How i went from 30 Handicap to SCRATCH in just 2 years playing golf (22 simple tips)

How i went from 30 Handicap to SCRATCH in just 2 years playing golf (22 simple tips)

In 2021, I started playing golf and one year later, I got down to a five handicap. By the end of 2023, I managed to get to scratch and was breaking par consistently. In this video, I’m going to show you the most important tips that helped me improve my scores. Starting with tip number one. So, when you’re in the middle of a competition and you know your driver is not working very well, it could be that you’re slicing it or you’re pulling it and you’re just a little bit unsure. If you’ve got a relatively short par four or you don’t need to hit your driver, having a go-to fairway club like a 3-wood, fivewood, sevenwood, something like that, maybe even a long iron, like a free iron could really help you. For me, I have a mini driver. So, this is my driver. And then we also have the mini driver here. This club is just so much easier for me to hit because it’s a little bit shorter. It also has 13 1/2° of loft rather than 9 or 10, which is typically on a driver. So, more spin, more forgiveness, and it still gets me far enough down the hole that keeps my ball in play, making it a little bit easier to get pars and takes out the double bogeies. So, statistically, most people come up short when they’re hitting their approach shots. So when it comes to front pins and middle pins, it’s generally a good idea to aim a little bit past the pin. And the reason why is we do know our carry distances. So for example, if I have a 9, I want to hit it 150. That goes 150 when I hit the ball well. If I don’t hit it well, it might go 145 or 140. So if I have a front pin and I’m I’m taking that number and trying to hit it on the pin, if I come up short, I might be left with a little chip shot. So when you have a front pin or a middle pin, actually try and go past the pin more often and you’ll actually leave yourself with shorter putts. So this one’s actually a perfect example. We have 142 yds to the pin. Um, I could hit a nice draw with my pitching wedge and get that onto pin high. If I don’t do that well, if I push it a little bit, I’m going to catch myself in that bunker. So, what I’m going to use is the entire green. We’ve got about 35 to 40 yards of green from left to right. So, if I actually club up and hit, I don’t know, let’s say about 15 to 20 foot past the pin, I’m going to get myself on the green, give myself an easy two. So, the goal here is to actually get this ball past the pin. And that’s a great example of why picking a club that can actually reach the green is important. Because if I chose to go after the pin there with a bad swing like I just did, I’d be in the bunker and that would be a hard up and down. But now I’ve probably got a 30 to 40 foot two-part, which I feel like I’m able to do most of the time. I think one of the lowest hanging fruits in golf for most people, especially if you’re mid to high handicap, is probably the three putts. And that pretty much comes down to the speed and the pace of your first putt. Also known as lag putting. So here for example with our approach shot. It wasn’t the best approach shot. It’s left us with about I’m going to say about a 40ft putt. It’s slightly downhill. And from here the mid to high handicappers might be free putting this about 40% of the time. I’m just picking random numbers here. But that’s what it depends what your strengths and weaknesses are. But this is where scratch players will hardly free putt. And technically it is kind of off the green so it doesn’t count as a putt. But we’re going to pretend it does. When I was a five to eight handicap, I would say I free putt about any anything from two to four times around. It was my the worst part of my game by far. And now I’d say it’s one of my strengths is actually eliminating those free putts. Perhaps getting fit for the right putter for you um is a really good idea, but also the practice putts you have before you start your round is really important to get the speed of the greens. Not so much, you know, getting getting your putts online. It’s actually the speed that is the most important part of putting. So to eliminate the free putts, what you need to do is actually do a 360. walk around the whole shot or the putt itself. Don’t just get behind the ball and try and read it from there because it looks different from when you get under the hole. In fact, I think it’s probably easier to read a part from behind the hole. So, from here, you can see it’s downhill. It’s going to break left to right. And all I’m trying to do here is get the ball to within 3T so I know I can tap it in. If it goes to four or 5 foot, I’m confident I can make those as well. But ideally, inside 3T is really good. So for anything over about 30 ft, I like to keep the pin in just so I can see the hole a lot easier. And it takes my focus off actually trying to make the part and just getting the ball inside about 2 or 3 foot. So I’m actually over the moon with that. I know that’s a very simple tap in. Now if you’re on a par five, this is a knockin birdie. If you’re on a, you know, quite a tough par four, you know you’ve got you got yourself an easy par. A really big difference between the mids and high handicappers and the scratch golfers