Relative Importance of Driving/Approach Shots, Short Game, Putting, etc. (LSW, Mark Broadie, Strokes Gained, etc.)

[Mr. Desmond]

To hopefully place the question in perspective, on a short term basis, the "short" game may help your scoring and shore up a mediocre long game; but on a long term basis, a solid mid to long game will help your scoring (game) ... more.

So, work on the long game in practice - 65/25/10.

[ghalfaire]

I would vote for the long game.  With a decent long game you have a chance to score well, which is when the short game takes over.  With a bad long game, you have little to no chance to score well, no matter how well you chip and putt.

The flip side of this is that a superior short game can make up a lot of strokes from missed green or substandard  long game (as long as you stay in play).  But I think if you want to be a low handicap it is all important.  I would say it takes more practice (for me anyway) to master the "keep it in the short grass" part of the game than the "chip it close" game.  The weakest part of my game is the driver, not furtherance but rather towardance, is an issue with me.

[Ernest Jones]

The weakest part of my game is the driver, not furtherance but rather towardance, is an issue with me.

Good stuff!

[iacas]

I'm up in the air again on this one.  When it comes to whats more important to practice, I'm 100% on board with the 65/25/10 plan, and I fully believe that the long game is where it's at, but as far as what is more important to your score, I don't know how to quantify that one.  Yesterday my short game was my saving grace.  I played pretty well overall, and shot an 80 ... with an 8 on a par 4.  I shot that 80 because I was money with the short game.  My putting was as good as it's ever been.  I had 29 total putts, including 3 made over 20 feet (one of those was over 30).  I missed one 6 or 7 foot birdie putt, but other than that one, I missed nothing under 12 feet.  I put 4 tee shots into hazards, and one 3 of those I got up and down for bogey and I got up and down for par on two other occasions.

Your short game was on fire and yet the lowest score you could have possibly shot was 80 (basically) given your long game. The days where you make everything inside of 12 feet and hole three putts of 70 feet combined are few and far between. With your average short game you'd have shot 85 or something and been lamenting your poor long game play (as you should be anyway).

Of course, the truly magical days occur when your short AND long games have good days.

As they say, the odds of failing to get up and down are always gonna be higher than the odds of three-putting after hitting a GIR.

[saevel25]

The flip side of this is that a superior short game can make up a lot of strokes from missed green or substandard  long game (as long as you stay in play).  But I think if you want to be a low handicap it is all important.  I would say it takes more practice (for me anyway) to master the "keep it in the short grass" part of the game than the "chip it close" game.  The weakest part of my game is the driver, not furtherance but rather towardance, is an issue with me.

This is a very rare case. Even one of the best short game players in the world, Stan Utley, who has the record for least amount of putts for 9 holes in a PGA tour event because he chipped in so many times, only has 1 PGA tour win.

[wils5150]

I'm up in the air again on this one.  When it comes to whats more important to practice, I'm 100% on board with the 65/25/10 plan, and I fully believe that the long game is where it's at, but as far as what is more important to your score, I don't know how to quantify that one.  Yesterday my short game was my saving grace.  I played pretty well overall, and shot an 80 ... with an 8 on a par 4.  I shot that 80 because I was money with the short game.  My putting was as good as it's ever been.  I had 29 total putts, including 3 made over 20 feet (one of those was over 30).  I missed one 6 or 7 foot birdie putt, but other than that one, I missed nothing under 12 feet.  I put 4 tee shots into hazards, and one 3 of those I got up and down for bogey and I got up and down for par on two other occasions.

So, yes, obviously the long game is important in the sense that I would have liked to have not put myself in those positions, but boy did my short game save me.

I guess what I'm seeing is that the short game is super important to scoring well IF the long game is not doing too good. :)

pretty good short game day there! but if you didn't hit 4 in a hazzrd a 76 was in reach.

[Fourputt]

Depends on how you define scoring.  Scoring in the 70s 80s or 90s?  If your cant hit to within a midiron, you can't score in the 70s no matter how good your short game is.  That might be true even for the 80s.

If you can't hit to within a mid iron, then you are playing the wrong tees.  Some players will never be long enough to play the the back tees, no matter how much they practice the long game, so moving up a tee or two puts them in a position to maximize what they can do with the long game.   Not much else to say about that.

[Golfingdad]

I don't mean this in a negative way - because I certainly believe that when you improve your putting skill, you have many more opportunities for luck to play a part and actually drop a putt. However, a plus 30 foot putt holed, 2 x plus 20 foot putts holed, and only 1 miss inside of 12 feet - sounds to me like the sort of putting round that comes along once in a while but not consistently for anyone, regardless of their putting skill.

Your short game was on fire and yet the lowest score you could have possibly shot was 80 (basically) given your long game. The days where you make everything inside of 12 feet and hole three putts of 70 feet combined are few and far between. With your average short game you'd have shot 85 or something and been lamenting your poor long game play (as you should be anyway).

Of course, the truly magical days occur when your short AND long games have good days.

As they say, the odds of failing to get up and down are always gonna be higher than the odds of three-putting after hitting a GIR.

Yes, you guys are correct.  I could have/should have made one more putt, so the ABSOLUTE best score I could have had would have been a 79.  And, it's probably pretty accurate to say that 85 or so would have been a reasonable score with a typical short game day.  If I could then work backward from that (a loooooot of crazy speculation here, I know) then I could say that if I had a decent long game day along with an average short game day I could have scored somewhere around 78-80 as well.

