Should I always aim at the middle of the green?

Not literally always, but far more often than most players do. Aiming at the centre keeps you on the correct side of the hole when you miss, and the miss is the shot that decides your score. Going at a flag only makes sense when the pin is in the middle third of the green, the yardage is a comfortable full club, and the short side is not punishing.

What does short-siding mean and why is it so costly?

Short-siding is missing on the same side of the green as the flag, leaving very little green between your ball and the hole. You have to land the ball almost immediately and still stop it, so the shot needs skill rather than routine. Long-siding the same green leaves a straightforward chip with plenty of room to work with.

Do amateurs really come up short that often?

Yes, and it is one of the most consistent patterns in the game. Most players judge their yardage by their best strike rather than their average one, and they ignore the fact that a flag is rarely at the front. Taking one more club and swinging smoothly usually leaves you pin-high or slightly long, which is a much better place to miss.

How many shots can better course management save?

Three to five a round is a fair range for a club golfer who currently attacks flags, and it can be more if penalty shots are involved. The saving does not come from hitting better shots. It comes from removing the two or three holes a round where a marginal decision turned a bogey into a double.

Is this the same as playing defensively?

No. Playing defensively means laying up out of fear and giving away birdie chances. Middle-of-the-green strategy still leaves you with plenty of looks, because a thirty-foot putt from the centre is a perfectly good outcome and it never costs you a double. You are removing the worst results, not the good ones.

← Blog · Method · 7 August 2026 · 7 min read

What's the best course-management tip? Why aiming at the middle of the green beats firing at the pin

Most amateurs lose three to five shots a round to decisions rather than technique, and those losses sit in a handful of doubles. Here is why the middle of the green and one more club fix more of them than any swing thought.

By Doug Dinwiddie. Founder of ProPlace. Former DP World Tour caddie.

The short answer

If you only change one thing about how you play, aim at the fat middle of the green and take enough club to get there. Most amateurs give away somewhere between three and five shots a round to decisions rather than technique, and those shots do not trickle away evenly. They arrive in a handful of double bogeys, almost all of which start with a ball fired at a flag it had no business going near.

Nothing about this requires you to swing better. It requires you to pick a different target and a different club, which is available to you on the very next tee.

Where the big numbers actually come from

Pull apart a bad round and you will rarely find twenty small errors. You will find fifteen ordinary holes and three that went badly wrong. Those three almost always share a pattern: an aggressive line, a miss on the wrong side, and then a recovery shot that needed to be excellent and was not.

Short-siding is the mechanism. Miss on the same side as the flag and you are asked to land the ball on a few paces of green and keep it there. Miss on the opposite side of the same green and you have a chip with room to run, one that any club golfer can leave inside ten feet. Same green, same distance from the hole, completely different difficulty. The piece on strokes gained around the green goes through why the short-side chip is the one that quietly wrecks cards.

A flag tucked four paces from the left edge has a punishing short side and a forgiving long one. Aiming at the middle means your miss lands in the forgiving half by default. You have not played more carefully. You have moved your mistakes somewhere cheap.

The expected-value case, in plain terms

Strokes gained thinks about every shot as a change in expected score from where the ball ends up. If that framing is new, the strokes gained guide explains the mechanics properly. Applied to target selection, the arithmetic is not close.

The upside of pin-hunting is small. Even a good amateur approach from 150 yards finishes an average of well over thirty feet from the hole. Aiming at the flag rather than the centre moves your typical result a few feet closer at best.
The downside is large. Your dispersion pattern is wider than you think, and the tucked pin puts one whole side of that pattern in a bunker, in thick rough or over the green.
Thirty feet is a fine result. A two-putt par from the middle costs you almost nothing over a round. A short-sided bunker shot costs you a stroke and sometimes two.
Centre aim still produces birdies. Roughly a third of pins sit close enough to the middle that aiming at the centre is effectively aiming at the flag anyway.

Take enough club

The second half of the habit matters as much as the first. Amateurs come up short of the green vastly more often than they fly it long, and the reasons are predictable. We remember the one seven-iron we flushed and quietly treat it as our number. We forget that flags are usually cut behind a front bunker rather than in front of one, and that the front edge is where the trouble lives.

Play the honest yardage. That means the distance you carry the club on a normal strike, not your best one, and it usually means one more club than instinct suggests. Then swing smoothly rather than hard, which improves your strike as a bonus. Being pin-high or five yards long is a good result; being ten yards short is often a bunker.

Tee strategy: remove the worst, not the longest

The same logic applies before you reach the green. The best line off the tee is the one that takes the worst outcome out of play, not the one that gets the ball furthest down the hole. If the right side has out of bounds and the left has a bit of rough, aim down the left half even if it costs you fifteen yards. A shorter drive from the fairway beats a bomb in the junk almost every time you compare the two honestly.

None of this means distance is worthless. It clearly is not, and the comparison in driver distance versus approach play sets out where extra yards genuinely pay. But distance gained by taking on trouble you cannot reliably beat is not distance. It is a lottery ticket you buy fourteen times a round.

What to change on Saturday

Three rules will do most of the work, and you can apply them without a single practice session.

Default to the centre. Go at a flag only when it is in the middle third of the green, the yardage suits a full club and the short side is not severe.
Add a club. Take the yardage to the middle, not the front, and choose the club that reaches it comfortably.
Pick the safe side off the tee. Identify the worst outcome on the hole and aim away from it, even at the cost of some length.

Play four rounds like that and count your doubles. If the number drops, you have your answer, and you got there without changing your golf swing at all.

Frequently asked questions

Should I always aim at the middle of the green?: Not literally always, but far more often than most players do. Aiming at the centre keeps you on the correct side of the hole when you miss, and the miss is the shot that decides your score. Going at a flag only makes sense when the pin is in the middle third of the green, the yardage is a comfortable full club, and the short side is not punishing.
What does short-siding mean and why is it so costly?: Short-siding is missing on the same side of the green as the flag, leaving very little green between your ball and the hole. You have to land the ball almost immediately and still stop it, so the shot needs skill rather than routine. Long-siding the same green leaves a straightforward chip with plenty of room to work with.
Do amateurs really come up short that often?: Yes, and it is one of the most consistent patterns in the game. Most players judge their yardage by their best strike rather than their average one, and they ignore the fact that a flag is rarely at the front. Taking one more club and swinging smoothly usually leaves you pin-high or slightly long, which is a much better place to miss.
How many shots can better course management save?: Three to five a round is a fair range for a club golfer who currently attacks flags, and it can be more if penalty shots are involved. The saving does not come from hitting better shots. It comes from removing the two or three holes a round where a marginal decision turned a bogey into a double.
Is this the same as playing defensively?: No. Playing defensively means laying up out of fear and giving away birdie chances. Middle-of-the-green strategy still leaves you with plenty of looks, because a thirty-foot putt from the centre is a perfectly good outcome and it never costs you a double. You are removing the worst results, not the good ones.