The Measured Golf Podcast

Why Chasing Scratch Is Holding You Back

• Michael Dutro, PGA • Season 6 • Episode 9

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Chasing scratch sounds noble until it blinds us to how golfers truly improve. We open the hood on handicaps—what they actually measure, why differentials are about potential rather than averages, and how course rating, slope, and conditions can make an 80 a great round for a scratch player on a brutal track. The math is fine; the misuse isn’t. When scorecards include gimmes and casual OB drops, indexes drift into vanity or inflate into sandbagging, and suddenly net leaderboards look like fantasy.

Instead of treating a single number like a personality test, we pivot to skills you can train. We lay out four performance buckets—off the tee, approach play, around the green, and putting—and give concrete benchmarks. Want to be a reliable single digit? Aim for roughly 50 percent fairways and greens, 50 percent scrambling, and about 31 putts. Dreaming of scratch? Push those rates toward 60 percent with around 30 putts. These targets reveal where to spend your practice time and why driver fixes alone won’t erase a double-digit gap. We even walk through a junior pounding 118 mph drives who still loses strokes where it counts: wedges and the flatstick.

Integrity is the hinge that makes the system work. We talk about putting everything out, honoring stroke and distance, avoiding on-the-fly “adjustments,” and self-policing within your group to protect events and keep competition fun. If you care about getting better, measure what matters, play by the rules, and let the numbers tell the truth. Subscribe for more grounded coaching insights, drop a comment on our Measured Golf YouTube channel, and if you want personalized help, visit measuredgolf.com to explore virtual coaching. Then tell us: which bucket will you attack first this season?

SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Measured Golf Podcast, where you, the listener, sit down and join me, Michael, and we discuss all things golf. And on this episode, we're going to get into where a lot of people kind of are this time of year when it comes to wanting to get better, and the discussion of hey, I want to get my handicap lower. And what I wanted to talk about in this episode is why chasing scratch is maybe the worst addiction a golfer can have, and how it really doesn't tell us anything, and it doesn't really help golfers benchmark themselves maybe the way they think it does. So we're going to dig a little bit into that. Um, I've kind of been inspired to do this podcast by none other than Yip Strickler. Uh, I don't know if you've seen him on social media yet, but if you haven't, uh you might want to check him out. And uh Yip is uh he's gotta be like an MIT math guy because the way he he digs into these handicaps and looks at the differentials, uh, he's doing some complicated math there. But you know, what Yip is doing is basically exposing the sandbaggers. Uh he's not claiming they are, uh he never outright calls them out, but he is kind of examining, you know, a big problem in golf, which is a lot of the events that we play in these days, especially here stateside, are handicap-based. And there's a lot of people who show up and claim to be a certain handicap, and maybe that's not entirely true. And they have all these strokes and they're able to, you know, not play maybe the best. And when you know it, they shoot a net 59 or a net 58 or whatever the case may be. And a lot of people just feel like they're getting hosed. And I think it's a real problem in golf. Um, I know that there's a local club here in town where I live who just sent out an email about how they're going to have to do something next year for this handicap integrity because there's a lot of issues going on uh with people, you know, playing under false pretenses, and it really doesn't protect the field. And I'm also a proponent of you know, more events to where we don't have any handicaps. And God forbid we went out there and just played golf and let the chips fall where they may, and people are gonna whine and cry that that's not fair. But there's a lot of people that don't get to play in the NBA. We don't we don't give them a handicap and let them go out there and and play against the Lakers and the Celtics. Uh they're just not good enough to play. So, you know, it's it's kind of this untenable situation that we've created to where the single-digit, low handicapped guys that want to play more on the muscle, we could say, those guys don't want to play against people with a handicap because they probably have been burnt by handicaps a bunch of times. And in my opinion, and and this isn't where the entire podcast is going to go, we're gonna get into a little more specifics, but in my opinion, handicaps aren't fair because as human beings playing golf, and as we all know, we tend to be a little more inconsistent than we would like to admit. But when you are a scratch, let's say, playing against a 15, he's going to get those 15 strokes. They're going to show up. But the assumption is, is I'm going to show up and play like a scratch. But maybe I don't play so well and they play kind of average, but those strokes show up every single time. And it kind of doesn't work on an equal curve to where there's a little bit of buffer built in for the scratch not always shooting even par, nor should they, depending on the course rating and slope. So, what we're going to do is we're going to dig in a little bit. I want to be perfectly clear. Uh, I don't think that the handicap system is broken. I do not. The math is fine. The math has been the math for quite some time. The way we calculate these things has been calculated, calculated the same way for quite some time. But I'm not getting at trying to say that we need to figure out a new handicap system. That's not what I'm trying to say. But what are I think a lot of things go wrong with the handicap system is that even though the math is right, uh, it doesn't work as intended. And one of the biggest things I see as somebody who coaches golf and tries to help golfers is that this number is used as like a personal benchmark. And it really doesn't tell us anything. And the example I would give you is that you could be a five-handicap and hit it very kind of, let's call it short and straight and be very, very accurate and be a five handicap. Or you could be really long off the T and kind of wild, but you still manage to get it around and you're a five handicap. So by declaring our handicap and acting like that establishes us as a golfer, it doesn't give us any kind of insight as to who we are and how we got there and