Follow These Rules To Keep Double Bogeys Off Your Scorecard!

Joel Tadman runs through the 8 rules golfers need to follow if they want to keep double bogeys off their scorecard, with the help of data from Shot Scope.

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► Chapters:
Introduction 0:00-0:50
Hit It Longer 0:50
Avoid Major Trouble 2:57
Don’t Get Greedy From Fairway Bunkers 5:35
Choose Less Loft Around The Green 7:17
Don’t Compound Errors 9:00
Develop A Failsafe Bunker Technique 10:30
Reduce Three Putts 12:01
Improve Short Range Putting 13:47

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now the key to shooting lower scores and getting your handicap down is not making a barrage of birdies it’s keeping those double bogeies or worse those destructive holes off your scorecard so in this video I’m going to give you some strategy advice backed up by data from Shot Scope that’s going to really help you lower your scores by keeping those double bogeies off your card make more pars and hopefully you’ll see an improvement in your play at the beautiful Peter Milton Golf Club let’s get into it now before we get into the strategy advice the first thing to acknowledge is the extent to which double bogeies are a problem i’m going to flash up the data here from Shot Scope you can see the average golfer a 15 handicap golfer is making nearly five double bogeies around it’s an incredible amount so clearly reducing the frequency of them should be a priority so let’s head to the tea and see what we can do [Music] there right the first way you can reduce the number of double bogeies you make during a round is by hitting it further off the tea now I know this sounds obvious we all want to hit the golf ball further but if you look at the data from Shotscape you can see there is a direct correlation between how far you hit it off the tea and the score you end up with at the end of the hole this is a 15 handicapper example the data is clear and obvious for all to see the longer you hit it the better your chances of not making a double bogey the data tells us that being a lot further down the hole in the rough is better than being shorter than the on the hole and on the fairway so we know that accuracy isn’t as important as distance so for golfers that like to choose a 3-wood over a driver because it feels like it gives them a bit more accuracy and gets them in play a bit more that sort of analogy doesn’t really quite work and actually the stats show that golfers aren’t really that more accurate with a 3-wood than a driver so in most cases I would say bin the 3-wood off go with the driver and really prioritize in your offseason or when you’re not playing golf and you’re practicing trying to increase the distance you get with your driver there’s a number of ways you can do that really easily could be some speed training at home maybe get some speed sticks maybe just improving the quality of strike that you get with your driver trying to hit out the middle more often curving the ball less that’s one way golfers uh reduce the distance off the tea if they hit bits big slices big hooks that’s another reason why golfers don’t hit it as far so try and hit the ball straighter maybe tee the ball up a little bit more to encourage more of an upward hit all these different things could help you get a little bit more distance off the tea really let it rip try and get down the hole as far as you can and that’s going to reduce the number of double bogeies you make so here I’m going to beautiful 17th hole here at Peter Milton don’t swing for control i’ll just give it a rip and deal with the consequences at the end it’s down the left it’s in the rough but that’s okay cuz I’m down the fairway and I’ve got a shot to the [Music] green the second way you can make fewer double bogeies is to avoid penalty areas lost balls and fairway bunkers off the tea again it sounds obvious but again there is a direct correlation between golfers that find those things off the tea and their scores because it goes up considerably actually if you look at fairway bunker stats which I’ll flash up on the screen now you’re about half a shot worse off if you find a fairway bunker off the tea than if you were to find the fairway so you definitely want to avoid fairway bunkers and one way you can really assess what lies ahead and make sure that you avoid those hazards that line weight for you is investing in some sort of tech i’ve got the Shotscape V5 watch here which is very nice because it gives you uh aerial hole maps which is quite useful so you can see scroll up and down the hole and see what lies ahead at your driving distance because that’s the other thing you really need to know exactly how far you carry your driver not total distance how far you carry it because that will determine what hazards lie in weight for you down there and what are in play for you if you’ve done all the things that I told you to do in point number one some speed training maybe some quality of strike training you might want to hit it a bit further and therefore you need to get on a launch monitor and see how far you’re actually hitting it now and recalibrate that and see what hazards line weight for you with your new improved distance but so you know how far you’ve got down the fairway you know to it you need to avoid all those things we talked about and lost balls are incredibly damaging a 25 handicapper loses six balls a round not only is that very expensive but it’s definitely going to be hurting your scores but the other thing I think all golfers should develop is a go-to shot or a shot that curves one way if you’ve got a shot that curves one way or you know it’s going to curve that way then you can allow for that with your aim uh and it should take one side of the golf course out of play so