How to Shoot Lower in Golf

Shooting lower scores in golf is less about achieving a picture-perfect swing and more about making smarter decisions. You can drop five, ten, even fifteen strokes without any dramatic changes to your golf swing. This guide will show you how to start scoring better right now by focusing on strategy, an intelligent short game, and a smarter approach to practice.

Stop the Bleeding: Manage the Course to Avoid Big Numbers

The fastest way to lower your handicap isn't by making more birdies, it's by making fewer double bogeys (or worse). The dreaded "blow-up" hole derails countless good rounds. It almost always stems from a single bad decision that snowballs. Course management is your defense against this, and it’s all about playing the percentages rather than constantly trying to pull off the miracle shot.

Think "Boring" Golf

The pros make boring golf look incredibly exciting. What you don't always see is them aiming away from pins, taking less club off the tee to ensure they hit the fairway, and playing for the middle of the green. They minimize risk. You should too.

• Forget the Hero Shot: Your ball is in the trees. You see a tiny window to the green. The hero inside you wants to thread the needle. Don't listen. The high-percentage play is almost always to pitch it out sideways back to the fairway. Sure, the hero shot feels great when it works one out of ten times, but the other nine times? You're likely still in trouble and staring a big number in the face. A punch-out leaves you with a clean look at the green for your next shot. You trade a tiny chance at par for an almost guaranteed bogey at worst.
• Aim for Your Misses: Let’s say you’re a right-handed golfer who tends to slice the driver. A hole with water all down the right side is your nightmare. Instead of aiming down the middle and hoping for a straight one, aim down the left side of the fairway. If you hit it straight, you're fine in the left side. If you hit your typical slice, it will curve back toward the center. You just used your common miss to your advantage.
• Rethink the Driver: Hitting the driver on كل par 4 and par 5 is a trap. If a hole has a narrow landing area or trouble lurks at your standard driver distance, club down. Hitting a 3-wood or even a hybrid into the fairway at 220 yards is infinitely better than hitting a driver 250 yards into the woods. A shorter club off the tee increases your chance of finding the fairway, giving you a better opportunity on your next shot.

Master the Scoring Zone: 100 Yards and In

Roughly 60-65% of all your shots happen within 100 yards of the hole. This statistic alone should convince you that if you want to lower your scores, this is the area to sharpen. Spending more time here than on the driver will pay off much faster. You don’t need tour-pro technique, you just need reliable, go-to shots that get the ball on the green and close to the hole.

Find Your "Go-To" Pitch Shot

From 40 to 90 yards, trying to muscle up a full wedge or take a delicate half-swing during a round is very difficult. Instead, develop a "system" with one or two of your wedges.

Here’s a simple system to try:

1. Take your sand wedge.
2. Without a ball, take a few practice swings, focusing on swinging your lead arm back so it's parallel to the ground (like the 9 o'clock position on a clock face) and then swinging through to a balanced finish. It's a three-quarter swing.
3. Hit ten balls with this exact swing length and see how far they go on average. Let's say it's 75 yards. That's your 75-yard shot.
4. Now do the same thing, but swing your lead arm back only to a "waist high" position (roughly 7:30 on the clock). Hit ten balls and measure your average distance. Let’s say it’s 50 yards. That's your 50-yard shot.

By simply adjusting the length of your backswing - not the speed - you can develop predictable distances. This takes the guesswork out and replaces it with a reliable system you can trust under pressure.

Simplify Your Chipping

When you're just off the green, many golfers automatically grab their most lofted wedge. This is often the riskiest play. Lofted clubs have sharp leading edges that can dig into the ground, leading to ugly chunked shots. They also require a longer swing, which introduces more variables.

A much safer and more effective way to chip is to think "putt whenever you can, chip when you can't putt, and pitch only when you have to."

• The Chip-Putt Technique: Use a less lofted club, like a 9-iron or 8-iron.
• Set up like you're going to putt: narrow stance, ball in the middle, weight favouring your front foot.
• Use your putting stroke. Don't use your wrists. Just make a simple rocking motion with your shoulders.