what we need to do to get better. And so many people are thinking that, you know, they want to chase scratch. They want to be a zero, they want to do these things. And when you ask them about that, what they tend to say, or what they tend to think maybe, is that they should shoot even par every single time. But that's not how a scratch player actually is going to shoot because we have to take into account, once again, the course rating, the slope, the conditions, which doesn't get talked about enough. And we got to realize if if you're playing a very difficult golf course like Oakland Hills South or like Winged Foot West and it hosts U.S. Opens, you can be a scratch player and go out there and shoot 80 uh on a day to where maybe it's a little windy and the T's are back and the rough is long, and your scoring differential could be close to zero. And it's kind of hard to think about a scratch shooting 80, but it's very possible because when we think about handicaps, it's measuring our potential, it's not measuring our average score. And so many golfers totally miss that. And they think that it's supposed to be their average score or what they shoot on average. And the truth of it is if it's measuring your potential, you should only be shooting that number once every four to five rounds. And if you're shooting your handicap all the time and turning in net scores under par, something is wrong. And we're not getting the numbers into the system accurately or honestly enough. But at the end of the day, a scratch player isn't going to shoot level par every single time out unless they're just playing a very easy golf course. So I think the concept behind what a handicap is and what it represents tends to not be very accurate for many golfers. And as I said earlier, this idea that it's a personal benchmark, that's not what a handicap is designed to be. A handicap is designed to be a comparative number between two players that tries to level the field so that a scratch player and a 15 player can go out, play golf, and it's a fair competition. That's what it's supposed to be meant for. That's its intended use. And when people are kind of constantly looking at their handicap and going, well, I'm a six and I got to get to a three, and they just kind of keep thinking that way. Once again, we're not getting any real data points to work off of to understand how we would go from a six to a three. So I think people need to understand that this potential is the score that we maybe shoot every four to five rounds. And we also have to understand that it's not an average. They actually take your last 20 rounds, they take your top eight scoring differentials, which is a fancy way of saying how you're performed relative to a scratch player, plus or minus. And then that's what kind of figures out like, okay, my scoring differential was really high today, so I didn't play very well, I didn't play anywhere close to my handicap, or my scoring differential is negative or below zero. I played really well, and I probably would have beat that scratch player today. So we need to understand that this differential is the number that we're looking at. And the differential is also one of these things that has a lot of math behind it, and we kind of have to understand that course rating and slope, and then we have to understand that the course ratings and the slopes tend to be imperfect because one course can play one way in certain conditions and a completely different the next. And we've all experienced this, right? So you have your home course that you play golf at, and let's say there's a citywide tournament that's going to be hosted at your golf course this weekend. Well, for the past two months, they've been growing the rough up and firming up the greens and double cutting them and double rolling them. And now all of a sudden, this golf course that has this rating when it's normal play is playing much, much more difficult. So now all of a sudden, like it's not that the rating and the slope gets adjusted overnight. These things tend typically are set in stone. They have the course raters come out every so often, not very often in most cases, but they have these course raters and these slope evaluators come out and they kind of determine where the golf course would be relative to this scratch level. And they try to determine, you know, a fair and equitable number for each golf course. They're doing their best, but things change. Superintendents change, conditions change, weather changes. Um, it's the fall now here in Michigan. So it's much colder, it's much more damp, the ball's not going nearly as far. A lot of these golf courses that typically play a little shorter are now playing a little bit longer. And once again, that's not really being accounted for within the handicap system, which is why you see these scoring seasons kind of exist, I think, in a lot of these temperate zones like we're in, to where I believe today, October 31st, is the last day that you can post scores in the state of Michigan because they know it the courses aren't what they should be. They know that the rating in the slope isn't going to be as accurate as it should be. So they don't accept scores after this point unless you're down somewhere, you know, south where the golf course is going to play like it did when they rated it in the first place. So I think a lot of people, you know, using this as a personal benchmark and not necessarily understanding that it's about the differential and not the average score, really mess it up for a lot of us because a lot of us tend to forget that, you know, when you're keeping a handicap, you're expected to play by the rules. You're expected to putt everything out. You're expected to like have the honor code in play here to where we're playing real golf. And a lot of us when we go out and play golf casually with our friends or after work or whatever the case may be, you know, a couple putts here and there get given. Um, you know, maybe you hit one out of bounds and the course is busy and you can't find your ball when you go look for it. And instead of going back to the T and holding everything up, you just drop one out. Well, I hate to say it, but that's kind of cheating because the rules clearly state if you hit it out of bounds, it's a stroke and distance penalty, meaning that you have to go back to the T or go back from the last place you played from and hit the shot from there. And a lot of us just throw one out or we give ourselves a putt, or whatever the case may be, but we're not genuinely keeping these scores as accurately as we should. And if you're giving yourself a putt here and there and you're dropping one out here and there, in the grand