A golfer explains how prioritizing where your ball lands over pure distance can drop your score fast. By aiming for safer zones and accepting shorter drives, you avoid penalties and hazards that cost you strokes. Juniors and amateurs see the biggest gains from this shift in thinking.
If you want to drive it better off the tee, you need to do what I would call guaranteeing yourself position. So it's kind of a vague concept, but the idea is when we think about driving off the tee, it's not necessarily about how far we can hit it off the tee. Sure, we'd like to hit it further if we can, but a lot of times, especially for junior golfers, amateur golfers, we're hitting it penalties and hazards way too often. So this is a more helpful frame, especially when you're playing in rougher conditions. What you want to do is just say, okay, where do I want this ball to finish, and then think my tee shot around that. And what you'll find is you'll have a lot more options available to you based on that kind of framework, and you'll be able to be more committed to whatever shot you end up choosing while also kind of being aware of, you know, maybe the better places to miss the ball. What ends up happening is you end up having a lot fewer penalty shots. Maybe you give up a little bit of distance on some holes, but all in all, you end up
