Shifting trends on the PGA tour.

[Stretch]

Originally Posted by Kieran123

Tiger could get up and down from the middle of a forest which requires a 40 yard low fade to a pin tucked in the corner.He can make the worst possible situation/lie look easy. Luke Donald can not do that ( doesn't need to with how straight he hits it but you know.... )

I think if you're looking for examples of current top players who can't scramble, Luke Donald is a spectacularly poor choice.

[sean_miller]

Originally Posted by Stretch

I think if you're looking for examples of current top players who can't scramble, Luke Donald is a spectacularly poor choice.

His wonky driving versus world ranking is pretty much proof of that.

[Kieran123]

Originally Posted by Stretch

I think if you're looking for examples of current top players who can't scramble, Luke Donald is a spectacularly poor choice.

Yes, but no one can scramble like Woods used to....courtesy of his driving ability. Even in his slump his current stats

GIR Percentage from Other than Fairway

59.81%

4th

Scrambling from the Rough

79.17%

1st

Luke Donald is tied first in scrambling from the rough, but he's only in the rough 21% of the time, whereas Tiger is there 35% of the time

[Kieran123]

Originally Posted by sean_miller

His wonky driving versus world ranking is pretty much proof of that.

13th on tour?

[bunkerputt]

Originally Posted by Fourputt   If you can't appreciate his game that way, then you don't really understand the intricacies of golf.

.  Wait.  Did you just claim to understand the intricacies of golf?  I'm folding up a Burger King crown and putting it in the mail to your address right now because you deserve it man!

Sure.  You're right.  I was being sarcastic and addressing people who are saying he would dominate even more if he had more distance.  I personally believe Luke could dominate even more if he had distance, was even straighter off the tee, never missed greens and always one-putted.

[bunkerputt]

Originally Posted by sean_miller

Garrigus - unfortunate trouser choices, terrible decisions, poor partial wedge player, children's putter

.

This is a problem I had on Tiger Woods 2004 on XBox.  My driving average was 360, but I had so many partial wedges I couldn't get it close consistently, so my average putts/hole stayed around 1.2 and it was tough to break 50. If partial wedges are hard in video game golf, imagine how hard they are in real life.  With as many partial wedges as those guys get, you'd think they'd be the absolute best at them.  The fact is, there definitely is such a thing as too much distance.

[jgreen85]

Originally Posted by bunkerputt

.

This is a problem I had on Tiger Woods 2004 on XBox.  My driving average was 360, but I had so many partial wedges I couldn't get it close consistently, so my average putts/hole stayed around 1.2 and it was tough to break 50.  If partial wedges are hard in video game golf, imagine how hard they are in real life.  With as many partial wedges as those guys get, you'd think they'd be the absolute best at them.  The fact is, there definitely is such a thing as too much distance.

That's them not thinking strategically. If your drive puts you to a partial wedge and you can't hit them close, you should be hitting 3 wood or w/e. What about those times when that extra length puts you to a 5 iron out on a par 5 instead of hitting hybrid/3wood or laying up? good w/ the bad, but the bad, in this case, could be avoided.

[newtogolf]

Thought the interview with Ken Venturi from Congressional was interesting and timely given this thread, He said during his interview, "But where they hit it today compared to where we used to hit it was 300 yards. If you think about it, what is hard to believe, they gave me the stats, in 1964 I was No. 1 in driving accuracy, and I was 16th in overall driving distance, and I drove it 249 yards. I was just watching players at the 10th hole, playing 218 yards and Bubba Watson just hit a 6-iron. In my day that was a good 4-wood for 218."

Contrast that to now where Harrison Frazer is #16 in driving distance with an average of 297.8.   Venturi said the year he won, congressional played around 7,050 yards (longest par 70 for a US Open) and he thought this year it would play around 7,350.

[B of H]

if you gave todays tour players the same equipment that venturi, jack, arnold, trevino etc... used they'd still blow it by them by a large margin.  The players today are bigger, stronger, have better mechanics, are in better shape, and are significantly more athletic and to leave that out of the equation is short sided to say the least.  Sure jack was long and put an athletic move on the ball in his prime but he's not tiger woods, gary woodland, bubba watson, dustin johnson, or phil.  Those guys are 6'1 to 6'4 and have a huge advantage in strength, speed, and arc.  Jack or sam snead might be plenty long compared to modern players with the same equipment but they wouldn't be as long...and they were huge hitters in their day.

