Going from scratch to a plus

For those of you that are a good plus handicap (+3 or better) what did you do to get from being a scratch to that plus handicap?

The thought would be if you have a better swing you’d play better golf but I’d suspect that going from a good player to a great player requires more than just improving your swing. Did you improve your mental game, start practicing different, play more, etc.?

What was your journey like?

Did you start competing/wining amateur events?

I am trying to get there now. For me, short game (saving par from anywhere) and putting are huge. One way miss on driver, a good game plan, and not getting too up or down emotionally are right behind that.

I’ve only ever been plus once, and it was years ago

but I can tell you what I learned from my university coach

short game. X 4. Get amazing greenside from any lie, from inside 80 yards, and on putts inside 10 feet, that was his mantra (he was a +2 at 55)

also, I would add find one club and shot you can get into play with any action or pressure ... 240 on the fairway. Cut 3w, punch driver, etc etc

if you want +3 you must eliminate one side of the course with every swing ... that is a game changer when you can aim at woods or water left, for example, and know with certainty it will move right

I doubt that you're going to get many responses from people who are actually +3 players. I would assume those guys are probably on college golf teams which means they're either (1) in class, (2) practicing/playing or (3) doing some other thing college-aged young males do, LOL.

Seriously though, from what I can see of the guys around me at my club (many of whom work with my club's well-respected instructor), that's basically what we're talking about--young kids who are either prepping for or coming from college golf. So when you ask about the difference between quality golf (scratch) and excellent golf (+3), you're really talking about two entirely different worlds.

Being a +3 only happens when it's your job. If you're already a scratch player and you set about practicing with a routine that tightens you up and has you out there grinding Every. Single. Day. you will get to your peak. You will likely have to start tracking every shot and every up-and-down. You'll start looking at advanced statistics to figure out exactly what you need to work on (not just what you want to or think you should be working on). You'll likely be working with a coach who helps you gather and sort out that information. That person will also track your progress and help you set goals to maximize what strengths you have and to improve on your weaker areas (which are probably already pretty sharp).

Nobody playing casually (even a skilled player that used to be a +3) will ever maintain that level once golf stops being their job. I know guys who've been + handicaps and who now hover around the -2 to -3 range because golf has gone back to being a leisure activity for them post-college. The difference is not the person, it's the focus and dedication.

If you look at guys who are already around the scratch level (maybe a +1) who are entering college, most of what takes them to a higher level has something to do with short game. As was said above, that's about the only thing you can really improve on in the short term. Most players who are already scratch don't need a ton of swing work. Usually the low-hanging fruit is to be found on and around the putting green.

Outside of short game, I can tell you that most college golfers are working with some type of strokes-gained metric (e.g. Analysis of Variance or "anova") to determine precisely where they need the most help and where their practice time is best spent. This is the sort of level of detail it takes. You have to treat it like it's your #1 mission in life. It has to be your "job." That's the term an ex-college player used in speaking with me about it. He said at that point, he lived/died with his golf. A bad round would ruin his day. It needs to mean that much to you.

My journey started when I was 25. I went from a 4 hcp to +3.3 in 7 years.

2 primary reasons.

1 playing against better players regularly. I literally got to see what was possible. When I first moved to the area the pro put me in a group and a guy in the group had to give me 8 shots. He was +4. I didn’t even know that existed.

2 playing better courses. I played 2 primary courses during that time that were really good. Ones hosted a pga event for many years.

i was a working bloke and practiced 1-2 week nights and played most weekends. Then off for 4-5 months over the winter.

i don't know man. this doesn't seem quite right, especially the part about how you need a bad round to ruin your day if you want to be a +3. that seems like terrible advice. the best athletes i know have very short memories when it comes to failure. that doesn't mean they don't learn from their failures, they just don't dwell on them.

I completely disagree with the whole “job” thing.

two years ago I was a +3.6 and played once a week and might have chipped and putted twice a month.

now I play about 20 times a year and I’m a +.8.

it is utterly possible to play to a plus handicap if you know THE game and you know YOUR game.

now, to GET to that level it takes more time and dedication.

IMO it is ballstriking, especially with the irons and wedges. I’ve gone from 0 to a +2.5 by improving my iron game (only hit draws now) and wedge game (use a simplified “clock” method for distance control). My driving has got worse in this time but handicap has gone down by improving my approach play. Leads to a lot fewer bogeys. I play about 3 times a week and practice maybe once every ten days. I don’t agree with the assertion that you need to treat golf like a job to get to a plus handicap. I know a +3 handicap who plays twice a week and never practices. I also know a +6 who doesn’t play any more golf than I do, although they practice twice a week.