I’ve noticed is actually the commitment to a shot and deciding what they’re going to do 100% have believed that’s going to be the right shot before they hit it. So this is an uphill shot 137 yards. I know it’s going to be playing about 142 to 145. Um there’s not much wind today. The the flag is also on a tier which means if anything that comes short is going to roll back into the middle. It’s going to be a harder two part from the middle there than most typical greens. So, anything over about 150, 155 could be going long. I need to make sure I hit a club that stays short of that. Um, anything that lands short means it’s going to be a trickier two-up, but a trickier two-up is better than a chip. So, I need to get committed to the shot and where I’m going going to start the ball, what kind of shot shape that I see behind the ball and just step into it and hit the shot. So, one of the biggest score killers for the mid to high handicaps, in fact any handicap range, is losing strokes off the tea. So, it could be driving the ball into water. It could be going out of bounds or just losing your ball completely. So, for me on this hole, there’s a lot of trees. It’s a par five. I know as soon as I go in those trees, the likelihood is that I’m going to lose a stroke. I’m going to have to hit my ball out sideways. Yes, sometimes you can have you do have a gap to kind of advance the ball another 100 yards or 150 yards up there, but it’s a it’s a bit of a loss of a shot. Even if you hit a club that’s a little bit shorter, that brings your dispersion in. So, you can still go off the the green on your next shot is is really big in saving strokes. So, to avoid hazards on this hole, there’s actually a ditch which you can’t see here about 300 yards down there. It’s so firm at the moment. We’ve had barely any rain. So, this ball’s going to roll on 30 or 40 yards. If I hit my driver, I can actually reach the ditch. But also, my tendency is to miss the ball to the right, which there’s not a lot of space for me considering the hole kind of bends goes goes to the left. So, for me, I’m going to be using my mini driver. It still gets my ball up there enough to give myself a 200 yard shot into a par five. So, birdies are still on the card by hitting this club. And I’ll take out more bogeies by doing this as well. So, I think this one goes without saying, but you can’t put together a good score unless you have a good short game. So, that means chipping and putting and actually making those five to six foot putts after you’ve hit a good chip shot. So, when I was around a five handicap, I was still pretty good at getting to the green. I was hitting a lot of greens, 60 to 70% of my greens. But, as soon as I missed the green, I was pretty much in for a bogey straight away. And that’s because I didn’t really practice chipping enough. The thing is with chipping, there’s so many ways to play the chip shot. If you feel like you’re in a situation where you didn’t have that particular shot in the bag, then go away after the round, get to the practice ground and then practice that chip shot there. What you can do if you’re playing golf by yourself in the evening, there’s not many people on the golf course. Hopefully, your golf club allows this, but you can just throw down a few balls in different situations that are quite tricky. And by getting up and down in situations where you didn’t have a good light, it’s going to give you more confidence. And when you’re having a bad day, or even if you’re having a good day and you miss a green, keeping that par going will keep the momentum going during a round of golf. So this we’ll just do a few chips. I’ll throw them in different places. Give myself tricky li. So this one’s going to be slightly I was supposed to be downhill but it’s rolled downhill. Then we’ll have one where we’ve missed the green into that heavy stuff. And then I guess we’ll go for the kind of chip shot that I practice the most, which is mostly, you know, a simple simple chip shot. Before I hit this chip shot, I’m thinking about where I want the ball. The practice strokes are important to kind of get a feel for how much energy I’m putting into the golf ball, where I want to land it. So I want it to be short. It’s an uphill putt, so if I can leave it under the hole, that’ll be perfect. Just a little bit past the hole, but I’ve left myself with maybe five or six feet. This one’s actually not too different from the the chip shot I just had. So, let me get it in something that’s really not ideal. So, the ball’s now sat down. I can’t really see it. By practicing like this, it’s giving me confidence that when I get myself into these situations and there’s a card in my hand, I’m in a competition, I can still get up and down. So again, it’s going to come out of less spin. So it’s going to probably roll on a little bit more. That should roll out a little bit more. To be honest with you, a little bit disappointed with that putt, but I mean that chip. Now this one, this is tricky. So this is, you know, it comes down to experience. You can’t really speedrun this part of golf. This you need to get on the golf course, find yourself in these situations to learn, okay, if the ball’s above my feet, where’s it going to go? What what are the tendencies I have? Do I thin the ball? Do I fat it? For me, I know that where