How many shots a round does DUMB golf cost you?

[Foxx]

I feel like I'm losing around 5 shots a round due to bad decisions. Almost every hole I'm making a dumb decisions one way or another.

Including wrong club selections based on factors eg wind, slope.

Sloppy green inspection before putts.

Setting up to the ball wrong, but hitting anyway.

Trying to play miracle shots. The list goes on with bad decisions.

We make lots of decisions every round. How many shots are your bad ones costing you?

I think I'm up there as one of the dumbest golfers going around 😆.

 

Still scoring around 80 somehow. Probably only due to being able to hit the ball a good distance. And being relatively consistent with everything.

 

Edited April 10 by Foxx

[Hawkeye77]

Haha, sounds like you mean delusional golf - you aren’t going to have a plus handicap just by eliminating these frankly easy to eliminate and alleged ten shots a round. Not why you shoot “around 80”. 

[kwcsports]

5-10 for me by rushing shots, not thinking things through and not taking a few more seconds to read putts. That's why my hdcp is not better.

[slocalifglfr]

Do you mean, "Bad plan, poorly executed?" 

[NardDog]

10 is probably about the same number for me. A majority of them come from rushing everything. I think I play much better when I'm walking instead of riding. 

[byerxa]

Depends what screw up constitutes "dumb". If it is strategy, bad club selection, not taking your medicine, not reading a putt properly, I'd say a few but not too bad. I always read a putt better from the other side of the hole, but I won't do that if it is my turn to putt (or get lazy) so there might be one or two there. I'm pretty good with club selection, and pretty good at taking my medicine.

 

So that leaves execution. Currently in the process of rebuilding my swing (undoing physical degradation and subsequent bad habits), at the point where I'm 50/50 on a given shot of regressing or not. And a lot of dumb swings on short game shots. Ends up with too many doubles, say 3 or 4 on a round of 85. But I am making progress, albeit slowly.

[dmbolp]

5-10 for me, and almost all right around the green with club selection.  Flopped when I should have chipped, chipped when I should have putted, and vice-versa

[SmashGolfBall]

With a beer in hand: 10 shots
Without a beer: unlimited

[Springsteennut]

I’d say probably in the 5/10 range. Some days I’m dumber than others. 

[golfwb]

i would say 2 a round.

Most of the time its having the wrong wedge around the green and not wanting to take the time to walk all the way back to the cart.

Or my favorite not marking a 3 footer and missing it

[DJDJ]

Usually 2-3. Mostly bad club due to wind or trying a shot I shouldn’t and turning what would be a bogey into a double.

[596]

Darn, thought this thread meant "shots," as in alcohol.  I'm good for 3 shots of whatever is in my flask that round!

[mizuno player]

I wouldn't say dumb shots.  It's usually a bad swing. For me it's all about putting. If I keep outta per round between 29/34 my scores are usually low 70's. Bad shots are gonna happen. Come to think of it. So are bad putts... I'm screwed..

[Foxx]

7 hours ago, mizuno player said:

I wouldn't say dumb shots.  It's usually a bad swing. For me it's all about putting. If I keep outta per round between 29/34 my scores are usually low 70's. Bad shots are gonna happen. Come to think of it. So are bad putts... I'm screwed..

 

You never make dumb decisions that cost you shots?

[kmay__]

I don't think I lose many shots to dumb choices, I am very quick to take my medicine, and rarely if ever try to attempt any miracle shots or high risk shots. But I would say I lose 10 shots anyways a round to just abysmal execution. Like shots that would make a playing partner think I've never swung a club.... it always amazes me how drastic the variation can be between my good shots and my bad ones hahaha. 

[cardoustie]

2-3

[caniac6]

Our course went through a renovation last year, and it did not go well, and the course didn’t recover well. I have a turf degree, and experience working at courses, so I see things the other guys don’t, and have developed a bad attitude. My biggest issue is not mental mistakes, but just playing pissed off about the state of our course. 

[david.c.w]

Probably 3ish.  I can almost guarantee that my score would be at least 3 shots better if I played a round with the flagsticks removed so I had no idea where the hole was and just played to the middle.  

[CTG77]

At least 5, and if I'm rushing (which if I'm in a cart, I am), probably 7-10...

[Roejye]

Truly dumb stuff? Probably just 1 to 2. Most of my errors are execution related. Now, if you expand it to things like not hitting a putt hard enough, maybe a different wedge would have gotten it a little closer, etc, then that would add another 2 to possibly 5 if poor execution also happens. I feel that most of my issues are on the execution side. 

[mizuno player]

13 hours ago, Foxx said:

 

You never make dumb decisions that cost you shots?

If hitting a bad shot is a bad decision then yes. If I'm playing I'm thinking well and won't anything stupid.  If I spit the bit already I'll try and hit all kinds of shots I'm most likely not going to pull off. 

[SurfDuffer]

On 4/3/2025 at 5:26 AM, Foxx said:

Trying to play miracle shots.

I'm a sucker for this one because sometimes I pull it off.  That feeling of pulling off a carved shot around a tree and stopping it close to the flag or cutting a corner with a driver off the tee is like crack to me.

