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True distance vs imaginary distance.


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Yeah it isn't too tough to look back at the 150 and up to the 100 and guess okay I am 135ish out and the hole plays uphill to a back flag so I'll pull X. I'm not firing at flags just trying to get it on the green in a certain area. Sometimes it's not even necessary to know. The guys at my home course shooting rangefinders all over or stepping off for second shots on par 5's drive me nuts. I could see it if there are obstacles smack dab in the middle of the fairway but most don't have a legit chance at getting home in two. Even then how many club choices do they have from 270 out?

Dave :-)

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This thread has inspired me to download Google earth and use it to help improve. I think it will help me get concrete distances for my longer clubs, as well as plan out strategy, plot out landing areas, tendencies, etc. The possibilities are endless!

Bill

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” - Confucius

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Yeah it isn't too tough to look back at the 150 and up to the 100 and guess okay I am 135ish out and the hole plays uphill to a back flag so I'll pull X. I'm not firing at flags just trying to get it on the green in a certain area. Sometimes it's not even necessary to know. The guys at my home course shooting rangefinders all over or stepping off for second shots on par 5's drive me nuts. I could see it if there are obstacles smack dab in the middle of the fairway but most don't have a legit chance at getting home in two. Even then how many club choices do they have from 270 out?

Zero??

Really though, Google Earth is excellent.  I use it every day.  I give my guys aerial printouts for direction maps.  Also use it to check out potential hunting areas.

-Matt-

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[QUOTE name="Dave2512" url="/t/71735/true-distance-vs-imaginary-distance/72#post_936981"]   Yeah it isn't too tough to look back at the 150 and up to the 100 and guess okay I am 135ish out and the hole plays uphill to a back flag so I'll pull X. I'm not firing at flags just trying to get it on the green in a certain area. Sometimes it's not even necessary to know. The guys at my home course shooting rangefinders all over or stepping off for second shots on par 5's drive me nuts. I could see it if there are obstacles smack dab in the middle of the fairway but most don't have a legit chance at getting home in two. Even then how many club choices do they have from 270 out? [/QUOTE] Zero?? Really though, Google Earth is excellent.  I use it every day.  I give my guys aerial printouts for direction maps.  Also use it to check out potential hunting areas.

Cool, but it would be nice to have more accurate 3D.

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Yeah it isn't too tough to look back at the 150 and up to the 100 and guess okay I am 135ish out and the hole plays uphill to a back flag so I'll pull X. I'm not firing at flags just trying to get it on the green in a certain area. Sometimes it's not even necessary to know. The guys at my home course shooting rangefinders all over or stepping off for second shots on par 5's drive me nuts. I could see it if there are obstacles smack dab in the middle of the fairway but most don't have a legit chance at getting home in two. Even then how many club choices do they have from 270 out?

It's funny - I'm pretty bad at judging distances so if I don't see a yard marker or one of those red/white/blue stakes in the ground, I wouldn't have any idea how far I am and there have been times when I'll ask how far out and I'll get that "did you really ask that question" look from my friend because we'll be 250-300 out. :-\

Christian

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Yeah it isn't too tough to look back at the 150 and up to the 100 and guess okay I am 135ish out and the hole plays uphill to a back flag so I'll pull X. I'm not firing at flags just trying to get it on the green in a certain area. Sometimes it's not even necessary to know. The guys at my home course shooting rangefinders all over or stepping off for second shots on par 5's drive me nuts. I could see it if there are obstacles smack dab in the middle of the fairway but most don't have a legit chance at getting home in two. Even then how many club choices do they have from 270 out?

I'd rather that they pace it off, then step up and hit as opposed to pacing it off and then wait for the green to clear for that 270 yard 3W shot.  Especially since they just crushed a 240 yard drive with the ball on a tee.  Of course, they did a quick calculation based on the scorecard length and have come to the false conclusion that the drive was 290 yards, so of course they have to wait for the green to clear for that "little" 3W from 270. :loco:

When I first started playing you were lucky to get the 100-150-200 markers.   A lot of courses had nothing but a little tree or bush planted somewhere near the 150 yard line, and that was it.  No sprinkler heads marked, no fairway plaques.  You learned to judge the club needed almost more than the actual distance.  You'd stand in the fairway (or more likely, in the rough :doh: ), look at that 150 marker, and say to yourself "This looks like a 3 iron", pull it out and hit.  Nobody paced.  They'd have been laughed off the course.  You used your judgement and you picked a club and played.

That said, I see nothing wrong with using what information is available to you as long as you just get with the program and don't take forever to figure out what you're going to do.

Rick

"He who has the fastest cart will never have a bad lie."

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I like what FourPutt said.  I do carry a GPS with me but usually just give it a glance to see distance to the center of the green.  If there is trouble between me and the green I will look up distance to the trouble and distance needed to clear before I pull a club.  But I do make it a point to not take a lot of time with the GPS and on most Par 5 holes I don't even look at it for the second shot as it is unusual for me to "go for it in two".