where however I set up here, the ball’s going to shoot off that way because the club’s pointing that direction. And it did go left. I actually didn’t aim far right enough. But I’ve left myself with the putt I intended, which was beneath the hole. And you know what? They’re actually all scattered around the hole about the same distance. So, good chance of getting up and down from all of those situations. All different chip shots. Once you’ve played golf for a little while, you’ll probably get yourself something like a GPS watch or a bushnull or rangefinder, something that actually helps you play golf to know how far the pin is away from from where you’re standing on the tea or your approach shot. This can be quite distracting, especially for amateurs that don’t really build much. You know, they don’t build a plan around the number. If you get a number, say 180 yards to a pin, whether that’s winter or summer, it’s going to make a big difference. For example, here we’re on this par three, and it’s a very tricky shot. It’s about 194 y away. If I just hit 1954 yard shot, it’s going to go long on the green because it’s downhill. There might be some wind that’s, you know, helping. So, we need to figure out all of these things once we get an actual number. So, as you can see on this par three, the flag is about 15 to 20 ft away from the right side of the green. So, if I try and hit a shot right at this pin, I know with my kind of miss that I’m likely to get myself into that green side bunker on the right hand side. So, knowing your actual shot pattern is really, really important. You know, when you actually pick a target and aim at it, you don’t miss equally to the left and the right. And some people might, but most people have a bias to one side or the other. If you’re someone that flips their hands and hits draws, you might be missing more to the left than the right. If you’re someone like me that holds on a little bit, you might be missing to the right more often. So, for me, I know that my dispersion kind of goes to the right side. So, for me, this pin is ideal. If I go straight to the middle of the green or slightly left, my miss is actually going to be more on the pin than my good shot, if that makes sense. So, no matter how good at golf you are, whether you’re a professional, scratch, five handicap, 10 handicap, you’re going to make mistakes in golf. So, when you’re playing a hole, the idea is try not to make two mistakes in a row, especially big ones. So, for example, here it’s a par three. If you manage to get yourself in a bunker like this, obviously that’s mistake number one. and you either hit a bad shot, maybe you didn’t calculate the wind correctly, or you know, something really bad has happened to get you in this bunker. But the worst thing from here would be to make another mistake. So, so for most amateurs, just getting the ball out is pretty good. If you’re like a 10 to 20 handicap, getting yourself on the putting green is is really good. Getting yourself inside 20 ft is pretty good. As you get down to scratch, you know, getting yourself inside 10 ft, 5 ft, and actually getting up and down from the sand is is really ideal. The killer here or the score killer here would be to have two bunker shots. So, that should run out a little bit. I’m actually really happy with that. It’s actually up there for about two or three foot, which I’ve just saved part. So, in the last video I made, I actually had a lot of comments asking me how important getting fit for clubs was. And for me, I found it’s really important to actually pick the most forgiving setup possible. When you go in to get fit, it’s very easy to get drawn towards the less forgiving clubs. They usually look better, whether that’s the irons, they look a little bit thinner. They look a little bit sexier, to be honest. But the ones that have more technology, they’re more forgiving. Even really good players, they don’t always hit the middle of the club face, and you want forgiveness when you’re playing golf. A good example is this shot here. We’ve got a long par three. It’s about 200 to 210 yards depending on where the pin is off off the blue te’s. I have the confidence that if I make a good swing, but I I catch it a little bit towy, a little bit healy, I should be near pin high or at least where I expect the ball to be. Whereas, if I was using something like blades, then I’m likely to to not get anywhere close to where I was actually actually aiming. I’ve hit that right out the toe. I couldn’t have picked a better time to talk about how forgiving clubs need to be. So, you can even see here where the marks are on the ground. I’ve pretty much hit this out this part of the toe and I’ve still managed to, you know, get enough distance to leave myself with a part on this par three. Another really important part of club fitting, I think, is actually the swing weight. So, a lot of people don’t realize that even though you order a set of clubs brand new from from some manufacturers, they some of them might not be swing weighted exactly how you like. Some of you might prefer D1 or D3. If you’ve ever had a club that you’ve used of your mates and you’re like, “Wow, this feels really good.” It’s probably because of something to do with the swing weight. It could be the stiffness of the shaft, the actual total weight of the