sheer luck and great misses

[SQ Bimmer]

I was just thinking of this topic the other day and was going to start a thread on it, but it looks like there is already a discussion going on.

I was thinking the other day about how I didn't believe in luck on the golf course, that you are the only one who touches your golf ball. Then I remembered during my last round, my GF shanked her drive right, into a tree and it bounced back onto a perfect lie in the middle of the fairway leaving her a perfect shot for the green. It got me thinking that sometimes you actually do get a lucky bounce. Or an unlucky one, as my approach shot hits something hard and my ball bounces over the far side of the green, down a steep drop. To top it off, I don't have a 60* wedge in my bag... but I got it up there with an open 56* so it could have been worse.

I was trying to break 90 (shot a 92) and these sorts of things accounted for a couple of my missed strokes. But I wish I had the SKILL to not miss so many putts (38 putts that round). Then maybe I could have broken 90 by a big margin.

[Greg]

at this point, every great shot I hit has a certain level of luck involved, I just happened the swing just right, hit the ball at the exact right spot and trajectory, a fraction of an inch off and I would have shanked it or pulled it or hit it fat or thin etc.

[flopdarock]

i had a great miss yesterday... i was about 10 yrds off the back of the green and needed to chip it in to save par... low and behold i topped the crap out of it and thought ohhh boy... i gotta go to the cart and grab my sw cuz its gonna be in the bunker on the other side... thank goodness the rough grabbed it enough to slow it down... rattled the flag and went in

[SQ Bimmer]

at this point, every great shot I hit has a certain level of luck involved, I just happened the swing just right, hit the ball at the exact right spot and trajectory, a fraction of an inch off and I would have shanked it or pulled it or hit it fat or thin etc.

You just described something in great detail that SKILL would take care of. This was part of my initial train of thought. If I thought that when I made my downswing I needed LUCK to get the ball going up and straight, I would never become a "good" golfer.

[Lance]

skill any day over luck.

sheer luck is shanking the ball off the tee into a tree and bouncing into the fairway.

it's because of your skill that second shot miss hit still manages to find it's
target no matter how it gets there.

[MiniMoe]

"piss on luck" ... quote from Dead Solid Perfect by Randy Quaid.

Also.. the better you are, the better luck you will have.

[MiniMoe]

Golf is not about how good our good shots are. It's about about good your bad shots are. If you get a bit of luck on the bad ones.. you are way ahead of the ball game. I'll take anything I can get.

[Titleist Man]

I had a really bad shot one time. it was headed at a pot bunker short of the green. I threw my club . Well turns out the ball went over the bunker and on the green and proceeded to go into the hole for an ace. To this day my friends wont let me forget that....

[DaSportsGuy]

I'll take skill over luck. Skill is rewarding and satisfying, luck is not. One of my dreads is that if I'm ever fortunate enough to get a hole in one, that it will come on a shot I shank off a tree or something.

I was playing a course last month that had a row of trees behind the green on a Par 3 and I hit my tee shot into the trees, it goes off some branches hits the base of the tree, rolls through a foot or two of rough and rolls onto the green about a foot behind the hole. When I hit it I was like "Ah ____", then it rolls onto the green and creeps closer and closer to the hole and I couldn't believe it. It was the worst tee shot I had all day but it had the best result.