Discover new ways to elevate your game with the updated DGCourseReview app!
It's entirely free and enhanced with features shaped by user feedback to ensure your best experience on the course. (App Store or Google Play)
I do neither. I just try to birdie or par every hole. To be honest my goal is to win, but I'm usually not thinking about it when I play.What makes you a better player, playing to improve your ratings or playing to win? And as a follow up, how does this decision affect your mental state while playing? opcorn:
The reason why I choose to do this, is because focusing on an end result is useless. You have to make the birdies before winning. Focusing on winning or ratings during a round will often lead to really poor scores. Not always but often.I do neither. I just try to birdie or par every hole. To be honest my goal is to win, but I'm usually not thinking about it when I play.
Sent from my SM-G981B using Tapatalk
I think that winning takes an additional mind state than playing good. Winning seldom just rolls along, in a relaxed state ...
What makes you a better player, playing to improve your ratings or playing to win? And as a follow up, how does this decision affect your mental state while playing? opcorn:
If you are thinking about anything other than one shot at a time you are screwing yourself. Do your focused best on each shot and wins and ratings are simply by products. That being said, now that we do everything on Live Scoring there are times when thinking about the win can come into play- generally only very late in a round though. I have both benefited and suffered from knowing exactly what I needed to do in an event to win (or cash).
I think that these are two different discussions. Being "ratings dude" or "winning dude" seems, to me, to be more of a pre-tournament mental state. It does not seem to be about how capable you are of focusing on every single shot that you care about as much as it is about whether you will reach a point where you no longer care about executing every shot.Play to do your best on each shot.
If you succeed on doing your best on each shot, it will get you closer to winning and aid in improving your rating. Focus on one thing at a time and that should be the shot you are making.
Regarding tournaments specifically, ahead of time I'm totally rating's guy. I like to check out a few previous tournaments at that course to get an idea of what I should be shooting to be in the hunt for a win or cashing. Mostly that just serves to remind me that in MA3 the competitor who collects the least amount of bogeys generally has the best shot at winning.
Once the tournament arrives I'll try to play like relaxed dude, but that's only because I want to be winner dude and ratings dude has already done his research and assured me that 15 boring pars plus 2-3 birdies on the easiest holes should be enough to get there.
In casual/practice/league rounds I generally go for the lower percentage shots almost every time. I feel like that helps me raise the ceiling of what a safe shot is for when tournament rounds arrive. I played a tournament this spring and there were only 2 holes I felt were true birdie looks every time I stepped to the tee. I just played that same course for another tournament this past weekend and found that there were about 6 holes I felt comfortable pushing for the birdie look, so I guess for me pushing my comfort zone on shots during non rated rounds has helped lead to better rated rounds.
With the 350' example hole you gave I think that would be a fun one to play a handful of aggressive shots on and note the results. For myself for instance, I'm likely looking at being 20-30' short even on my best drives, so depending how close to the basket the guardians are and how close to OB they are I might find that my disc is so low, or traveling downward enough that even if I hit a guardian I'm unlikely to have enough height/speed left on the disc to kick OB. At that point, might as well try for it. I would think the same could apply even to longer arms, disc down to something that's falling down at 330' instead of throwing a big hyzer flight with something that goes 400-450' and aiming to park the pin.
On the other hand, if the guardians are 200' down the fairway I'm likely laying up just like you because I may not trust myself to get max distance and hit the gap 2/3 of the way down the fairway. I'm going to expect that my competitors in the same division are likely having the same issue, some will kick OB and be scrambling for a 4, a couple will get lucky and sneak through for a 20-30' birdie putt (which they might miss) and a few will lay up and take an easy 3, assuming they execute both their 150' upshot and putt well.
TLDR: I think my opinion is that ratings and winnings guy are kind of similar. For instance I'm 870 rated so if I want to win in MA3 on any given weekend I probably need to be shooting above my rating and turn in 920-930 rated rounds. I suspect relaxed guy probably is one of those guys who cashes most of the time. He doesn't usually spend a lot of time being first on the tee order, but while his cardmates flip back and forth between birdies and bogey's he casually collects pars and winds up with a better score at the end of the round.