shaft. So, when you do get fit, just try to have something that fits through the whole bag and there’s like a synergy from the top of your bag to the bottom rather than having like a extra stiff driver and a really really whippy kind of um wedge or something like that. Just try and get something that’s very similar throughout the bag so that your swing feel and it all feels the same basically. So, to get down to a scratch handicap or even just low single figures, you need to be able to use your wedges really well. Basically, everything inside 100 yards. So, I’ve hit a really good drive here. Now, typically a lot of the mid to high handicappers tend to not know their distances with their wedges. So, having some kind of system where you kind of reach a part of your body, whether it’s waist, chest, something like that that’s a a reference point so you know how far your wedges go is a really good idea for shots like this. So, for me, typically, anything inside about 50 yards is fill, especially when you’re hitting into a green like this. Most front pins, you actually want to get the ball past the pin, whereas this one’s actually at the front and there’s a there’s a there’s a roll off at the front. So, you actually want to be under the hole to have a more confident putt. So, for me, I don’t need to like bush all this and find out the distance. But, spending time practicing your distance control of wedges is really, really important if you want to get down as low as possible. So, the goal with this shot is to leave myself just under the hole. Anything inside about 5 foot is amazing. Anything inside 10 or 15 foot is pretty good as well. I need to read the line to make sure I can control the spin as well and just try and leave it underneath the hole. So, I want to land it just on the fringe and let it roll up. And I pushed it a little bit, but distance-wise, it’s underneath the hole. So, something that I found out pretty early on was that every time I tried to swing my absolute hardest with my driver, I would actually get less distance and my dispersion would go left and right massively. So, this point is really about actually swinging slower to hit the middle of the club face more often will give you more ball speed because when you swing fast, that’s typically when your body gets out of sync. Especially if you’re fairly new to golf or you’re a mid to high handicap. Your technique probably isn’t down really good. So, the slower you can swing or the more controlled you can swing I should say is actually more important cuz it’s about how fast the ball speed is, not how fast your club head speed is. Where you hit on the club face is really sensitive. If you’re off like a centimeter into the heel or the bottom of the club face, it could add like a th00and spin and that will take off 20 or 30 yards from your drive. So, like I said, swinging more control, trying to hit the middle of the club face more often. It’s going to give you a better launch, better spin window, and you’re actually going to get more distance and better dispersion with your drive. But this also applies to wedges, irons, long irons, everything. But especially with driver So, with my YouTube channel, I don’t want to be a golf coach. I’m not here to say like this is how you play it. This is how you play a fade or draw, anything super technical, but I do think there are some really fundamental things that will help your golf swing. The first one’s going to be your alignment to the shot. And I think even when you watch professionals on TV, if you see that someone typically hits a fade and their alignment’s bad, you know it’s going to be a bad shot. So as a golfer, as a as a amateur golfer, if you can get your alignment really good, that’s a really good start. And if you mishit it, hopefully it’s not going to be miles off the planet. Secondly, is going to be your grip. So how you grip the golf clubs really important. Again, if you’re a fader or a drawer of the ball, how you swing, it might affect, you know, one might be stronger or weaker, but if you can get the same grip every time, then that’s going to give you more consistency. And the third one is going to be your posture. So obviously you don’t want to be too too close to it, too upright, and you don’t want to be like sticking your bum out and doing all sorts of weird postures, but alignment, grip, and posture, I think, are just the basics fundamentals of a golf swing. You see all different styles of swings that work on the PJ Tour. But their alignment, grip, and posture are always the same pretty much over every shot. And whilst we’re on the topic of, you know, professional golfers and why they’re so good, they all have the same pre-shot routine every single time. It doesn’t matter if it’s the first T-shot of the day or the last shot of the day. Pre-shot routine is so important. The amount of times I’ve been in competitions, I’ve got that first T-shot and for some reason I’ll get stuck over the ball a little bit paralyzed where I’m like taking more practice swings, I might be taking practice swings, not even knowing if I’m trying to feel a fade or a draw just because I’m caught up in that moment of don’t, you know, don’t hit this bad, you know, really bad mindsets basically over the ball. So pre-shot routine and that commitment, visualizing the the the right shot