Stock yardages are one of the easiest ways to make better decisions on the golf course. Joanna Coe explains how to find your real carry numbers by hitting multiple shots with each club and working from the average, not the outlier. That includes distance, left-to-right dispersion, and how much variation shows up from shot to shot. A stock yardage is a baseline, not a fixed number that never changes. Temperature, layers, wind, energy level, and the golf ball you are using all affect carry distance, so your numbers need to be honest and usable in normal playing conditions. Consistency matters here too. If swing speed and strike quality are changing too much, yardages start to overlap and club selection gets harder. If they stay more stable, the gaps through the bag become much clearer. This is not about the one perfect shot. It is to understand the number you can rely on most often. Once that becomes clear, target selection improves, club choice gets simpler, and it becomes much easi...