Your Best Golf May Still Be Inside 100 Yards
I’ve been around golf for most of my life, and like many golfers, my relationship with the game has changed as I’ve gotten older.
I may not play as many rounds as I once did. I may not hit the ball as far as I did years ago. But every golf season, I still find myself asking the same question:
How can I get better?
That question is what led me to create The Golf Scoring Zone.
We May Lose Distance. We Don’t Have to Lose Our Game.
Getting older changes golf.
The driver may not carry quite as far. The irons we hit into greens may have different numbers stamped on the bottom than they did 20 years ago. Flexibility, strength and mobility can change.
But there’s another side to getting older as a golfer.
We have experience.
We understand our games better. We can make smarter decisions. And most importantly, there are parts of golf where age doesn’t have to prevent us from improving.
We can become better from 100 yards and in.
We can improve our wedge play.
We can become better chippers.
We can learn to control our pitching distances.
We can become better putters.
And if we can do those things, we can still shoot lower scores.
That’s the idea behind The Golf Scoring Zone.
What You’ll Find Here
The Golf Scoring Zone is about exploring the skills, techniques, practice methods and equipment that can help recreational golfers become better where scoring really happens.
Short Game
We’ll look at everything from wedges and pitching to chipping, bunker play and distance control.
The goal isn’t to find one magical technique. It’s to understand our options and discover methods we can take to the practice green and test for ourselves.
Putting
Putting instruction can become surprisingly complicated.
Should the putter travel straight back and straight through? Should it move on an arc? Where should our eyes be? How important is face rotation? Should we change our putting stroke as we get older?
We’ll explore those questions along with practical ways to improve alignment, starting direction, speed control and consistency.
Training Aids
Golfers certainly aren’t lacking for training aids.
Putting mirrors. Gates. Alignment sticks. Chipping trainers. Strike boards. Putting mats. Nets. Launch monitors. And countless gadgets promising to fix practically every problem imaginable.
But do they actually help?
I’ll look at training aids from the perspective of a recreational golfer and ask practical questions:
- What is this training aid supposed to teach?
- How do you use it?
- Does it provide useful feedback?
- Can you use it indoors?
- Can you use it on artificial hitting mats?
- Is there an inexpensive DIY alternative?
- Is it particularly useful for an older golfer?
- And ultimately, is it worth buying?
Not every training aid will be right for every golfer—and sometimes two alignment sticks or a towel may accomplish the same thing as an expensive gadget.
Learning From the Short-Game Gurus
One of the fascinating—and sometimes frustrating—things about golf instruction is how often respected instructors appear to disagree.
Dave Pelz may teach one approach.
Stan Utley may teach another.
Other instructors have entirely different ideas.
Who is right?
Maybe more than one of them.
The Golf Scoring Zone will examine the philosophies of respected short-game and putting instructors, looking at where their methods differ, where they’re surprisingly similar, and what recreational golfers might learn from each approach.
The objective isn’t to declare one instructor the winner.
It’s to understand the ideas well enough to determine what might work for our own games.
Winter and Indoor Practice
For those of us who live where winter can put golf courses under snow for months, improving our games presents another challenge.
But winter doesn’t necessarily have to mean putting the clubs away.
We’ll explore ways to practice putting and the short game at home, in golf domes, indoor practice facilities and simulators.
We’ll also look at which training aids work particularly well indoors and how to create inexpensive practice setups at home.
Instead of starting over every spring, perhaps we can actually emerge from winter as better golfers.
Golf Fitness and Mobility
Improving inside 100 yards isn’t entirely about technique.
As we get older, maintaining mobility, balance, flexibility and strength can help us continue practicing and playing the game we enjoy.
The Golf Scoring Zone will explore practical golf-specific exercises, warm-ups and mobility work designed to help recreational golfers keep their bodies capable of playing the game.
This isn’t about becoming a fitness model.
It’s about staying capable of playing golf.
I’m a Golfer, Not a Guru
There’s something important you should know about this website.
I’m not a PGA teaching professional.
I’m a recreational golfer who has played the game for decades, studied it, practiced it, struggled with it, occasionally figured something out—and then sometimes wondered where that same golf swing disappeared to a week later.
In other words, I’m probably a lot like many of the golfers reading this site.
I’m still learning.
When I review a training aid, explore an instructional method or try a new practice drill, I’m approaching it from that perspective.
I want to know:
Can an ordinary golfer actually use this to get better?
I’m not interested in pretending that I’ve discovered the secret to golf.
I’m interested in learning from people who know the game, testing their ideas, examining the tools available to us and sharing what I discover along the way.
The Goal Is Simple
There will always be another new driver promising more distance.
And who doesn’t enjoy hitting a drive down the middle and watching it fly?
But eventually we have to get the ball into the hole.
That’s where The Golf Scoring Zone begins.
From wedge shots inside 100 yards to the final three-foot putt, there are opportunities everywhere to save strokes.
We may not be able to stop getting older.
We may not hit the ball as far as we once did.
But that doesn’t mean we’ve played our best golf yet.
Your best golf may still be inside 100 yards.