Tee Shot Simulator
Aim, hit twenty drives the way you really hit them, and watch where they end up. Then watch twenty more at the aim that keeps you in play.
What this answers
Where will your tee shot finish, and where should you aim?
- Set your game below the hole: handicap, your usual miss, the club and the wind.
- Drag across the hole to move your aim, or use the Aim slider.
- Hit 20 and watch where they finish. Then hit 20 at the smart aim to compare.
Reopen it any time with ? Guide
The situation
You slice. Out of bounds runs down the right.
Most golfers aim at the middle. Drag across the hole, or use the slider, to aim where you would. Then hit 20 drives with your handicap’s spread.
- Your aim
- Smart aim
- Penalty
Result
Hit 20 to see where they finish.
Each drive uses the published sideways spread for your handicap, curves with your miss, then lands, bounces and rolls out.
ModelSpread by handicap from published research; every result is modeled, on our own holes.How real is this?How far drives spread sideways by handicap is published research. The pull of your miss, the wind, what each lie costs and the made-up holes are our model. How it works
Your game
Using it
Taking it to the course
Aim away from the big number
Out of bounds costs a stroke and the distance. Most of the time the best aim moves away from it, even if that brings the rough on the other side into play.
Play it out, then play it 1,000 times
Play the hole takes your drive through the approach, the short game and the putts to a score. One hole is luck; 1,000 of them show what your tee aim is worth in shots.
Pick a target you can see
Once you know how far to move your aim, find something on that line on the real hole, such as a tree or a bunker edge, and aim at it.
Use your own distances
The simulator starts from typical carries for your handicap. Saved numbers from Club Distances or My Lab replace them.
Club DistancesIf the slice is the problem
Aim is the free fix. The club can help too: 7 of the drivers we have researched are built by their makers to draw the ball, which works against a slice. The Driver Finder lists them with today’s prices.
Method
How the simulator works
Sideways spread: published. How far amateur drives finish off line, measured as an angle, comes from Broadie 2008: a standard deviation of 5.4° for golfers whose rounds run 70–83, 6.4° for 84–97, and 8.1° for 97–120. Broadie groups golfers by score, not handicap, so matching a band to a group is our judgement: 0–12 to the first group, 13–20 to the second, 21 and over to the third. His figures come from men’s rounds; we use them for women’s numbers too.
Your miss: model. For a right-handed golfer a slice moves the middle of that spread 60% of one standard deviation to the right and a fade 30%; a draw and a hook move it left by the same. Left-handers are mirrored. These shifts are our own estimate, not a measurement.
Distance. Carry comes from your saved numbers, or from Club Distances: the driver from TrackMan’s published average for your handicap (TrackMan), the 3-wood and hybrid from our spacing model. Each drive varies by 5% of carry, our estimate. Roll after landing is the average difference between total distance and carry in the USGA and R&A’s report R22-01 for the driver and the 6-iron; we give the hybrid the 6-iron’s roll and the 3-wood the average of the two. Wind uses the Lab’s flight model.
What to try. We hit 1,200 drives at each aim, every 2 yards from 30 yards left to 30 yards right, and pick the one that costs the fewest shots, counting the fairway as 0, the rough 0.2, a bunker 0.3, the trees 0.6, water 1 and out of bounds 2, plus 0.05 of a shot for every 10 yards left to the green. These costs are our round numbers. We suggest another club only when it does clearly better at its own best aim.
The flight you watch. Each ball flies the Lab’s flight model with your club’s launch and spin. To show the curve, a slice tilts the spin axis 14° and a fade 6° (a draw and a hook the other way); that tilt is our model and only shapes the arc. The flight is then turned and scaled to land exactly where the pattern above puts that ball.
Playing the hole. After the drive, every shot comes from published amateur numbers for your handicap. Approaches: how close golfers finish from 20–60 and 100–150 yards, from the fairway and the rough, in Broadie 2008 (Table 2), growing beyond 150 yards as in Shot Scope’s 15-handicap averages. Greenside bunkers: Broadie’s Table 1. Chips: Shot Scope’s average proximity by handicap. Putts: Shot Scope’s make rates by distance and handicap.
Our model fills the gaps: the shape of an approach pattern (distance error 2 times the direction error, the middle finishing 3% short), fairway bunkers playing like rough but 25% worse, a punch out from the trees, the club for each distance, and where a missed putt finishes, set so that putts per green in regulation match Shot Scope’s published averages. Out of bounds costs a stroke and the shot is played again; water costs a stroke with a drop where the ball went in. Checked against the published numbers: from 125 yards in the fairway the model finds the green 61%, 43% and 25% of the time for the three handicap groups, against Broadie’s 63%, 46% and 25%; and a mid handicap averages within 0.2 of Shot Scope’s average par-4 score.
The holes are made up, drawn to scale. Lies, slopes, bounces and kicks on a real course will differ.