Daniel Behringer, scratch golfer and blogger (Instagram: mr.danielgolf)
A scratch golfer is someone who can play par or better on any golf course.
Daniel Behringer quit his management job at the beginning of 2024 and lived and trained like a professional golfer for a season. Within a few months, he reduced his handicap to 0. How he managed it and what tips he would give to ambitious golfers, he told me this and a lot more over a round of golf.
Daniel, when and how did you get into golf?
Through my parents. In 2004, at the age of 9, I took a taster course with my brother and then got my handicap. That's when I was practically infected with the golf bug. I can still remember exactly how my mother drove me to the golf course every day after school and how I hit buckets of balls onto the practice green. My short game still benefits from that today.
How did your golfing journey continue?
After some initial success, I took part in a screening course run by the Bavarian Golf Association and made it into the squad. In order to be able to continue playing my other two sports, tennis and skiing, I decided against being accepted. It wasn't easy to juggle everything. In the summer, the focus was on tennis and golf; in the winter, I skied and played tennis. Despite my other sports, I managed to play in numerous golf tournaments every year and to constantly improve. After graduating from high school in 2013, I moved from Munich to Passau to study economics. I played golf intensively during the first semesters and was able to achieve further success. After a semester abroad in the USA, in 2016 I actively decided to focus on my studies and later on my professional career. Accordingly, I greatly reduced my training workload, hardly played any tournaments anymore and saw golf primarily as a hobby.
At the beginning of last year, you took a brave step and quit your job so that you could devote 100% of your time to golf. How did that come about and what attracted you to the challenge?
As I have already described, I played several sports at a high level in parallel when I was younger, but never focused entirely on one sport. That is why I have never dared to become a professional. In recent years I have often thought about how my career would have turned out if I had invested more time in golf. So I wanted to find out how far I could get if I devoted all of my available time to golf. Since I had built a solid professional base and was able to finance my project with my own resources, nothing was stopping me from starting.
You quickly became a scratch golfer. How did you manage that and what were the challenges?
Due to my long break from tournaments and the switch to the World Handicap System, I earned a handicap of 4 after I returned in 2023. I started the 2024 season with that and played my way down to 0 in less than seven months. I managed that with a large dose of ambition and discipline, a competent team consisting of a swing coach, mental coach, physiotherapist and the basics from my youth. My solid short game definitely helped me, but at the same time I had to work intensively on my technique to iron out minor "mistakes" that crept in during my "golf break". The biggest challenge was the numerous new swing ideas that developed as a result of the swing adjustments. I had to complete my tight tournament schedule consisting of club tournaments, international amateur tournaments and the Q-School for the Pro Golf Tour, which was not always easy.
What would you advise ambitious golfers who also want to achieve a handicap of 0?
In my opinion, anyone who wants to become a scratch golfer should focus on three things:
Hitting fairways and greens is the basis for low scores. In most cases, greens are much easier to approach from the fairway because the ball flight and spin can be controlled better than in other locations. In order to increase the fairway hit rate, the choice of club should be reconsidered on some holes. The driver may not always be the best choice or may not be needed at all. Tip: check your choice of club and, depending on the circumstances, decide on a club with which you can safely place the ball on the fairway. In order to hit more greens, it is often better not to attack the flag directly, but to place the ball in the middle of the green. The longer the iron, the higher the variance in most cases. Tip: only attack flags if you are relatively sure that the ball will land close to the stick. My rule of thumb is: if I am not 80% sure, I aim for the middle of the green.
Short game and putting - both in the short game (chipping and pitching) and in putting, you can save a few strokes per round with targeted training. On training days, I usually spent more than 70% of my time in the short game area and on the putting green. Tip: always try to train for competition situations. In other words, set goals for each drill that you have to achieve before you can move on to the next exercise or end training. This will train you to perform under pressure, which will benefit you in every tournament round.
Stay patient and don’t force anything! To give yourself the best possible chance of getting low scores, you have to learn to be patient. If things aren't going well at the start of a round, that doesn't mean that the final score will necessarily be "bad". From experience, I can say that I've played some of my best rounds with a rather mediocre start. In such situations, I stayed patient and created good chances for myself at the end, which I then took advantage of. Tip: keep a mental scorecard. To do this, set yourself 2-3 goals at the start of the round that you can control 100% yourself. Goals could be, for example, that you follow your stroke routine with every shot or that you play every ball with 100% commitment. After each hole, rate your performance on a scale of 0-10. This approach shifts the focus away from the actual result (score), which you have no control over, and towards your goals, which you can influence yourself. This will give you the best possible chance of delivering good results.