Where You Actually Lose Strokes in Golf (It Is Rarely Your Driver)
Most golfers who shoot 90 to 105 blame the swing. But when you break a round down shot by shot, the strokes usually leak from three places, and none of them is raw swing speed.
The three leaks, in order
1. Penalties and re-tees
A ball out of bounds is not one bad shot, it is two strokes plus the psychological tax on the next swing. For most mid-handicappers, two or three penalty situations per round is 4 to 6 strokes. Nothing on the practice range pays off faster than picking targets that take the big number out of play.
2. The shots from 30 to 120 yards
Tour players get up and down; most amateurs take three or four from wedge range. If your typical hole is drive, mid iron, chunk, chip, two putts, the leak is not the drive. Count how many strokes you take once you are inside 120 yards. For most golfers it is more than half the round.
3. Three-putts from lag distance
Three-putting from 35 feet is not a putting stroke problem, it is a first-putt speed problem. Two or three of these a round is common and almost free to fix: your only goal outside 20 feet is to leave a tap-in.
How to find your own leak in 3 rounds
You do not need a launch monitor. For your next three rounds, record just three things per hole:
1. Putts. 2. Penalty strokes. 3. Strokes taken from inside 120 yards.
After three rounds the pattern is usually obvious, and it is usually not what you expected. The golfers who improve are the ones who fix the leak the data shows, not the one the range ego picks.