“You’re consistent. You just consistently suck.”
This was a comment I made to a friend during a recent round. Not at him, but more a general statement for anyone looking for more consistency in golf. That includes me.
The point I wanted to get across is that golfers are consistent already.
- If you 3-putt six times a round, you consistently 3-putt.
- If you average 8 out of bounds or drops per round, you consistently hit and lose strokes to unplayable shots.
- If you chunk every other iron shot, you consistently hit your irons poorly.
You’re consistent but maybe not in the way you want. I would argue that what you want instead is to play more predictable shots and shoot lower scores. This comes down to improving dispersion and strategy.
You’re probably thinking I’m splitting hairs. Maybe I am. Give me a couple minutes to change your mind. Either way, you should leave this article better than when you first landed here.
Where Does Inconsistency in Golf Come From?
Inconsistency on the golf course comes from mistakes or decisions that lead to unpredictable outcomes. It’s variance and volatility.
For example, say your normal 8i goes 140 yards, but you have a tendency to chunk 20% of your iron shots. So eight shots will go about 140 and the other two will vary from 80 yards to 130 yards.
This significantly impacts your ability to play good golf. For one thing, your original plan is no longer any good. You now need a new one since your ball didn’t land where you wanted it to.
Other than losing strokes on distance, you might also compound your problem by landing in a hazard. Say you needed 120 yards to clear water or a bunker. Your 8i should have been plenty of club, but you chunked it and now you lost a stroke to it landing in the water.
Or say you have a tendency to hook your driver. Many fairways I play on are 30-60 yards wide with trees or houses lining at least one side. You can try to compensate for that all you want, but if you don’t know exactly how far your ball will go when you hook it, you can’t plan your next step.
It is hard to play consistent golf when you can’t put your ball where you want (within a reasonable dispersion — because we’re not snipers, we’re using shotguns).
Okay, so when you drill down, where does inconsistency for golfers really come from?
- Poor ball striking
- Bad swing mechanics or matchups
- Suboptimal course management and strategy
- Guessing
Poor Ball Striking
If you cannot find the center of your club face and deliver the club the same way each time – no matter how inefficient your swing might be – you will struggle to find consistency in your golf game.
Inconsistent ball striking forces you to try to play a longer and wider dispersion on every shot. Instead of playing a 20 yard left-to-right dispersion and 10 yard front to back dispersion on your 7i, imagine playing double that.
As noted in the example, that impacts your ability to come up with and execute on a good strategy. Should you take more club? Should you take less? Will a 7i work? Who knows.
Front to back dispersion feels easier to manage than left to right, though. Dealing with curvature (slices and hooks) is tough because you’re unable to control how much spin there is. So some shots might curve a little bit and go a long ways and others will curve a lot and kill all your distance.
To tighten this up, you need to work on club face control at impact and your low point. The more you can improve both of these, the more predictable your shots will become.
Bad Swing Mechanics or Matchups
There is a lot of overlap with poor ball striking. However, it is possible to play good, consistent golf with an inefficient swing. For example, look at Adam, the guy behind the Not a Scratch Golfer YouTube channel. His golf swing isn’t efficient — he’s got much more in the tank — but he has a single digit handicap.
His golf swing is fugly too, as are the swings for many golfers — some of them tour pros. The point I’m making is that you don’t need to have a pretty or efficient swing to play consistent golf.
What you do need is a repeatable swing with decent mechanics or matchups. What do I mean by this? It’s easier if I explain what you don’t want to happen.
For example, if you roll the club inside and get way under plane in your backswing, you’ll likely lift your arms. This isn’t a good matchup because you won’t have any time to shallow the club. You’ll come over the top and will probably early extend to give yourself room to swing the club.
You have to time this. This is tough to do and so what happens is that you deliver the club with so much variance. Any given shot has a club face that is open or closed by several degrees. Your low point is several inches behind or in front of the ball. Your swing path varies wildly. All this leads to a shot dispersion and shape that you can’t predict.
This makes it hard for you to be a consistent golfer.
If you have a fugly swing that works, great. If you have an inefficient swing that works, use it. But if you have a swing with poor matchups that forces you to compensate to time things at impact, you should get a lesson or record your swing so that you can fix it.
Suboptimal Course Management and Strategy
Another thing that adds volatility and variance to your golf game are the decisions you make. You’ll find that some decisions have a higher probability of success than others.
For example, say your tee shot landed in some trees. You have two or three options here.
- You can punch it out laterally into the fairway. You lose a stroke but you’re back in play.
- You can try to advance the ball diagonally. You will still likely lose a stroke or nearly a stroke, but your ball is closer to the pin which is ideal.
- You can try to thread your ball through a 10 foot wide gap between two trees. If it goes to plan, this will allow you to advance your ball the most and lose the least strokes.
Which option do you go with?
I believe that even pro golfers lose strokes in spots like these. You’re nowhere near as good as they are. So if you’re going to lose strokes anyway, doesn’t it make sense to minimize the damage?
Put another way, trying to thread a couple of trees has the highest risk/reward. The risk is so much higher compared to the other options and the success rate is so much lower. By default, I’d say either of the first two options are the way to go.
This is one of many decisions you’ll make on the golf course. They won’t always be as clear as this, as far as which one is statistically better. That’s something you might want to hire a golf coach for or something that will come in time.
However, what I hope you can see now is that your ability to play consistent golf is largely impacted by the decisions you make on the golf course. The higher the odds of succeeding, the less volatility and variance you’ll experience, thus the more consistent you should be.
Guessing
By this I mean you don’t know certain things.
- Your yardages for your clubs
- How far your bump and runs go for each club
- Yardage to a flag
- How shots are impacted by different lies, slopes, types of grass, etc.
When you don’t know these things, then your shots become more unpredictable. When you can’t predict where your ball will go, it’s hard to strategize and plan, and therefore play consistent golf.
Some of this will come with time. You need to play on different lies, grasses, slopes, etc. over many seasons to get an idea of what your ball will do.
As for the other stuff, you need to figure that out. Know your yardages, have a system (like a clock or percentage system) for your short game shots, and so on. You should have a handle on all the things you can control.
The more things within your control and that are consistent, the more consistent your golf game will be.
Final Thoughts on Consistency in Golf
I don’t know if I’ve convinced you that your golf game is already consistent and that what you’re really looking for is better ball striking, strategy, and swing mechanics. Those things ultimately lead to tighter dispersions and less volatility and variance. This will lead to fewer mistakes and unpredictable shots, thus leading to a more predictable golf game.
If anything, I hope I showed you a new way of thinking about this desire that so many golfers put on a pedestal. I’ve heard so many golfers say they want more consistency and yet they don’t seem to understand that consistency isn’t a thing you can directly fix or improve. You need to dig a little deeper, find the things that might be leading to more variance in your game, and then improve that.