[newtogolf]

I agree with your points, I just thought it was interesting that Congressional will play 350 yards longer than the year Venturi won, roughly 20 yards longer per hole (though not likely to be evenly distributed) but Frazer is averaging almost 50 yards more per drive than Venturi.

Originally Posted by B of H

if you gave todays tour players the same equipment that venturi, jack, arnold, trevino etc... used they'd still blow it by them by a large margin.

[sean_miller]

Originally Posted by B of H

Jack or sam snead might be plenty long compared to modern players with the same equipment but they wouldn't be as long...and they were huge hitters in their day.

That's pure guesswork of course. I think the only objective test would be to have the longest hitter play the equipment of old (including the balls) and see how they fare.

[Harmonious]

I think you would find that today's "big" hitters would have to scale back their swings, in order to find their drives.  Were they to try to hit a balata ball with their modern power swings, they would be playing out of the woods all day long.  That is, if they could even find it.

[B of H]

Originally Posted by sean_miller

That's pure guesswork of course. I think the only objective test would be to have the longest hitter play the equipment of old (including the balls) and see how they fare.

true but it's a pretty safe assumption IMO.  We have more than enough to go on already including high speed video of jack in his prime etc...

tiger is going to out hit jack no matter what, he's just superior in every way with regards to creating speed and distance.

[turtleback]

Originally Posted by sean_miller

That's pure guesswork of course. I think the only objective test would be to have the longest hitter play the equipment of old (including the balls) and see how they fare.

We pretty much saw that in the 1997 Masters.

[B of H]

Originally Posted by Harmonious

I think you would find that today's "big" hitters would have to scale back their swings, in order to find their drives.  Were they to try to hit a balata ball with their modern power swings, they would be playing out of the woods all day long.  That is, if they could even find it.

actually it's the opposite way around in many ways.  With the ball going further it negates the differences in accuracy if anything and the modern players have more stable and sound actions so i'd bet that they still hit if further and straighter regardless of equipment.  Do you really think that the old happy feet reverse C type swings produce straighter shots?  do you really think that the old dudes dialed back their swings?  precisely the opposite of the truth IMO.  Jack and Tom Watson swung out of their shoes.

yeah, 1997 was tiger with a balata ball and traditional blade irons right?  6'2 and a real athlete vs 5'10 and not all that athletic etc...

[Harmonious]

Originally Posted by B of H

actually it's the opposite way around in many ways.  With the ball going further it negates the differences in accuracy if anything and the modern players have more stable and sound actions so i'd bet that they still hit if further and straighter regardless of equipment.  Do you really think that the old happy feet reverse C type swings produce straighter shots?  do you really think that the old dudes dialed back their swings?  precisely the opposite of the truth IMO.  Jack and Tom Watson swung out of their shoes.

yeah, 1997 was tiger with a balata ball and traditional blade irons right?  6'2 and a real athlete vs 5'10 and not all that athletic etc...

Well, I'll just have to disagree with you on several of your points. First, I wouldn't hold Tiger up as the poster child for accurate driving.  Second, Nicklaus and Watson (and Palmer, Trevino, Casper, Irwin, Player, etc.) had swings that they perfected to best utilize their talents to hit the ball where they wanted. The fact that they could hit straight shots (or controlled shots) using balata balls while swinging as hard as they did only proves their talent.  Could Bubba Watson or J.B. Holmes keep their ball in play using balata balls and persimmon drivers?  You already know the answer.

And who are you saying was not all that athletic?  Snead? Nicklaus? Palmer? Player? Maybe they didn't have the height of Woods, but they were very athletic in their primes.

[sean_miller]

Originally Posted by turtleback

We pretty much saw that in the 1997 Masters.

Was Tiger blowing it past Ernie, Phil, DLIII and guys like that? I don't remember. Ther other guys were relics and short knockers by any standard at that point.

[The_Pharaoh]

Originally Posted by newtogolf

If Donald could figure out how to get another 30 yards out of his driver he has a shot at really dominating (assuming  it didn't hurt his iron play) for quite some time.

This is the reason he's working with the Titleist Performance Institute on fitness!