Anybody play well in their Sim but poor out on the Course?

[JamesBurns13]

Hi guys, I am an 18 (UK) handicap and have had my sim for a week. I shot 7 over on Pebble Beach yesterday (TGC 2019) and the day before I shot 1 over on a fantasy course through 13 holes. I am playing at my local course tonight and I am worried if this is all false hope and it won't carry over onto the course. Does this happen for anybody or has your sim helped you improve?

Thanks

[andygg1986]

I would suspect that over time your ball striking will improve and your distance control will be better, but don’t expect to shoot the same scores on the course. Having a perfect flat lie on every shot, no wind, not losing balls in the rough or trees, greens that show you the break, and 6 foot gimmes all can drop your score significantly. But the good news is that at an 18 handicap, the sim can definitely help you hit more fairways and greens, which are both areas you should have room for improvement.

[JamesBurns13]

Yea I agree completely, anytime I shoot a good score on the sim I usually add another 5 or so shots just to compensate for the gimme's etc, I'd genuinely just be happy to shoot lower than my handicap, so hopefully the sim can help with that. We'll find out tonight I suppose!

[Uk101jkt]

Ive gone from a 16 to a 9 handicap in real life with about 8 months simulator time (and a lot of sim time during the shutdown periods). The biggest improvement for me was hitting the driver better and not losing so many balls from driving. Unfortunately though the sim does give a bit of false expectation with this as the rough is too easy and does not penalize enough, and i have had many par or better rounds on the sim. Generally just playing more is helping a lot but I feel if i want to make my game more realistic then i need to hit chips back out of the bad rough rather than blasting 3 woods.

[Parshooter36]

The only place I have noticed an improvement on the real course is off the tee. Hitting on a launch monitor for several months has helped me immensly learning how to keep my spin numbers down. My putting on the other hand has never been worse, so my scores have not changed.

[sirish19]

The only place I have noticed an improvement on the real course is off the tee. Hitting on a launch monitor for several months has helped me immensly learning how to keep my spin numbers down. My putting on the other hand has never been worse, so my scores have not changed.

Just curious but do you think your putting has gotten worse BECAUSE you are playing on the sim or simply because you are playing on the sim and NOT practicing on real greens? I have been playing on the sim a lot since Feb and almost not at all on the course since that time. My putting has always been fairly decent and I feel that the sim should be making my putting better because i am putting more for distance rather than line. When I play with scratch golfers, they always practice on the putting greens by counting off steps of their putting (not putting at practice holes). I would assume that putting on a sim (where you are basically putting blind), should help you with pace as long as you get a feel for the pace of the actual green that you are playing beforehand.

Having not played at the course for a few months, I don't really know. Just curious.

[Parshooter36]

I think it is a combination of not playing enough real golf and the straight putt setting on TGC2019. I have missed a ton of short puts this year from pulling or pushing them. Granted, I have a putting green as part of my sim, so I don't have any excuses. I just spend most of my time on the sim.

[V8burble]

Welcome to my world. 6 years ago I was a proper 28 handicapper shooting around 100 outdoors. I'd reckon I've probably got the biggest difference of anyone between indoor and outdoor scoring.
I've shot a 60 on sim whereas I can't break 80 outdoors.
The biggest improvement by a wide margin for me is ball striking and hcp(unofficial) is down to around 13/14 I'd think. Having that confidence in my carry numbers really lets me commit to the shots.
Driving seems to be very hit and miss for me - I go through spells where I struggle to drive the ball well indoors - despite outdoors always being pretty good, I can only put that down to setup and alignment indoors using square edges/mats/LM whereas outdoors I just do what's natural.

I'm also a lousy chipper and putter IRL, but pretty good in sim where I know exactly how hard to hit it and pretty much on what line.

[soupy]

the big problem is you always have a clean lie on the sim and flat. add uphill,downhill and sidehill lies with rough and the game is diifferent

[sirish19]

Yeah, I can imagine that once I finally get back out to the real course, I will miss a lot of lazy short putts as the straight putting and 6-foot gimmes probably make us lazy. I do try to work on my 6-foot putts on my putting surface though to ensure that I can putt straight.

Like V8burble, I was normally shooting around mid- to high-90's/low 100's before I really started playing on the sim in earnest (particularly since lockdown in Feb). I still don't get on the sim as much as I would like as my setup is outdoors and dependent on the weather, but while my sim game has gotten fairly good, I can regularly break 80 and sometimes shoot under par, especially if on a fairly easy course, I have no expectation to be able to shoot that well IRL. But, if I can get my game to where I can shoot in the 80's regularly, I will be quite happy.

Of course, the perfect lie of the sim will likely give us all a false sense of confidence in our ball-striking which will certainly have negative effects on the course, but hopefully that will be something that I am conscious of when I am on the course.

I think another huge difference in the game and real life is bunker play. I am terrible out of bunkers because I just don't have a chance to practice and bunkers on the sim are nothing more than normal chip shots. Hopefully the other aspects of my game that have improved will help me stay out of the bunkers, haha.

[Jtangm04]

Took me a year before my ball striking on a real course matched my sim golf performance. I always found myself having unrealistic expectations on the real course knowing that I was so much more consistent in my garage. This lead me to tense up and quicken my tempo in all the wrong ways.

Once I learned to just relax and have more fun on the course versus comparing my garage play everything clicked.

[bm11]

I find that the biggest thing that holds me back in golf is my head. I bought my sim shortly after my first season of playing golf, to try to continue improving through the winter. I made massive gains on the sim, and then took a trip to Myrtle Beach to golf before the season opened up at home. I had huge expectations that were almost immediately crushed.

I think that in my case knowing that I was capable of making a much better swing was for whatever reason actually making me play worse. But I am probably a unique case, the mental game is easily the hardest part of golf for me.

[JamesBurns13]

You're not alone there, that is what happened to me the other day. High expectations, a few bad swings and I was beating myself up in my head , thinking "you shouldn't be doing that, you didn't in the sim" etc