Picking better targets is an easy way of lowering your score. How you select a better target is achieved by understanding your shot patterns (or dispersion) and overlaying that pattern to pick the optimal target.

Understand Your Dispersion

Dispersion is just another way of describing what your typical shot pattern likes like for a given shot. Typically, it would look like a oval with some shots going longer or shorter than you anticipated, and some going left or right of your intended target.

As an example, if I tried to hit 10 8-iron shots, I know most will go 5 or more yards left of where I’m aiming. A few good ones will be centered perhaps 5yds left of where I aim, a few more will be scattered out to about 10yds to the left, one might be exactly where I aimed, and one or two may be mishits and end up 20yds short and to the far right or left of the green.

Let’s lightly touch on some mathematical terms. People often talk about standard deviation which is a term for defining how wide an area your shot pattern is. If you are a beginner golfer, you shots will go all over the place or in other words, you’ll have a higher standard deviation than a PGA tour pro. Often people use the term one standard deviation which means 2/3 of all shots will fall within that shot pattern. Two standard deviations means that 95% of your shots fall within that shot pattern. With some minor caveats, once you calculate your standard deviation as a number, you can multiply it by two to get two standard deviations.

Calculating Your Own Dispersion the Hard Way

My flightscope mevo plus will do this for me but you can do it yourself with pen and paper (and a smartphone). During a range session, hit 10 shots with a given club. It helps a lot if you have a personal launch monitor that gives you carry distance. Using carry distance, the distance where the ball would land is a better metric than using total distance, where the ball would come to rest.

For each shot, use the same starting line which will help you understand how much lateral movement you have between where you are aiming and where the ball actionally goes. You absolutely should do your full pre-shot routine – just raking over the next ball won’t give you very accurate data. As a bonus, I typically calculate two clubs at the same time by alternating shots with each club (e.g 5 iron and wedge, 7 iron and 5 wood, etc). For each shot, write the carry distance down as well as how far left or right the ball goes, or lateral dispersion (consider using left negative numbers and right of target as positive numbers). If estimating lateral distance is hard, consider holding your hand oustretched in front of you count the number of fingers between your aim line and where the ball lands.

I prefer to throw out mishits like shanks or super-fat shots. I don’t think it’s super useful to include a shank that goes off 40yds to the left in determining your dispersion you would use on the course. I find recording mishits are great at tracking your improvement, but when it comes to help you make better target decisions, I think it just adds noise. How you define a mishit is up to you, but if you throw out all shots that weren’t hit perfectly, it’s not going to help you much eiher. I recommend finding a middle ground what your shots will likely be on the course.

Once you have those 10 shots recorded, just throw the set of distance numbers and the lateral distance into a calculator like this. You’ll need the mean (or average) as well as the standard deviation. So now what? Let’s say my 8-iron shots have a mean of 150yds and a standard deviation of 8. That means that 2/3 of the time my 8-iron will go between 142 (150 -8) and 158 (150 + 8). To get 2 standard deviations, just multiple standard deviation by 2. So in this example, 95% of the time, my 8 iron will go between 134yds(150-(8x2)) and 166 (150+(8x2))

Handy shortcut to calculating dispersion

As you can tell, it’s a lot of work. I often use a shortcut on the course and compare my real dispersion with the shortcut and then calibrate. For full club swings, I take the distance from the hole, and I use 5% of the distance as the standard deviation and 10% as second standard deviation. So for example, if I’m 100yds out, I assume 2/3 of the time (ie one standard deviation) I will hit it betweend 95 to 105, and 95% of the time (ie two standard deviations) it will be within 90 to 110 yards from the hole. Similarly, I may miss left or right by 5 yds or less 2/3 of the time, and 10yds 95% of the time.

Target vs Aim

Most people don’t hit the ball straight. It’s really important for targeting purposes to figure out the center of your dispersion laterally as well as distance. Using the mean, as described above, you may find your number to be +5yds to the right of where you aim if you fade or push the ball. In that scenario, it’s important to aim 5 yards to the right of where you want the ball to land. That means that sometimes, you’ll nut it perfectly straight and end up 15ft to the right of your target, but for every time you do that, more often you’ll land closer to your intended target. When selecting a target, use the mean or center of your shot pattern and then offset those distances to pick a place to aim.

Now what?

Ok, now that I have figured it out, how do I use it in practice? Let’s say your lateral mean is 5yds to the right of your aim and your standard deviation with a 100yd wedge is 5yds, and two standard deviation is 10yds. What I do is first make sure real penalty area like a water hazard is outside of 10yds reducing my risk of penalty down to 5% of the time. Depending on how well you play a bunker shot, you may want to make sure you put your target 10yds away from that too. Most bunkers at my home course aren’t that penalizing, so I’ll end up being fine aiming my target no less than 5yds away. Several places on my home course make short siding a miserable option, so I’ll avoid those as well.

Some caveats

All this math can be helpful, but there a few things to mention. First, the math isn’t perfect in that it assumes a normal distribution (or if you hit an infinite number of shots on a chart, it would form a bell curve) which I don’t believe is true. Typically, for a right handed player, if you charted your dispersion, the oval would be shorter to the right with a weak toey fade and longer to the left with a closed face pull. I threw out mishits which of course I hit out on the course. Wind, lie, and the variability of your swing each day will throw things off. That being said, it’s still a useful tool.

Why is this better?

I find by doing this exercise on the course, I have three big benefits for myself. First, scoring lower in golf almost always is about avoiding mistakes rather than making hero shots. By selecting smarter targets, you reduce the risk of putting up higher numbers. Second, it takes all the emotions out of decision making which also gives you more confidence in the shot. If you pick a target that 95% of the time keeps you safe, that is a real confidence builder. Finally, when you do pick a target and things go awry, there is some emotional detachment. By thinking statistcally, sometimes you are going to dice is going to roll the wrong number.