Beginner Golf Tip: How to Determine Distance to the Target (Video) - by Pete Styles
Beginner Golf Tip: How to Determine Distance to the Target (Video) - by Pete Styles

So when you’re out on the golf course and you’re starting to hit the ball more consistently and starting to use your different clubs to change the distance the golf ball flies, it’s not really important you can actually work out how far away you’re hitting it, but also how far away your target is. Now I’m thinking there’s probably five ways to do this, ranging from really precise to not very precise at all. The first way would just be guessing, just simply looking at some of the thing and thinking well last time it looked that far I used my seven and it flew like this. But I think now we can start to use different areas maybe the technology comes into, we can start to use different ways. Some golf courses will actually have markers either markers is the disks on the fairway, or markers at the side of the fairway, and the classic is just to 150 posts.

There might be a post or a special type of tree or a little disk on the fairway that’s 150 from the green. And you can either paste from that 150 peg, or have a look at how far back that is and how far away the green is. And again it’s a fairly rough approximation. The next way would be a natural yardish]chart, a printed or a written yardish chart that says, from the side of that bunker, it’s 150 or from that tree over there, it’s 130, and then you can get a gauge from there. So now we’re getting a little bit more accurate. The next would be a mobile or an on car GPS. It is a hand held device, some smart phones even have this opportunity now where you actually look on the App and it will tell you how far you are. So the GPS satellites are working and your location it’s a preloaded map of the golf course works at the flags location or the, sorry should I say the greens location, and it tells you how far away the green is, how far away the bunkers are, how far away the trees are.

The only thing that it can’t really tell you is how far away the flag is ‘cause the flag will move on a daily basis as the green keep is rotated around the green. So the way to actually tell how far away the flag is, would be with a lazar, so a bush nail and snooper and people like that, actually make lazars when you look through them like a pair of binoculars and it flies a lazar off to the flag and it tells you how far away that is. So it doesn’t necessary give you a map or a chart of the green, but it does tell you the exact distance to the flag and then you can point it to a bunker or point it to the trey. And maybe a combination of those two devices would probably be giving you the best answer of how far away it is, unless you can afford to pay a caddie to do it all for you because the caddie has the yard chart, he paces things out. Caddies use lasers but pre-round and all uses lasers in the round but they can do it before the round. But I guess the important thing to do is try and have something other than just pure guess work to work out how far you’re hitting the ball. Particularly as you get consistent as your game develops you’ll notice that the club starts to fly the relevant distance is more consistently, but if you don’t know how far you are then it doesn’t matter how far, it doesn’t matter if you know how far the seven iron goes. This could go 150 but I if don’t know that I’m 120, then I’ve got the wrong club. So get yourself a laser, get yourself a GPS best minimum sorry, get yourself a little yard chart, at least then you can work out the bunkers here, the flags here, I’ll reckon I’ve got a good idea of how far I’ve got to go. Start to understand your distances that will improve your golf scores, no question.

 2013-03-29

So when you’re out on the golf course and you’re starting to hit the ball more consistently and starting to use your different clubs to change the distance the golf ball flies, it’s not really important you can actually work out how far away you’re hitting it, but also how far away your target is. Now I’m thinking there’s probably five ways to do this, ranging from really precise to not very precise at all. The first way would just be guessing, just simply looking at some of the thing and thinking well last time it looked that far I used my seven and it flew like this. But I think now we can start to use different areas maybe the technology comes into, we can start to use different ways. Some golf courses will actually have markers either markers is the disks on the fairway, or markers at the side of the fairway, and the classic is just to 150 posts.

There might be a post or a special type of tree or a little disk on the fairway that’s 150 from the green. And you can either paste from that 150 peg, or have a look at how far back that is and how far away the green is. And again it’s a fairly rough approximation. The next way would be a natural yardish]chart, a printed or a written yardish chart that says, from the side of that bunker, it’s 150 or from that tree over there, it’s 130, and then you can get a gauge from there. So now we’re getting a little bit more accurate. The next would be a mobile or an on car GPS. It is a hand held device, some smart phones even have this opportunity now where you actually look on the App and it will tell you how far you are. So the GPS satellites are working and your location it’s a preloaded map of the golf course works at the flags location or the, sorry should I say the greens location, and it tells you how far away the green is, how far away the bunkers are, how far away the trees are.

The only thing that it can’t really tell you is how far away the flag is ‘cause the flag will move on a daily basis as the green keep is rotated around the green. So the way to actually tell how far away the flag is, would be with a lazar, so a bush nail and snooper and people like that, actually make lazars when you look through them like a pair of binoculars and it flies a lazar off to the flag and it tells you how far away that is. So it doesn’t necessary give you a map or a chart of the green, but it does tell you the exact distance to the flag and then you can point it to a bunker or point it to the trey. And maybe a combination of those two devices would probably be giving you the best answer of how far away it is, unless you can afford to pay a caddie to do it all for you because the caddie has the yard chart, he paces things out. Caddies use lasers but pre-round and all uses lasers in the round but they can do it before the round. But I guess the important thing to do is try and have something other than just pure guess work to work out how far you’re hitting the ball. Particularly as you get consistent as your game develops you’ll notice that the club starts to fly the relevant distance is more consistently, but if you don’t know how far you are then it doesn’t matter how far, it doesn’t matter if you know how far the seven iron goes. This could go 150 but I if don’t know that I’m 120, then I’ve got the wrong club. So get yourself a laser, get yourself a GPS best minimum sorry, get yourself a little yard chart, at least then you can work out the bunkers here, the flags here, I’ll reckon I’ve got a good idea of how far I’ve got to go. Start to understand your distances that will improve your golf scores, no question.