Butch

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If the point of this thread is that many golfers do not hit it as far as they think they do, wow. I'm shocked to hear this.


It's been a while since you posted. I just saw two posts from you today. Welcome back.

I kind of wondered if this overestimation might be because of the scorecard yardages? It seems like if a card yardage states 420 yards for a hole, and you make it with Driver-7iron and you pretty much know you hit the 7iron 160 yards, then it stands to reason that the drive was an effective 260 yards even if the actual yardage was 240 yards. It seems like you only need to use the effective "260" yardage to decide which tees to use? So, when someone states his distance on the internet, it is probably the effective distance and not an actual yardage?

I ran into two people this last weekend, who were playing $7 a hole with carry over. Well, one of them said his friend was driving 280 yards all day and was going to beat him for the first time in years. My drives were definitely not 280 (I have a rangefinder), but ended up next to his even though I teed off about 20 yards behind them. As far as they were concerned, because the "280 guy" used an 8i on his approach both of them thought he was driving 280 yards. The actual yardage was significantly shorter, but in his mind was the stated course yardage and the distance left.

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Thanks for the welcome back message, Lihu.

I really don't know why many golfers think they hit it farther than they really do, aside from ego. But I've seen it over & over, and I end up proving it to them rather simply. I hit it 240. Two forty. That's it. And when I play with someone who thinks they hit it father & I hit one of my two fortys, they're like, "Wow! You really tagged that one! I bet that was 280 yards!" I say nope, 240. I then prove it once we get to the ball - "This hole's 380 & I got 140 in." Or if the cart has GPS, even better.

Maybe this is because I live and play golf in humid, sea-level Florida. I would imagine I am in an area where the ball travels the least distance of the universe of conditions out there. If I lived in Denver my 240 would be 260 I guess.

Another thing is roll. If someone is saying they're pumping it out there 300, I would say, 'On the fly?' Well, of course not. But if I were playing some track with speedway fairways, my 240 would likely roll out to close to 300. And SoFla courses are notorious for their general lack of roll. Like my posts about Crandon Golf Club. That course play looooong. You just don't get a lot of roll out there. It's a soft course.

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The main reason that players overestimate driving distance is simply that they use bad math.  They make an invalid assumption which leads to using incorrect data.  By trying to use the yardage on the score card you are going to be wrong 99% of the time.

Once again, using Google Earth, I can make the par 5 15th hole on my home course measure 30 yards less than it really does.  When a player measures the distance to the flagstick after playing his drive, he is always going to come up with an incorrect drive length.  The hole is 520 yards from the middle tees, and that is an accurate number when measured the way that holes are normally measured for scorecard.  I have absolutely walloped a drive on that hole and driven 323 measured (not calculated) - in late fall with dry fairways and a stiff tailwind.  Yet if I had figured it the way I did before I had a GPS, I'd have come up with over 350 yards, some 30 yards farther than actual.  The reason?  I wasn't playing the ball on the line that the hole is officially measured on, meaning that I didn't hit down the middle of the fairway to the center point of each of the two bends.

Even on a course like this with accurate card measurements you can be quite a bit off.  It gets worse when you play a course where the yardages on the card are not accurately measured, or where they mix and match tee and pin positions with no attempt at maintaining the proper yardage.

Rick

"He who has the fastest cart will never have a bad lie."

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The main reason that players overestimate driving distance is simply that they use bad math.  They make an invalid assumption which leads to using incorrect data.  By trying to use the yardage on the score card you are going to be wrong 99% of the time.

Once again, using Google Earth, I can make the par 5 15th hole on my home course measure 30 yards less than it really does.  When a player measures the distance to the flagstick after playing his drive, he is always going to come up with an incorrect drive length.  The hole is 520 yards from the middle tees, and that is an accurate number when measured the way that holes are normally measured for scorecard.  I have absolutely walloped a drive on that hole and driven 323 measured (not calculated) - in late fall with dry fairways and a stiff tailwind.  Yet if I had figured it the way I did before I had a GPS, I'd have come up with over 350 yards, some 30 yards farther than actual.  The reason?  I wasn't playing the ball on the line that the hole is officially measured on, meaning that I didn't hit down the middle of the fairway to the center point of each of the two bends.

Even on a course like this with accurate card measurements you can be quite a bit off.  It gets worse when you play a course where the yardages on the card are not accurately measured, or where they mix and match tee and pin positions with no attempt at maintaining the proper yardage.

Yep, score cards are seldom right on the number. When a tee box can be 100+ yards long (i've seen them), no telling where the measurement was taken from. Good point on taking in the curve of the golf hole. If someone cuts the corner on a dogleg, that could be register as huge driver if taken by score card yardage.

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Here's a funny one from when I first started playing (and didn't have a clue about carry distances).

This is the second hole on the first course I ever played. From the tee in this pic it looks like you could miss to the right of the lake but in reality the slope is so steep that any ball landing there would bounce to the right and OB.