and a good shot before you hit the ball is so important. So hopefully we’ll use this as an example of good alignment to the shot and uh hopefully the shot goes well. So I’m happy with my grip, my alignment, my posture feels good. There’s a quote by Ben Hogan which is the most important shot is the next shot. So here’s a situation where our second shot is actually missed and actually miss completely the green and the bunker. It would be better to be in the bunker for this shot. Now when you’re in a competition it’s very easy to get frustrated and get fixated on the mistake you’ve just made. But with that quote it kind of takes you out of that mindset and gets you focused on this one. So from here yes it’s going to be pretty much it’s going to be very hard to get it within 3 foot and actually make the par. But by using that mindset, it could easily save you a shot or two just from one hole. And actually, by playing one hole badly, it can lead onto multiple bad holes or even a bad round. So, basically, the idea of that is once you’ve hit a shot, it’s done. It could be the worst shot in the world. It could be hitting a shot OB into the water, into a hazard, but once it’s done, it’s done. Get it out the way, stay in the present, and keep focusing shot by shot and play the best shot that you can every single time when you get up to the next one. Anything inside 10 ft is a pretty good outcome from here. Yep. So, I’m pretty happy with that. Landed quite close to the pin. Um, I’ve left myself with maybe 8 to 10 foot put, maybe a bit more, but I can get a feel for a read of the green there as it’s rolled past. Another quote that I really like is that you don’t need a perfect swing, but just a repeatable one. I think too many people get bogged down with trying to have the absolute perfect swing with so many um people teaching on Tik Tok, Instagram, and all this social media stuff. everyone’s trying to make their swing look amazing, but ultimately having a repeatable shot shape or just a repeatable shot in general that you can do is so important to help you score good in golf. As you can see from from the swings I’ve made in this video, they don’t look amazing, but I’m still able to get the ball out there and get myself round the golf course roughly about scratch most times. Another way to actually help you shoot better scores is to actually take out the clubs from your bag you can’t control. I used to have a free iron in my bag and every time I had to hit it, I was thinking, well, I don’t know where this is going, but I had to hit it because it covered a specific distance that I needed to. So, when it comes to, you know, that that middle part of your bag between the driver and say a five iron or a 4 iron, there are so many options. You can go for a fairway wood, you can go for a hybrid, you can go for a long iron. So, if you don’t hit something well, you can actually just try something new. And it’s amazing how many times people play a competition or go out to play, you know, some holes by themselves and they’ll use half a bag and shoot a better score. And the reason why is because they’re using clubs that they they know that they hit well. And it’s golf is a game that’s hard enough. If you have to get used to 14 different clubs and hit them perfectly all in different ways, then you have to have a lot of time on your hands. So again, coming back to the mini driver, I take I took the freewood out the bag because I’d only hit it about twice around at my local golf course and it was never off the actual floor. or is off the tea. And sometimes if I’m not hitting the ball well, I might sky it, I might hit it out the toe, might hit out the heel because it’s a much smaller club face. So that’s what actually led me to getting this club. And then what evolved from that was I used to hit it twice around the freewoods and now I probably hit this club about five or six times. So by trying to experiment with different things has actually led me to a better built bag for myself. Another quote that I like is from Payne Stewart, which is a bad attitude is worse than a bad golf swing. So basically, how many times have you seen someone that’s super talented at golf, they’ll be going really well, halfway through the round, something will happen and it will just completely throw them off and their round will be ruined. I have to say that there have been times where I’ve had a good round going and I can drop two or three shots just by letting that one bad shot get to me and it just spills over into the next two or three holes and sometimes the rest of the round. So it’s very similar to the other quote we had with Ben Hogan, which is to stay present, stay focused on that shot and don’t let the past get to you. I think it’s really important for well everyone really but especially amateurs to have a preferred go-to shot shape whether that’s a fade or a draw. Don’t try to hit the ball straight because it’s very hard to hit the ball straight. Have a way that you like to see the shot going whether that’s a draw or fade. Sometimes you get to the golf course. Let’s say for example you like to see a fade but you’re drawing it that day. I think it’s Tiger that actually said if he’s whatever he was playing with that day, he just played with it. Don’t try to fix your swing during the round and get the shot shape