scheme of things, it really adds up. In the moment, maybe not so much. Maybe, you know, the person you're playing against is in the fair way in a great position, and we're just trying to keep things moving. And it doesn't seem like it matters much here right now, but these small inaccuracies compound over time. And that's where we start winding up with a lot of these vanity handicaps, to where a lot of people are going to ask you, you know, what's your handicap? What do you play to? And nobody wants to feel like they're, you know, not as good as they think they are. So we tend to come up with these ways to kind of make that number look and sound a little better than it probably should be. Golf's very difficult. Uh, I think we all know that. I think we know that most golfers aren't nearly as good as they claim to be. But once again, even if you're a six, that doesn't mean that you're gonna play to that number every single time. And it's once again, not an average. So if you're a six, you know, that's your potential. So once every four to five rounds, assuming that it's like a 130 slope and you know, par 72 and all these things, you're gonna shoot like 78. Okay, that's your potential. You should be doing that every fourth or fifth round, which in reality means you're probably shooting closer to 80 on the regular. And there's no shame in that. Like 80 is actually a very good score depending on how long you've been playing golf and how much time you put into it, and how much practice and all of those things. But nobody wants to really claim that they're a double-digit handicap. And I've seen this happen more often than not. But you have a lot of people out there who are inexperienced golfers and maybe casual golfers, weekend warriors, if you will, and they think like 18 handicap is the worst. So, like they just, oh, I'm an 18, you know, I don't play it very often, maybe once, you know, maybe four times a year kind of thing. And once again, that's just leading to the narrative that, you know, we want this super low handicap number. But once again, like the vanity handicaps don't help anybody because the worst thing that happens is you put yourself down for a six, and depending on what club you're at and the level of players that are there, you know, that might seed you into the first flight or the championship flight at your club event. When now you're a six, and realistically you're probably, I'm not saying everybody, but a lot of sixes probably are closer to a 10. And now all of a sudden their potential is 130 slope. Their potential is going to be like closer to like 82. And remember, it's a tournament, so they're probably not gonna shoot their best round then. So now they're shooting like 85, 86, while a lot of these stronger players are kind of watching and waiting for them all day, going, why am I why am I playing against this guy? He's he shouldn't be in this flight. So a lot of the people think they're really not doing any harm by having these vanity handicaps, but in reality, it really kind of messes things up when it comes to the seating and using these handicaps accurately. So the opposite is true too. And this is, you know, where Yip kind of steps in and kind of exposes a little bit of this, but there's a lot of sandbagging that goes on too, right? We've got the vanity on one side and we got the sandbagging on the other to where people just want to win at all costs, right? If you're not cheating, you're not trying. And I'm not trying to say that everybody that has a higher-than-should-be handicap is actively trying to cheat. But a lot of people have handicaps that are way, way, way too high. And whether that's because they believe it's an average, whether they're not keeping their score accurately, whether they're just not turning in all their scores, which is a big problem as well. It could be one of those things, but they wind up with this inflated handicap. And then every time they go play in a club event or uh at at the city championship that's based off handicap in a net round, you you see these like ludicrous scores like net 59, net 58. And there's just no way that that stand that deviation from score should, or differential, excuse me, should be happening, especially under tournament play for somebody who plays maybe a couple of tournaments a year, maybe five, six tournaments a year. Uh, as somebody who has played professional golf tournaments and somebody who plays without a handicap, I can tell you that generally the sports performance people will tell you that if you do everything really, really well and manage the things that you can manage to the best of your ability, practice round to competitive round, there's gonna be about a 10% drop in performance. And that's really taking care of business and doing and controlling all the things that you can control. So, generally speaking, if you go out, you know, play maybe a practice round for your club championship and you go out there and you keep score for whatever reason, you shoot 72, you know, we're probably gonna see a 10% gap across the skills. And now when you go playing a tournament, that 76 really feels like that 72. And it's probably because we feel some more nerves, there's a little more pressure, you know, that that three-footer that you never miss slides by the hole once, you know, that T shot that you always put in play finds the out of bounds, whatever the case may be. But generally speaking, we're not going to be shooting a lot of our career low scores in a tournament setting. So when you go to these events that are handicap-based in the leaderboard like 18, 19 under, uh, because there's a team full of sandbaggers who have inflated handicaps, something's amiss. And what it really does is it drives people away from the game. Because I call it pencil whipping. And there's a lot of pencil whipper opens out there to where you know when you tee it up that you're just going to get beat to death by the strokes. And there's no way for a scratch player to go low enough, especially once again in a tournament or competitive setting, to cover those strokes because they've got more than they should have. And it's just really not a fair fight. And once again, the the point of the handicap is to make things more fair and equitable. So I think it's really important that we realize that. And we also realize that it's very, very subjective in a lot of ways. Because once again, even though there are allowances for weather, there are allowances for course conditions, there are some of these kind of built-in um adjusted gross score, right? That's a one. So based off your course handicap, you know, you might be a double or triple max per hole. But when a lot of people hear