I'm going to say turning bogies into pars and being a good reader of greens. You gotta love the flatstick and convert your chances more.

Hey, everyone on tour and every plus can hit the ball. It's the last two shots on every hole that count, so be as good of a short iron player as you can be and the best putter you can be.

Practice using the worst club in your bag, not the one you like to hit the most.

Practice bad lies out of divots, hitting off of funky hills, learn how to turn the club over and hit left handed, hit massive curve balls, low screamers, super high wedges over trees, flop shots, fairway bunker shots, etc. That's how you turn bogies into pars or better.

You gotta hit two good shots on every hole. Think about that last sentence a lot...

Best I ever got to and maintained for any sort of period was a +2. For me it was not getting in trouble off the tee keeping it in play then good iron play. Short game does play a part but, to me it's not as important as eliminating those penalty shots off the tee and hitting greens. My handicap has been trending down as of late and when I look at my stats it's because my GIR and FW stats are way up. End of the day to go low you have to make putts but, even a bad day putting hitting alot of greens is going to be a good score.

I'm reporting to you what actual college golfers have told me. If you're going to treat the game as though it's that important, it's going to effect your mood. If one does nothing but play golf, it is in effect their job. And keep in mind these college golfers were all on scholarship so polishing their golf games absolutely 100% was their job and they lived with the stress of knowing they had to perform under the gun!

We're not talking about Rotella-type, hole-to-hole mental game stuff here. We're talking about larger, life-size stresses. I'm relaying what I've heard from guys who were actually under some appreciable weight and lived with a kind of stress the casual player doesn't ever feel outside of a putt on 18 during their weekend Nassau which can be erased with a few dollars payment.

Not only did these college players have to live with their failures not having any way to "pay that debt" but to try and get better but these were also kids who didn't necessarily know what they'd be doing 5 years down the line. So blocking everything out and focusing on golf had added pressure built in that again, the casual weekend player who gets his paycheck every other week thinks nothing about.

I agree that in golf we strive to have a "short memory" out on the course (obviously!) but what I'm trying to say is that at the level of a +3 or +4 college golfer, you will 100% go to bed at night thinking about shots you missed because they mean that much to you.

Now, you might say that not all +3 golfers are competitors in college but I don't know a single person at my club who's that good and who isn't a competitor that makes their living either as a college-level athlete or as a competitive golfer who works part-time.

Wow, if you could achieve a +3.6 without actually trying then it's scary to think of where your potential might've actually been! If you got to +3.6 without actually working at it, that suggests your potential is probably that of a Tour Pro. I'm not being sarcastic or anything either. That's insane, man, you must be impressive to watch!

Wouldn't you agree though that there's a big difference between achieving versus maintaining an elite handicap? If one has already done the work to achieve a given level of performance (and it sounds like you have), the maintaining of that performance usually only takes some small % of that original effort. It might only be 30%, for instance.

There seem to be countless examples of adult players past their prime who used to be elite sticks in college and who can play as little as 1 round every week or two and still post scores at (or just below) par. Maybe you're in that group? But obviously, it takes tremendous work to get to that point where upon one can still expect to shoot par even when they're not practicing at all.

Anyhow, I think it's definitely misleading to tell somebody that they can lower their handicap 3-4 strokes merely by practicing once a week and playing a little in between without making it abundantly clear how much prior work was involved.

Besides, you must've played everyday at some point in your life to achieve your level of skill anyhow. I haven't come across a single + handicap that didn't get to that handicap by way of playing virtually all the time as a teenager and ultimately spending time during their prime as a full-time player.

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Kinda agree with the "job" statement to a degree. Getting from 0 to a +3 was definitely like a "job". Maintaining it, in my opinion, is easier. I currently only play 1-2 times a week, and then every other weekend. But I practice efficiently. Quality over quantity.

