Curious Golfer

A few days ago on the GolfChannel I heard that Ben Hogan expected to hit 7 bad shots per round.  This put me back in my seat because I thought that Hogan, being perhaps the best ball striker of all time, would hit far fewer bad shots per game.  If you assume that Hogan would likely shoot slightly under 70 most rounds, that would mean that just under 10%  of his shots in any round would be “bad” shots.

After hearing that Hogan tracked his bad shots, I decided that this would be a good thing to start tracking.  Considering that I normally shoot in the upper 80’s and am in no way similar to Ben Hogan, I figured that double the number of bad shots in a round should be a good starting point for me (of course, Hogan’s definition of “bad shot” is probably very different than mine, but its all relative).

The first round that I played after I heard this, I forgot to track my bad shots, but I shot 88 and had 30 putts.  I was happy with only having 30 putts, which is pretty good for me since my average putts per round is 33.8.  In contrast, on my next round I shot 83 and had 35 putts, so my ball-striking that day was pretty good.  In fact, I also calculated that I had 11 “makeable” putts and I missed every one of them (not a good putting day).  During this round, I did keep track of my bad shots and I counted 18 bad shots, which does not include any putts, so depending on how you count, this could have been 29 bad shots.  But I don’t expect to make 100% of my “makeable” putts and I prefer to track these two separately.

This was very surprising to me that I could miss 11 “makeable” putts AND also make 18 bad shots and still shoot what I consider to be a good round (better than my average), which has given me a whole new way to think about my golf rounds.  If I can make 18 bad shots and still shoot a decent score, then I should probably EXPECT to make 18 bad shots per round (or somewhere around there.  I will have a better idea of what it should be as I track this more often).  I have realized that if I set my expectations so that I expect to make that many bad shots per round, then that should take the pressure off.   In other words, realizing that my game doesn’t have to be perfect in order to score well, should eliminate any pressure to be perfect.

I am excited to see how this new realizaton affects my game.  Of course, in the short term, all of this will probably go to my head and I may shoot higher than normal as my excitement about this new outlook rattles around in my head on every shot.  In the long run, I expect that tracking my bad shots and incorporating an expectation for bad shots into my game, will probably improve my scoring.  Come back to find out.