Peter Williams: Improve your short game and get results

You don't want to know this but all that money you've spent on golf equipment in the last few years has not improved your game. Don't feel bad. Nobody else, at least in the USA and New Zealand, has been shooting lower scores either.

Here are some sobering figures. The retail golf equipment market in New Zealand is about $50 million a year. That includes shoes and apparel and range balls but the majority is spent on flash drivers with titanium heads that cost up to $700, sets of irons often worth over $2000 and golf balls which can sting you for up to $10 each. But the average handicap of a New Zealand male golfer is now worse than it was in 2001.

According to Alan McCracken who runs the website which has been recording and calculating the handicap of every club member in New Zealand since September 2000, the average male has slipped out from a mark of 16.36 in May four years ago to 16.42 today. Women fare worse. They averaged 22.42 in 2001 and are now on 23.31.

We shouldn't be surprised because the story is more or less the same in the US. There, the National Golf Foundation, an organisation that researches and consults for the golf industry, says the average score for all players remains about 100 and has for decades. The average US Golf Association handicap is 16.1, an improvement of about half a stroke in the last five years but only 20 per cent of US golfers have a handicap.

But here's the real eye-opener. The average score of players on the PGA Tour, the game's major league, has risen by 0.28 shots a round more than it was 10 years ago.

We know golfers today hit it further, especially off the tee. Even at club and amateur level we all know of a hole we used to reach with a drive and five iron and these days we get there with a seven iron. All that means is that we probably make as many pars on that hole as we used to but it feels easier doing it.

Today's equipment is significantly better than it was five years ago. The drivers are bigger and lighter, the wedges have more loft for escaping from trouble, the putters have better balance and the balls go further with more control. So given all that, how come we can't score lower?

Golfers at all levels forget the aim is to get the ball in the hole in the fewest number of shots. Yet if you go to any golf course practice area or a driving range with a short game facility, what are most people doing?

They're out with the titanium driver with the super light graphite shaft practising their long game. Or maybe they're giving the new set of cavity-backed irons a major workout. I can't talk. I even do it myself.

When we get a lesson from a pro what do we mostly get advice on? You got it - the swing for the long shots. Yet where are the majority of golf shots hit from? Inside 100m.

The average golfer, the one on a 16 handicap, is usually going to score somewhere around 90. About 30 of those will be putts and another 20 will be chip, pitch and bunker shots near the green.

The flash new driver will be used 15 times, at most.

So why spend big money and practice time on the big clubs? Because it's more fun.

But unfortunately it doesn't make us better players.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY