Tournament strategy changes?

[Fat Slice]

Some of us with handicaps will take a shot for the fun of it and not because it is going to give the best chance to score low on the hole. An example of this might be a long carry over water which you might make 1/2 the time but is a lot of fun to try. Another might be a risky shot over trees instead of a punch-out to the fairway.

For those of us who enjoy the ill-advised hero shot, here's a question: Do you still play like that during competitive rounds (match play, etc.), or do you take the safe/smart shot instead?

[clubchamp]

Fairways and greens and if the opportunity presents itself for a risky shot that will get me a win I will go for it.

[RandomRaiderTTU]

I play it safe in tournaments.

Last one that I played, I took 4-iron off the tee on most of the par 4s. Left me with 135-155 in almost every time (short course). The course had a lot of water (14/18 holes had multiple ponds/lakes).

I could have taken driver and gotten down to 30-75 yard range, but the risk just wasn't worth it. You get it out of line a little and you're dropping a ball.

I usually just weigh the risk/reward factor. I was hitting my gap, PW, and 9 iron straight all weekend, so there was no real need to go to driver off the tee.

If my driver was deadly straight all weekend, maybe I'd have taken it a handful more times...