McKee

You can see how a hazard can create apprehension but not how a lack of confidence can?

Take an island green for example. The fact that you cannot miss the green without going in a water hazard puts extra stress on the shot. Therefore it makes it a more difficult shot. Same thing goes if you don't have confidence in your short game. Not being able to get up and down adds strokes to your game just as hazards do. You may not be conscious of it when your about to hit your approach shot but the stress of missing the green is there. Not being confident in your ability to get up and down makes the approach shot more difficult. The pros may not have to chip very often but they still need to be prepared. Most police officers go through their career without ever drawing their gun, let alone firing it. But they still practice, just in case. Players who can't get to the green in regulation would benefit from pitching practice since the full swing is probably a very daunting task for them. It would help them develop some solid, basic technique. Give them a long club and everything goes out the window. I am trying to make a case for why the short game should be practiced as much as the long game. Give or take a few percent. Call me crazy.

Exactly what I am saying. If you are comfortable with your short game, through ample practice, then you will not be afraid to miss greens. Not being afraid to miss greens comes in very handy when trying to hit them. Crazy is a bit extreme guys. Just theories. I am not talking about using "the force" or anything. Geez.

The general definition of yips is "the apparent loss of certain fine motor skills seemingly without explanation in one of a number of different sports". In golf it is mostly associated with putting and I assume you are imagining the yips as a spastic tremor in the hands during a short putt. The yips has many different definitions - I clearly defined it as "a form of anxiety (or fear) which compromises their (golfers) ability to perform". Every golfer has anxiety and every golfer is physically affected by it . Yes, it is an epidemic.

Quote: Unfortunately, your intuition is wrong. The PGA Tour players have better long games than their peers on the Nationwide Tour. Why are players on the PGA Tour? Because they're great ball strikers. Maybe if I type this in bold it'll sink in: in general, GIR is the single biggest determinant of your score . You hit greens with your full swing. You don't hit greens by practicing your ten-foot putts or your bunker shots. I want to try bold... If you practice your ten-foot putts and your bunker shots you will hit more greens because you will not be afraid to make bogey or worse if you miss the green. If fear wasn't one of the most significant factors in weakening a golfers ability to perform than there wouldn't be a small library of golf psychology books out there.

iacas, Wow, you called me crazy. I did not expect you to go there. It seemed like you were taking a stand but now it looks like your generalization is a cop-out.

There is little doubt that the pro who wins the tournament is probably on top of the GIR leader board. But no one person does that every week. It just happens. Look at it this way, why are they all there to begin with? Because they have exceptional short games. Of course they strike the ball amazingly but so do all the other pros waiting in the wings for an opportunity to play in the big show. The only difference is the guys who don't qualify are mediocre putters and chippers. No stats to support this just good old fashioned experience and intuition.

I just wanted to support, with my personal experience, what you said - "I'm not saying that everyone needs to follow the same path". My personal experience proved to me that improving your ball striking and hitting more GIRs can be a result of intense short game practice. By practicing pitching I learned to make better contact, maintain soft grip pressure, and have better timing and tempo, all of which enabled me to strike the full shots better, swing freely and hit more greens. It's tough to give a high handicapper a big club and have them "swing smooth" or "relax". They can develop a great full swing by associating it with a slow, manageable pitch shot. I like a sliding scale for practice percentage. Depending on the individual and the state of their swings. I like changing my practice routine to avoid getting comfortable and complacent. It sounds very much like you are saying "this is how it should be done...60% long game, 35% short shots, 5% putting". Correct? The question is how can GIRs be increased? I would say every aspect of the game - short and long - including fitness would have and equal effect. Short because it nurtures tempo and relaxation. Short because it gives you confidence that you can get up and down if you miss the green. You know what they say, "confidence is key". Then how can someone make the blanket statement that one part of the game is more important and should be practiced more than another? 33 to 48 percent of serious golfers have experienced yips (Mayo Clinic), and these are just the people with measurable hand tremors. Anyone whose anxiety manifests itself physically causing an errant shot is suffering from a form of yips. I would venture to say every golfer has experienced that. I would go as far to say that a professional golfer leaving a birdie putt short out of fear of a three-putt has just experienced the yips - a form of anxiety which compromises their ability to perform. This epidemic warrants practicing putting more than 5% of the time. This has to do with the discussion regarding the simplicity of putting. If it is so simple why is there such risk?

