{"id":2135,"date":"2014-01-29T16:19:19","date_gmt":"2014-01-29T16:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/?p=2135"},"modified":"2023-12-01T01:22:46","modified_gmt":"2023-12-01T01:22:46","slug":"shoot-good-golf-scores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/shoot-good-golf-scores\/","title":{"rendered":"Shoot Good Golf Scores, Even When You\u2019re Playing Bad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2149 alignright\" title=\"Tiger Woods with Golf Club\" src=\"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Tiger-Woods-with-Golf-Club.png\" alt=\"Tiger Woods with Golf Club\" width=\"303\" height=\"320\" \/>Golf isn&#8217;t about how good your swing looks, or how far you hit the ball, or how many birdies you make, or how many fairways you hit.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s about how well you score. At the end of your round, there&#8217;s a number on your card and that number is the only thing that matters.<\/p>\n<p>All great players have one thing in common and it has absolutely nothing to do with their swing. They all know how to score.<\/p>\n<p>Even on days when they aren&#8217;t hitting the ball great, they find a way to get it done (Tiger Woods has made his career by doing this). It&#8217;s easy to shoot a good score when you&#8217;re swing is in sync but it&#8217;s much harder to avoid a bad score when it&#8217;s not.<\/p>\n<p>So next time you&#8217;re not hitting the ball so good, don&#8217;t just assume you&#8217;re going to have a bad round. Instead, see it as an opportunity, use some of the tips below and grind out a respectable score.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Focus On Your Putting<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Putting is, without question, the most important part of golf. It can completely erase bad shots and in most cases, it&#8217;s the only part of your game that doesn&#8217;t change much on a day-to-day basis.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re not hitting the ball well, putting can be the equalizer. You can hit a bad drive, a bad approach shot and a bad chip, but if you can make a good amount of 8 to 10 footers, you can make pars. So spend more time on the putting green when you&#8217;re waiting for your swing to come back.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Put the Driver Away<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re swing is out of rhythm, the driver is likely to be the worst club in your bag. If you&#8217;re off target with your short irons by 5 or 10 yards, you&#8217;re driver is going to be off by 20 or 30 yards and that means your ball could go anywhere off the tee.<\/p>\n<p>So leave the big dog in the bag and take out a club that&#8217;s a little easier to hit (maybe a 3-wood or a hybrid). Obviously, you&#8217;ll be giving up a little distance but at least you won&#8217;t end up out-of-bounds.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Avoid Penalty Shots<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Penalty shots are round killers, so avoid them. Simple as that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Play Conservatively<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re game is a little off, don&#8217;t take risky shots. If you end up behind a tree, just tap out. Don&#8217;t try to make some miraculous recovery, just take your medicine and move on. You&#8217;re probably not going to make many birdies but you&#8217;ll take doubles and triples out of play.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Accept the Bogeys<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Unless you&#8217;re a professional, you probably have your fair share of bogeys every round so if you make one, don&#8217;t get discouraged. Just take it in stride and move on to the next hole.<\/p>\n<p>Make it a goal before every round to come in without anything higher than than a bogey. If you can do that, your &#8220;off&#8221; days won&#8217;t be anything to write home about but they certainly won&#8217;t be anything to be embarrassed about either.<\/p>\n<p>Golf isn&#8217;t about &#8220;how&#8221;, it&#8217;s about &#8220;how many&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Golf isn&#8217;t about how good your swing looks, or how far you hit the ball, or how many birdies you make, or how many fairways you hit. It&#8217;s about how well you score. At the end of your round, there&#8217;s a number on your card and that number is the only thing that matters. All&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2149,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,483],"tags":[47],"class_list":["post-2135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf-tips","category-tips","tag-golf-scores","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2135"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8761,"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135\/revisions\/8761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}