Playing Winning Golf
Lawrence Bredenkamp
It is quite amazing how many club players do not concentrate on playing winning golf. If you want to play winning golf you sometimes have to forget about your score – as crazy as this sounds.
Golf is a game of fun and there is no more fun than playing winning golf yet how many of us get tense when we drop an unnecessary shot. Take it in the context of the game and react accordingly.
What do I mean by that? Well quite simply most golfers seem to want to get their best score ever – every time they play. Now this is quite natural because the average golfer is fortunate if he can play once a week. It therefore becomes important to him to play his best. But striving to play your best every time you play golf puts you under tremendous pressure and more often than not leads to disappointment.
May I suggest you concentrate on the game in hand and if you succeed in that you will learn to relax, enjoy, win more often and no doubt shoot lower scores.
Let’s put some numbers to this. If we take matchplay for example your score does not count for anything other than being better, the same or worse than your opponents score. This in turn means you have either won, halved or lost that particular hole. Nothing more and nothing less – so does it matter if you made a birdie or a par when your opponent has made a double bogey? No it doesn’t.
Like wise if you are playing a stableford scoring system. The actual score only determines whether of not you get points on the hole. Once again ignore your opponent and concentrate on scoring on every hole. If the opposition has already made whatever number of points you still need to make as many as possible. If you have a twenty foot putt left to make one point then leaving it short is no good – at least make sure you putt it firmly enough to at least have a chance of going in.
Most club games at my club are played on a Best-Ball basis where you have a partner and the best stableford points between you count towards your team score. This should allow you to be bold in many instances as you try and improve on your team score. After all you are trying to play winning golf. To do that you need to have a team strategy not two individuals who are only concerned about their own individual scores.
When it comes to stroke play or medal you need to adopt a different approach as there is no point at which you can pick up and proceed to the next hole until you have completed the last. In this type of game every shot counts so more caution is required. For example on our previously mentioned twenty foot putt you would want to put it pretty close to ensure that at worse you will two-putt.
Essentially those are the three types of competitions played:
Strokeplay – where every shot counts and the player with the lowest score wins.
Matchplay – where the best score on each hole wins the hole and the player/s who win the most holes win the match.
And a point scoring match (of which stableford is probably the most common) where the player/s with the most points wins.
Learn to understand the competition you are playing in and plan your strategy accordingly so that you improve your chances of playing winning golf.
Of course we often have private bets which take a totally different format to the overall competition – this does not lend itself to winning golf simply because it is difficult to win one competition when there is another – different – competition within a competition. Arrange with your four ball to have your bets on the same basis as the main competition.
If you want to learn to play winning golf you need to understand the intricacies of different competitions and adjust your game accordingly. Sure it’s great to continually shoot good scores but I am sure if you start playing winning golf you will automatically find that you will start playing better and shooting lower.
It is quite amazing how many club players do not concentrate on playing winning golf. If you want to play winning golf you sometimes have to forget about your score – as crazy as this sounds.
Golf is a game of fun and there is no more fun than playing winning golf yet how many of us get tense when we drop an unnecessary shot. Take it in the context of the game and react accordingly.
What do I mean by that? Well quite simply most golfers seem to want to get their best score ever – every time they play. Now this is quite natural because the average golfer is fortunate if he can play once a week. It therefore becomes important to him to play his best. But striving to play your best every time you play golf puts you under tremendous pressure and more often than not leads to disappointment.
May I suggest you concentrate on the game in hand and if you succeed in that you will learn to relax, enjoy, win more often and no doubt shoot lower scores.
Let’s put some numbers to this. If we take matchplay for example your score does not count for anything other than being better, the same or worse than your opponents score. This in turn means you have either won, halved or lost that particular hole. Nothing more and nothing less – so does it matter if you made a birdie or a par when your opponent has made a double bogey? No it doesn’t.
Like wise if you are playing a stableford scoring system. The actual score only determines whether of not you get points on the hole. Once again ignore your opponent and concentrate on scoring on every hole. If the opposition has already made whatever number of points you still need to make as many as possible. If you have a twenty foot putt left to make one point then leaving it short is no good – at least make sure you putt it firmly enough to at least have a chance of going in.
Most club games at my club are played on a Best-Ball basis where you have a partner and the best stableford points between you count towards your team score. This should allow you to be bold in many instances as you try and improve on your team score. After all you are trying to play winning golf. To do that you need to have a team strategy not two individuals who are only concerned about their own individual scores.
When it comes to stroke play or medal you need to adopt a different approach as there is no point at which you can pick up and proceed to the next hole until you have completed the last. In this type of game every shot counts so more caution is required. For example on our previously mentioned twenty foot putt you would want to put it pretty close to ensure that at worse you will two-putt.
Essentially those are the three types of competitions played:
Strokeplay – where every shot counts and the player with the lowest score wins.
Matchplay – where the best score on each hole wins the hole and the player/s who win the most holes win the match.
And a point scoring match (of which stableford is probably the most common) where the player/s with the most points wins.
Learn to understand the competition you are playing in and plan your strategy accordingly so that you improve your chances of playing winning golf.
Of course we often have private bets which take a totally different format to the overall competition – this does not lend itself to winning golf simply because it is difficult to win one competition when there is another – different – competition within a competition. Arrange with your four ball to have your bets on the same basis as the main competition.
If you want to learn to play winning golf you need to understand the intricacies of different competitions and adjust your game accordingly. Sure it’s great to continually shoot good scores but I am sure if you start playing winning golf you will automatically find that you will start playing better and shooting lower.
Tags: Best Score, Birdie, Club Games, Disappointment, Foot Putt, Fun, Golf Game, Golfers, No Doubt, Opponents, Sounds, Stableford Points, Stableford Scoring System, Team Score, Winning Golf