As for my quest to a +3, I was just out of college, did not have a job yet, and spent all of my free time golfing and playing in tournaments. Practicing every single part of my game often, with the correct mental approach, got me from a 0 to a +3. I didn't have a coach, but I like to think I have a pretty good understanding of my swing and what I need to do to stay on plane. If you don't know your swing well enough to make your own swing changes, a coach is necessary. Next, there is a level your short game and putting need to be at. You can have good days and bad days (trust me I have a lot of bad days), but you need to be able to read greens correctly on putts and chips, and have significantly less 3 putts than a 0-3 handicapper. Next, I had a reliable tee shot. I don't hit the ball tremendously far (for a + handicap 275-285 carry is not far), but I keep the ball straight. I can choose a side to miss and I rarely lose a ball off the tee. If I need to be accurate, I have a hybrid that, when I feel confident, I can hit into a 10 foot circle. Lastly, and potentially the most important in my opinion, is contact with the irons. Some may call it being a ballstriker, but I like to think of it as just consistent, solid contact. Being able to pull a 5 iron from the fairway and hit it solid 10/10 times (not on the green 10/10, but solid to the point of not chunking it 10 yards short or skulling it over or slicing/hooking significantly).

we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

i know the mentality of an elite, focused player striving to peak because i've been in that position, at least with baseball. i started getting correspondence from MLB scouts when i was 13. by the end of high school i was working out with more than a half a dozen teams. i played ball with a bunch of former and current MLB players, including all-stars and cy young award winner. i hung up my spikes early/before my peak to pursue other opportunities in college, but i was projected to go in the first 15 rounds if i played beyond my redshirt freshman year. not great, but not terrible. if baseball had a handicap system i would've been well into the plus range.

as far as golf is concerned, i've played with numerous plus cappers in college programs, some mini tour guys, and a US open qualifier. they all had different attitudes and reactions to crappy days on the course. perhaps some of these guys attainted success by letting a crappy performance ruin their day and keep them up at night, but the most successful of the bunch i know were very good at letting things go. and this goes for all of the elite/professional athletes i know, not just golfers.

in the long-term, i highly doubt staying up at night to obsess about missed opportunities or letting job performance ruin one's day is a good strategy for success or mental health, whether in golf or any other serious pursuit. you're entitled to your opinion, but based on my personal experiences i don't agree with what you're saying at all. if anything, it sounds like a good strategy for burning oneself out.

Idk where the disagreement is here, but I can give some input and say that I definitely think about every shot post round and a bad day on the course when I need to perform well will most certainly put me in a bad mood (I'm not talking about crying myself home or a "dont talk to me for a day", just a regular bad mood). Now if it's a Tuesday after work and I play bad then so what, but if I'm prepping for a tournament for weeks and I play poorly, then I'm gonna be pissed about how I let all that go to waste and I would bet 95% of +3 handicaps feel the same way. Maybe being able to shrug off a bad day for an important round is what separates the tour pros from the mini tour guys, but I don't think it's what separates the 0's from the +3's.

What separates a real scratch, (not scratch in his own mind), from a plus handicapper, is consistency. They are both able to execute the same array of shots, the plus guy just hits good ones more often and bad ones less often. In other words there is no trick to becoming a plus handicapper. Just get better at everything.

Steve

mello just said "bad round", not "tournament round". and not just a "regular bad mood", a "ruin his day" kind of bad mood. these are important distinctions imo. the picture he painted was very dramatic in a live-or-die kind of way. my whole point is not every successful, elite, athlete acts like that -- it can be exhausting and counter-productive.

edit: getting away from conjecture, here's an interview with a competitive +2.5. the goods start at 15:14:

With all due respect, I don't think you and I are talking about the same thing.

I don't know a person in the world who doesn't feel major stress from their job. I'm relaying stories from guys who played college golf and who for all intents and purposes did it as their vocation. They had to show up and shoot scores just as I have to show up for work and submit engineering packages. It's stressful (at times). There's no getting around that.

The whole reason we talk about maintaining a positive mindset is that it's so easy to fall victim to the stresses of the pursuit. I know what you're saying and it's a valid goal, but every guy who's responsible for something is going to feel pressure and stress in a very big way. This is what often makes it feel like a "job."

To that end, I'm not saying we want it to feel like a job. That's the worst part, actually. We want it not to feel like a job. However, intense dedication and focus is going to be required for the OP and that'll add stress. That's pretty much a constant across any pursuit.

Now, if a casual golfer can maintain a +3 handicap all on their own with no real need to do it...well, good for them, but that's not common at all. Most +3 players are that good because in some way, shape or form they need to be. It's required of them.

Okay, I get it. I'm just saying that whatever they portray on the outside is one thing but you're making it seem like it's easy when it's very obviously not. Maybe they stayed calm, cool and collected on the course but that doesn't mean one can replicate that level of performance by simply mimicking those players' carefree attitude. That alone is obviously not what makes them that good.

I'm not down-playing the significance of having the proper attitude. I'm just saying that that sort of advice isn't going to help the OP in his pursuit of lowering his handicap, because there are real things he's going to have to do that aren't just about relaxing and going with the flow. He's going to have to fix real weaknesses in his game to lower his handicap by 3-4 strokes.

