So You Want to Improve Your Golf?

Golf is a game that provides enjoyment to a wide range of players of all ages and skills. The golf handicap system means that you can compete on a rather equal footing with players that are more or less skilled than you, something that is impossible for other sports like tennis. Golf brings you outdoors to enjoy the weather and nature, and golf courses are sited to maximize attractive vistas. Golf is a social activity and brings you together with others who enjoy the game. Many golf courses and country clubs offer food and drink to socialize after a round. What other sport employs people who drive around in motorized carts to serve you food and drinks?

All this is to say that whatever golf game you have today can give you joy and provide a healthy walk and social outlet. But that is not enough for many golfers, including me. After playing occasionally for many years, I want to improve my golf performance. I have found that better golf is even more fun than poor or mediocre golf.

Setting Goals

The first step to improvement is to set your goals. What is your priority among all the areas you can improve, and what result would you find most rewarding for your efforts? Is your goal to reach a scoring milestone such as breaking 100, 90, or 80? Would you like to be able to hit a 250-yard drive? Play a round without losing any golf balls? All these are legitimate goals, and you will find instructional materials for any goal that you choose.

Picking a short term goal may be less frustrating and give you more positive reinforcement than laboring for a distant goal. For instance, you cannot break 80 without also breaking 100 and 90. You will need to recalibrate your goals as you progress and add new goals as you achieve milestones.

Measure Your Game

You cannot know whether you are improving unless you measure your game. The first step is to keep accurate score. This may requires some adjustments to what you have been doing, whether it is to eliminate mulligans and breakfast balls (not counting some errant tee shots) and taking penalty strokes for lost balls, hazards and unplayable lies. For many golfers, moving to accurate scoring will temporarily make your score worse. If you do not keep accurate score, however, you cannot see the first signs of your improvement. You may be breaking 100 but only because you are not counting every stroke.

Calculate Your Handicap

The golf handicap is one of the best features of the game. You should take advantage of the handicap system as the most important benchmark for your golf performance.

I didn't track my handicap until a few years ago because I didn't think I was playing enough rounds to calculate it. With mobile golf scoring apps, tracking your handicap is easier than ever. Even if you do not belong to a golf club or don't have a home course that you play frequently, you can sign up with a golf app and your local U.S. Golf Association to get an official handicap. Your app with report your scores to the USGA and you can view your handicap.

Swing and Shot Measurement

In addition to the overall score, golf affords you dozens of other measurements which will chart your progress. You will want to learn how far you hit each club, for instance, in order to choose the right club for each shot. You can do this at a driving range by taking notes on where your shots end up and calculating the average or median shot in terms of distance and the miss from the target to the left or right.

The ideal way to take measurements of you golf today is to use a launch monitor. Launch monitors track clubhead speed, ball speed, angle of the clubface at impact, distance and dispersion of each shot from the aim line. Many driving ranges are now equipped with high end launch monitors like Trackman or Toptracer. You can download apps to your phone to store the results of each practice session.

East Potomac Golf Course and Langston Golf Course in Washington, DC recently added Toptracer to their driving ranges. Used in conjunction with the mobile app, you can track your average shot distances like this:

This shows five shots with my 3 hybrid club. My tendency was for those shots to go left of the target. This is helpful information in planning your shots and can give you confidence in your distances on the course.

Personal launch monitors give you some of the same measurements including ball speed and estimated distance, and are small enough to slip in your pocket. I have used my phone to snap photos of the pocket launch monitor to show the results of shots to analyze later.

Here is how a shot looks on a personal launch monitor:

Portable launch monitors can help your speed training. You can measure your swing speed even with practice swings.

In addition to tracking your scores and handicaps, some golf apps allow you to enter which club you used and where your shots ended up, producing dozens of stats and graphs to learn more about your game.

My favorite golf mobile app is The Grint. The makers of The Grint keep adding new advanced features and dashboards. For instance, this shows scoring by par of hole and front 9 compared to back 9.

Measuring your golf game gives you the Before picture so you can get to work on getting in shape for the improved After picture.

While golf apps and launch monitors are powerful and efficient, you can track your performance with a pencil and paper as well. For instance, you can note on your scorecard which club you use for par threes and whether it was short, long, left or right of the target.