No matter who you are, being able to improve your golf score is desirable. For some, a dream come true would be to finally break 70 in golf score. To get your score down into the sub-70’s, you will need to do many things.
Figuring out what these things to do are is not obvious to everyone wanting to improve at golf. Therefore, you may wonder: how do you improve your golf score?
In this article, we will tell you exactly how to improve your golf score thanks to our 9 pro tips.
How To Improve Your Golf Score?
You can greatly improve your golf score by setting a practice schedule, getting golf lessons, working out, having a good diet, resting enough, improve your golf course management skills, filming your technique to critique yourself, going for aggressive shots off the tee and by living like an athlete.
Depending on how lofty your goals are, improving your golf score will require a varying amount of elements and hard work. Breaking 70 will be a lot harder than breaking 100, and will require that you can to succeed and improve.
How much time and effort you decide to put into golf is up to your discretion, but one thing is certain: the more smart work you put in, the better you will get at golf.
Down below, you can read our 9 pro tips to improve your golf score. Feel free to use as many as you want in your own game. Remember that you may need to use all of these if you dream is to become a professional golfer.
9 Pro Tips To Improve Your Golf Score
Down below are 9 pro tips destined to make you a completely different golf player and revolutionize your abilities. With enough hard and smart work, you will become a completely different golfer if you follow these tips.
#1 Set A Dedicated Practice Schedule
To get better at golf, it does wonders to have a dedicated practice schedule. This means that you actively block out time in your week to go practice golf, even if you do not necessarily feel like it.
For example, to break 70, you need to consistently be practicing, both on golf courses, and at the driving range.
The driving range allows you to practice shots with small time intervals in between each shot, allowing for time-efficient swing practice.
On the other hand, practicing at the golf course is where you put what you learned to use in a higher stakes situation with more variation in shot difficulty.
You should practice as much as possible without overtraining or risking injury. A good starting point from which to start if you truly want to improve is the following:
-Driving range practice 2-3 times a week
-Play 2-3 rounds of golf per week
If you notice you are not recovering quickly enough, you can lower the number of practice sessions. If you feel you still have some golf in you and can safely do more, add another session at the driving range or the golf course.
If your goal is not to break 70 or 80, you can definitely practice a lot less. Shape your practice schedule to reflect your goals and how fast you want to reach them.
#2 Get Golf Lessons
Getting golf lessons is one of the most beneficial things you can do for your golf game, even if you do not realize it until after you try them.
Even though there exist some bad golf coaches out there, there are many decent ones, and some great ones. Find a good golf coach to give you lessons, and you will thank yourself for how much your performance improves over time.
It can be so incredibly helpful to have a good golfer who is more experienced than you look at your technique from an outside perspective.
Seriously, you may have been performing the same bad habit in your swing for years, such as early extension, but it only takes a decent coach noticing your error once for you to remember to never do that bad habit again.
There exist both private and group lessons. If you would like to read more about golf lessons, read our guide: How Much Do Golf Lessons Cost?.
#3 Work Out And Develop Your Flexibility
Your body is the conduit through which you affect your golfing performance, so it only makes sense to take care of it, and improve it over time. One way to drastically improve your body is to work out and develop your flexibility through resistance training and stretching.
Resistance training will improve your muscle strength, which will give you more power with which to swing your club and hit the ball. A long drive golfer like Bryson DeChambeau works out generously to increase his power.
This increase in power power can easily add a few tens of yards to your carry distance off the tee, which can save you some strokes, thus lowering your golf score.
You can check out our golf specific gym workout here: Golf Specific Gym Workout.
On the other hand, improving your flexibility will reduce your risks of injury, and give your joints more range of motion, leading to more comfortable and fluid swings.
#4 Get A Good Diet And Nutrition
Without a good diet and nutrition, you will feel sluggish, recover slower from exercise, and have a hard time building muscle. Remember that exhausted sensation you feel after you eat a burger from a fast food chain. Not so great, huh? This is what you want to avoid.