about the adjusted uh adjusted score, they start doing it on the golf course. And like, oh, well, I'm gonna pick up because I can't make worse than a double. Well, no, you can play golf and make way worse than a double. Uh, you see tour players make an 11 every now and then. So they have to count that, and that should go on the scorecard. That's the score you're actually shooting. But when we're adjusting in real time and then submitting our score to Jen, what's happening is it's adjusting it again. And now, once again, it's an inaccurate score that we're submitting. And they're going, these inaccuracies are going to compound over time, which lead to once again, inaccurate scores. Uh, these inaccurate scores are are really what create both the vanity and the sandbagging situation that we alluded to earlier. So it's really, really important that we kind of do our best. Uh, and I've been kind of saying this for a while now, but it's really important that we do our best to actually just keep our score. You know, play golf, you know, write down every stroke, play by the rules to the best of your ability. Um, I always tell people the the rules are confusing. You know, you have to go to these like rules workshops and you have to do like all this work to learn the rules to go and be a rules official at a tournament because they are quite complicated. And there's a lot of weird scenarios that happen on the golf course. But if you're somebody who is listening to this and wants to keep a more accurate handicap, uh, if you hit a ball into a situation to where you don't know the rule, play two balls and then go in uh and talk to your local club pro or the professional at your golf course, ask them, like, hey, what's the situation here? And then you can get the right answer and you can figure out which ball was right, and then put the score down on the scorecard. It's not that hard. Uh, you'd be amazed at how many times you probably go in and ask your local pro, you know, what happens here. They may not know. So the nice thing is, is excuse me, you can submit that question through GIN to the people who actually like manage the rules, uh, which is going to be through the USGA and RNA. But once you have your answer, then you can submit that score. And now you're doing your your very best to keep an accurate score. And that's that's the key, right? We we need to actually put the scores we shoot on the scorecard, then submit it to the Gin app, because the Gin app is going to do the adjusting for you. We shouldn't be doing this adjusting in real time. So as a as a player who plays, you know, with no handicap, I get zero strokes as a professional, you know, I would like to be able to play with more people, and I would love for the handicaps to work out. But the real reality of the situation is even though I'm a professional and I get no strokes, I'm not a I'm I'm honestly not a zero scratch player, more than likely. I'm probably like a two, uh, which means that I'm really going to have to play well just to shoot my handicap. So it's kind of almost like I'm inflating whoever I'm playing with, their handicap and their strokes by two, um, and and really kind of working against myself. And if you're a better player, it's there's a reason better players don't want to play with bad players. And it's not because of the fact that they're not as good. It's because the fact is, is that because of their handicap situation, you're gonna get to the end of the round of golf. And let's say you shot 74 and played pretty well as a zero, and the 15, you know, maybe his 15 wasn't quite as accurate as it should be, and he shoots like a net 68. Well, in his head, he beat you, but there's no way on God's green earth that that person beat you at golf that day. So I think it gets a little out of hand, and I think that's why a lot of your better players really just don't want to play with golfers who want strokes. And we've all been there, you know. There's there's the guys at the club, there's the guys at the golf course who, you know, talk a bunch of smack and want a piece of you because you're one of the better players, or whatever the case may be. And then you get there to the first year, like, all right, let's go, let's let's settle this once and for all. Oh, well, how many strokes do I get? Well, like, once again, you don't get strokes so that you can play with the Lakers or the Celtics. You don't get strokes to where you get to go in and punch Mike Tyson 20 times in the head before he gets to hit you. Like, how is this a fair contest? It isn't. It's really, in my my personal opinion, it's really Mickey Mouse golf. It's not real because real golf is played on TV by the professionals with no strokes. There's never any net events because we don't do that, right? We want to see the best just square off mono a mano and play golf. And I really feel like the handicap situation has gotten so out of whack. Uh, not because, once again, that anything's wrong with the handicap system per se, but the intended use just isn't there. And it's gotten so out of whack that now people are using this really as a crutch. And speaking from the golf coach perspective, not from the player perspective, like I said, golf and understanding your abilities and trying to distill it down to a single number doesn't tell us anything. So, like I said, there's a million ways to be a five, there's a million ways to be scratch, there's a million ways to be a 15. But when we are using that number solely as a benchmark of who we are as a golfer, it doesn't tell us anything. So, so often people come in, especially this time of year, and they're like, hey, you know, I had a good year, you know, I went from an eight to a six, and and this year I want to get to a four. And I'm like, all right, well, what does that mean? And they're like, Well, I want to be a four-handicap. And I go, Well, what's a four-handicap look like? And they just kind of look at me confused because once again, that single number doesn't really tell us anything. And the other problem with it and how it becomes a crutch is so many golfers go out, do what they always do, you know, hit some crooked drives, you know, maybe three putt quite a bit, maybe hit it kind of loose and into the hazards, whatever the case may be. But then they go into the clubhouse afterwards when they've shot 90 and you know, figure out that they shot a net, you know, 74, let's say, and they're like, oh, see, I'm pretty good. I'm doing fine. I don't, I'm good. And it's like, well, hang on. Like, I don't think anybody who shoots 90 on the golf course that isn't new or an aspiring golfer should be satisfied with 90. It's you know, 18 over par. You know, that's a bogey