Golfshake Weekly Round Up 3rd May

If you are based here in the UK you may have been lucky enough to get back to back extended weekends of golf.  With 10000s of rounds added over the last few weeks I've been doing some serious number crunching for this weeks newsletter, see below, so be sure to track your scores on Golfshake.

If you are looking for a course to play then check out our UK golf course guide and the interactive course search plus the Golfshake top 100 golf courses.
 

Number Crunching 1 million rounds

With over 1 million rounds of golf to analyse from social and competitive play it's surprising how there really are trends in terms of playing ability and more importantly dropping your handicap.

The 18+ handicappers drop on average 1.3 from their handicap every 7 rounds, the mid teen handicappers drop more regularly but only 0.8 every 5 rounds and those exclusive single figure golfers find it much tougher to maintain with an average drop of 0.5 every 11 rounds.

So along with some serious practice and regular golf how can you begin to lower your handicap ?

1. Track Your Scores

Tracking your scores is a sure fire way to pin point your weaknesses on the way to lowering your handicap and don't forget even the Pros do it.

Our analysis continues to show that tracking your scores online along with some hard graft and regular golf will save you on average 3 shots on your handicap over the year.

2. Focus on the Approach

Whilst it's important to get off the tee and hit the fairway, 21+ handicappers average a respectable 60% of Fairways in Regulation compared to a very close 70% for 15-20 handicappers. The more important statistics to help the higher handicapper is Greens in Regulation where those stats change drastically to 28% and 56% for the 21+ and 15-20 ranges respectively.

3. Put 3 Putts to one side

The Golfshake averages show that high handicappers 3 putt 20% of the time, that's almost 4 holes, compared to 10-14 handicappers only doing it once every other round.

Ruling out the 3 putts will serve all golfers well in reducing the shots per round and more importantly the handicap but to truly reduce your handicap and get down to the elusive single figures then averging 31 putts or less is the benchmark for single figure golfers and 29 for those below 5.  On the Pro tours the worse putters only just creep above 30 putts with the best at around 27 putts per round.

Everyone's heard the saying 'Drive for Show, Putt for Dough'  and with most golfers taking at least 33% of their shots on the putting surface something must be said for putting practice.

Community Round Up

To check out the latest scores, reviews and compare your scores & stats on the virtual leaderboard then check out the Golfshake community secion.

2011 BunkerFEST

BunkerFEST2 is taking place 8-9th May at De Vere Belton Woods, Grantham, Lincolnshire and where else can you take part in 2 days golf with the GONG in the Lake Challenge ?  Visit www.bunker-mentality.com or call 0115 989 0970

 

---

Swing well and see you on the fairways soon.


Darren.