This is 1 of the biggest differences between good and bad golfers

Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game-improvement column that will help you play smarter, better golf.

Everyone wants to get better at golf. Even the best players in the world are always looking for any edge they can find to shoot lower scores.

The problem with most recreational golfers is that they don’t fully understand why they shoot higher scores than better players. Sure, they recognize the macro-level differences — longer drives, closer approaches, fewer putts — but they don’t always understand how better golfers consistently put themselves in position for success.

The latest Arccos Annual Distance Report shed light on this topic, and it all starts with accuracy off the tee.

“>

1 big difference between good and bad golf

As you might expect, low-handicap golfers are more accurate off the tee than their high-handicap counterparts. But the gap between the two is smaller than you might think.

According to Arccos’ data, low single-digit handicaps (0–5) hit 50 percent of fairways across all age groups, while high-handicap players (30+) hit 40 percent. So, over the course of an average round, a low-handicap player will hit only one or two more fairways than a high-handicap playing partner.

That’s likely a much smaller discrepancy than you expected (it certainly surprised me). But if you dig a little deeper into the data, you’ll see the biggest difference between these groups comes from the severity of their misses.

Wayward drive percentage

The table above charts the percentage of wayward drives across handicap groups, and it highlights one of the clearest differences between good and bad golfers.

According to Arccos, a “wayward drive” is any tee shot that results in either a penalty stroke or a recovery situation, such as a punch-out or layup. And as the chart shows, better golfers hit far fewer wayward drives than higher-handicap players.

A low-handicap golfer hits only about 12 percent of tee shots into this wayward category, while high-handicap golfers hit 45 percent of their drives wayward. Over a typical round, that means a low-handicap player hits only one or two drives into serious trouble. A high-handicap player, on the other hand, hits six or seven wayward drives — nearly half of all tee shots.

So what does this mean for you? If you want to shoot scores like a low-handicap golfer, you need to drive the ball like one — and that means keeping the ball in play. You don’t need to hit every fairway, but you do need to avoid the big miss. Do that consistently, and lower scores will follow.