Long and Short Game

**SasQuatch<3** · May 11, 2009

My buddy and I played 9 together, our first time playing together.. He was joking around, ya know saying he was gunna win.. but anyways we hit our tee shots, mine personally sucked for the day, consistently hooking and coming up short. His tee shots were so good and it started to make me wonder.. Well my short game was awsome! I was 2-putting almost every hole except 1 of them. His short game was off, almost consistently 3 & 4-putting. We ended up 1 apart at the end of the day. Its amazing how he had perfect tee shots and yet because his putting was off and mine was on, we were still close in the end.

**opie** · May 11, 2009

I beat my dad constantly and he rarely misses a fairway and I rarely hit one. My short game is leaps and bounds better than what I do off the tee. if you can chip and putt you can shoot 70's and be horrid off the tee. I've done it.

fired a 78 one day hitting 5 iron off the tee because I couldn't keep the longer clubs in play

**billm408** · May 11, 2009

Statisically, you'll take about 80% of your shots within 120 yards of the hole. You'll hit your driver 14 times max. The person with the best short game wins every time IME.

**saltman** · May 12, 2009

Statisically, you'll take about 80% of your shots within 120 yards of the hole. You'll hit your driver 14 times max. The person with the best short game wins every time IME.

This is true up to a point, almost always for the weekend warriors. At the higher end of playing ability its almost always the ability to drive the ball well that produces the biggest performance variance. Look no further than Tiger Woods vs. Henrik Stenson last weekend. Tiger has a superior short game, but couldn't keep the ball in the fairway.

My own personal stuggles have been with the driver as well. My short game is still better than most, but in recent years I have been getting killed by players of much less ability because I take 8-10 penalty strokes per round. When you generate club head speed of 115+ and your swing gets off plane, you can find places on the golf course (and off) that nobody has ever seen before. David Duval is another example, he is dead last in driving accuracy. Its his single biggest demon on the golf course.

**David in FL** · May 13, 2009

A stroke is a stroke. It doesn't matter where you take it......

**moadhia** · May 13, 2009

This is so true. Short game can really make your scorecard shine

**BallStriker** · May 13, 2009

Crazy game....earlier this year I had a round where I hit only 5 greens and shot 76....then had a round where I hit 13 and shot an 81...

Is it any wonder that golf pros keep trying to reinfoce the fact that you need to spend 60+ percent of your practice time on the short game?

BOOMSHANKA · May 13, 2009

As they say, "Drive for show, putt for dough!" There is truth to that...I too believe the short game will most always win...

**CalBoomer** · May 17, 2009

Statisically, you'll take about 80% of your shots within 120 yards of the hole. You'll hit your driver 14 times max. The person with the best short game wins every time IME.

I think this analysis depends on the difficulty of the course one is playing. There are more than a few courses I play, where a tee shot off the fairway is out of bounds or lost rather than just on an adjacent fairway. If you are constantly shooting 3 off the tee, you lose no matter how good your short game is.

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