to to go to what you think. If your body’s not moving that well that day, that’s absolutely fine. But most people when they play golf should be trying to hit that shot shape over and over again. It builds in repeatability. And sometimes in golf, you’ll get a hole like this where a big draw would be absolutely ideal. It’s a par five, so if you can get the ball running against the fairway and feeding down to the left, it’ll be perfect. But I like to hit a fade with my driver and the mini driver or my second club down wouldn’t go as far. So I do need to hit well I don’t specifically need to hit the driver but it’s a good idea to hit my driver. It’s just this particular shot shape and this hole doesn’t suit my eye. But despite that, I’m not going to try to change it now just for this one T- shot. I’m actually going to still hit my fade that I know I can do most of the time. So because I like to hit a fade, it’s really important that I try to use as much of the T- box as I can to help that shot shape. So, if I was over on the right side of the T- box, sorry, the left side, my fade would be going that way too much. Whereas, I can now aim down the actual hole and fade it back into the fairway. So, use as much of the T- box as possible. And yeah, like I say, doesn’t suit my eye, but I’m actually going to have to take a more aggressive line over the big tree on the left with my fade and just let it work back into the fairway. So, for the last part of this video, I’m going to play a few holes. I’m going to talk about my club selection, and I’m also going to be using the app. I’ve actually been using this app called Shot Pattern for the last 6 months. And it’s really helped me figure out exactly where I’m losing shots, whether it’s my putting, my chipping, my approach shots, or my driving. You know, where is my weaknesses basically in my game. So, what I love about this app is it has exactly what we’ve been speaking about, the Tiger 5. In this app, it’s called Score Killers. So, it has double bogeies. Obviously, double bogeies are bad. It means that you’ve hit a really bad T-shot. It could be a lost ball. Um, it could be two shots out of a bunker. It could be a four putt. So, double bogeies are obviously a no no whether you’re a scratch player, a 20 handicapper score. It’s a terrible score killer. Also, it has par five bogeies. So, if you’re playing a par five and you make a bogey, you’re really losing shots against the field against, you know, every other player that’s playing that day. So ideally when you get to a par five again it’s about decision-m hitting the right club off the tea and if you’re in a bit of a sticky situation if you need to hit out don’t go for the hero shot. You also have three putts two chips as well. So obviously if you’re in a bunker and you’re taking two shots to get out or if you’re going to go for a flop shot but you end up leaving it short or going too long. And then also bogeies inside 150 yards. So, if you’re making a bogey with a wedge or a nine iron in your hands, that usually means that yeah, you could have hit a really bad shot, but a lot of the time it could be bad planning for your shot. Like we’ve gone through in the previous ones. Even though the pins on the right side, I’ve I’ve still aimed towards the middle of the greens. What this app also has, because I’ve been using it for 6 months, if you go to my driver, you can actually get a shot pattern up of my driver. And you can see clearly that I very rarely miss to the left hand side of my target. My misses are usually to the right. And this actually helps you pick targets a lot easier. If I have a massive fairway to hit, rather than me aiming down the middle of the fairway, I’ll actually aim to the left side of middle because I have the tendency to push the ball. And I have all of these tracked for all of my clubs. So if I go to approach shots here, you’ll see if I go to view by distance and I go to 150 yards to 175 yards, you can see again that I miss pretty much all of my shots to the right. So again, when I’m going for an approach shot, if the pin’s on the right side, it doesn’t make any sense for me to aim directly at the pin. So we have this hole here, which is uh hole eight here at Westarts. Even though it’s a par four, you’re actually using an iron off the tea because now, especially as it’s uh summer, it’s quite firm. I can hit this 220 and it’s going to roll out to 270 because it’s all downhill. And it’s going to leave me with uh something like a 50° or a 54° for the actual approach shot. Right. So, even though you can use distances with the app that we are using right now, the shot pattern app, I still like to use the Bushnell when I’m out on the golf course because obviously if I’m playing competitions, I want to have the exact yardage. So, believe it or not, that is bang on 100 yards. So, I’ve got a 54°ree and a 50°. I know my 54 degree goes about 103 yards with a smooth swing. I know it’s a very specific number. Um, but because we’re uphill here, that is probably the right club. And to be honest with you, I don’t think I need to change my swing much. I don’t need to take some off it. I don’t need to add any. It’s actually a stock shot, which um it doesn’t happen often with golf, but we’ll take it when it comes. It’s bogey avoidance here. We’ve got a bunk on the right side. That’s