What it *really* takes to get to scratch

I'm proud of my friend and colleague Alex Myers, who is fully in the thick of it right now.

Alex has always been curious about golf swing stuff. He's also naturally gifted with some stellar hand-eye coordination, and one of those golfers who has always figured out how to do the important stuff well.

Alex got some help with his game along the way, and it served him well. He landed in what I consider the sweet spot of golf: The 3-to-4 handicap range.

Then he decided to chase a scratch handicap—and launch an entire series around it.

The series itself is great, because it captures in real time the truth about what it takes to make that jump: 

You need to start caring about things beyond golf like fitness

You need to balance speed training with accuracy

You need to try things, and learn what doesn't work for you

You need to get comfortable making constant tweaks to your game

Getting to low single digits is about refining your game, and doing the simple stuff well.

Getting to scratch is about raising your ceiling, taking in a bunch of new information, then learning how to filter it all out to find what works for you.

Once again, it's a great series, here's Alex's latest from it...

7 (more) things I learned caddying in a pro tournament

By Alex Myers

What You Need to Know

Speaking of strange things you have to start caring about if you want to get to scratch...

The laws of ball flight, arguably the most important thing. What is the difference between a fade, a block, and a push-cut? All three shots ended up right, but they're all caused by different things. This ball flight finder can help you decode it all.

This is a game improvement newsletter, but pardon me if I take a slight detour to highlight the Young Team's epic Seitz Cup victory last week. I was captain of the Young Team this year, and what a glorious victory it was.

As for a game improvement angle, I don't really have one. But doing the pairings, I was thinking how stark the difference is on approach shots between higher and mid handicaps. Approach shots; hitting greens in regulation; getting near the green in regulation; that's priority one if you're trying to get from 90s into the 80s.

How do you do that, you ask?

Getting better from the fairway means, above all else, learning to hit the ball solid. Luckily, you can practice that stuff. Coach Adam Young has gone deep into the research around this, and the key is to keep switching things up for every golf ball you hit. Different clubs; different start positions; different locations on the clubface. Get good at learning how to do things differently, and the results will be more consistently the same. 

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