can be done on the carpet at home.

• The clock drill. Six balls around the hole at three feet, like the numbers on a clock face. Hole all six in a row, then step back to four feet. Short putts settle more medals than anything else on the green.
• Distance ladder. From 30, 40 and 50 feet, try to finish every putt within a putter length past the hole. It is the quickest cure for three-putts, and our lag putting guide goes further.
• Par two. Drop a ball somewhere different around the green each time, chip or pitch, and hole out. Count how many of ten you get down in two and write the number in your notebook.
• Know your wedges. Find out how far each wedge carries with a short, a half and a full swing. That gives you a set of dependable yardages, and the method is laid out in our piece on wedge numbers.

Play the course on purpose

The practice ground builds a swing; the course teaches you to score. A quiet evening nine, on your own or with one friend, is some of the best practice going, although after 25 October the light runs out soon after work. Try playing two balls and always taking the worse, so you learn what your ordinary shot really looks like. Try a nine with only four clubs. Or set one rule for the round, such as “no penalty drops”, and let it decide every tee shot. Many shots go on poor decisions rather than poor swings, and course management is the one skill you can sharpen without changing your swing at all.

Where British golfers can find free feedback this autumn

If you are registered with England Golf, as a club member or through its iGolf subscription, the statistics tool is probably already on your phone. The MyEG app’s My Stats feature lets you record fairways hit, greens in regulation and putts alongside your scorecard, and you can also log the club you used, where the ball went, greenside bunker shots and penalty strokes. It keeps every round you have recorded, which is the five-round notebook described above, kept for you. Golfers in Scotland and Wales go through their own national bodies, so check what your union’s app offers.

Under the World Handicap System you can also put your quiet nines to work. England Golf lets you submit general play scores over nine or eighteen holes, as long as you register your intention to submit before you tee off and complete all nine holes. A regular evening nine then does two jobs: honest practice, and a handicap that reflects how you play right now.

For course practice without holding anyone up, look at nine-hole layouts, pitch and putt courses and the quieter end of the tee sheet. Our guide to nine-hole courses in the UK has ideas. And plan around the season: the clocks go back on Sunday 25 October 2026, so after-work golf moves to the floodlit range and the short-game area, and weekend rounds become the place to test what you have been working on.

When to book the pro

Coaching yourself only goes so far. Book a lesson when the same fault is still there after a month of honest effort, when something hurts, when you cannot work out from your videos what is going wrong, or when you are brand new to the game, because sound basics early save years of unpicking bad ones. One lesson aimed squarely at the problem your notebook found, with a drill to take away, slots neatly into everything above.

A six-week plan to take you into winter

• Weeks one and two: five rounds with the notebook, and one filmed session from each angle.
• Week three: choose the area that costs you most and write your one-sentence change.
• Weeks three to six: two short sessions a week, half on the change and half on the short game, each finished with a scored game.
• Every weekend: one nine played with a single rule or format in mind.
• End of week six: film again, compare the clips and read your stats. Keep the change, tweak it or book a lesson.

Six weeks with a single target, honest feedback and a number to beat will do more for you than a winter of good intentions, and it leaves you with a clear picture of your game before the spring medals begin.