golfer. And for a bogey golfer to be like, oh, okay, well, that's pretty good, you know, and comparing themselves to level par, I mean, it's it's not the same thing. It's smoke and mirrors. And so many golfers, because they're able to kind of manage their competitive scores with one another and manage their competitive scores based off this fictitious handicap, they don't actually get encouraged to get better. And that's really my whole crux of my argument against handicaps, is it really gets in the way of golfers developing the skills to get better because you're really not incentivized to get better. Because if you play with the same group all the time and everybody's kind of keeping score the same way and all that fun stuff, generally like handicaps stick around like handicaps, meaning that you know, generally you play in a group to where the handicaps are pretty similar across the board. So if you are playing in a uh, let's say you're maybe a little bit older and retired, and you're part of that crew that plays every, you know, every day at 8 a.m., 9 a.m., and you're going out there, your group of guys, they're probably all tens or whatever the case may be. Well, let's say you put some work into this and you decide to, you know, maybe take some lessons, or you know, maybe you do a little strength training or whatever you do to get better. You'll work on your putting and your chipping, which generally goes overlooked. But let's say you do some of these things to actually get better. And let's say you go from a 10 to a seven. Okay, well, that seven is gonna have variability. They're not always gonna chip it better, they're not always gonna put it better, they're not always gonna put it in play more often. And guess what? They're gonna start losing their side bets based off that handicap more often than they win. And what fun is that? Like, wait a minute. I put the time in, I put the effort in, I got myself better at this, and now I'm losing more. Like, that's not fun for anybody. And that's where I think the handicap issue really kind of is, is that you really create an incentive to actually inflate the number versus lower the number. And I know so many people are gonna say, well, no, no, no, I I don't care about competing against other people. I just care about you know, lowering my number for personal gain. Well, there's a lot better ways to do that because golf and scoring falls into four buckets. It falls into off the tee, around the green, approach play, and putting. And, you know, the benchmarks aren't very hard to figure out. You know, I Tony Ruggiero, the I believe it's the tour coach podcast, but Tony just had Kevin Kirk on and they were talking about some of these benchmarks. And I love Kevin to death. I think he's a bright, bright guy. But if you're somebody shooting in the 80s and you want to start shooting in the 70s, you want to lower that handicap differential, you want to work on those things. Okay, well, the the math that we need to be paying attention to is if you're gonna be that single-digit guy that shoots in the 70s, then you need to be hitting 50% of your fairways, 50% of your greens, and you need to be having 31 putts per round. Like statistically, that's what a single digit looks like from a statistical standpoint. And that's really, really important. Those are numbers we can work with because now we can kind of start charting our round a little bit and figure out that, hey, maybe off the T you hit that, you know, 50, 60% threshold. Hey, maybe you're hitting 50, 60% of your greens. But maybe you're having like 35, 36 putts per round, and maybe you're, I'm sorry, I forgot one of the benchmarks, is you got to be getting up and down 50% of the time. Okay. So that that goes into the being a single digit. We got to be able to scramble it at 50%. Okay. So let's say that, like I said, you know, you're above the threshold with the driver, you're above the threshold with hitting the greens, but let's say that you're not hitting the threshold when you miss greens and you're not at that 50% scrambling rate, and your putts are too high at let's say 35. Well, the low-hanging fruit in that situation is going to be that person needs to chip and pump more and get better and get those thresholds up. That's how we lower the handicap. We can't just say, well, hey, I'm a 10 and I want to be a six and like wish it true. That's not how golf works. Golf doesn't owe us anything no matter how much time or effort we put into it. So, by understanding that the handicap index is not really a number of personal improvement or development and getting into some of these stats, that's critically important, right? So that's where I think there's a huge disconnect with golfers trying to get better. And if you're listening to this podcast, you probably listen to other podcasts, and there's a million podcasts devoted to chasing scratch and everybody thinking, well, if I if I'm a scratch player, that means I've made it as a golfer. And you know, a lot of people just scratch isn't in the realm of possibilities. And it's because they can't hit these benchmarks, right? Because if we want to be a scratch player, instead of it being 50% from the T, it's 60%. Instead of it being 50% greens, it's 60%. Instead of it being 50%. 50% scrambling, it's 60%. And now, if we get to the putter, now it's 30 putts. Okay. So those are the benchmarks, and this is how we see the improvement, and this is how we level up, or in some cases, level down. And we need to focus on the things that we can control and the things that we can work on. But when we try to summate it down to, well, I'm this and I want to be that, you know, kind of like my dad used to tell me, you know, wish in one hand and crap in the other, and see which one fills up first. And that's the plight of the golfer, right? And I think that so many people think that if they just keep playing more golf, the handicap score will go down. And there's some truth to that, because if you're playing a singular golf course all the time, let's say you're a member of a club, and because of the dues structure and all that stuff, you you primarily play at that course. If you play a golf course enough times, whether consciously or subconsciously, we do eventually kind of figure out where we can and can't hit it, and we kind of figure it out a little bit, and we will get our scores to drop a certain amount, doing the same things and having the same skill set that we've always had. But at a certain point, that kind of plateaus, and we can't really get any better. And the reason for that is we're not developing new skills, we're not even paying attention to where the skill weaknesses are. And so many people come in for a lesson and they go, hey, you know, my driver, man, it's just it's not working for me. You know, like this is what's holding me back. And it's like you do a little statistical analysis on their driver and you find out like this is a great example for junior golfers. Um, I can't tell you how many golfers come in that are under the age of 18, and they tell me that the driver's got to get better. Like, that's the that's the narrative out there. I got to drive it farther, I got to drive it straighter. Like if I do that, I'm gonna be top notch. And the funny thing is, is I literally had this happen this week. I had a 14-year-old come in, kid you not, swinging the golf club at 118 miles an hour. Okay, club head speed. 