We're deep into the winter months now. If you live in a similar climate to me, we're still three to four months away before we can trade in the simulator for fresh air and green grass. Unfortunately, I haven't had much of a chance to hit the simulator this winter. But I have been playing plenty of EA Sports PGA Tour at home. Now a video game isn't going to fix your slice or get you swinging like all the pros featured in the game - but it can help you to be a better golfer by helping you with your course management.
For years, course management was the last thing that I would think about while out on the golf course. "There's the fairway, there's the flag" - and getting there with as few strokes as possible was the goal. And I have a feeling that a lot of golfers are the same way.
I'll be going through a bit of an overview on course management below, if you want to skip all of that and get right to how video games can help click here - although it does tend to link back together.
Course Management - Club Selection
Target selection is one of the biggest keys to good course management. And a key part of that is club selection.
I listen to a few golf podcasts, mostly The Sweet Spot and Hack It Out, and both of them frequently recommend taking more club. The reason both shows believe in golfers taking more club than they normally would comes down to one thing: mis-hits.
Most amateur golfers are not going to nail the club's sweet spot every time. We just do not have the face control to make that happen consistently. Missing the sweet spot by just a few centimetres could end up with you coming up short, hitting it offline, and maybe (probably) even both. By aiming for the back of the green rather than the pin you give yourself a higher chance to get your ball on the green with a well struck shot ending up on the back of the green and one you didn't quite get all of still having a good chance to make it onto the green, rather than making you wait one more shot to grab that putter.
So unless there's trouble behind the green that I could run into from being a little long, I'm using the yardage to the back of the green for my club selection. But what about where to aim? At what distance should we start taking on the pin directly? Well, to answer that you knowing how large your dispersion with each of your clubs is is a huge help.
Shot Dispersion and Target Selection
Shot dispersion refers to the area around your target where the bulk of your shots will land. Generally speaking, this area is larger for your long irons than it would be for your wedges.
My ShotScope watch gives me a bit of an idea of what my dispersion looks like with each club but, as the chart says, it's measuring my proximity to the pin. And I don't always aim for the pin.
This data can be helpful when figuring out where you want to aim your next shot but to be really sure where you might end up, you'll have to spend some time with a launch monitor. From my proximity data, we can see that with a pitching wedge in my hands I'll usually put my ball within 50 feet of the pin. Based on that number, it wouldn't be very wise for me to take on a pin tucked 20 feet from the edge. The smarter play would be to aim to the right of the pin to increase my chance of ending up on the green. This gets even more important when you come across a green guarded by bunkers or water as missing the green becomes far more punishing. My home course has some pretty small greens and because of that, I am almost always aiming for the centre of the green - as long as there's nothing greenside I'm trying to avoid.
It's all about minimizing the big score.
When aiming for the green, it's about choosing the right club and target to give yourself the best chance to hit the green and not about pin-seeking. And when it comes to tee shots it's not about always finding the fairway but avoiding trouble.
I've started thinking less about where I want the ball to go and more about where I do not want the ball to go. Off the tee I'm no longer aiming for the centre of the fairway - I'm aiming for the spot that's going to give me the best shot at hitting the green in regulation (or less).
For example, on a hole with a fairway bunker on the left-hand side, I'm going to aim down the right-hand side of the fairway rather than aiming for the middle. With that target, a miss left of the target will still likely end up in the fairway rather than in the trees or bunker. A miss right of the target would have me off the fairway but still leave me with a clear look at the green.
With that fair-way bunker on the left (hopefully) out of the picture, par can still be in play from the rough on the right. These choices are based on lowering the chance of ending up in trouble. But it can take a long time to see how choosing a safer target works out for you throughout the season. And if you only play once or twice a week, it can be even harder. But over the past two winters, I've noticed something: golf video games can be a great way to try out your course management ideas and see how they work.
How Can Video Games Help With Course Management?
The short answer to this is: repetition.
It can take a while to see how changes in your strategy will play out throughout your season - even more so if you aren't using a shot-tracking system like ShotScope. But what if you could play ten rounds in one day and see how things play out? Well, that's where video games come in handy.
Boot up your favourite golf game (I'm partial to EA Sports PGA Tour myself) and you can knock out an entire 4-round tournament faster than you could get around and play 18 holes in real life. And, more importantly, you have all those shots to see how they turn out.
If you're playing on a low difficulty, it's not too difficult to hit pin-seekers and fairway after fairway. Although you can still get a feel for how things like wind and elevation can affect your target selection. If you work your way up to higher difficulties, especially if you start playing on sim, you'll be able to see how mis-hits come into play more often and how choosing smarter targets can impact your strokes gained or lost.
Here on the "Tour" difficulty we get a great visual of where we are aimed with a circle showing our possible dispersion for a good shot. Much like real golf, a swing that is off-tempo might turn into a pull or a swing that's off-plane might slice so you need to account for that in your target selection.
Typically, I wouldn't choose a target that could put me in the sand trap. But, there was some wind at play. But this gives us a great visual for how smarter target selection can lead to better scores. Had I aimed for the centre of that sand trap then maybe I wouldn't have rolled off the left side of the green.
One thing you (probably) won't see pop up too much in this game though is missing the sweet spot. So, that handy tip about aiming for the back of the green from the boys at the Sweet Spot and Hack It Out may not be as easy to replicate and see play out. If you're anything like me you'd be more likely to overpower your shot than to come up short.
I decided to test out my theory in practice by playing one round on sim difficulty with super aggressive targets and playing another where I was always choosing the safe shot to see how the two scores compare. As we can see below there's a large difference. In real life, I'm not going to be putting up numbers like this but having fewer squares on the scorecard is a real possibility when you put yourself in good positions throughout a round.
A video game isn't going to help you with refining your swing -I'm not watching my little golfer on screen and getting ideas on how to improve my grip or how to start my downswing. But being able to see over and over again how picking smarter targets can lead to a better score, or at least not as high of scores, can be very valuable.
While I'm not going to have anything like a dispersion overlay in real life, ShotScope's new MyStrategy feature might be the next best thing. That feature allows you to plot out your tee-shots with your average distances and ShotScope's dispersion data they have for you. That dispersion data isn't perfect as there's no way for them to know where you're aiming, but it's definitely a handy tool when it comes to target selection that I didn't have before.
I plan on spending some time with a launch monitor before golf season gets going to get some more solid data to pair with the MyStrategy feature. Until then, I'll have to make do with practicing my course management skills through some good ol' video games. That should help me fine-tune my course management skills and really start Droppin' Strokes.
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