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

[iacas]

12 hours ago, Lihu said:

In general, it's tough to generalize on any statement like "Drive for show and putt for dough." but it's also tough to generalize and say "a 270 yard average player will always beat the 225 yard player" as well.

It's not tough to generalize. "Drive for show, putt for dough" is wrong/bad/incorrect/misleading. Take your pick.

And again I took that original topic from 12 years ago to be mostly about distance. Distance matters (distance off the tee exclusively matters even less than "distance" too). But it's only a portion of the "full swing" stuff that matters a lot.

Anyway…

[NM Golf]

12 hours ago, Lihu said:

Good thread. . .

Actually, I read Erik's first few responses, and they seem consistent with whatever he says now. Some people were beating you up but at least half agreed with what you stated in your OP.

Yet, there are plenty of 225 yard average golfers who play better than 270 yard golfers because of a pretty amazing short game and a command of their long irons and woods. I'm sure you run into the senior player who hits a Driver then 3W on a 400 yard hole and ends up rolling onto the green consistently.

Well, some people equate long game with length alone. Straight is a huge factor as well. Length without the ability to find the darn thing is pretty useless. All other aspects of the their games being equal someone who hits the ball farther will win as they should have a better chance of getting the ball in the hole in the fewest number of strokes. That being said in the real world that would never happen as people's games would almost never be equal in all other areas.

12 hours ago, Lihu said:

In general, it's tough to generalize on any statement like "Drive for show and putt for dough." but it's also tough to generalize and say "a 270 yard average player will always beat the 225 yard player" as well.

And I never said that, too many factors exist. I just never did buy into the "practice your short game 80% of the time" theory for the mere fact that even the best players on the planet only get it up and down at an average of about 60% of the time. I mean the best guy on tour only gets it up and down 67% of the time. So even the best amateur can only hope to achieve 50%. (although there are people on this forum who would make you think they get it up and down 90% of the time )

Basically my belief has always been to be successful you have to have as many looks at birdie as possible, so you have to have as many GIRs as possible which means you have to be in the best position possible to hit greens. Which in turn means hit it as long as you can AND hit it where you can find it. Even the best hybrid player on the planet from 225 yards is not as good as I am with sand wedge from 110.

Like Lee Trevino said, "There are two things that won't last long in this world, and that's dogs chasing cars and pros putting for pars." You can only get it up and down so often so there is a direct correlation between GIR and scoring well. if you miss 10 greens on average even the best player is looking at a score of +4. 
 

Edited September 21, 2017 by NM Golf

[Lihu]

34 minutes ago, iacas said:

It's not tough to generalize. "Drive for show, putt for dough" is wrong/bad/incorrect/misleading. Take your pick.

And again I took that original topic from 12 years ago to be mostly about distance. Distance matters (distance off the tee exclusively matters even less than "distance" too). But it's only a portion of the "full swing" stuff that matters a lot.

Anyway…

That's true, I've never actually seen anyone use their putter from the tee to the hole in a reasonable number of strokes before.

 

27 minutes ago, NM Golf said:

Well, some people equate long game with length alone. Straight is a huge factor as well. Length without the ability to find the darn thing is pretty useless. All other aspects of the their games being equal someone who hits the ball farther will win as they should have a better chance of getting the ball in the hole in the fewest number of strokes. That being said in the real world that would never happen as people's games would almost never be equal in all other areas.

And I never said that, too many factors exist. I just never did buy into the "practice your short game 80% of the time" theory for the mere fact that even the best players on the planet only get it up and down at an average of about 60% of the time. I mean the best guy on tour only gets it up and down 67% of the time. So even the best amateur can only hope to achieve 50%. (although there are people on this forum who would make you think they get it up and down 90% of the time )

Basically my belief has always been to be successful you have to have as many looks at birdie as possible, so you have to have as many GIRs as possible which means you have to be in the best position possible to hit greens. Which in turn means hit it as long as you can AND hit it where you can find it. Even the best hybrid player on the planet from 225 yards is not as good as I am with sand wedge from 110.

Like Lee Trevino said, "There are two things that won't last long in this world, and that's dogs chasing cars and pros putting for pars." You can only get it up and down so often so there is a direct correlation between GIR and scoring well. if you miss 10 greens on average even the best player is looking at a score of +4. 
 

To add to this and joking aside, I see a lot more people on the driving range practicing fulls swings than in the short game area. It seems like people either consciously or subconsciously know that long game is a very important part of their games.

[iacas]

1 minute ago, Lihu said:

To add to this and joking aside, I see a lot more people on the driving range practicing fulls swings than in the short game area. It seems like people either consciously or subconsciously know that long game is a very important part of their games.

I think they just enjoy hitting driver more than they enjoy putting or chipping.

Very few of those golfers are really "practicing" anything close to properly.

