Close the Gap: Why Your Bad Shots Hold the Key to Better Golf
When a student hits what I call a bad miss and I’m not talking about a slice or a hook, I’m talking about a ball that barely gets off the ground my next question is almost always the same:
“Do you know why that happened?”
Usually I get an incorrect answer. And I get it. That’s why they’re at a lesson in the first place. If they already knew the answers, they’d be solving it on their own. There’s no shortage of videos out there promising the “one thing you need to do” to fix your swing, but the reality is that golf is far more complex than any single tip.
The truth is, most mid- and high-handicap golfers are spending their practice time on the wrong thing. They’re judging their range sessions by how good their good shots are. The players who actually improve are the ones doing the opposite they’re closing the gap between their best shots and their worst ones.
What Does “Closing the Gap” Mean?
Closing the gap means shifting your focus during practice away from your good shots and toward understanding your bad shots. Golf is a game of misses. You will mis-hit the ball more often than you strike it cleanly, and the score you post on the card is far more dependent on how bad your bad shots are than on how good your good shots are.
If you’re going to judge anything at the range, judge the quality of your misses. That’s the puzzle you’re trying to solve every time you practice: What is my worst shot? What’s the miss that keeps showing up on the course and costing me strokes? Why is it happening? And how do I fix it?
Why This Approach Works
1. It Targets the Shots That Actually Cost You Strokes
Big numbers on the scorecard rarely come from great shots that ended up a little off. They come from the bad miss the ball that never gets airborne, the one that starts 40 yards offline, the chunk from 120 yards out. Improving those shots has a far greater impact on your score than making your good shots slightly better.
2. It Forces You to Think Like a Diagnostician
When you stop reacting emotionally to bad shots and start asking why, you turn practice into problem-solving. That’s how real improvement happens not by hitting more balls, but by understanding the ones you’ve already hit.
3. It Builds a Game That Holds Up Under Pressure
A swing that produces a few great shots and a handful of disasters won’t hold up on the course. Tightening the dispersion between your best and worst shots is what creates the consistency you actually need to shoot lower scores.
4. It Mirrors How Better Players Practice
Lower handicaps don’t spend their practice time admiring their best swings. They spend it studying their misses and working backward to the cause. Closing the gap gives mid- and high-handicappers the same framework.
The Three Questions to Ask After Every Bad Shot
On the range, when you hit that not-so-fun shot and you mutter “there it is” hold onto that frustration for a moment. Before you reload and try again, work through these three questions:
1. Where did I hit it on the face? For the ball to do what it just did, where did it strike the clubface center, heel, or toe?
2. Where did the club meet the ground? If you’re hitting an iron, did the club contact the ground before the ball, after the ball, or did it not find the ground at all?
3. Did the ball curve the way I wanted it to? Did it curve too much, too little, or in the wrong direction entirely? Here’s a key concept most amateurs get wrong: the path of the club through impact curves the ball opposite of the direction you’re swinging. A swing that travels to the right of the target tends to curve the ball back left, and vice versa.
If you can honestly answer those three questions after every miss, you’re already doing the work that closes the gap. These are the global principles of the golf swing. Anything you work on that doesn’t connect back to these three areas isn’t going to make you a better golfer.
Reading Your Misses: Three Common Patterns
Once you’re paying attention to your misses, you’ll start to notice patterns. Here are three of the most common, and what they’re usually telling you:
Pattern 1: The Ball Won't Start on Your Target Line
If you’re getting the ball in the air just fine, but your biggest miss is that it never starts on the line you picked (and you are picking a starting line before every shot, right?) you most likely have a clubface control issue. The face is pointing somewhere other than where you intend at impact.
Pattern 2: The Ball Starts on Line but Curves Way Off
If the ball starts where you want it to but then curves dramatically away from the target, that’s almost always a path problem. Remember the path curves the ball the opposite way of where the club is traveling.
Pattern 3: Fat Shots, Thin Shots, and Low Knuckleballs
If you tend to hit it heavy, hit it thin, or hit shots that just don’t get up in the air you have a low point problem. The club is bottoming out in the wrong place relative to the ball.
Why Setup, Grip, and Alignment Matter
This is where the fundamentals come in. The reason a great setup, a sound grip, and alignment that matches your target are so important is that all of them directly influence your ability to control the three things above: face, low point, and path.
Setup and alignment make it easier for the club to travel on a path that matches your target. A good grip makes it easier to deliver the face square at impact. Posture and ball position make it easier to control where the club bottoms out. Fundamentals aren’t the goal they’re the foundation that lets you control the things that actually move the ball.
The Takeaway
Closing the gap is the simplest and most honest way to think about practice, no matter what your handicap is. Stop measuring your sessions by your best shot of the day. Start measuring them by your worst. Ask the three questions face, low point, path every time the ball doesn’t do what you wanted. Identify the pattern. Work backward to the cause.
That’s the work. That’s the puzzle. And that’s how you actually get better.