118. Now the PGA tour average club head speed is 117.3 miles an hour for 2025, uh maybe 24, excuse me. So they have above PGA tour average club head speed, and they're telling me that the issue is their driver. Okay. So you dig into that a little bit and you're like, oh man, this this kid's got a lot of speed. And you go, well, how many, how many uh fairways or how many good drives are you hitting to where the second shot is unobstructed? I'm more interested in that than I am like the ball actually being in the fairway. And you find out kind of surprisingly, in this case, I was very surprised, but in this case, he was actually hitting 60% of his fairways, swinging the bat at 118 miles an hour. Okay, great. So you're still telling me that the driver's the problem. Oh, yeah, coach, I got I gotta get this driver sorted out. Okay, well, well, you know, I know you're playing a lot of competitive rounds, I know you're playing tournaments. What would you say like your handicap is? Ah, you know, it it's getting there, it's getting there. Okay, well, what is it? Ah, you know, I'm probably you know, about a six. Okay. Okay, cool. Well, just so you know, um, the PGA tour players are hitting like 60% of their fairways at 117 miles an hour. And if we put them on a normal golf course, uh their hand or their home golf course, I should say, because a lot of these guys belong to really difficult golf courses, but you put them on their home golf course, their handicap is like a plus eight or plus nine. Okay? So you're a six. So there's a 15-stroke difference between you and a tour player. Oh yeah, man, that's what I'm telling you. Like, I gotta get better. Well, getting better at the driver isn't going to make up that gap. You're not losing 15 strokes with your driver. And it's somewhere else. And this is once again trying to distill the golfer down to one metric. It doesn't tell the whole story. And there's so many of these young people out there, these competitive players who are really, really great, but they can't seem to level up, they can't seem to take that next step. And the reason is because they're focused on their strength and not actually even aware or focused on their weakness. And once again, we can come up with all the reasons behind that, but the simple truth is that uh handicaps and the handicapped system encourages manipulation. It does. We either want it better than it is, or we want to have a big advantage when we play against our buddies, and it's just really not incentivizing people to play by the rules, count every stroke, put everything out, and keep a fair and accurate handicap. Because people don't like looking in the mirror. It's the one of my favorite quotes of all time is everybody wants to change the world and nobody wants to change themselves. So it's way easier to manipulate this number and make ourselves feel how we want to feel than it is to actually just address the truth of the situation and go, hey, you know, I I feel like I'm a scratch. And sometimes I do feel like a scratch, you know, like happens to me too. But in reality, you know, there's going to be variance, and I'm probably closer to a two or three than I am a scratch. And once again, just because I'm a scratch or a two or three doesn't mean I'm shooting between par and 75 every time. Because I get invited to a lot of nice golf courses uh that tend to be quite a bit harder. Played wingfoot uh earlier this year, uh the West course where they have the US Open, actually played really, really well, felt great about it. But like when you're playing these golf courses and you look at the slope and the rating, you start figuring out that, like, hey, if I'm like a three, there's no shame in like trying to break 80 today because that would be a heck of a score. And then if you were, I don't do this because once again I don't get a handicap, but if you put that 79 in there at Winged Foot West or 77 in there from Winged Foot West, you're probably going to see a negative differential, which means you played your butt off, which is true, you did. And even though you didn't shoot that 72 like you think you should have as a scratch or whatever the case may be, you actually played really, really well. It's understanding how this scoring is actually happening and what it actually means to go and play different golf courses. So I think just the whole narrative surrounding handicaps really just encourages this manipulation one way or the other. And it's why I think that so many better players aren't interested in playing with people when they're using their strokes, because the strokes are going to show up and they may or may not play to their level that they normally do. And generally speaking, like I said, there's humans involved, so there's always going to be variants, and you're not going to shoot that handicap, but once every four or five rounds, if you're doing it correctly. And for people to go out there and every time they play, it's net, you know, 63, net 64, net 65, something's wrong. And I know there's a lot of people who do that, and I hate to tell them, but they're not that good of a golfer. They're just a sandbagger. And that's the truth of it. Because if you follow the letter of the law, if you look into these differentials and how handicaps are calculated and the adjustments, you're going to see the same thing that I'm seeing, which is, you know, you're shooting that number once every four or five rounds. And it's just, I get it. We all want to do better than that. We all think we're special and that we're we're going to be able to go out there and beat the math. But the math is the math, and it is accurate, as I said early on. It it's not a problem with the system, it's a problem with dishonesty and not playing by the rules and putting everything out the way we're supposed to do when we play golf. So, you know, we can we kind of talked a little bit about how you know this idea that chasing scratch is is kind of the in-vogue thing. And like I