Plot Your Playing Strategy On Your Next Golf Trip

How to Prepare for your Next Golf Trip with Arccos Caddie App

Between winter storms pounding the Northern Hemisphere, and the PGA’s U.S. and European Tours’ swing through balmy locales like Hawaii and Dubai, golfers’ thoughts often turn to their first golf trip of season around this time of year.

With COVID restrictions still in effect many places around the world… golf is still the favored sport for many people looking for a change of scenery. Planning your next golf trip is exciting, especially after recent months. Now you can also plan your golf strategy in order to make sure you give your buddies a run for their money on the course.

Playing up to your peak performance level on the road can be challenging. Golf buddy trips often entail visiting new places and playing courses for the first time. Sometimes they even involve traveling across multiple time zones, and rarely is there enough time to log any meaningful practice time.

No worries, there’s an App for that. Namely, the Arccos Caddie App that’s become invaluable to your rapid game improvement at home. Turns out, there are several Arccos features that come in handy for prepping for your upcoming golf trips.

Arccos Caddie Preview

Available to those who’ve logged at least five 18-hole rounds with the system, Arccos Caddie Preview allows you to not only review the courses you’ll be playing on your trip but plot your strategy as well. With over 40,000 courses around the world, players can search and digitally explore what their round might look like. 

First, search for the courses in your trip lineup and download them to your smartphone. Select one of the courses and once it’s loaded, tap “Preview Caddie” in the bottom left corner. If you know which tees you’ll play, go ahead and select those as well. 

RELATED: Don’t see your course? We might be able to fix that. Read more.

Arccos Caddie Preview will present you with an “Optimal Strategy,” as well two “Alternate Strategies” for playing each hole. 

Why is this important? 

First, let’s say you’re struggling with the driver prior the trip. The Alternate Strategies will recommend a club with more loft off the tee (e.g. fairway woods, hybrids or irons) on par 4s and 5s while providing the estimated strokes to “get down.” 

Second, it will help you determine the risk-and-reward-related shot values of the par 5s you’ll face on your golf sojourn. For example, some par 5s that may appear reachable in two may actually require three shots, based on the “Smart Distances” Arccos provides for each of your clubs. 

In these cases, the “strokes to get down” between the Optimal and Alternate Strategies could be same or just a tenth of a stroke apart. So if you’re more comfortable going 3-wood, 5-iron, pitching wedge than driver, 7-iron, gap wedge, Arccos lets you do you! 

Arccos Caddie Preview also integrates real-time meteorological information so you can get a feel for the prevailing winds, elevation changes and other elements on the courses you’ll play and how they’ll impact club and shot recommendations. 

Pro Tip: To get a more accurate assessment of the prevailing winds on a course, preview it a few times before leaving on your trip. 

Strokes Gained Analytics 

Veteran Arccos players are no doubt familiar with the Strokes Gained Analytics (SGA) feature, accessible by tapping the “Player” icon on the bottom left of the screen. A few weeks out from your departure, lean heavy into SGA’s “Top 3 Insights” and the “Arccos Tips” within it to develop a practice plan. 

If you live where you can play and practice outside, that’s a bonus. If not, no worries, there are plenty of accessible, indoor drills available from Arccos Ambassadors like Trillium Rose and Andrew Rice, both Golf Digest Top 50 Instructors.

And if you have plenty of time available before your golf trip (e.g. four to six weeks) are able to play your home course, and want to improve before you go, utilize SGA’s filter to set your target handicap at the number of rounds to get data from (we recommend five rounds, to indicate most accurate current game performance).

Smart Range 

Maybe you’d be well-served to add a club or two to your bag before heading out to your destination of choice. But which club or clubs, and why? 

Arccos players often consult the Smart Distance Club Averages Range feature in the “Clubs” section of the Arccos Caddie App to understand the distance variance throughout their set. This will also help you focus on your problem clubs and gaps so that you can figure out which clubs need more attention.