where I I can’t go. I also can’t go left. Anything past the pin by about 10 to 15t is also great. So, slightly above my feet. Need to make sure that I’m aiming correctly here. I don’t feel like I’m going to pull it or push it. Just get get set. It’s gone quite high. Probably a little bit too far. Right. So, the flag was 100 yards. I’ve actually hit that really well. And I’m probably I’m going to say I’m going to say maybe about 18 ft, maybe 20 ft. Um, from here, especially since it’s quite a flat green, I feel quite confident I’m not going to free putt this. So, bogey should be out the equation now. All I need to do is read the putt correctly, give it a good roll. Doesn’t go in, not the end of the world. Um, if it doesn’t, we’ve got a par. If it does, we’ve got a birdie. Simple as that. Really simple. It’s a good line. It just missed. It just missed. That was a good putt right next to the hole. Stressfree par. Good chance of making a birdie. And onto the next. Right. So, this one is bang on. 120 yards. It’s a par three. Obviously, we’ve got the the bunker on the right is going to be the absolute worst place to be because it’s shortsided. Um is a bank coming off of that bunker. So, if you try and chip it out, it’s just going to run away. So, for me, I’m already thinking there’s a shed in the background there. Um and some benches. I want to actually aim my shot towards that shed to stay away from that bunker just in case I do push it. Pushed it a little bit, which is what we know is my miss. And it looks to be just short of the pin. All right, so the shot did land a little bit shorter than I expected. There is a hill here. Um, but again, we’ve actually got a very similar distance to what we’ve had most of the day. Actually, again, this is probably about I’m going to say 25 to 27T and uh breaking right to left uphill. And just do the same thing we’ve we’ve done all day. A little bit short there. So, that one was a little bit short. I kind of know what this putt’s going to do. So, I’m going to step into this feeling confident that it’s going to break a little bit from right to left. I’m going to aim just to the right center of the cup and walk off of a par. All right. So, we’ve played a par three, we’ve played a par four. Now, we’re going to play a par five. And we’re actually not going to hit driver. Even though it’s a par five, it’s actually a very strong dog leg left, which means that if you can draw the ball, you’re going to be in A1 position. Um, if I do miss it with this club, I’m most likely to hit it dead straight or a little push off to the right. And in that situation, usually what happens is more spin will go on the ball. it will pull up a little bit shorter and it takes, you know, the potential bogey or lost ball going into the trees there on the right where there’s a lot of leaf litter on the floor and it’s very easy to lose a ball. All right. So, we’ve actually got 165 yards to a yellow flag, which at West Harts means it’s a middle flag. Um, straight away what I’m thinking because we’re in the rough, I need to analyze the actual lie here. So, there’s actually no grass behind the ball cuz there’s loads of divot marks and all that and there’s grass in front of the ball. Now, typically what that means is you’re more likely to get a flyer because as you hit the ball, the grass in front of that will stop the ball from back spinning and kind of grip onto the ball. So, it’s more likely to go a little bit further than what you expect. So, like I said, 165 yds to the pin. I know that my eight iron flies around 165 yds. But if I hit that exactly stock, what’s going to happen? It’s going to pitch in on the flag or past the flag and it’s actually going to roll out to the back of the green, which isn’t a bad place to be. It’s still possible to make birdie from there. So, what I’m going to do here, eight iron. And in my head, I’m going to be thinking about 158 yds or 155 yards. If I can carry that distance and it releases another 15 to 25 ft, that’ll be perfect. So, if I want to hit this 8 iron less distance than a stock yardage, like 165 yards, I need to hit this with a little bit of a cut. That will add a bit of spin. It will launch the ball higher and it should land a little bit softer into this green. So, that’s what we’re going to try and do. Start the ball just to the left side of the flag, which is towards the middle of the green and hopefully not hit it, you know, too hard or too soft. It just needs to be a good strike. I think the distance is good. Just got onto the front of the green there, releasing down towards the pin. So, it looks like actually on uh as we’ve drove up here, the ball is very close to the pin. We’re in a great position. I didn’t mean to hit it this close. In fact, my target was to the left of the pin. Actually, if you if you go through interviews with professional players on tour, this is what their caddies are telling them. Sometimes their best shots that you see on live TV is when they’ve actually mishit the shot. I mis hit that and I’m in a better place than I would have been if I hit the exact shot I was trying to do. So, same routine again. I’ve lined up the logo with where I want to start the ball. Um, like I said, I think it’s going to break a little bit to the right, but not enough for me to aim outside of the hole. And, uh, just