It's a proverb. Big difference. And he is supporting his stress with statistics. Teaching only the short game is not a bad thing, it won't be brushed over in 15 minutes but instead worked on in a detailed and diligent manner. I went to his school and it was amazing for me. Aside from my major short game improvement I had the greatest leap in overall ball striking since I was a kid. "On the other end of the spectrum, there are players who have truly scrutinized the data to find holes in their game. I spent a long time on the range talking stats with Chris Stroud , a young Texan looking to make his name on the PGA Tour. He prints out all of his ShotLink numbers at the end of the year and analyzes them with his coaching team to figure out his weaknesses. This year, he noticed his putting, chipping, and bunker play were lacking, so that's where he put in the majority of his practice time." Should we tell him to just hit more GIRs? These guys are trying to shave off a fraction of a stroke per round. They will look at every part of their game for improvement. These studies you are talking about, it seems like they only pertain to professionals. Are you saying the statistics should also apply to the high handicappers you experience? I understand what you are saying. The short shots are physically the easiest shots in golf. But, short shots, because of their simplicity, contain a dynamic of stress that can be paralyzing to people who are prone to phobias. As you get closer to the hole and the shot gets "simpler" the greater the fear of an embarrassing mistake. In some, this fear can grow to become an anxiety disorder commonly known as the yips . The yips are not "on or off" but can vary in degree - any amount of fear that contributes to missing a simple shot is a form of yip. "We're in a golden age for golf research because the PGA Tour has opened ShotLink's books to researchers. Two professors at the Wharton school, for example, looked at 1.6 million tour putts and concluded that professional golfers are risk-averse . They examined putts for par and putts for birdie from the same distances and discovered that pros make the birdie putts less often. They suggest that pros leave these birdie putts short out of fear of making bogey, and then calculate that this bogey terror—and the resultant failure to approach birdie putts in the same way as par putts—costs the average tour player about one stroke per tournament."

You know what they say, "the short game is the first to go". Since Pelz's statistics are biased and every opinion expressed here is influenced by personal experience is it safe to say there is no objective answer to this conundrum? To say that chipping and putting are "easier things" is biased. The short shots are considered the most feared parts of the game (biased Pelz survey) and can develop nasty anxiety disorders.

I trust his numbers and have no desire to be skeptical. 15 minutes, really? Is that not trivializing the short game?

http://www.lvrj.com/golf/hitting-long-is-fun--but-short-game-more-important-99448189.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/apr/08/masters-2011-luke-donald - some other article - What Pelz discovered was that full club PEIs for a given player are essentially the same. A player with a 5.4% Driver PEI (250 yard drive --> 13.5 yard error) has about the same PEI of 5.6% with a 9-iron (130 yard 9i --> 7.6 yard error). The range of full-swing PEIs went from about 5% to 9%. The wedge PEIs went from 13% to 26%. Putting PEIs varies from about 5% to 10%. He found that the large errors for wedges was a result of distance control. Full-swing shot errors are mainly attributed to direction. The player mainly misses the target left or right but has very little error in distance. For instance, a player may hit a 150 yard shot and miss it 11 yards left but only be 1 or 2 yards long or short. Wedge shot errors are mainly attributed to distance. The player mainly misses the target long or short but has very little error in direction. Have you ever hit that 80 yard wedge shot that is all over the pin yet it falls 9 yards short or long? To Pelz, his results amplified the importance of the wedge game. He found no correlation between full-swing shot errors and money made. In fact he noted that the lowest full-swing PEI over a 3 year period was from a player that didn't make much money and fell off the tour. He did, however, find a strong correlation between money earnings and wedge PEIs.

That is what I mean by devaluing.

If statistical data collected by a research scientist is "cooked" and the details of Sean's round yesterday are "pointless" then it seems your point of view is unshakeable. What amazes me is the degree in which the short game has been devalued in the presence of the long game. It can't be because short game practice is tedious and boring? Or perhaps because a great short game is not as impressive as a straight tee shot? It's fun to play with high handicap strangers when your having a great long game day. They could care less if you five-putt every green (best to pick up after two) as long as you stripe it down the middle and hit the green. The moment you miss a green they say "he's human" - in other words "not professional" - and lose interest. Could moments like these influence our practice regimen? That stunning short game of his is what kept him from shooting 80. It allows him to swing freely so when he does miss the green it was not because of fear of making bogey. He may not be working on his short game now but I am sure he put a lot of time into developing it. Salvaging a bad round with a great short game is just as noble, and necessary, as shooting 67 and never touching a chipper. BTW - making 5 birdies and not three-putting has a lot to do with short game.