Golfers love to tell you how far they can drive the ball. But what they are really referring to is how far they can hit their best drives, and even then most golfers like to exaggerate their ability. It makes for great banter in the clubhouse!

When I ask "how far do you hit the golf ball?" you must not think about how far you could hit the ball. This is not about your best drive. What I am referring to is how far you hit the golf ball with each club in your golf bag.

If you want to score to the best of your ability, you need to know precisely which club to take to get the ball to where you want it. That is, you need to select the club that with most probability will propel the ball the required distance, in the direction you want it to go in.

You absolutely must know how far you hit the ball on average with each club in your bag.

When you work out how far you hit with each club, make sure you don't take the best distances. You need to know how far the ball will go with a club most of the time.

Another important aspect to calculate is 'carry' distance.

On wet fairways the ball will get little or no run. Good greens will hold a ball very well. So what is more important is how far the ball flies i.e. carries in the air before it lands.

The advantage of this is you will know, fairly accurately, exactly where you expect the ball to land. This is critical if you are to fly the ball over hazards such as bunkers. It is not important that the ball goes a total distance of 100 yards. It is far more critical to know that the ball will fly the hazard at 95 yards!

So you must know how far the golf ball carries with each of your golf clubs.

Once you have this knowledge you can plan your way round the golf course much more effectlivey.

To produce your best score you need to calculate the distance to target for each shot. Once you know how far you have to go then you are able to choose the correct club easily.

If you start to plan your way round the course based on the required carry distance on each shot you may find that you get closer to the pin more of the time, and your scores start to fall.