Most amateur golfers step into an approach shot knowing exactly one number: The distance to the pin. And in many ways, that's the least important number of them all.
Pros and their caddies have a series of numbers they care about before they commit to a shot, and they're not as complicated as they sound. There are five in particular, and for the rest of us, each one only takes about a second to zap on your rangefinder.
And the good news is, they'll make you more prepared and help you hit better shots—without having to change anything about your actual swing.
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Important yardage No. 1: Cover number
This is your floor—the absolute minimum you need to carry your shot to guarantee safety over whatever trouble sits short of the green.
So, if there's a bunker guarding the front of the green, you need to zap a spot on the top of the lip of the bunker, not the pin. That number is the one most amateurs gloss over and the one everything else works backward from.
If you know it's 157 to cover that bunker, hitting your 160 yard club is probably cutting it too close. Any mishit will find the bunker. Pulling your 170 club, for instance, gives you a far better chance of clearing your cover number from that distance. Even if you end up long, you've still avoided the worst trouble.
Important yardage No. 2: The "actual"
This is the genuine number to the flag, the one you'll hear pros ask their caddies for. This is the raw number without accounting for wind, slope, or anything else. If your cover number is your floor, think of your actual number as your goal. Your best case scenario.
Important number No. 3: Pitch distance
Where you want the ball to land, which pros obsess over even though they spin it more than the rest of us, hit it higher, and stop it faster as a result. It matters even more for the rest of us, because we hit it lower with less spin and our ball rolls out—yet we think about it less.
Landing spot, not final resting spot, is what you have to plan around.
Continuing with the example above, if it's 157 to cover the bunker, the "actual" to the pin may be 160. The problem is your ball is going to roll once it lands. So to get close to it, you'd have to land it 158 yards—way too close for comfort to your cover number. Seems like the pin in this hypothetical example isn't one worth trying to get close to...
Important number No. 4: Max distance
We've talked a lot about your floor but there's also a ceiling, because chances are you can't pull your 220 club, blaze it long of your 157 cover number, and not run into some other kind of trouble.
This is your maximum distance. It's the longest you can hit the shot and still be safe, because bailing out long into water or a back bunker is its own kind of trouble—the goal is to hit your ball in the zone between your floor and ceiling, getting cautiously closer to the pin as you go.
Important number No. 5: Bailout number
Sometimes you're not feeling a shot. We get it. It's a fact of the game. That's where your bailout number comes into play: It's your insurance policy for when a hole feels like trouble everywhere and your brain locks up.
Architects almost always leave one gap on the hole where there's an empty space of grass—often short of the green—so you zap a spot in that area, play to that, hit an easy chip or pitch onto the green, two-putt and get out of there.
None of this is slow play or paralysis by analysis. Standing in the fairway, most times it's quick zaps: pin, biggest trouble short, anything long. A zap to the pin if it looks available, and a bailout if you're not feeling it.
Try it on one par three this weekend—zap all five before you pull a club. You'll get used to it quickly, and you'll like the results.