[Lihu]

1 minute ago, iacas said:

I think they just enjoy hitting driver more than they enjoy putting or chipping.

Very few of those golfers are really "practicing" anything close to properly.

True enough, especially on your second statement. . .

[mvmac]

[iacas]

Swinging fast is a skill, too.

(But again, remember too, that "long game" means "full swing," not just "hitting it long.")

[Runnin]

49 minutes ago, iacas said:

Swinging fast is a skill, too.

(But again, remember too, that "long game" means "full swing," not just "hitting it long.")

Sorry, I'm not up on the tech, but these numbers are driver only averages?  I think I was averaging around 107 or 108  today on the machine at my range, but I wasn't sure how to work it.   It was flashing a faster number too but maybe that was the ball speed.  A little slow relative to the above number but they were dead range balls.  

I don't feel like my swing is as loose and free as it could be and I probably swing harder than I should.  I wonder how close to 100% most pros are swinging.

[Lihu]

On 9/22/2017 at 8:04 AM, Runnin said:

Sorry, I'm not up on the tech, but these numbers are driver only averages?

Average on the course.

 

Quote

I think I was averaging around 107 or 108  today on the machine at my range, but I wasn't sure how to work it.   It was flashing a faster number too but maybe that was the ball speed.  A little slow relative to the above number but they were dead range balls.  

Do you swing as fast on the course as on the range? Most people I know don't, because on the course you hit only 10-14 drives interspersed over 3 to 4 hours. It's not like you're "dialed in" or anything?

I've read in a biography, when I was into reading golfer biographies, that one particular golfer averaged only 260 on the PGA tour but when "fooling around" could hit 300 yards on the fly into a window. It's in a book with a title like "Long shot on the PGA Tour" or something to that effect.

There should be no reason to believe that the LM you use is incorrect, and it's likely they tweaked the numbers to account for the range balls already. Dead range balls versus premium balls differ in LM readings by something under 3% if they're limited flight balls. The range ball tweak factor in Trackman maxes out at something like 5%. If they are not limited flight balls the readings would be the same.

So, my guess is the 116.6 number would be more like 125 under your same range conditions while your readings are in the 108 range. I'd also guess that they would hit their balls a lot straighter than you.

 

Quote

I don't feel like my swing is as loose and free as it could be and I probably swing harder than I should.  I wonder how close to 100% most pros are swinging.

They are possibly 10% or less than their absolute maximum? I was told by a web player that he swings less hard during competition, but there are some shots he "goes for it". He was consistently carrying significantly more than 300 that day, but was just "having fun". . .His plus handicap friend hit range balls on the course and flew them more than 270 yards.

Edited September 25, 2017 by Lihu

[cutchemist42]

On 9/21/2017 at 11:45 AM, Shindig said:

Well, where are you losing strokes compared to where you want to be?  

Also, I know I sound like a broken mp3 telling everyone this in response to your question, but consider a Game Golf.  They're slightly more than $100 off Amazon now and helped me narrow onto where I was losing strokes.  I also had a round where one of my skills was at 0 strokes lost compared to Scratch (for that round at least) and that feeling was well worth every penny I paid for the device. 

Just posting to 2nd the GG opinion, absolutely love it when combined with LSW.

The mindset it created led to me catching up to other friends who have played for years  by focusing on full-swing in my 1st 3 Summers of golf.

[uitar9]

On ‎09‎/‎21‎/‎2017 at 11:46 AM, Lihu said:

Basically my belief has always been to be successful you have to have as many looks at birdie as possible, so you have to have as many GIRs as possible which means you have to be in the best position possible to hit greens. Which in turn means hit it as long as you can AND hit it where you can find it. Even the best hybrid player on the planet from 225 yards is not as good as I am with sand wedge from 110.

Last year I was in the short game camp. Spent a lot of time chipping and putting, at targets. Really helped my chipping and putting. I can see where this is easily done by most any golfer. It's not as physically challenging. But I wasn't getting any GIR's.

This year spent some time on driver (tee shots generally), second shot off the fairway, trying to keep it in front of me in the short grass. Love to say I'm seeing lots of birdies, but from where I started, I'm happy to be able to start seeing GIR's, a few more pars and fewer doubles and triples.

My drives are straighter and in much safer places. Gonna spend a bit more time on that this winter.

Short game or long game, to me , is like solving pi.

[Lihu]

16 minutes ago, uitar9 said:

Last year I was in the short game camp. Spent a lot of time chipping and putting, at targets. Really helped my chipping and putting. I can see where this is easily done by most any golfer. It's not as physically challenging. But I wasn't getting any GIR's.

This year spent some time on driver (tee shots generally), second shot off the fairway, trying to keep it in front of me in the short grass. Love to say I'm seeing lots of birdies, but from where I started, I'm happy to be able to start seeing GIR's, a few more pars and fewer doubles and triples.

