Set your personal golfing targets for 2017

A new year means new aims – whether that’s hitting your perfect score, fixing your swing, or ticking an item off your golfing bucket list…

Everyone has their own personal golfing challenges, but sometimes knowing what to aim for can be difficult. To help you decide whether you need to improve your short game or if your goals should be more lifestyle-based, we’ve come up with a list of potential golfing targets for 2017…

Lowering your score

This is the main area many golfers will look to improve on. Even the best professionals are always trying to achieve new personal bests on their favourite courses.

It might simply be knocking the score down by a single shot. But in the real world, our game isn’t so finely tuned that we’re talking about one or two shots difference. If we’re totally honest with ourselves, we’d want our scores knocked down by at least four or five shots - around a five to eight per cent reduction.

If you've got a handicap, then lowering this will also be among your challenges. Realistically, with a concerted effort and regular training, you could halve your handicap within a year.

Improving your game

To reach your score goals, you could just play the same course over and again, learning every aspect of it and how to tackle each hole. But a better way is to try and improve your overall game.

Whether you’ve developed a glitch in your swing, can’t sink a putt or are constantly finding the rough, there are plenty of areas to tackle.

The three areas we recommend focussing on to give your overall game a boost is your drive, short game and putting.

With your drive, try and increase the length by around 10%. There are a number of ways to do this, but we recommend that instead of trying to add strength to your drive, you create a smoother, more controlled swing. And with a little extra effort over the year, you could easily add 20 yards.

For your approach play, try hitting pitch and putt courses. Play your approach shots from a variety of starting points, such as hitting from the rough, digging your way out of a bunker or aiming around an object like a tree.

Finally, the putting. This is something you can practice off the course. Get an indoor putting mat and keep practicing whenever you can. Change things up to help you adapt to any situation.

Bucket list

Outside of improving your game, 2017 could be the year you finally tick off a few items from your golfing bucket list.

If you’re looking for courses to play, why not head for Royal Birkdale before the Open takes control of it in July. Or maybe you want to visit Surrey and have a round on the Wentworth Club, which is the host for the BMW PGA Championship

Other items to try ticking off include personal achievements – will it be the year you hit a hole-in-one finally, can you score tickets for one of the big golfing events or will your aim be to finally indulge your love of golf’s history and play a round using traditional wooden clubs.