[charli]

I don’t think decisions cost anyone. They don’t have the skill to pull off most shots 

[cjr534s]

1 hour ago, SurfDuffer said:

I'm a sucker for this one because sometimes I pull it off.  That feeling of pulling off a carved shot around a tree and stopping it close to the flag or cutting a corner with a driver off the tee is like crack to me.

This...  I used to be at a club with lots of trees.  If you were off the fairway at all you had to hit what we called a "chicken cutter".  Low and moving left to right or right to left.  It was quite a challenge but enjoyable if you pulled it off.  Overall, how many strokes I lose to bad decisions is directly related to how many cocktails I have had on the course.  

[Old Tom Morris]

Always costs me something.  Over the years I have gotten better about making foolish decisions on the course but have not completely eliminated them.

[Nard_S]

Got the mental errors down to a couple, used to be more, execution is still way too much but the two are correlated.

If you have a poor strategy, the execution fail goes up, if the execution is faulty, maybe the mental needs adjustment to offset. So an execution fail can pass some blame to the thinking going on before it. A lot of this rides on level of awareness I'm working with. Which gets back to the entire mental maturity aspect & to be honest, playing 30 plus years and have not mastered that.

[DTorres]

Playing with Friends? Loaded with Gas Station hot dogs, bad intentions and straight from the parking lot to the first tee no practice swing: 18 handicap

 

Amateur Tournament/Long Drive tournament? Full of bananas and Ibuprofen with a dash of energy drink. Fully stretched, full of hope and warming up at the range an hour before tee time: Scratch baby

[Hawkeye77]

1 hour ago, charli said:

I don’t think decisions cost anyone. They don’t have the skill to pull off most shots 

 

A lot closer to reality than the notion if someone who shoots "around 80" eliminates "dumb" shots they'd be "around 70", i.e. par or better, it's just not the case.  You're a 10-12 because you aren't as skilled as someone who is a +1/scratch golfer.  We all hit silly shots but this idea of "dumb" as expressed is just an excuse for not being real about one's game, which is you aren't saving 10 shots a round (which isn't close to realistic for anyone) by being "smarter" - you save 10 shots a round by being a better at ball striking, short game, putting and sure, course management and whatever you think mental game is.  

 

Like mentioned above, I'll hit shots that would take a miracle to pull off mostly because I play a lot and I'll be playing tomorrow and I don't play real competitions, so why not.  Having said that, it doesn't occur every round or maybe even once every 5 rounds.  I'm usually living at 5-6 for handicap - I miss greens, I miss fairways - but missing a green is almost always execution it's not "dumb" - and I don't magically hit a significant number of more greens because I remember to judge the wind better - everyone messes up something like that, even pros, but it's not that significant - I miss greens because my swing isn't as consistent/solid in general as a better player and I hit more than players of higher handicaps because my swing is more consistent/solid than theirs are (in general). 

 

 

 

 

[Shilgy]

12 minutes ago, Hawkeye77 said:

 

A lot closer to reality than the notion if someone who shoots "around 80" eliminates "dumb" shots they'd be "around 70", i.e. par or better, it's just not the case.  You're a 10-12 because you aren't as skilled as someone who is a +1/scratch golfer.  We all hit silly shots but this idea of "dumb" as expressed is just an excuse for not being real about one's game, which is you aren't saving 10 shots a round (which isn't close to realistic for anyone) by being "smarter" - you save 10 shots a round by being a better at ball striking, short game, putting and sure, course management and whatever you think mental game is.  

 

Like mentioned above, I'll hit shots that would take a miracle to pull off mostly because I play a lot and I'll be playing tomorrow and I don't play real competitions, so why not.  Having said that, it doesn't occur every round or maybe even once every 5 rounds.  I'm usually living at 5-6 for handicap - I miss greens, I miss fairways - but missing a green is almost always execution it's not "dumb" - and I don't magically hit a significant number of more greens because I remember to judge the wind better - everyone messes up something like that, even pros, but it's not that significant - I miss greens because my swing isn't as consistent/solid in general as a better player and I hit more than players of higher handicaps because my swing is more consistent/solid than theirs are (in general). 

 

 

 

 

 

Yep…poor execution is not dumb….its just a bad shot.  Just because it’s a shot you can hit well 70% of the time doesn’t make the misses dumb.

 

It's like the story from one of the Harvey Penick books.  The guys from the university of Texas golf team played a round with Tom Kite back when Kite was the leading money winner on tour.  When finished they asked Kite why they shot 76 versus his 70 when they could hit any shot he could hit. Maybe even better. 
His reply was that in any given round there would be a few shots where the college player would not give his full attention to the task at hand.  And the score would suffer.

 

So like you said it’s not dumb…it’s attention to detail and focus.  But that doesn’t mean those ten shots per round are as simple to eliminate as many here were implying.

 

 

[ChaosTheory]

 Bad shots bother me very little.  Bad decisions bother me much more.

 

My typical ones are mis-club due to wind, not appreciating the risk on some green side shots, not protecting bogey once I’m in trouble, and shooting for front pins on our target golf greens.

 

I am reevaluating my ideas about reasonable places to miss greens.