Stand behind any green on a Saturday and watch where the approach shots land. A few fly over. A lot land on the front third, and a lot more never reach the putting surface at all. The golfers hitting those shots are not choosing badly on purpose. They are choosing the right club for a distance their 7-iron does not actually go.
This is the most fixable leak in amateur golf, and it is a number problem before it is a swing problem. The course management guide treats your shot pattern as the input to every decision on the course; this article is about the one direction that pattern leans, and why one more club is usually right.
On this page
The data: most amateur approaches finish short
Shot Scope’s published breakdown of all approach shots from inside 150 yards, all handicaps and all lies, puts 17.4% of them short left, 19.0% short right, 8.0% long left and 6.2% long right. Add the pairs and 36.4% of approaches finish short of the green against 14.2% long. Short outnumbers long by more than two and a half to one. The same article puts the green-hit rate from 130 to 150 yards at 38.64% and the average finish from 150 yards at 89.25 feet from the hole.
| Miss | Share of approaches |
|---|---|
| Short left | 17.4% |
| Short right | 19.0% |
| Long left | 8.0% |
| Long right | 6.2% |
| All short misses | 36.4% |
| All long misses | 14.2% |
It gets worse with distance, as you would expect, and the shortfall is the reason. GolfLink’s August 2026 breakdown of Shot Scope’s numbers by handicap has the 15-handicap hitting 19% of greens from 150 to 175 yards with an average finish of 106 feet, and 11% from 175 to 200 with an average finish of 145 feet. Shot Scope’s greens-in-regulation figures give the same golfer 49% from 100 yards in the fairway. From wedge range the ball mostly gets there. From a 6-iron it mostly does not, and the direction it mostly does not go is short.
A short miss is not a bad swing in most cases. A shot struck a groove low, a touch heavy, or on a cool morning still flies straight and lands short of where a flush one would. Straight and short is what the data shows, and straight and short is what a slightly imperfect swing with the wrong club produces.
Why: you’re recording your best strike, not your average
Ask a 15-handicap how far their 7-iron goes and the answer is a single number, usually the longest one they remember. That is how memory works. The flushed 7-iron that carried the bunker and finished pin-high is the one that gets filed under 7-iron. The three that came up 12 yards short get filed under bad swing.
Shot Scope built a statistic to correct for exactly this. Its Performance Average, described in its 2022 driving-distance report, excludes abnormal shots at both ends, the flushed ones and the mishits, to give a number the golfer can expect to hit on a typical swing. The same report notes that nearly 70% of amateur golfers average less than 250 yards with the driver, a figure most amateurs would refuse to believe about themselves. The iron numbers have the same gap between memory and average, and the gap is almost always in the same direction: the memory is longer.
There is a second number hiding in the first. The number you remember is probably total distance, the spot where the ball stopped, and the number that matters for an approach is carry, the spot where it landed. On a firm fairway a 7-iron can roll 10 yards; on a receptive green it rolls two. The guide to carry versus total distance works through the difference. If you have been using the total to pick clubs into greens, you have been under-clubbing by the roll on every approach of your life.
Then there are the conditions. Andrew Rice’s rule of thumb, built for everyday golfers, adds yards equal to the wind speed in mph for a shot into the breeze; 10 mph is 10 yards. GOLF.com reported Rice’s TrackMan testing on temperature: about 2 yards per club for every 10°F below 75°F with the longer clubs, less with a wedge. A 55°F morning with a 10 mph wind in your face turns a 150-yard shot into something closer to 165. Your best-day 7-iron was hit on a warm afternoon with no wind. Today is not that day, and the club is not that club.
Back-of-green misses are cheaper than front misses
Architects defend greens from the front. Bunkers, ponds, creeks, false fronts and steep banks sit between the fairway and the putting surface, because the front is where a course sets its challenge. The back of most greens is grass: a collar, some rough, a mound, occasionally a cart path. A shot that goes 10 yards long usually leaves a chip. A shot that comes 10 yards short usually leaves sand, water or a pitch up a bank.
The short game numbers make the point. In Shot Scope’s par-3 data, amateurs get up and down 43% of the time from inside 25 yards and 16% of the time from 25 to 50 yards. A long miss is usually pin-high or past it and inside 25 yards of the hole. A short miss is often 25 to 50 yards out, because the ball fell short of the green and the pin is somewhere on it. The long miss leaves the 43% shot. The short miss leaves the 16% one, plus whatever the bunker adds.
There are greens where long is the disaster: a drop-off, a road, out of bounds, a downhill chip onto a slick surface. Those holes are the exceptions, and they announce themselves from the fairway. On the other fifteen, the honest rule is that long is cheaper, and the golfer whose misses are split evenly between long and short is playing the right club. Shot Scope’s split is 36 to 14. That is not even. That is a bag full of clubs labelled ten yards optimistically.