Adopting a good nutrition and diet plan is quite helpful to be a great athlete and golfer. The right nutrition will allow you to feel more energized, to recover more quickly, and make muscular gains as you work out.
Focus on eating a good and healthy diet that will provide the necessary building blocks (like protein) for your body to grow and perform at an optimal level.
#5 Rest Sufficiently
Resting is extremely important and it comes in multiple forms. Some forms of resting include yoga, massages, not performing excessive amounts of exercise, sleeping enough (at least 8 hours per night), and eating the right foods.
Without rest, you will feel exhausted, and your body will not have what it needs to recover. Without rest, your body cannot heal and grow stronger from your training.
Rest sufficiently, and you will increase the value of the practice and hard work you put in. You will also feel energized, excited and highly-motivated to improve your golf scores day in and day out.
#6 Improve Your Golf Course Management Skills
If you have not already implemented effective golf course management notions inside your game of golf, then what are you waiting for?
Effective golf course management is the set of all decisions you take on a golf course, from the club you choose to the direction you aim, and so much more.
Some decisions are objectively better than others, but which one is best highly depends on the golf course you play on and the specific shot you are playing at any given moment.
To learn the fundamental notions of great golf course management, read our guide: How To Master Golf Course Management?.
#7 Film Your Technique To Discover Potential Improvements
If you cannot find a good coach for lessons, or cannot afford one, the next best thing you can do is to get a camera and film your technique from multiple angles.
After getting footage of your technique, you can rewatch it, slow it down, or pause it and compare it with the technique of gifted professional players like Tiger Woods. Comparing your technique to that of technically excellent players will help you find the flaws in yours.
After you find your flaws, you can address them and fix them consciously the next time you practice. Over time, you will find your technique resembles more and more that of professionals, which will increase your performance and lower your score.
Try experimenting by filming your swing technique from different camera angles, and you will find more success.
#8 Go For Aggressive Shots Off The Tee
If you are a beginner, you should disregard this pro tip, as you should instead focus on limiting the amount of mistakes you take by going for safe, high percentage shots.
However, if you are a really good golf player who wants to improve their score, then your skill level is high enough to go for riskier, more aggressive shots off the tee.
An aggressive shot off the tee is a tee shot that will land the golf ball in the best set-up location possible for your next shot. These shots often some land the ball several yards closer to the green than a safe shot would, and can give you a better line of sight.
For example, without going for the perfect set-up for your next shot, you may have some trees in your line of sight on your second shot. Landing your ball on the edge of the fairway to get a great, unobstructed view of the green on your second stroke can be amazing to lower your score, provided you have the skill to pull it off.
There is not much room for error in such a scenario, as your ball could easily end in the rough if you use too much power.
Remember that performing aggressive shots requires considerable skill and excellent ball control, as your target is closer to the rough and other hazards. As your skill level improves, you will feel comfortable pulling off riskier and more aggressive shots.
#9 Adopt An Athlete Mindset
To become an athlete or professional golfer, you usually have to think and act like an athlete. This is called adopting an athlete mindset.
To illustrate this point, most golfers who are capable of breaking 70 are legitimate athletes in some way, shape, or form. Therefore, if you would like to lower your golf score to professional level, you would benefit in adopting an athlete’s mindset.
Adopting this mindset implies living your life like an athlete would: sacrificing late night parties for sleep, junk food for nutritious food, certain hobbies for golf practice, watching funny shows to watch golf tutorials and read instructional articles.
Athletes who succeed make more sacrifices to become good at their sport than many people realize. If you truly wish to improve at golf dramatically, living like a golf athlete will do wonders. However, beware that even if you do everything correctly, there is no guarantee you will be the best, but you will become excellent.
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Conclusion
There you go! After reading this article, you have discovered exactly how to improve your golf score. To accomplish this, we shared 9 pro tips with you that will have you lowering your score to the sub-90’s, sub-80’s and maybe even the sub-70’s in no time!
What is your golf score goal to hit? What is your current best golf score? Let us know in the comments down below!