if there for me I’ve started to develop a bit of a fade it’s become my go-to shot i’m more comfortable with that um when under pressure so um pretty good for this hole is out of bounds all down the left so I know I can aim down the left and curve it to the right really understand what you go to under pressure priority is avoiding bunkers out of bounds lost balls in particular and that will hopefully reduce the number of bug double bogeies you have so I know under pressure I’m going to be able to cut this from left to right and it’s going to avoid the trouble look at that absolutely perfect it’s missed the fairway bunker it’s missed the hazard slap bang in the middle of the fairway and I’d do very well to make a double bogey from [Music] there now one of the main reasons double bogeies occur is by golfers getting too greedy from fairway bunkers we know from the stats you’re far less likely to hit the green from a faux bunker and your scores go up considerably if you’re in one of these things and I think the reason is people get too greedy and often don’t get out on the first time uh maybe hitting a club that’s not appropriate for the size of the lip hitting the lip comes back in and you’re hitting again from the same place so really important to not get greedy from the fairway bunker your absolute first priority should be to get choose a club that you know is going to clear the lip and get the ball out much better off being short of the green with a clear shot for your next shot than having to play again from here so um on the Golf Monthly website there’s loads of good advice about how to get out of favor bunkers and how to play that shot correctly i’m not going to stand here and tell you exactly how to do that but a couple of things I like to do in a favor bunker is just grip the club a little bit tighter just pulls it away from the ground a little bit and just have the ball slightly further back in your stance that’s going to ensure hopefully you catch the ball first before the sand your intention is no different from the fairway in that regard you’re trying to hit the ball first then the ground in a fairway bunker i’ve got a pitching wedge here which I know is plenty of loft to get the ball out of this fairway bunker so trust the loft on the club ball a smidge back in the stance and just try and catch the ball first oh I’ve pulled it but it’s got out it’s missed the green but most importantly it’s not still in the furry bunker i’ve got a shot from a third shot and hopefully I can make Bow get worse and not a double [Music] B but when it comes to shorter shots like this around the green obviously it’s important to use a club that you’re most comfortable with it could be you know a chipper for example whatever club works for you but if you look at the data most ability of golfers or pretty much every ability of golfer has a lower shots to finish stat with a lower lofted club like an 8 iron or a 9 iron versus a sand wedge or a lob wedge so using le less loft where you can uh is really important obviously if you’ve got a bunker to go over you might need to switch to a higher lofted club to get the elevation but in most scenarios you’re much better off using a lower lofted club here like I’ve got which is an eight iron so ditch the sand wedge go for a lower a lower lofted club obviously because that way you’re going to be making a shorter swing less can go wrong with that regard less wrist hinge less technique involved versus a lob wedge where you having to make a much longer swing far more can go wrong you want to get the ball rolling as early as you can so I’ve got an eight iron here i mean this applies if you’ve got a decent line than rough like I’ve got here but it works equally well from the fairway so just really simplify the technique just get that shaft leaning slightly ahead of the ball back and through and get it running up towards the hole pretty happy with that one i do very well to make a double bogey from there so switch to a lower lofty club is going to put this odds in your favor right just a short interlude to say if you are enjoying the video please do click the like button and subscribe to the Golf Monkey YouTube channel it really helps us out and if you like the look of any of the Shot Scope products featured in this video I’ve put some handy links in the description so you can get your hands on those for the best price in your area right let’s go and find some more ways that you can make fewer double bogeies now this is a classic scenario that leads to double bogeies a lot of the time you’ve hit a bad shot and you compound your error with another by going for a risky shot and it leads to a double bogey or worse i think that’s the you look at the tour pros the one thing they don’t do is follow one bad shot with another they’re able to forget what’s gone before and focus on the most important shot which is the next shot and get the ball back in play we’re all going to hit bad shots douffs fats thins shanks it happens most important thing is to put that out of your mind and focus on hitting a good shot for your next shot and in this particular shot here it’s clear I’ve hit a bad T- shot i’m in the right hand side i’m in the trees and the one thing you absolutely need to avoid to make sure you don’t make a double bogey is those miracle shots so whether it’s you know here a big slice around the trees it could be a long carry over water taking on that that high flop shot over a bunker those are the shots you really need to avoid taking on if you want to stop making double bogeies so in this particular situation I’m not going to try that banana slice and try and get it up to the pin or maybe through that tiny gap over there towards the pin i’m going to take my medicine get it back in play and then hopefully it’ll give