The plus-one rule and when it fails
The old fix is take one more club. It is a good patch. If your stated 7-iron number is a best-day number, a 6-iron with a normal swing lands roughly where you thought the 7-iron would, and the front bunker stops collecting your ball. For a golfer who has never measured a carry distance, plus one is the single most useful habit on this page.
It is still a patch, and it fails in predictable places.
- Downwind. The ball flies flatter and runs. Rice’s rule of thumb subtracts half the wind speed in yards; on a 15 mph tailwind, plus one turns a good shot into a long miss.
- Downhill. A green well below you plays shorter than the number, and the ball lands steeper and stops. Plus one flies the green.
- Firm summer greens. A pin-high shot runs to the back, and plus one runs off it.
- Hot weather. The same TrackMan testing that takes yards away in the cold gives them back above 75°F, about 4 yards per club at 95°F. Plus one on a hot afternoon adds those on top.
- Trouble long. On the holes where over the green is the worst place to be, plus one puts you there.
- Already-honest numbers. If you have measured your average carry, plus one is double counting, and now you are the golfer who is always long.
The rule fails because it is a correction for not knowing a number. Once you know the number, you do not need a correction. You need the number and a way to get the distance to the green.
Know the carry number, then choose
Here is the version that replaces the rule. Measure your average carry for each club: 15 to 20 balls, count every one, note where the group lands, not where the best one lands. The guide to finding your real club distances lays out how to do it on a range, on a launch monitor, or on the course over ten rounds. If you want a starting point before you have your own data, the club distance chart gives sourced ranges by swing speed and skill, though a chart is a guess about you and your own measurements are not.
Then, on every approach, the decision is three steps. Get the distance to the middle of the green. Adjust for wind, temperature and slope. Take the club whose average carry covers that number, and aim at the middle of the green, for the reasons the center-of-the-green article lays out. A club that carries the middle number lands in the middle on a normal strike and on the front on a heavy one, and both are on the green. A club chosen for the front number is on the green only when the strike is good, and the data says the strike is good less often than you think.
Two habits make it stick. Write the average carry on a strip of tape on the shaft for a season, so the number in your head is the measured one and not the remembered one. And keep a tally for ten rounds of where every approach finishes: short, long, on. If short still outnumbers long by two to one, your numbers are still optimistic. When the tally evens out, you have the right clubs in your hands, and the front bunkers on your home course will start to feel strangely quiet.
Questions
Why do I always come up short in golf?
Because the distance you have in your head for each club is the distance of your best strikes, and most swings are not your best. Add a slightly heavy strike, a cool morning and a breeze into you and the shot can land 10 to 15 yards short of the number you planned for. Shot Scope's data on approaches from inside 150 yards shows this is the most common miss for amateurs by a wide margin. The fix is measuring your average carry and choosing the club for that.
Should I always take one more club?
No. Take the club whose average carry reaches the middle of the green. If you already know that number, the plus-one rule is redundant; if you do not, plus one is a decent patch. It fails downwind, downhill, on firm greens, in hot weather and when there is trouble long. Measure your carry once and you will not need the rule.
Is it better to be long or short of the green?
Usually long. Most greens are guarded in front by bunkers, water or a false front, and open behind. Pin-high or long misses also leave a shorter chip more often, because amateurs tend to fall short of the flag rather than fly it. There are exceptions, such as a green with a drop-off or out of bounds behind it, and on those holes the middle of the green is still the target with a club that carries there and no further.
Does clubbing up mean swinging easier?
It means swinging normally with a longer club. An easy swing with a bigger club is how good players flight it down in wind, but for most amateurs a deliberately soft swing loses rhythm and produces a worse strike than a full one. Choose the club that carries the number with your usual swing and then make your usual swing.
How do I find my real carry distance?
Hit 15 to 20 balls with one club on a range with accurate markers, or on a launch monitor, and count every ball, including the thin ones. Note where the group lands, not where the best one lands, and use that as the club's carry. A GPS app on the course does the same thing: note the distance to the green before an approach and where the ball finished. Ten rounds of that is a better yardage chart than any table.
Sources
- Shot Scope: How many greens should you hit from 150 yards?
- GolfLink: Why 150 to 200 Yards Costs 15-Handicappers So Many Shots
- Shot Scope: Distribution of Driving Distances 2022
- GOLF.com: Here's how temperature affects carry distance with your driver
- GOLF.com: Here's a simple formula that calculates how far you'll hit it in cold weather
- Andrew Rice Golf: Wind formula
- Shot Scope: Play Smarter with Radar, Par 3s
- Shot Scope: How many greens do amateur golfers hit?