said, there's a lot of podcasts, there's a lot of content that's produced about this, and oh, join me on my journey as I chase scratch. You know, why not like rename it to hey, watch me learn how to hit my driver better, watch me to learn how to hit my irons better, watch me learn how to scramble better, putt better. Um, because those are that that's that's actual skill development. And I've been kind of screaming this from the mountaintop, if you will, but skill acquisition and skill development are how we get better at golf, not just trying to like rig the system so that we appear to be a better golfer. And the people with the vanity handicaps, you know, they love to tell everybody what their handicap is, and they love to talk smack in the office, but they get exposed. Um, you know, more often than not, they get exposed. And I just don't understand like why you would want to be that person in the first place. Like, you know, you've been hanging out with the water cooler all week, talking all this smack to a bunch of eights, telling them how you're a two, and then you go out and play golf, and the eights smoke you because you can't play to that level and they get the strokes. So I just don't understand why you would even want to do that to yourself, other than you like to tell people something that's just not true. And the sandbaggers, you know, there's a solution for this. We need more self-policing. Uh, we need more governance from the people playing the game. And, you know, as a as a person who spent the first part of my career managing golf courses, you know, I can't tell you how many times people would come in after a club event and, you know, want us to throw somebody out or want us to address something. And honestly, you know, it's not on the professionals to regulate this. Uh, we don't get a handicap. You know, it needs to be governed by the grassroots level and the people playing the game. And, you know, it's terrible, but I hear about it every year to where, you know, so and so finally pushed it too far and the club's not letting them play in any tournaments anymore. Or, like I said earlier, the club's sending out emails about handicap integrity. And, you know, I don't think that it falls on the club or the professional to be the one to sort this out. You know, you need to, if you're playing a game on the regular with your guys, you know, hey guys, new rule. We put everything out, no gimme's. Don't expect it, don't ask for it, you're not getting it. You know, that would do a lot to straighten out the handicaps. Uh, hey guys, we're uh if you hit it out of bounds on number three there, that's real tight. Uh no more of this throwing it out stuff. We're gonna, we're gonna make you go back to the T. Everybody's in carts anyway. You know, I hate that too, but I don't want to sound too much like an old man, even though I sound like an old man with this conversation. But, you know, we're gonna play by the rules and we're gonna putt out. And that would do a lot to protect the tournaments and the events at the club, way more so than just asking for somebody to be thrown out because it doesn't seem fair that, you know, he shot a net 64. Um, it happens, it happens often, it happens at all different levels of clubs. Um, maybe even more so at the higher end clubs with the sandbagging, but it's one of those things to where, you know, once again, it's going to require the actual golfers to kind of step up and to start kind of, you know, policing this. And I think we need that across the board. I think we need that when it comes to raking bunkers. I think we need that when it comes to fixing ball marks. And look, like nobody wants to be a jerk on the golf course. And generally the people you're playing with are your friends and whatnot, but there's more than your group that's going to play that day. So, you know, we need to protect the field, you know, with the scores and make sure they're accurate and honest to the best of our ability. But then we also need to protect the enjoyment. The people playing behind you, if you're at a private club, paid the same amount of money as you did to be a member there. And they don't want to have their ball come to rest in a footprint in a bunker. They don't want to have their putt on the way to going in and it hits an old ballmark and jumps offline. Like we need to do a better job of honoring the tradition of the game, which is based in integrity. And it's still the only sport, it's still the only game where we call our own penalties, right? And and that's a big part of it. And, you know, I had a player this year that lost a tournament uh because they called a penalty on themselves, and nobody else would have called it. You know, they think that they hit the sand in their backstroke in the bunker. And whether they did or didn't, they thought they did and they wanted to be on the right side of it. So they called the penalty and they ended up losing the tournament by one. Um, and you know, I couldn't be more proud. I really couldn't. And and I spent so much more time with that player after the round, congratulating them and condoning them for what they did because that's the right thing to do. That that's being a golfer. Uh, if you want to be a golfer, be a golfer. And if you're gonna play golf, then understand that you know we're not there to pick up putts, we're not not there to, you know, go out there and beat it all over the golf course only to pretend that we shot a certain score. You're there and it's it's a mirror. You're literally turning the mirror on yourself. And, you know, we're responsible to take care of the golf course, and we're responsible to submit honest and accurate scores. And I just think that so much of our game has gotten away from that. And, you know, there's a lot of people out there that, you know, don't want to say that they're 12, don't want to say they're 14, don't want to say they're 15. But there's no shame in that. You know, you can get better, you can develop the skills. Uh, if you dig a little deeper and look past that singular number, we can start kind of benchmarking things and figure out what we got to do to help you get better at golf. And, you know, when it comes to chipping and pitching and putting, you know, those are some skills where you can kind of go dig it out of the dirt a little bit, unless, you know, the technique's just really, really bad. But for the most part, people just don't spend any time on these things. And then they expect this number to go from eight to six to four to two just because they're showing up. And a handicap shouldn't be a participatory trophy. It shouldn't be. But there's a lot of people who have fake handicaps, the vanity people, and