Stroke Saver: Bad Things Happen When You Have Too Much Information

 You find yourself standing in the fairway, dead center, staring at the front right flag stick that is tucked right behind the bunker. You check your GPS watch and see that the front of the green is 118 yards away. You grab your laser rangefinder from your bag and focus it on the flag, 121. You then pull your phone from your pocket to check that it is 120 to clear the back edge of the front bunker. The only problem is, you don’t have a club that hits the ball 118-121 yards. You only have clubs that hit the ball 115 and 125. In an age where we have so much information at our fingertips, its hard not to want to use it all, but there is really only one number of those three you should consider, unless you are a tour pro with incredible accuracy at a 89% swing. You should only focus on the number that gets you a full swing, not an overswing and not a partial swing, but a full swing.

In this case, all of those gadgets and gizmos are telling you that your 115 yard club will not get you where you need to be. This means a full swing of your 125 yard club will land you center of the green, and hopefully within 10 fee of the hole for a birdie putt. Too often we get caught up in if the flag stick is 118, 121 or 120 away from us instead of worrying about the fact that we need to hit it over the bunker to start with. We try to muscle up on that 115 club and just poke it to that 118 mark, and end up pushing the ball right or worse, coming up short into that front bunker. We ruin the perfect drive by trying to do too much with the second shot. The bad part is, if we were playing 20 years ago, we would have seen 125 to the middle of the green with the little discs in the fairway, or that sprinkler head marking, and hit a safer shot to the middle of the green instead of trying to be so exact.
In something that I will call a disturbing trend, I see golfers of well below average skill level carrying a $200 GPS, a $400 rangefinder and still using a third or fourth method to get information about their next shot, instead of just thinking about their swing. They step up to that shot, knowing that it’s 118 to the front, 121 to the stick and 120 to clear the bunker, and still try to hit that hard wedge right at it. Each time they do it, over and over again, only to get a bad result. These are the same people that go to the driving range and hit ball after ball without thinking about why they are doing it. They just want to ‘groove’ their swing and get out on the course and play better.

I have to say, that since I started pre-working rounds in my head, about 80% of my holes have played out pretty much exactly as planned. I’ve had to adjust my yardages a few times, but I’ve swapped irons 3 times this year, so I’m not expecting to have the distances down quite yet. I will say this though, rather than worrying about 118 or 121, I’m playing much better when I stare at the number for the center of the green. That 125 number stands out as a much better target for me than trying to get the exact 89% swing on that 125 club to stick it closer. In fact, the last time I found a green side bunker was when someone with that laser rangefinder told me an exact yardage. For now, let me work on that direction a bit more and the numbers a bit less. It’s dropped me 5 strokes in two rounds, maybe it can do the same for you.