give it a tap and hopefully walk off with an eagle here. There you go. All right. So, I was actually going to stop at that hole, but since we’re already on this hole, we’re at a another par five, and this time it is driver. As you can see here from the fairway, it’s the widest fairway at this golf club. It’s actually technically the easiest hole on the golf course cuz it’s a par five and it’s a stroke index 18 or 17. I think it’s 18. So for me, big drive as far down the middle as I possibly can. So the the bunkers you can see pretty much aren’t in play for me. The one on the front right and and the middle left there are I should be able to carry those bunkers with ease. So for me it’s just all out as far as I can hit this driver. That’s gone a pretty long way. It looks to have carried about 290 300ish. I think I’m a little bit short of the path. So, I don’t know if the camera’s picking up, but there is a path that goes through to the driving range here that is about 300 I think 320 or 340 yards. It depends where you are on a T- box. Um, but that should leave me with I would say maybe an even a 9 iron or an 8 iron because it looks to be a front pin today. So, another par five. We could be getting a birdie or an eagle. So, 149 yards. It is slightly uphill, but I do have a little bit of a flyer lie. The good thing about this is it’s a front pin, but we’ve got about 20 yards of green all the way back and even about 15 yards of green to the left and right. So, for me, I can genuinely go straight at this pin. If I want to be a little bit conservative, I can aim a little bit to the left side just to make sure if I do hit it short, I’m not going to go in that front right bunker. In fact, that’s what I’m going to do because we don’t want to turn this into a par from a great drive. So, if we can just get on the green and two part, it’s a birdie. I’ve pushed it a little bit, but hopefully I should carry. I’ve just carried the bunker. I think I’ve actually gone towards the back of the green. So, a little bit of a fly alive, which is okay. What we need to do now is just two part and just walk off our birdie. So, we’re left with about an 80 ft putt here. Like I mentioned at the start, it’s about having confidence two. So for me, I’ve read the brake roughly. It’s going to break left to right. Probably about probably about four or 5 ft of brake here. So all I need to do is get this within about 5 ft and then I’ll have a 5 footer for birdie. It might actually go in. Oh, if that went in, people would be like, “Nah, this is this is not real.” That was that was very close. I don’t know what else we can say really other than we read it correctly. We didn’t think too much about the line. I said four or 5 ft. Get the speed right and it actually had a very close chance of going in. I’ve actually shaved the cup. Um, it’s very, very close. I’ve actually come just in front of the cup here and I’ve got a tap in birdie which we’ll take on any hole. So, that was a lovely way to finish a video. two par fives, birdie eagle, and I’m actually free under through those four four holes. Um, it doesn’t always end that way, but as a scratch golfer, you need to take shot for shot. And if you do make a bogey, at least if you plan the right shot and execute it, that’s all you can ask for. Move on to the next shot. We have been using the app that I found amazing during the video. It works for all handicaps, high handicaps, scratch to get better at golf to figure out where you’re losing strokes, whether it’s driving, putting, approach shots. So, I’d recommend going and giving a download. Uh there’s actually a discount code in the description, Jack Fowler Golf. It will actually get you 20% off if you use that uh discount code. And if you enjoyed the video, why not like and subscribe to the channel? I’ll be posting more content like this. But also you can leave a comment to let me know what you’d like to see next from

How I went from 30 handicap to scratch handicap golfer in just 2 years of playing golf (22 simple tips)

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Some fundamental tips going from a 30 handicap new golfer shooting in the 100’s to breaking 90 consistently and then breaking 80 as easily as possible and finally breaking par.

0:00 Intro
00:19 Having a go to fairway club
01:11 Using more club to front/middle pins
02:31 Speed control for 3 putt avoidance
04:23 100% commitment to shot
05:19 Wayward tee shots
06:39 Can’t score without a short game
08:47 Spend time practising awkward lies
09:21 Using distances to the pin to build a plan
10:11 Understanding your shot pattern
10:54 Avoid making 2 simple mistakes in a row
11:56 Getting fit for the right clubs
13:07 Check swing weight/total weight of your clubs
13:48 Wedges distance control within 100 yards
15:01 Smoother swing for faster ball speeds
16:12 Golf swing fundamentals
17:18 Consistent pre-shot routine
18:16 The most important shot is the next shot
19:27 You don’t need a perfect swing, just a repeatable one
19:58 Stop using clubs you can’t control
21:19 A bad attitude is worse than a bad golf swing
21:50 Hit one shot shape as often as possible
23:01 Use both sides of the tee box
23:39 Bogey avoidance & strokes gained app
25:46 Playing a par 4
28:05 Playing a par 3
29:27 Playing a par 5
32:49 Final hole
35:51 strokes gained app (shot pattern)