Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game-improvement column that will help you become a smarter, better golfer.
Golf technology has taken almost all of the guesswork out of the game. With all the gizmos and gadgets out there, you can get an answer for your swing flaw, or diagnose a weakness in your game, more quickly than ever before.
One such piece of technology is the Arccos shot-tracking system. These trackers are great for recreational players as they document each shot during your round and give you strokes-gained analytics so you can compare yourself against other players at similar skill levels.
Arccos’ system has tracked over a billion shots from an assortment of golfers of all skill levels. This is not only useful on the micro level to help golfers improve, but it can also tell us a lot about the game in the macro sense. One such insight comes from Arccos’ Driving Distance Report, which you can read in full here. In it, there’s tons of great insights, which you can use to help improve your own game.
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One of the coolest elements in Arccos’ report is the driving distance summary. In it, we can see that amateurs are driving the ball just about the same distance as they were since the company began tracking this data in 2018.
Obviously, hitting the ball longer off the tee will always make the game easier. But for those who just can’t seem to hit the ball any farther, there’s still an easy way to shave strokes off your scores — and it all has to do with your accuracy off the tee.
While it’s true that your fairways hit percentage likely will decrease as you hit the ball longer, it’s still important that you keep the ball in play.
According to Arccos’ report, low single-digit handicaps hit just 12 percent of their drives wayward (i.e., resulting in a penalty stroke or recovery situation). As golfers’ handicap indexes increase, so, too, does their wayward drive percentage.
What does this tell us? First off, it shows that lower handicap players know how to avoid trouble better than higher handicaps. And it also shows that your handicap has a strong correlation with your ability to keep the ball in play.
So, next time you’re at the driving range, work on reigning in the big miss. If you can avoid hitting the ball out of play or into trouble situations, your handicap is sure to drop.