Now if only I could have had one of those "magical" days ...

pretty good short game day there! but if you didn't hit 4 in a hazzrd a 76 was in reach.

... that would mean I could take back the 4 hit into the hazards, and 2 other really poor shots, and now we're talking 72-73 ... or a career round.

Someday it'll all come together. :)

[BuckeyeNut]

This is a silly argument...........

If a golfer hits his tee shots sideways.....he most likely doesn't have a short game either!!  >>>>>this golfer has no game....short or long!  The short game is how you score...but yes...you need to hit it where you can find it to get started.

[Lihu]

This is a silly argument...........

If a golfer hits his tee shots sideways.....he most likely doesn't have a short game either!!  >>>>>this golfer has no game....short or long!  The short game is how you score...but yes...you need to hit it where you can find it to get started.

Plus, he needs to hit some other club the distance his driver would have gone off grass or worse.

[BuckeyeNut]

Good stuff!

The Fonz was cool....Aaaaaay!  I grew up in the Happy Days era.

But this guy will kick his butt!

LOL

[purple drank]

Iron play is the most important aspect of your game IMO.

[BuckeyeNut]

The whole argument is BS...............

You need to be good enough to keep the ball in play from the tee............get it on or around the greens in reg....and in the cup.   Pretty GDamn simple.  Nobody gets near scratch without short game...........

[flopster]

They say the long game is more important, all I know is that every aspect of the game is important because the difference between breaking 80 and even par could just be a couple missed 3 footers, a chili dip, and a bladed explosion.Errant tee shots can sometimes be recovered same as tugging an iron left of the green can be made up with a good chip and putt.One other reason I have a hard time agreeing long game is more important is that short game is what you  do last at any hole and can carry over into the next a lot of times, bad drives and poor irons can be forgotten with a solid short game.

[Lihu]

The whole argument is BS...............

You need to be good enough to keep the ball in play from the tee............get it on or around the greens in reg....and in the cup.   Pretty GDamn simple.  Nobody gets near scratch without short game...........

Nobody disputes that you can't get to scratch without a really good short game, but what is being said in the research is that the long game gets you in position to play well. I think that your handicap pretty much says you can depend upon your long game, and that your good and bad days might statistically depend more upon your short game.

They say the long game is more important, all I know is that every aspect of the game is important because the difference between breaking 80 and even par could just be a couple missed 3 footers, a chili dip, and a bladed explosion.Errant tee shots can sometimes be recovered same as tugging an iron left of the green can be made up with a good chip and putt.One other reason I have a hard time agreeing long game is more important is that short game is what you  do last at any hole and can carry over into the next a lot of times, bad drives and poor irons can be forgotten with a solid short game.

No one is really saying anything, we are looking at the conclusion Dr. Broadie made from the data he took at his country club. It seems that the long game gives you a better chance for a lower score. His statement further concludes that if you had any shot from a tour pro, it would be from more than 100 yards away.

The argument is that it underscores the standard teaching that " the key to low golf scores is a good short game".

Some of us made conclusions based upon our own experiences, myself included, that when our long game is on we score better. I know that when I was playing two weeks ago, I hit relaxed off the tee and got decent distances on the fairway. Last week, I got more aggressive (and much longer) with my tee shots, and scored worse because I ended up in bad places (like the next tee box, in one case). My irons and short game were better last week, but I still scored worse.

In my "isolated" example, my scoring results have correlated very well with Dr. Broadie's conclusion.

[mvmac]

They say the long game is more important, all I know is that every aspect of the game is important because the difference between breaking 80 and even par could just be a couple missed 3 footers, a chili dip, and a bladed explosion.Errant tee shots can sometimes be recovered same as tugging an iron left of the green can be made up with a good chip and putt.One other reason I have a hard time agreeing long game is more important is that short game is what you  do last at any hole and can carry over into the next a lot of times, bad drives and poor irons can be forgotten with a solid short game.

Try telling that to Mike Weir Guys shooting even par aren't scrambling a lot for pars, they're hitting more greens than they miss.  As Erik said a few posts back, " the odds of failing to get up and down are always gonna be higher than the odds of three-putting after hitting a GIR."  So the difference between breaking 80 and shooting even usually revolves around how good your long game was, tee to green, rather than how solid your short game was.

[wils5150]

I think we all know that you need some sort of short game skill. I think all of us would pack it in if we 3 jacked every green lol. For those who don't agree with the long game I ask you this: What would you rather have a putt for birdie or a putt for bogey?

[peteraleman]

Well here is my input.  I have been playing since 1992, I have always been a low 100's player, I once broke 100 for a 95 and could never repeat it. In the last 4 years I took a break from the game to tend to my business and just started playing about a little over a month ago.  my first round 140, hard course, but horrible score none the less.  I took some lessons and quickly improved back to my old low 100's score.  Well where am I going with this, I quickly improved drastically with my short game, I have 1 to 2 putt average, no more.  My short game inside the 150 is on the money, this is what keeps me in the low 100's.  Recently I changed my 15 year old driver to a newer one, went to the range for a couple of days to adjust to it, first day out with my new driver, 90, second day out 92. I am now getting in the GIR where I never was able to do before.

I am sorry, but the long game is so as important as your short game that both sides have valid arguments, if you have a bad long game you will never get near the scratch players, if you have a bad short game, well the out come is close to being the same.  I can only get better with improving my accuracy now, I finally found my long game with nice straight and long tee shots with a descent fairway shot.  Once I am inside the 150, its over for whom ever is with me!