The goal is to get the ball rolling on the green as quickly as possible. This shot is much more forgiving than a delicate flop shot and will lead to far more kick-in pars.

The Two-Putt Mindset: Stop Wasting Shots on the Green

Three-putting is a soul-crushing way to add strokes to your card. The secret to avoiding it isn't to think "I have to make every putt." The secret is to think, "My goal on this first putt is to make sure my second putt is easy."

Lag Putting Is a Skill

On any putt outside of 15 feet, your primary goal is speed control, not direction. A putt that is a bit off-line but travels the perfect distance will leave you a simple tap-in. A putt that is dead on line but 3 feet short or 4 feet past the hole leaves you with a pressure-packed second putt.

Practice lagging by picking a spot on the practice green about 30 feet away. Your goal isn't to hole the putts, but to get all of them to stop within a three-foot circle around the hole. This shifts your focus from just "making it" to controlling distance, which is the true path to eliminating three-putts.

Practice with a Purpose

We've all seen the golfer who buys the jumbo bucket of balls and just machine-guns through them with their driver for an hour. Don't be that golfer. Practice doesn't make perfect, purposeful practice makes progress. Mindlessly hitting balls builds bad habits and doesn't prepare you for the course.

Structure Your Range Session for Scoring

Instead of hitting 100 drivers, try a practice session that simulates playing a real round. A good rule of thumb is to spend 50% of your time on shots from 100 yards and in, 25% on mid-irons, and 25% on woods/driver.

A Sample Practice Plan:

1. Warm-up (10 balls): Start with a sand wedge, then an 8-iron, just getting loose.
2. Wedge Work (20 balls): Use your 9 o'clock and 7:30 swing system. Hit to a specific target. Focus on landing distance.
3. Mid-Irons (15 balls): Pick a specific target. Go through your entire pre-shot routine before every single shot. Imagine the fairway, the pin position, everything.
4. Simulate the Course (25 balls): Play your home course in your head. Hit a driver for the first hole, then the iron you'd have into the green. Hit your wedge for the par-3 third, and so on. This forces you to change clubs and targets just like you would on the course.
5. Trouble Shot Practice (10 balls): Finish by deliberately practicing a tough shot. Maybe a low punch shot under a tree or a high fade. Making this part of your routine builds confidence.

Know Your Game: Track Your Stats

You can't fix what you don't measure. Guessing about your weaknesses is a recipe for frustration. Saying "I was terrible today" isn't helpful. Knowing "I missed 7 out of 9 fairways to the right" is incredibly helpful. Tracking a few simple stats will provide a crystal-clear roadmap for improvement.

You don't need a complicated spreadsheet. On your scorecard, just make tick marks for a few key metrics:

• Fairways in Regulation (FIR): Did your tee shot on a par 4 or 5 end up in the fairway? (Yes/No)
• Greens in Regulation (GIR): Did your ball end up on the putting surface in par-minus-two strokes? (e.g., on the green in 2 shots on a par 4) (Yes/No)
• Putts Per Hole: Simply write down how many putts you had on each green.
• Penalties: Did you hit it out of bounds or in a water hazard?

After a few rounds, the patterns will be undeniable. If you're consistently under 25% FIR, you know your driver is a problem. If you’re averaging 38 putts a round, you need to be on the practice green. This data takes the ego and emotion out of it and shows you exactly where your time is best spent.

Final Thoughts

Improving your golf score is a game of inches, not yards. By focusing on course management to eliminate big scores, sharpening your skills inside 100 yards, and practicing with clear intent, you can make significant strides without ever overhauling your swing.

Of course, making smarter decisions on the course is easier when you have an expert in your corner. We've built Caddie AI to be that on-demand golf brain, ready 24/7. When you’re facing a tough tee shot on a new course or looking at a strange lie in the rough, instead of guessing, you can get a simple, strategic recommendation right on the spot. It's designed to take the uncertainty out of your game so you can play with more confidence and turn those frustrating rounds into successful ones.