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The last time you walked off the 18th green, you were probably convinced your swing cost you at least a few shots. And yes, swing mechanics are a thing. But those lost shots (and more) are waiting to be saved with adjustments that have nothing to do with your swing motion. Your score is getting killed by the decisions you're making, and by a few common setup issues that need to be addressed.
GOLFTEC Director of Teaching Quality Josh Troyer is the host of a new YouTube series designed to uncover these exact scenarios and provide simple solutions. In Score Killers, you'll see how much easier the game can be with a slightly different approach. Let's take a look at three of the more common ones:
Should you always hit driver?
"Generally speaking, yes," says Troyer, who is also the 2026 Colorado PGA Teacher of the Year. The qualifier is the part worth diagramming on your scorecard or yardage book. Before the club comes out of the bag, the number that matters mostis the expected width of your shot pattern, and a workable estimate is 20 percent of the total distance you hit your driver. Troyer carries his driver right around 300 yards, which puts his own pattern at roughly 60 yards wide. A golfer who carries it 230 is working with a window closer to 46 yards. If the landing area is that wide and nothing catastrophic sits on either edge, the driver gets to eat.
But when fairway bunkers are hemming in and shrink the landing zone, you need to do some math. Clubbing down has a price, and the video puts a number on it — for every 20 yards taken off the tee shot, a player generally adds about a tenth of a shot to the score on that hole. Lay back all day and you're probably giving up two shots before the turn.
Still, the arithmetic on this particular shot tells the story. A 3-wood that travels 250 to 275 yards produces a pattern about 50 yards across, and at that distance the bunkers are out of play entirely. The tee shot he ends up hitting isn't especially good. It stays in the fairway anyway, short of the sand, with a straightforward approach into the green.
Why do you keep chunking 30-yard pitch shots?
Most players stand over a 30- or 40-yard pitch and are trying to manufacture height, says Troyer. Helping the ball up means moving the sternum away from the target on the way back. That move drags the low point of the swing behind the ball, which sets up the compensations that actually produce the chunk. The elbows separate. The lead wrist extends. "It just causes a ton of chaos when you hit."
You fix it with your setup. Play the ball roughly in the middle of the stance, with the face slightly open. The buttons on your shirt should lean a little toward the target at address and stay there through the swing and into the finish—which for many golfers feels like extra pressure under the lead foot.
What actually causes three-putts?
It's almost never your read. Troyer lays out what is probably a familiar scenario. On a 50- or 60-foot putt that breaks six feet, if you aimed dead at the hole and struck with exactly the right speed, it finishes six feet away. Read the same putt perfectly and roll it only 30 feet, and the second putt is 20 feet long and still breaking. One of those is in makeable. The other is a three-putt waiting to happen.
The PGA Tour stats bear this out. The majority of three-putts on the PGA Tour come from outside 25 feet, which is to say from the distances where speed, not line, is the variable in play.
Use the 10 percent rule. A tenth of the putt's length becomes the circle around the hole a golfer is trying to finish inside, which on a 50-footer means five feet. Long putts that finish inside that circle are far less likely to turn into three-jack city.
Most of the time, the main issue is a strike problem. Catch a ball on the toe or the heel and you lose a tremendous amount of ball speed—and the ability to predict it. The classic gate drill addresses it with two tees set just outside the putter head. Make your stroke and miss the tees.
