TGC / 2019 vs Real Life Golf Scores?

[DejaVu]

Very curious in a nutshell please. That is; without any rewinds and/or big gimmies on the greens...how would you compare your scores from your sim to your local course? Extra credit added for how you take your sim to your course and your course back to your sim with progression.

[Gresh12]

Apparently I’m the only one that’s really bad at sim putting.

[Jwheels9876]

I 3 putt just as often on the sim as in real life but I hit WAYYY more long putts indoors than out. Some of these guys make every putt they see in the game

[mikemcd22]

I'm 7-8 Strokes better on the sim. I'd be careful about trash talking your buddies too soon... I thought I was going to kill it on the course after my first winter on the sim. Thought I had an advantage from playing all Winter. Turns out there was less transfer from the Sim game to IRL than I expected. Had to really focus on alignment and short game before I could score again.

[calebm1001]

Was just about to post this too. The mat really hurt me for a long time. I didn’t realize how fat I was hitting everything until I got on real grass. Big buzz kill thinking you’re gonna kill it...

[Topcat]

I find I'm probably 3-5 shots lower on sim but fairly consistent with real life scoring. Think I lose a few around the greens but make up for it with easier bunker and rough play. For example I hit into deep rough with tee shot the other day and put it on the green with a 7 wood from 180. Easy par. In real life I'd be lucky to...... 1) find the ball 2) get a wedge on it back to the fairway. 3) more than likely I'd get greedy...try to hit a 6 iron, advance it 3 feet then pitch out with a wedge...then dump in greenside bunker.... two to get out and invariably 3 putt it for a 9! So yes sim's easier. My goal for this year is to work on improving my negativity!!

[halekala]

hahahaha...good reply Topcat. Very true! I just can't get over the fact that on SIM the lie is so perfect!! I sigh out in the course when I have to bend all kinds of way to get a solid hit. I can never remember the setup for the four different lies. This season I will keep that four lie setup in my notebook.

[Jwheels9876]

I played outside last 2 days after not playing anything but indoors since early November. Shot 83-84... hit my driver and irons pretty darn good and chipped like garbage costing me numerous strokes in both rounds because I couldn't get up and down from inside 20 yards.

If I can get my playing partners to agree to 6 foot gimmies I think I can go from 10 strokes to 5 different indoor to out lol.

[halekala]

That's nice that you get to play outside. I am itching to play outside but that's not going to be possible here in Michigan anytime soon. The chipping is so easy on mat as opposed to outside. I kind of stopped practicing chipping on mat b/c I gain no confidence at all. It's good 90% of the time which is quite not tru IRL. So chipping outside as soon as weather improves is going to be paramount. On 6' gimmies, it's huge on SIM but I think it's justified b/c the damn greens are so fast.

[Jwheels9876]

I found that full pitches like 30-90 yards are great and carrying over to outside but those little greenside ones don't carry over one bit. The different grass and lie makes it worlds different trying to get one to land nicely and roll out the right amount.

If you have a fiberbuilt you can literally flop every single chip shot greenside indoors and make it look easy doing it. Try
that stuff outdoors

[halekala]

I tried flop shots outside with my 60 degree LW 10 degree bounce and I was successful only handful of time. Most of the time I bladed it. Indoor, every time it's good, I have fiberbuilt but I don't use that I use a different one. However, I have no complaints about being able to at least swing a regular ball inside and have fun. It's that I have to be realistic outside and can't expect the same result.

[LondonGolf]

When I first got my sim I thought my golfing abilities had vanished. Slowly starting to come back to real life (2 hcp), but still seem to have more blow up rounds indoors than outdoors.

[gnomike]

My sim scores are a few strokes lower, I'm sure, but it's not a complete landslide either. I think the overall battle is that in the sim I have a perfect lie on a flat stance with perfect alignment on every shot, but IRL I have automatic awareness of my surroundings (big slopes, contours etc), I have instinctive feel instead of hitting to numbers, and I have much better creativity.

IRL I love reading my lie and anticipating how the ball will come out, and choosing different shot types depending on what I've got. Around the greens In real golf there's a lot more feel. Look at the distance, picture the shot, the bounce, the check the roll... in sim it's again just hit to a number.

I guess I just embrace both types of golf for what they are.

Oh, and IRL the G#$!#@^&&@!!! lamp on your projector doesn't go out after only a couple hundred hours and cost you a small fortune to replace!!

