A strokes-gained approach to closing the gap from a 5 handicap to scratch — built with Ryan Dône, Steve Hamer, Chris Hanson and the DECADE framework, and sharpened by a recent look at how Arccos and Ping treat golf as roughly thirty separate skills rather than one game.
"My short game isn't very good" isn't specific enough to act on. Treat golf as roughly thirty separate skills — driving with trouble left, approach from 175–200 yards, a 5-foot putt, a 50-foot lag — and the real question becomes: which of those thirty games is actually costing me the most strokes? That's the question this plan answers.
Ranked by strokes lost per round, not by what feels worst after a bad hole. This is the order the practice plan follows — top of the ledger gets the time.
Not three, not five. Sequential improvement beats trying to fix everything in the same week — and a weakness moves from a 15-handicap standard to a 5-handicap standard far faster than an existing strength moves from scratch to plus-2. That makes bunker play, currently the clearest opportunity, the fastest shots to save.
Built around the top two items on the ledger. Benchmark each session the way the 15-yard pitch, 20-yard bunker carry and 25-yard wedge numbers were already benchmarked — objective evidence, not a feeling on the way home.
25, 30, 40 and 50-foot putts to varying pins. Track three-putt percentage, not makes. Steve Hamer / DECADE course-management principles applied to first-putt speed control.
Fixed-length carries from 10, 15 and 20 yards, varying sand and lip height. Chris Hanson short-game work, scored on up-and-down rate rather than shot feel.
Ladder drills at 45, 60 and 75 yards. TrackMan carry consistency logged against actual proximity to pin, not just dispersion on the range.
Maintenance only. Driving and DECADE decision-making are already ahead of the rest of the game — the instinct after a bad score to "go find it on the range" is exactly the bias to resist.
Arccos is trying to recreate this with AI. The pieces are already in place.
A four-putt, a lip-out and one bad bunker shot are what get remembered after a poor score. The stats from the same round usually tell a different story — solid driving, good course management, a mostly sound short game. Score the round on the ledger, not on the two holes that felt worst on the drive home.
The plan, in one line: keep the driver exactly where it is, eliminate three-putts through dedicated lag putting work, turn bunker play from a weakness into a neutral, and tighten up the 40–80 yard wedges — while letting DECADE course management keep poor swings from turning into doubles.
Save a shot through putting, half a shot through bunkers and half a shot through wedges, and that's the move from a 5 handicap to something performing much closer to scratch — without a single swing change.