How many shots are you really happy with during a round??

For me it's usually just a couple that I would bank as pretty much what I was trying to do. Today I only had 1.

On average I make abut four shots a round that remind me that once I could play this silly game.

Very few.  I think as you improve you are more interested in the exectution but as a beginner the final position of the ball is all that matters

Childish ,let it go marshall

Patric, understand your perspective of a good shot as every solid contact shot must feel great i can remember them days

For me to actually really get full satisfaction from a shot it has to be excatly as visualised it in my mind,  from strike, trajectory,shape and finish. I may hit many good shots what I call Ryan Air's (great flight lands no where near your destination) . I rarely get excited by my driver it generally perfoms well but to be honest rarely does what I visualise as there so difficult to shape. Now my persimmon's different story.

Dave,

I think the one where you told me to play a little fade just right of the big tree at your course the other week & it came out exactly as it was called & ended 4 feet from the pin.

I get about 4 of those a round if I'm lucky. Funnily enough I get more with putts. If I read the break well & hit my intended line & it goes in then I'm happy  

Yes John,It was a very good shot, I sometimes walk of the course feeling better about someboddy else's shot rather than my own. A couple come to mined (other than some exceptionally talented players I get to play with) recently Peter Wilson played a fantastic 4 iron around 200yrds into the heart of the green at the West Mids Qualy pretty impressive from a 22 hcp'er in difficult conditions.The other Dean Elliott another 4 iron (which I built ) hit in very close from around 200yrds I told him to hit it and where to hit it and it was perfect , again higher hcp off 18 who say's you cant play a balde club off 18 I really couldn't of hit it any better. 

Interesting post. It is worth reading Dr Bob's chapter on How Memory Works in 'Golf is not a game of Perfect'.  The expectation is that we play well in any given round and therefore a good shot is not memorable as it is just playing to how we expect to perform whereas bad shots tend to stick in the memory far more and these memories are potentially destructive to one's game.  The practice of recording to the n'th degree the statistics for rounds can also be counterproductive as it can reinforce the negative rather than the positive.

Dr Bob suggests actually recording the great shots you play in a notebook and reliving them regularly to reinforce the positive memories and the feeling of playing well.  I have recently started to try this.  In the last game I played at Sandown and Shaklin GC on the Isle of White last week I have recorded 5 shots which I considered to be really great. There were others that were okay but five stood out as exceptional.  The best was a long tee shot to centre fairway with a fade around the moderate dogleg.

Might actually make a useful extra bit of functionality to be able to record more extensive notes against a round where such positives could be recorded?

I can remember good shots from when I first started playing, no need for me to keep a record of them.

I can also tell you where each of my partners played their shots from on every hole of a game and what they scored after the game.

The shot by Dean Elliot that Dave L mentioned was on the 15th at South Winchester, where after a good drive he hit his second into the trees on the right. Dave then told him to drop another, take the four iron and the shot was fantastic, beautifully struck to the green.

I have an incredible photographic memory and somehow manage to be able to retain myriads of useless information.

I can honestly say that it used to be about 10 to 15 but lately its about 2! Yesterday the said 2 did not appear until the 18th when I was contemplating jacking the bloody game in!!

For those like me with a relatively poor memory, making notes of great shots may have some benefit. I can remember most games and certainly all the courses I have played. I'd love to have a memory like yours John.

One memorable shot of mine was a 300yd drive off the 15th at South Winchester when playing with you John last year. The hole was memorable too for the pigs breakfast I made of holing out for a 7 after pitching over the green and nearly taking Mr Marshall snr's head off on the 16th tee.

Passed by Winchester yesterday on the way back from the Isle of White and thought of the course. Would like to play there again someday but it is rather a long drive from Southend just for golf.

Yes Andy, I remember how you managed to snatch a disaster from so far down the fairway, although, to be fair, you did strike the ball extremely well that day.

I reckon 4 to 5 a round. to be counted they have to be struck right out of the middle of the club, the distance needs to be right and the ball needs to to land where I wanted it to. If I want to land the ball 10 feet right of the flag and it lands 10 feet left then it may look like a good shot to my playing partners, but to me I have missed my target by twenty feet, so the result is ok but the shot does not make my list. I played this weekend and on the 11th hole I hit a perfect lay up shot on a par 5 with a seven iron this enabled me to hit a reasonable wedge shot close to the flag and I made birdie, but it was the lay up shot that went in to my list, because it landed exactly where I wanted it to far enough back to hit a full wedge and right of a large tree and right edge of the fairway to open up the green to attack the pinbut not two far right to go out of bounds. Then on the 18th I hit a seven iron fat it landed twenty feet short of the green, but ran up to about 6 feet from the flag giving me a birdie putt, so although the result was good the shot was crap. didnt make my list of 4 to 5 good shots in that round.  

Good post Russ , I don't imagine you hit too many fatties

I think that the higher your handicap, the more good shots you are likely to have. Let me explain. When you start this game you are made up to get a par on a long par 4 so therefore your happy with all 4 shots. As your handicap comes down your expectations rise so that on the same long par 4 you expect to go further with your drive, closer to the pin with your second and hopefully 1 putt. When this doesn't happen and you know you have the ability to do it you may feel that the 4 shots you have just taken are not as good as previous times when infact they have just done the same job. I tend to look at the round overall and then decide if I was happy with the way I played most of my shots. If the total number of shots did the job then yeah I'm happy. I do hate starting with a birdie as my confidence goes sky high and I try and go for everything after that, usually with disasterous results.

I'd say i make at least one good shot per round ;P but most of my shots ain't usaully very accurate so i play my short game to get my accuracy up to standards

Sweet indeed, Lewis, accuracy with distance, 145 with an 8 is within your capabilities, but not mine.

Lewis did you sink that putt? If so do you count that as a good strike?

Dave CAC handed Geordie.