{"id":658603,"date":"2026-05-08T22:43:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T22:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/658603\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T22:43:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T22:43:09","slug":"this-is-1-of-the-biggest-differences-between-good-and-bad-golfers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/658603\/","title":{"rendered":"This is 1 of the biggest differences between good and bad golfers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to\u00a0Play\u00a0Smart<\/a>, a regular\u00a0GOLF.com\u00a0game-improvement column that will help you\u00a0play\u00a0smarter, better golf.<\/p>\n

Everyone wants to get better at golf. Even the best players in the world are always looking for any edge they can find to shoot lower scores.<\/p>\n

The problem with most recreational golfers is that they don\u2019t fully understand why they shoot higher scores than better players. Sure, they recognize the macro-level differences \u2014 longer drives, closer approaches, fewer putts \u2014 but they don\u2019t always understand how better golfers consistently put themselves in position for success.<\/p>\n

The latest Arccos Annual Distance Report<\/a> shed light on this topic, and it all starts with accuracy off the tee.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

“><\/p>\n

1 big difference between good and bad golf<\/p>\n

As you might expect, low-handicap golfers are more accurate off the tee than their high-handicap counterparts. But the gap between the two is smaller than you might think.<\/p>\n

According to Arccos\u2019 data, low single-digit handicaps (0\u20135) hit 50 percent of fairways across all age groups, while high-handicap players (30+) hit 40 percent. So, over the course of an average round, a low-handicap player will hit only one or two more fairways than a high-handicap playing partner.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s likely a much smaller discrepancy than you expected (it certainly surprised me). But if you dig a little deeper into the data, you\u2019ll see the biggest difference between these groups comes from the severity of their misses.<\/p>\n

Wayward drive percentage<\/p>\n

\"table <\/p>\n

Arccos Golf<\/p>\n

The table above charts the percentage of wayward drives across handicap groups, and it highlights one of the clearest differences between good and bad golfers.<\/p>\n

According to Arccos,<\/a> a \u201cwayward drive\u201d is any tee shot that results in either a penalty stroke or a recovery situation, such as a punch-out or layup. And as the chart shows, better golfers hit far fewer wayward drives than higher-handicap players.<\/p>\n

A low-handicap golfer hits only about 12 percent of tee shots into this wayward category, while high-handicap golfers hit 45 percent of their drives wayward. Over a typical round, that means a low-handicap player hits only one or two drives into serious trouble. A high-handicap player, on the other hand, hits six or seven wayward drives \u2014 nearly half of all tee shots.<\/p>\n

So what does this mean for you? If you want to shoot scores like a low-handicap golfer, you need to drive the ball like one \u2014 and that means keeping the ball in play. You don\u2019t need to hit every fairway, but you do need to avoid the big miss. Do that consistently, and lower scores will follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to\u00a0Play\u00a0Smart, a regular\u00a0GOLF.com\u00a0game-improvement column that will help you\u00a0play\u00a0smarter, better golf. Everyone wants to get better at golf.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-658603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}