"The Short Game Bible" by Dave Pelz

[uitar9]

On ‎02‎/‎26‎/‎2012 at 6:37 PM, Wingover718 said:

I was a little suprised to see Pelz book get torn apart on here. I felt like I learned a great deal from the book. I liked the technical discussion and approach to each of the various shots. Having never taken a bunker lesson I got a great deal from his scoot and slide discussion. I can't say I use each of the shots discussed regularly, but it was easy to discern the meat and potatoes and the stuff to skim through. I still use the 3 x 4 method though I do find the 9 o'clock position is always my best shot so I often rely upon those distances and put the differences. Having only had a limited amount of instruction prior to reading the book I thought it was well worth the thirty something bucks. Thats way cheaper than most lessons. And unlike thoughts from a lesson I have the book on my shelf to go back to for reference on days when I can't play, but wish I was.

Read a couple of pages this morning, the section which discusses club sets being sold and in his opinion the male ego driving those configurations. At my handicap, (and I'm probably in the cohort  of hackers that buy these sets) I tend to agree with industry's  lack of emphasis on the short game. IMHO golf is not Taylor Made's next M!/M2

[uitar9]

Just finished reading TSGB for the second time. Really like the comments around having a better chance to improve scoring by reducing the bad shots/poor rather than increasing birdies. 

[pinseekingdreams]

I've read the Short Game Bible once fully and I'm on my 2nd read now.

Everyone in here seems to think that the beginning was fluff, but I disagree.

I think it was really interesting hearing how important wedge game is, and being able to get inside 2-10 feet due to the putt conversion chart. In his analysis he said that with irons you want to worry more about direction (left or right) and with wedges you worry more about distance control, since direction is easier to attain with a wedge.

Basically saying if you want to get good at golf, hit your irons straighter and control your distances with your wedges better.

I also thought him talking about error dispersion was extremely interesting also, essentially the way this works is due to percentages.

He said if you took the best ball striker he measured (Lee Trevino), and Lee hit a 4 iron from 200 yards that had a low error percentage of 5% (That's going to be a 10 yard error, (10 yards from flag)).

Due to the putting conversion chart, every foot inside of 10 feet, the chance of making the putt go up considerably, but every putt outside of 10-11 ft, the chance of making the putt is roughly the same.

So 10 yards = 30 feet.

Lee has a 30 foot putt.

Now if you take another player, who Lee is playing against, and they have a 10% error margin. So they hit that same 200 yard 4 iron to 20 yards, so 20 x 3 = 60 feet.

Basically both Lee and the player he's playing against will likely walk off with a par.

Now, where this gets interesting is the closer you get to the hole, the more these percentages matter.

If you hit a wedge from 50 yards with a 7% error margin, that leaves you with a 3.5 yard putt (10.5 feet), if you hit a wedge from 50 yards with a 10% error margin that leaves you with 15 feet.

Now to explain the other 3 images I've attached,

Basically hitting up uphill into the green = More roll out

Down hill into a green = Less roll out

Landing the ball on a downward or uphill slope, the trajectory the ball bounces off the slope is double the slop angle.

Landing the ball in dips = allow high margin for error, because of the way the ball bounces off the dip.

Landing the ball on a hump = very low margin for error, due to how the ball bounces off the slope. Downward slopes get their slope doubled, so the ball shoots hard off the down slope. The uphill slope will make the ball come up way short.

I've also used this dip theory a lot, if I have a tough green to work with, I'll sometimes target landing in a dip because they're forgiving.

Then of course, with Pelz there's the 3x4 wedge system (7:30, 9:00, 10:30) which we all know (and personally I really like it, helps a lot with my distances control.