I give quite a few playing lessons to my students, and I can’t remember the last time one of them hit a ball over the back of a green. However, I do see them miss the green short with a solid shot, probably as much as they miss it left or right.

Many golfers really have no idea how far they hit each shot, but they let their ego tell them how far they hit each club. Golfers have a tendency to remember their best shot and how far it went. Think back to the times you’ve played your home golf course this year. How many times did you hit a ball over the green, with a solidly struck shot?

Many of my new students are aware of how many greens they hit in regulation during a round of golf. What I ask for is that number, plus how many shots are within 5 yards of pin-high. Those shots are the ones that will affect golf scores in positive ways, assuming the shot is online, as a putt inside of 15-20 feet is often a fairly makeable putt.

Let’s say you’re playing to a green that is 30 yards deep (90 feet). The pin is 18 feet from the back edge of the green. You hit a solid shot about 15 feet onto the front part of the green, on line with the pin. Most golfers are happy about the prospect of hitting the green, having a birdie putt, etc. In reality, they’ve left themselves a putt of about 55-60 feet, which isn’t exactly in the range of a makeable putt. Golfers don’t practice 60 foot putts very often, so the result is often a 3 putt, and the golfer will beat himself up mentally over a missed putt.

The biggest problem with this scenario is, the golfer didn’t hit the proper club to give himself a reasonable birdie putt to begin with. The first putt was approximately 60 feet away, or 20 yards difference. Twenty yards is often TWO club’s difference in distance (the gapping between iron distances is about 10 yards for many players.) Assume this golfer had 150 yards to the pin, and he hit his approach to the green with a 7 iron, and it ended up going 125-130 yards. That’s reality. To get the shot closer, the golfer would have possibly needed to hit a 5 iron to get the ball within that “five yards of pin high” that would have given him a reasonable birdie putt. The ball was on-line, it just didn’t get there close enough for a scoring opportunity.

Most of my students will analyze a round of golf with advanced numbers. We don’t count “just” GIR, fairways hit, number of putts, etc. We are making sure we get the ball in scoring zones. The object of golf is to get the ball to the hole. Make concentrated efforts to get every putt, chip, and iron shot to the right distance.