me a chance to get on the green one putt two putt at worst and make a bogey there we go perfectly back in play i can pitch it on from there and hopefully a double bogey won’t be on the card now another way you can absolutely reduce the number of double bogeies you make during a round is by developing a failsafe greenside bunker technique we know looking at the shotcope data that you’re about half as likely to get up and down from a bunker than you are anywhere else around the green so it’s imperative that you have a technique that gets you out every time you know high handicappers in particular struggle with this shot and often hitting it into the face coming back down and you’re hitting again from a green side bunker and that’s where your scores really start to go up so um have a look on the golf monthly website loads of really good advice about how to get out of greenside bunkers every time maybe think of adding a bunker specific club to your bag there’s a few out there there’s one from Ping that Ping bunker that was recently launched developed specifically for bunkers so if you really struggle from bunkers I’d consider investing in one of those but in terms of your strategy obviously you need to get it make sure you get it out but really don’t focus on getting too cute with these shots just focus on getting it out don’t go chasing those tight pins so for the this particular shot you can see the pin is quite tight to me here on the front of the green i’m not going to be messing around with that i’m going to make sure I’m getting it past the pin give myself a putt back for a par who knows i might hold it but at least I won’t be making a double bogey so make sure you get it out don’t get too cute with it give it some speed perfect it’s a little bit past the hole but I’m okay with that i might well make that putt for a par but hopefully I won’t be making double [Music] bogey now another cause of double bogeies is too many three putts during a round poor lag putting specifically leads to unnecessary strokes on the green so you really need to develop a system that allows you to control your distance and allows you to get the ball close to the hole from long range and reduce the chance of three putts again loads of tips on the golf monthly website to help you with lag putting but one drill I’ve found that works for me i’m a 2.5 index golfer um that I do a lot in practice is this one in what I’m going to demonstrate now so what I like to do is I just like to roll apart about 30 foot away there’s a little mark down there so I’m just going to try and roll this ball towards that um mark down there so that’s around about 25 30 ft and then what I like to do with these next two balls I want to try and hit this first one just past it and there’s a second one just short of it because that really develops that sort of the micro changes you need to make in your feel and your calibration to get uh adjusting to different distances so uh I know that I want to just try and get this one just past that ball pretty happy with that one just past it and I want to get this ball just short of the first one or you could do it you could try and get the ball in between the first one and the second one which make it even harder that’s what I’m going to try and do now so really developing that sort of sense of feel and distance control try and get it in between those two balls which I’ve failed miserably and I’ve hit it way too hard but try that drill just try put a ball down there get one short one pass just develops the sense of feel and distance control and hopefully uh on the course will manifest itself into better lag putting and fewer three putts now I think one of the easiest ways you can make fewer double bogeies is to improve your putting from short range specifically that 3 to 6 ft range if you look at the data from Shot Scope 25 handicappers are only making 48% putts from this distance whereas PJ Tour players are making up at 85% why I think this is one of the easiest areas to improve is that it doesn’t require any physical strength or flexibility or speed it’s literally just about moving the putter a very short distance and squaring the putter face to your intended target every time but also you can pretty much practice short putts anywhere at home on the carpet um on a practice putting green pretty much wherever you want there’s always room to be able to just work on getting the club base back to square every time and one drill that I think was really going to help golfers with this particular issue which I learned from my uh friend and colleague Joe Ferguson who’s a PJ pro is rather than practice putting to a hole on the practice putter green practice putting to a T that is going to obviously make the target smaller and therefore when you’re on the course it should increase your margin for error so rather than practice put into a hole really focus on trying to hit the teg see if we can do one here for you there we go right in the middle of the tea you’re very happy with that one obviously that would have gone in the center of the hole but if you do just miss the tea you really focus on that tee it’s a narrow target if you do miss it like that that may well have licked in on the right hand side so focus on practice putting to a tea from 3 to six ft that should hopefully help you hold more from short range and three putt less which means fewer double bogeies so that concludes our look at the ways you can stop making those destructive double bogeies i hope you enjoyed the video big thank you to Peter Milton for hosting us here today and as I mentioned earlier I’ll put some links in the description where you can get your hands on some of the Shot Scope products featured in this video but that’s all from me from Peter Milton i’ll see you next time