you know, it's a participatory trophy. They didn't earn it, you know, they weren't honest, they didn't like put the sacrifice in, the blood, sweat, and tears, and get the skills that they needed to become that number. They just tell everybody that they are. And, you know, like that's their prerogative, and it's not my uh it's not my war to fight. But at the same time, when that same person goes and plays in a tournament and messes things up for everybody, whether it being vanity or being sandbagging, it's not fair to the people that are trying to do the right thing. And like I said, you know, I think that the handicap situation is getting to a point where it's pushing people away from competitive play. And, you know, I don't think there's much competition in net tournaments, but that's more or less what there is. You know, if you're a member of a club, if you're a member of the course and you, you know, play in the events, there's maybe like a dozen guys that play in the in the no strokes division, you know, just in the championship flight, no handicaps. And then there's like, you know, the rest of the field is filled out with this net division. And whether I like it or not, the bulkhead of golf is played with a handicap. And I just think that the more this gets out of hand, the more you're gonna see people that just don't feel like showing up. Because so many of us that are golfers are kind of addicted to this chasing perfection. Uh, and I think a lot of people try to replace the word perfection with scratch. But so many of us are trying to get better. We want to get better. That's why driving ranges are full, right? Like we're all out there trying to figure out how do I get better, how do I get better? But like I said, if you're playing in these net divisions and the handicap matters, there's really not an incentive to get better because the better you get, the more those sandbaggers are just going to pile up on you. So I think it does a lot of negative things to the game of golf and the competitive spirit of golf. And, you know, the only way I see through this is through some more, you know, self-policing and some grassroot efforts to kind of make things a little more on the up and up when it comes to playing golf. So I know I've sounded like an old man. Um, I've kind of wanted to do this podcast for a while. I don't think this podcast is going to do very well. Uh, I don't think people like hearing this uh, you know, conversation about handicaps and and how it's kind of messing things up, but I think it is. And, you know, if if I'm gonna ask the listeners of this podcast to help self-police, then I've I've got to do my policing too, which is kind of what this is. And it's a call to arms for the golfers that want to get better and want to play the right way and want to kind of honor the spirit of golf. Um, because you know, the rules haven't changed, you know, it they are what they are. Uh, I'm not saying they're not confusing sometimes. They they can be, but there is a way to get the answer, and and the truth is out there, you know, like we can figure out, you know, what what should have happened in this situation? How should I have scored that? And I think that's important because, you know, these are the these are the skills, these are the life skills that golf teaches us, right? Like honor, integrity, and this like self-policing thing. And when we're out there and we're kind of cheating the system, and then the young people that we take to the golf course see us do this, they're gonna do it too. But these aren't the things we want to be teaching them. We want to be teaching them the great things about golf, the accountability, the doing the right thing, the taking care of the golf course. Like these are the things that golf is supposed to be teaching us. And I just don't understand how the handicap system is aiding in that at all. So, you know, if you have a handicap, it's totally fine. If uh if you're doing your your best effort to keep an accurate scorecard, you know, good for you, and I applaud you. You know, if if we all could agree to do that, then I think the handicap system is fine because the math is is very accurate and determining what our potential is. But it's the human side of this, it's it's the behavioral side of this that really gets in the way. And that's where we're going to have to hold one another more accountable to make this less of a problem. So, you know, with that being said, you know, I've kind of beat it to death a little bit, but you know, hopefully you've taken something away from this. Uh, whether you like it or love it, or I'm sorry, whether you like it or hate it, uh, you know, feel free to shoot us a note. You can leave us some notes in the comment section on YouTube where we post the video version of this. We also have a whole lot of like golf swing stuff on our YouTube. So if you enjoy the podcast, if you like listening to it, you can definitely uh kind of go a little farther and get into the golf swing stuff with myself on YouTube. If you're unfamiliar where that is, you can go to YouTube, search for Measured Golf. Uh, that'll take you right to us. You'll be able to find both the podcast and the videos there as well. Uh, we've got social media. You can find us at measured golf. You can find me at the forceplate guy website, measuredgolf.com. If you can't remember the other stuff, everything is there and kind of linked, including the podcast, the YouTube, and the social media. Um, there's also been a lot of people who have reached out and wanted to know how they could work with me if they don't live in the Michigan or Ann Arbor area. I do virtual coaching. Uh, more than happy to help you out with your golf game and some of the skill acquisition uh and maybe get that handicap a bit lower, uh, even though there's not a huge incentive for that. But if you're interested in doing the virtual coaching, uh, you can reach out to us via the website measuredgolf.com. Let me know that's what you're interested in, and we will get back in touch with you quickly and get you on your way to improvement. So thanks again. Um, really blown away with the podcast this season. Really been a lot of fun. Uh, can't believe how many people were actually listening to this thing. So thank you for that. I really appreciate it. If you haven't already, please make sure that you subscribe to our podcast. Uh, that really does a world of good for us. And then if you could take a moment and go over to the YouTube page, leave some comments there. The engagement also helps as well. So make sure to give us a follow uh at all the platforms I mentioned before. And as always, keep grinding.

Head Shot

Michael Dutro, PGA

Host