[orangeman]

My experience is completely different. IRL I'm a higher handicapper (15.1 index) and my scores on the sim are generally worse than IRL. I've been following this thread trying to figure out what's going on and today, when I was playing Pebble it hit me. Two things make my scores worse here: No Equitable Stroke Control and putting. IRL I will generally have a couple (or more) of blow-up holes per round. With ESC, triple bogey is as bad as it gets (double on Par 5s prior to the rule change). On the sim, I can go all the way to 11 and when things go bad on the sim, they often go really bad and I will max out. On the putting side, IRL I'm a decent putter - I rarely 3-putt let alone 4 putt. On the sim I wind up with multiple 3 putts per round and 4 putting is not out of the question.

The blow-up holes are something continue to work on IRL and in Sim play. For me, the putting just doesn't warrant the extra work because it doesn't really translate.

[Will]

+1

I shoot over my handicap on the sim. ESC matters. Putting past the hole has caused too many 3 putts. Recovery shots and anything near a leaf just happen to hit the branches everytime.

Some Societies seem to play courses from the tips. (7000+ yards) So, nearly every hole has me hitting a driver and then 5w or hybrid multiple times. 5i-9i are rarely used.

But, if I hit Q on 1st putts, and drive it straight.... this game is really addictive....

[TXANM]

I was really crushing it in the sim world but then I went to top golf last night for some IRL hitting. I couldn’t hit anything! The mat was really hard and the clubs suck but I should have been able to do something!

[Cklguy2013]

This is a great question, I've been tracking my sim scores just so I'd know the answer.

Playing Lidar courses and using 6' gimmies my average score on the sim is 72 versus 77 in real life, a difference of 5.0. On the sim I've played courses that averaged about 6,500 yard versus 6,200 yard course IRL, so factoring in the yardage difference and using and using 6' gimmies I'd say there is about a 6 stroke difference between sim golf and real golf for me.

With regards to putting, In real life I average about 30.5 putts per round, using 6' gimmies with the sim I average about 29.5 putts per round, Btw I tried no gimmies and my putts per round averaged about 33 putts per round. I seem to have settled on 3' gimmies which gives me about 30.5 putts per round very similar to real golf.

[Mikeporter2000]

I'm one of those guys who just got my golf sim in October. It rains all the time in Seattle so I haven't gotten out for real rounds yet...focusing on skiing in the mountains and golf in the garage. I'm a 16.3 handicap in real-life and now a 6 on the sim. Based on the improvement of my accuracy alone I'm thinking I'll be a 12, but we'll just have to see. I've been a 13 before and I'm definitely way more accurate. I'll report back next week when I'm playing live in Punta de Mita. Have to say I'm loving the sim.

[gnomike]

Just played my first IRL round in a while and have a few observations.

1) It was rainy and wet and cold, and my ball was going nowhere. The course felt like it was playing 8000 yards. I finished ten strokes higher than usual and felt like I'd been used as a punching bag lol. Having a bad round in the sim, I would have said **** this! Then flipped a switch, and ditched. Or hit Rewind 50 times.

2) Sim golf has trained me to pick the ball more because it's a perfect lie and hitting a fat shot on turf is punishing on the joints. When I head out to RL golf, I thin/blade a lot of shots until I re-learn to hit down on the ball a bit more and take divots.

3) It's SO much easier to "find my swing" or keep a good rhythm going in the sim because there's virtually no delay between shots. When you're in the zone you can stay in the zone. If you're off, you can take what you think wasn't working more easily to the next shot. IRL you have lots of walking and several minutes between shots and that makes a huge difference. It's both harder to get out of a rut IRL and harder to keep a good rhythm going.

4) Short game benefit of the sim on RL golf: Several times I had shots of distance 'x' and simply hit to that number as if still in the sim and voila! Great results. that part was nice.

5) Putting is a conundrum, lol. Overall I think sim putting helps RL even though it's completely different. I guess practicing a smooth stroke is never bad

[Jwheels9876]

I played twice outdoors a few weeks ago.

under 50 degrees, windy, wet and generally just miserable.... shot 83 and 85...

nobody gave me a 6 foot gimmie outside all day lol

I hit the ball great the 83 day and still couldn't break 80. Indoors I would have shot in the 60 with the same ball striking and 6 foot gimmies

[JackedUpSwing]

Do you feel like you're improving over the break?

I'm a 9.7 outdoors, and I feel like a reasonable goal this year for me is a 5. My ball striking especially my driver I feel has gotten so much better this winter.

I haven't played great in tournaments, but that is because I am basically CONSTANTLY changing my swing lol

But I feel over the last few days I have found the right combination of feels that has fixed my major issues(lowpoint and path too far out right).

[Wizard of Coz]

Jack you shot even outdoors with me! 9.7 really? You competing with triple for sand bagger of the year?