The stress and the pressure is going to get ratcheted up as he applies himself. That's when the stuff you're talking about will come into play. He'll have to figure out how to stay positive and focused on what's in front of him when the pressure is really on.

But I think what the OP is asking about is more fundamental. He's asking what he ought to do to ratchet up the pressure in the first place. He wants to know whether it's full-swing work, short-game work, putting work, playing, competing, etc. It's obviously all those things custom-tailored to his own personal game but he's asking for anecdotal info so I shared what I know about the good players I've met through my club, many of whom are/were college golfers in the + handicap realm.

As I said above, those players (and their coaches) analyze their results and their progress towards various goals in intricate, detailed ways by looking at real statistics which common/casual players simply don't. There's a level of professionalism going on there that I promise you isn't with most average players who look at general stats and really don't customize their practice around what are statistically weak areas.

ratcheting up the pressure without having a plan to deal with it is a bad approach in my opinion. as an engineer you should know this ;)

i think having a detached attitude is much more important than having a positive attitude -- e.g. the buddhist practice of observing without judging.

worrying or obsessing about something completely out of one's control -- like past performance -- isn't something i see in most successful athletes (or executives if you want to use work as an analogy). in my experience and from what i've been told by many others, this is a recipe for burn-out and unhappiness. it's important to be able to leave the office behind after a rough day.

and yes, this is a skill that many people need to work on. i never said it was easy. absolutely makes it easier to succeed though.

p.s. OP did ask about mental game...

My problem is after a bad round I care about it's not that I'm worried, stressing, or obsessing about the past round, it's more of a disappointment with myself because unlike a lot of things, I feel as though I do have direct control over my performance. Regardless of my mental issues, I think while mental control is definitely important and needs to be practiced, I don't think this level of mental fortitude needs to be there to reach a +3, and I don't know how to obtain that mental level since I care so much about my performance.

In all honesty...the answer is simple but the process is difficult....Hit it better and make some putts...make your swing better and scores will go down. Turn the 30 footer from 150 yards to 20ft or closer on occasion, hitting the green fairly consistently from 200yds, minimize any big blocks or hooks from the fairway leaving you crazy pitches, hitting more fairways or keeping driver misses playable, etc. Short game is great but it won't really lower your cap. It will help save bad rounds though. Next you have to make some putts....I prefer working on 5-6 footers on the practice green with only a chalk line...keep it simple in putting.

Conceptually it’s very easy. Improve on where you’re weak.

Might be mental approach, might be drive it better, etc.

I disagree. Two things help you score better and lower your handicap, 1 is fewer bogies, 2 is more birdies. The shot game is where we eliminate bogies. I've never played with a genuine + hndicp guy who didn't have a very good short game.

Steve

There probably aren't many of us on this board, but there are plenty that defy your description, above. I know twenty or more of them myself, all of whom are at least 30 (and up to 57) years old. Most have full-time jobs and most have families. They are the people who are, if not winning regional amateur events, are consistently making cuts and placing in the top 10 - 15 in whatever region (not city or state, but region) they play in.

They are absolutely out there, and it sounds like the OP wants to become one of them. :-)

A scratch already has a Relatively good short game. If you lower average proximity to the hole from 10-30 years by 25%, that’s huge, but really won’t affect score that much as make % on putts won’t improve significantly.

Unless you’re an ultra elite ball striking scratch who is awful at short game.

improving from 150-200 is most often what separates skill levels.

Hello there! Few questions for you, before I respond:

Are you wanting to get to this level yourself? Or are you just curious?If you are wanting to get to this level yourself:What is your current index?What is your current age?How long have you been playing golf?Do you play tournaments now?If so, do you play outside your club in city, county, and regional tournaments?What part of the country do you live in?Do you know anyone, personally, who has ever won, or finished in the top 10 in a regional tournament in your area?

One other quick question for the OP:

Are you concerned about actual indexes, or about what it takes to be a competitive amateur who is one of the best in your region? They are, ostensibly, one and the same, but practically, they can differ a bit because indexes are, in many ways, illusory. Once I know more about what your getting at, I can expand on that.

I'll just say this to start: I know a "+4.2" who is really a +2.0 and a +2.0 who is really a +4.5. They are both very good golfers, but one of them doesn't turn in all of his bad scores (a bit of a "vanity" capper) and the other somehow "forgets" to turn in some of his best scores....

Brian, would love to here more from you here once we figure out what the OP is actually getting at.... :-)