My drives are straighter and in much safer places. Gonna spend a bit more time on that this winter.

Nice!

I'm just starting my golf season down here and am awaiting the results of that as well.

16 minutes ago, uitar9 said:

Short game or long game, to me , is like solving pi.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2124418-celebrate-pi-day-with-9-trillion-more-digits-than-ever-before/

I sure hope not. . .

[iacas]

[saevel25]

https://www.pgatour.com/players/player.30925.dustin-johnson.html/scorecards/r016

Dj's final round strokes gained off the tee was more that his total strokes gained putting for the entire tournament. He could have had zero strokes gained putting and still won by 5 strokes. 

 

[iacas]

10 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

https://www.pgatour.com/players/player.30925.dustin-johnson.html/scorecards/r016

Dj's final round strokes gained off the tee was more that his total strokes gained putting for the entire tournament. He could have had zero strokes gained putting and still won by 5 strokes. 

@MuniGrit, @kpaulhus could have putted for DJ and won the event.

h/t to @mvmac for that one.

[Throwback]

Both are equally important, the key word is accuracy not distance, most consistant player I ever new was a 70 year old 5' tall Japanese gentleman never hit a drive over 200 yards but straight as an arrow, fairway wood to the green and a put or two, he beat me everytime  with my 280+ yard drives into where ever they felt like going, and scambling to make a rescue Iron shot. It at least taught me how to use my irons.

nuff said  

[klineka]

1 hour ago, Throwback said:

Both are equally important, the key word is accuracy not distance, most consistant player I ever new was a 70 year old 5' tall Japanese gentleman never hit a drive over 200 yards but straight as an arrow, fairway wood to the green and a put or two, he beat me everytime  with my 280+ yard drives into where ever they felt like going, and scambling to make a rescue Iron shot. It at least taught me how to use my irons.

nuff said  

I disagree. Distance is extremely important and Dustin Johnson proved that yesterday. Total for the tournament, DJ hit 65% of fairways with avg. driving distance of 296, Brian Harman hit 73% of fairways but only averaged 266 yds.

Give me the choice of hitting a tee shot 300 yds and being in the rough on a normal course compared to being 250 but in the middle of the fairway, I'm choosing the 300 yd drive every single time (assuming I have a normal shot to the green not blocked by a tree or something)

And based on the tees you were playing with that guy, he probably held his own by just keeping the ball in play, but if he went back to a further set of tees or wanted to seriously improve his game, he would need to hit the ball further. No other way around it. 

The obvious thing to take into account for accuracy is keeping the ball in play. Assuming you were able to keep those 280+ yard drives in play, that means you were out driving him by 80-100 yards every single drive, which then means one of two things, either you were playing on a very difficult, tight, and tree-lined course that gave you 0 chances to get to the green unless you were in the fairway, or two, your iron play wasnt very good. Lets say an average par 4 on that course was 400 yards. 280+ yard drive should have left you around 120 +/- 10 yds into the green. That should be a wedge of some sort, maybe a 9 iron if its deep in the rough. If he was consistently beating you when he was hitting fairway woods into each green and you were hitting wedges, that identifies where the glaring weakness was in your game. 

 

Let me ask you this, which would make you a better player right now, having the driving distance of Dustin Johnson with your driving accuracy, or the driving accuracy of the most accurate PGA tour player from 2017 (72%) with your current driving distance? 

In my opinion the obvious answer is Dustin Johnson's distance. I regularly play par 4s that are under 400 yards, so with Dustin Johnson's distance, I would have partial wedges into all par 4s and less than 200 yards into the majority of the par 5s.

Distance matters.

Edited January 8, 2018 by klineka

[iacas]

2 hours ago, Throwback said:

Both are equally important, the key word is accuracy not distance

I changed the title, finally, after years of having "long game" in there, because I think people continue to confuse "long game" with "distance." It's just about driving and approach shots - i.e. things that aren't "short game" shots.

But no, it's not really about "accuracy" per se.

1 hour ago, klineka said:

The obvious thing to take into account for accuracy is keeping the ball in play. Assuming you were able to keep those 280+ yard drives in play, that means you were out driving him by 80-100 yards every single drive, which then means one of two things, either you were playing on a very difficult, tight, and tree-lined course that gave you 0 chances to get to the green unless you were in the fairway, or two, your iron play wasnt very good. Lets say an average par 4 on that course was 400 yards. 280+ yard drive should have left you around 120 +/- 10 yds into the green. That should be a wedge of some sort, maybe a 9 iron if its deep in the rough. If he was consistently beating you when he was hitting fairway woods into each green and you were hitting wedges, that identifies where the glaring weakness was in your game.

Yes.