Not knowing how far to carry the lake of course I had to try it. Bombed the best shot I could hit and right on line and went up to see how it turned out. No ball to be seen. When I couldn't find my ball I just assumed that the carry must be 300 yards simply because I knew some people could hit a ball 300 yards and was stubborn enough to think I could hit a ball as far as anybody else.

Never really knew how far that carry actually was until last night when I used Google Earth. Turned out that to clear the water is only about 270 and to get over the cart path on fairly level ground is only 280.

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Here's a funny one from when I first started playing (and didn't have a clue about carry distances).

This is the second hole on the first course I ever played. From the tee in this pic it looks like you could miss to the right of the lake but in reality the slope is so steep that any ball landing there would bounce to the right and OB.

Not knowing how far to carry the lake of course I had to try it. Bombed the best shot I could hit and right on line and went up to see how it turned out. No ball to be seen. When I couldn't find my ball I just assumed that the carry must be 300 yards simply because I knew some people could hit a ball 300 yards and was stubborn enough to think I could hit a ball as far as anybody else.

Never really knew how far that carry actually was until last night when I used Google Earth. Turned out that to clear the water is only about 270 and to get over the cart path on fairly level ground is only 280.

I like the way you say "only" 280. :roll: I've never carried 280 in my life.  If I've carried 250, it was a huge hit for me.  I honestly have no data at all about how far I might carry a driver.  That data is nearly impossible to come up with unless the ball just plugs, or stops within a yard of it's pitch mark.  I've had that happen before, but never when I was bothering to measure the drive.  To be honest, I've never really cared.  If the shot is so risky that I can't just look at it and know that I can carry whatever trouble is in front of me, then I make a different shot choice.  On the hole above, I lay up every time.

Rick

"He who has the fastest cart will never have a bad lie."

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I like the way you say "only" 280.   I've never carried 280 in my life.  If I've carried 250, it was a huge hit for me.  I honestly have no data at all about how far I might carry a driver.  That data is nearly impossible to come up with unless the ball just plugs, or stops within a yard of it's pitch mark.  I've had that happen before, but never when I was bothering to measure the drive.  To be honest, I've never really cared.  If the shot is so risky that I can't just look at it and know that I can carry whatever trouble is in front of me, then I make a different shot choice.  On the hole above, I lay up every time.

After that first time I always laid up on that hole, assuming I couldn't carry it. Haven't played there in a long time and if I go back I will probably still lay up. For me it falls into the doable but not smart category.

I play a hole almost every day that is 285 yards and it hits into an uphill slope in front of the green and leaves a pitch mark, and of course if it hits on the green it leaves a pitch mark. I only carried that green once last year with a helping wind, and my average "best" land about 10 yards short. My average overall, taking the bad and the good, is probably more like 30 yards short.

With those odds laying up is the play for me.

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[QUOTE name="MS256" url="/t/71735/true-distance-vs-imaginary-distance/72#post_939313"]   Here's a funny one from when I first started playing (and didn't have a clue about carry distances). This is the second hole on the first course I ever played. From the tee in this pic it looks like you could miss to the right of the lake but in reality the slope is so steep that any ball landing there would bounce to the right and OB. Not knowing how far to carry the lake of course I had to try it. Bombed the best shot I could hit and right on line and went up to see how it turned out. No ball to be seen. When I couldn't find my ball I just assumed that the carry must be 300 yards simply because I knew some people could hit a ball 300 yards and was stubborn enough to think I could hit a ball as far as anybody else. Never really knew how far that carry actually was until last night when I used Google Earth. Turned out that to clear the water is only about 270 and to get over the cart path on fairly level ground is only 280. [/QUOTE] I like the way you say "only" 280. :roll:   I've never carried 280 in my life.  If I've carried 250, it was a huge hit for me.  I honestly have no data at all about how far I might carry a driver.  That data is nearly impossible to come up with unless the ball just plugs, or stops within a yard of it's pitch mark.  I've had that happen before, but never when I was bothering to measure the drive.  To be honest, I've never really cared.  If the shot is so risky that I can't just look at it and know that I can carry whatever trouble is in front of me, then I make a different shot choice.  On the hole above, I lay up every time.

Forced carries are the only way I know to tell how far you carry.

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Forced carries are the only way I know to tell how far you carry.

The 2 of you guys need to come to Ireland for 6 months every year, where our miserable weather, lets you know exactly how far you carry it... Plugs are as common as getting roll.

I've played with a guy that lost his ball....on the fairway!!!!! :-D

It took us 3 minutes to find it, it was right in the center of fairway but it was 90% plugged

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I've just read through the thread and all this talk of accuracy of A,B & C as a measuring device was slightly assuming.

The biggest inaccuracy in measuring our average drives is our ability to forget about that one we topped, sliced etc. :-D

(That's obviously less relevant the lower you go in HC)

In my experience, a lot of peoples "average drives" are the "average" of their good drives ;-)

I have yet to meet someone taking out their GPS to find out the distance from the mens to the ladies tee after they topped it :-P

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