 If this is something you do on a golf course then all I can say is I hope I never get stuck behind you. Yes it's old school and I love a bit of retro but I'm also an advocate of letting technology help. I mean imagine trying to work out a yardage using this technique and then multiply it 18 times. There are several issues which will be detrimental on your ability to improve your golf and today I will show you that if you don't use a device to help you work out exact yardages you are causing a lot of problems for yourself. I will also reveal a secret hack that will make sure when you do start to work out the crepe yardages you will get closer to the flag than ever before. Right so based on my little old school method there 221 minus the 13 yards that I've allowed for that gives us a 208 to the flag is what I'd be working with right now. Now I can barely see the flag by eye because it's hidden away in amongst the bushes. It's actually playing 221 to where that flag position is which must be at the back end of the green. So without doubt using this method not only am I taking a whole lot of time and that group on the tee is telling me to hurry up and get a move on I've just learned that I'm a club out with using this old school guesstimate method. Those segment are the sponsors of today's video and I'll talk to you in detail about that a little later and before you start whining like a bunch of old women or men no one's going to accuse me of being sexist. This sponsorship means you get a huge discount code and a secret hack all in one video. I am the gift that keeps on giving. Now it's easy to realise the importance of knowing the right number to a flag but there are also many other reasons why you need a device like this to help plot your way around a golf course. Course management can reduce your handicap significantly and it's got nothing to do with improving your swing and this is how to use a rangefinder to make the right on course decisions. Right so we've left ourselves short of that bunker. We played about a 180 shot so the flag is showing 94 to the flag but now I'm going to switch on the slope compensation because as you can see that's a very uphill and we add six yards so that means the club I choose is going to be obviously the club I would play a hundred yards and not one that is 94 and if you get that wrong there's a serious issue that you could come up short and we all know what happens with that kind of slope your ball's going to come whizzing back to you so for me what I would choose now is something that plays maybe 105 or a little bit more and make sure I go past the flag. Right so now we can commit to the shot knowing we're confident in our distance and that slope hill compensation. Okay it's right on line. Oh and absolutely perfect to be honest you're flighted just a little bit lower but the yardage was spot on and I would think that there's every chance that's not too far from a flag and if anything and we're going to check it out I think it might just gone a little bit further past it which is exactly the way we intended to play the whole. Right so the complete opposite of what we've just faced downhill elevated T position par 3 and I would imagine it's going to make probably a club difference I would guess but we're going to work out again with slope compensation switched on what the kind of differences in yardage. Now this is really a key point you're not allowed to use slope compensation in a competition so if you play on a Saturday morning in a medal you've got to have that switched off so what's the point of having it well for me this is the key you play this whole in your practice rounds or you're midweek friendly with your mates or wherever it is and you start to work out what the kind of difference it makes that elevation so when you come to play the comp on a Saturday you can make that deduction yourself you might even want to make a few notes if you take life really seriously so for me right now we're looking at 126 to the flag and then it's suggesting we take seven yards off that to allow for this elevated position so we're playing what is it 119 there's zero breeze to worry about so all we've got to do is select our 120 club we can commit again and then it's down to you can you execute a golf shot or not that's a really well struck ball is it going to move in a bit more come in a tad oh we've just managed to leave ourselves a bounce right into the bunker a decent enough strike and judging by where the ball would have pitched if I had just managed to get it a little bit further left that again was perfect yardage now just a quick thought on that hole and the club selection that I made and how my course management wasn't too clever I had all the information that I needed I could have zapped all the bunkers on this green and got more information than just 120 to the flag now I landed pin high and went into the bunker we can't quite see that's just what it's the right side of the flag there are four bunkers on this hole there's one there the one I went in one behind you and one to my right now then I can zap all of those four bunkers and what I can soon realize is there's a whole lot of green at the back side of this flag that is empty and void of trouble so what I should have done was not played that 120 yardage I should have played a 130 maybe a 135 yardage and took all that trouble out of the equation and that's where using a rangefinder a GPS device a measuring device of some sort can be a huge help to your course management and equally it's going to help you lower scores so this video is sponsored by Sigmund which means I'm duty bound to say nice things about that rangefinder and this could be deemed as being biased so I'm going to make this nice and simple in my appraisal of the Sigmund CT 1000 this rangefinder does the following and this is the Bushnell Pro X3 plus and as far as I can see has exactly the same spec the Bushnell is 549 pound and the Sigmund is 109 pound now when you have the two products that perform the same way but over 400 pound difference I don't think you need to be biased to work out which one I would recommend over the other or an onscreen now is a discount code which makes that Sigmund CT 1000 even lower than the 109 I just quoted there's also a link in the video description that'll take you straight to the Amazon page right the moment you've all been waiting for how this device is going to help save you shots on your round and I guarantee it it's a hack that is you'll think it's fairly obvious but I bet none of you are doing it and it's quite simply let me get a yardage right so we've got 150 to this flag I've got slope compensation on the zero effect on this shot now 150 I would say that I'm grabbing a seven iron in most cases if I hit my seven iron as good as I can then I'm probably going to hit around the 150 marker but what if I don't quite get it right then the chances are that's going to fall short so what I'm going to do I'm going to suggest that every time you step up to a yardage 150 160 170 whatever it is I want you to go one club stronger in the bag so in this case I'm going to use a six and not a seven because you've got to ask yourself this question when you play golf when your mates play golf and when you watch them how many times do any of those golfers go past the flag and I'll bet you in most instances most golfers come up short more times than they go long so what I'm hoping is by choosing six if I absolutely flush it worst case scenario I go past the flag I'm on the backside of this green I can live with that if I get my shot in around sort of 80 90 percent of what I can do then the chances are I'm pin high but I've just taken away a real issue that is potentially a threat to my score if I choose seven iron and don't get the shot spot on yeah again we've got that right on the flag this could be really good oh and the interesting thing is from that it's not only it was a really good shot and I got it there I was really comfortable with the strike that was a six iron and that still came up what I would think looks a yard or two short so what a good decision it was to go up a club and even though I struck that as pretty good but again one of the major things that it changes is that by going up a club you'll also find you'll swing a little bit easier because you're comfortable with that that you've got that distance covered within that club by stepping up a little bit so your rhythm your tempo everything will be improved just by that one simple decision in terms of course management