Learn Your Club Yardages to Improve Consistency, Golf (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles
Learn Your Club Yardages to Improve Consistency, Golf (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles

So one of my questions that I often ask people when I'm looking to assess their game at their very first lesson, find out how good their game really is, I'll ask them how far they think they hit certain shots and they often answer is "You know, I hit a seven iron at about 160 and I hit my drive to about 280."

I wouldn't go as far as suggesting that the people are deliberately lying to me or telling me an untruth but I just think that golfers have a habit of remembering big. They just remember the big shots, the one time they really got hold of a drive or the one time they went over the back of their green with a seven iron and they remember that distance and then relate that distance to their averages and it's not really quite what they should be doing because they actually sell themselves short.

And if you look at the way a golf hole is put together, often the danger when you're playing a second shot into a green will be around the front of the green, the bunkers, the water hoses, the banks will be at the front and the middle to the back of the green is often a little bit easier, a little bit more marginal, a very bit more room. So, what I would encourage you to do to be more consistent with either front shots particularly is get a really good understanding of your distances.

So, when you go down to the driving range, if you've got a practice area or practice field that's got a yards just marked out, fantastic, if you have it then you can take advantage of a GPS or even a smartphone app or a laser range finder, try and measure as many of your shots as possible. So, go through your entire bag from sand wedge through to driver hitting five shots with each club, try and discount the best and the worst with each club and then just take those central three shots as your core average distance. Measure that distance, scribble it down maybe on the back of a business card or something like that, something nice and small that you can just keep in your wallet or your pocket and then you've always got those distances with you when you're out on the golf course.

Eventually, you'll learn your distances. So, each club would be roughly 10 yards different from the next club with your irons, maybe a little bit of a bigger gap with your wedges unless you've got three or four wedges in your bag evenly spaced and a bigger gap between your driver, three within your five wood, depending on the spacing there as well. But try and get a rough breakdown of about 10 yards per club through the bag. Write those down on a business card. Keep those in your pocket or your wallet so when you're playing, if you have a need to refer to it, you can look at it.

And then actually, when you're on the golf course playing as well, try and get a good idea of how far away you are either with like I mentioned a GPS smartphone app or a laser range finder. So, as you're getting better at golf and as you're playing more and more, the distances you hit become a lot more relevant. If you're not hitting the ball very well at all, doesn't matter whether you have the right club but if you starting to strike the ball well hitting good shots, the distance that you're going to hit that shot becomes really, really important too.

So, let's make sure that you're not wasting shots on the golf course by simply remembering too big and overestimating how far you can actually hit the golf ball.

 2012-05-30

So one of my questions that I often ask people when I'm looking to assess their game at their very first lesson, find out how good their game really is, I'll ask them how far they think they hit certain shots and they often answer is “You know, I hit a seven iron at about 160 and I hit my drive to about 280.”

I wouldn't go as far as suggesting that the people are deliberately lying to me or telling me an untruth but I just think that golfers have a habit of remembering big. They just remember the big shots, the one time they really got hold of a drive or the one time they went over the back of their green with a seven iron and they remember that distance and then relate that distance to their averages and it's not really quite what they should be doing because they actually sell themselves short.

And if you look at the way a golf hole is put together, often the danger when you're playing a second shot into a green will be around the front of the green, the bunkers, the water hoses, the banks will be at the front and the middle to the back of the green is often a little bit easier, a little bit more marginal, a very bit more room. So, what I would encourage you to do to be more consistent with either front shots particularly is get a really good understanding of your distances.

So, when you go down to the driving range, if you've got a practice area or practice field that's got a yards just marked out, fantastic, if you have it then you can take advantage of a GPS or even a smartphone app or a laser range finder, try and measure as many of your shots as possible. So, go through your entire bag from sand wedge through to driver hitting five shots with each club, try and discount the best and the worst with each club and then just take those central three shots as your core average distance. Measure that distance, scribble it down maybe on the back of a business card or something like that, something nice and small that you can just keep in your wallet or your pocket and then you've always got those distances with you when you're out on the golf course.

Eventually, you'll learn your distances. So, each club would be roughly 10 yards different from the next club with your irons, maybe a little bit of a bigger gap with your wedges unless you've got three or four wedges in your bag evenly spaced and a bigger gap between your driver, three within your five wood, depending on the spacing there as well. But try and get a rough breakdown of about 10 yards per club through the bag. Write those down on a business card. Keep those in your pocket or your wallet so when you're playing, if you have a need to refer to it, you can look at it.

And then actually, when you're on the golf course playing as well, try and get a good idea of how far away you are either with like I mentioned a GPS smartphone app or a laser range finder. So, as you're getting better at golf and as you're playing more and more, the distances you hit become a lot more relevant. If you're not hitting the ball very well at all, doesn't matter whether you have the right club but if you starting to strike the ball well hitting good shots, the distance that you're going to hit that shot becomes really, really important too.

So, let's make sure that you're not wasting shots on the golf course by simply remembering too big and overestimating how far you can actually hit the golf ball.