Is Distance Really That Important for Amateurs?

[Ernest Jones]

What I am seeing is that the better players here are typically disagreeing more with the theory than those who are higher handicaps. For us, I would kill to give myself 4 more birdie trys per round and have under 29 putts per round which is more important to me than being able to hit a 5 iron 220 yards.

But don't you think hitting into a green with a wedge vs a mid-iron is going to yield you those 4 extra birdie attempts?

[GHIN0011458]

But don't you think hitting into a green with a wedge vs a mid-iron is going to yield you those 4 extra birdie attempts?

I see Luke Donald giving himself a chance with every club in the bag. If I am playing a 300 yard par 4 I am chipping and bad chipping would throw away that chance right? So accuracy there is very important. Now if I know that my money club is a 60 yard shot and my average distance to the hole is 8 feet from that shot, then why not lay it out there 240 with a wedge in my hand that yields an average of 8ft to the hole where the chip could be in the rough in a knarly lie or a wet, public course bunker that is going to be a spray and pray that it rolls close to the hole.

[Ernest Jones]

I mean really- if I am playing a 400 yard par 4 and I hit driver 400 yards then accuracy comes into play on the chip right?.. so I think there is some type of curve on how important distance is. The longer you are, the less important it becomes, the more accuracy comes into play. Which could be in the book already.

Yes, of course, but your margin for error is far greater with that little chip after driving it 400 yards that in is for that full wedge after driving it a mere 300 yards.

[GHIN0011458]

Yes, of course, but your margin for error is far greater with that little chip after driving it 400 yards that in is for that full wedge after driving it a mere 300 yards.

So back to my question- at what distance does accuracy become more important than distance? I also play a lot of pins that are tucked in some pretty crazy places vs the center of the green on Saturday. My margin for error on a chip shot can be just as small in a tournament.

[Golfingdad]

What I am seeing is that the better players here are typically disagreeing more with the theory than those who are higher handicaps. For us, I would kill to give myself 4 more birdie trys per round and have under 29 putts per round which is more important to me than being able to hit a 5 iron 220 yards.

Again, it's not really an either/or thing here.  Nobody is saying that you should go do what long drive participants do and try to knock the cover off the ball at all costs.  "Forget form, forget accuracy, just swing out of your ass!!"  Nobody is saying that, so your argument there is a bit of a strawman.

However, I would completely agree (as would any sane person) that having more birdie tries per round and fewer putts per round is a good thing.  How do you do that?

The answer is the same for both.  Start with the green.  To have fewer putts, you have to have SHORTER putts.

To hit more greens, one of the biggest helps to that is to have SHORTER approach shots.

[Jakester23]

I see Luke Donald giving himself a chance with every club in the bag. If I am playing a 300 yard par 4 I am chipping and bad chipping would throw away that chance right? So accuracy there is very important. Now if I know that my money club is a 60 yard shot and my average distance to the hole is 8 feet from that shot, then why not lay it out there 240 with a wedge in my hand that yields an average of 8ft to the hole where the chip could be in the rough in a knarly lie or a wet, public course bunker that is going to be a spray and pray that it rolls close to the hole.

Your not averaging 8 ft from 60 yards sorry. Besides what do you think your average would be from 15 yards? Or better yet what would it be from 3 yards?

[Ernest Jones]

So back to my question- at what distance does accuracy become more important than distance? I also play a lot of pins that are tucked in some pretty crazy places vs the center of the green on Saturday. My margin for error on a chip shot can be just as small in a tournament.

http://thesandtrap.com/t/78188/is-distance-really-that-important-for-amateurs/252#post_1079318

^^^^That is what I think the tipping point is...

[GHIN0011458]

Again, it's not really an either/or thing here.  Nobody is saying that you should go do what long drive participants do and try to knock the cover off the ball at all costs.  "Forget form, forget accuracy, just swing out of your ass!!"  Nobody is saying that, so your argument there is a bit of a strawman.

However, I would completely agree (as would any sane person) that having more birdie tries per round and fewer putts per round is a good thing.  How do you do that?

The answer is the same for both.  Start with the green.  To have fewer putts, you have to have SHORTER putts.

To hit more greens, one of the biggest helps to that is to have SHORTER approach shots.

On the PGA Tour, you see guys rankings on proximity to the hole from different distances. Sometimes they are MUCH better form 100-125 than they are from 75-100. Where would they rather play from?

[Jakester23]

On the PGA Tour, you see guys rankings on proximity to the hole from different distances. Sometimes they are MUCH better form 100-125 than they are from 75-100. Where would they rather play from?

That's not a realistic stat. You would have to have them hit let's say 100 shots from 150/125/100 ect... on the same hole with the same pin location to get a fair comparison.

[Golfingdad]

On the PGA Tour, you see guys rankings on proximity to the hole from different distances. Sometimes they are MUCH better form 100-125 than they are from 75-100. Where would they rather play from?

You might see them ranking high in one than in another, but by and large, they're still getting closer from the shorter distance.  As an example, just plucking Brandt Snedeker (and using 2013 because pgatour.com is being finicky) ...

He ranked 6th in GIR percentage from 125-150 yards and only 65th from between 100-125 yards.  So, one could conclude that against the field, he's much better from a little further away.  Fine, that's not wrong.

However, what is wrong is that he is better from further.  His actual GIR percentage from 125-150 was 78.19%, but from 100-125 it was 82.87%.

He hits more greens from closer to the hole.  Period.

And I think you will find that to be true for nearly everybody on the tour.

[ghalfaire]

I haven't posted on the thread yet because I wasn't too sure I had anything to add.  But I think I do after I have read a number of the posts.  I think it is pretty difficult to argue against the premise the closer you are to the hole the better off you are, assuming you have a play of course.  But it is also pretty difficult to argue against the premise given by Dr. Bob Rotella in "Golf is not a game of Perfect" which is "you should always hit the shot you can hit, not necessarily the shot you think you ought to".  So answering the question of "are you better off at 130 yards from the pin in the rough versus being 160 yards away in the fairway?" has something to do with your skill level I believe.  But for me I believe every shot is a new decision depending on a multitude of variables such as how are you playing today, what is the lie, where do you want to land the ball, and etc.  But always going for distance isn't the right thing to do all the time for very many of us.  I think you should always go for as much distance as you can within the boundary of being confident you can pull off the shot.  Maybe in match play there might be a reason to hit a low probably shot, but in metal play there is seldom a reason to hit any shot you are not confident of.

[rb72]

Golf is simply a game of distance and accuracy. Seriously, that's it. You've gotta cover 400 yards and eventually get the ball into a very small hole. Distance and accuracy both matter… so even if accuracy was twice as important as distance, something that accounts for 33% of the game is pretty "important." That answers the topic question, does it not?

Plus, it turns out that accuracy is NOT twice as important. So…

You can't answer that question generally.

The question posed is "is distance important to amateurs." The answer is yes. Generally speaking, it's also slightly more important than accuracy, but everyone has to judge this for themselves.

Again, all covered in LSW. And no, it doesn't say "MOAR DISTANCE!" It handles it the same way it handles every other decision you must make regarding what shot to play. You should buy a copy.

That guy doesn't really exist. Not like you seem to think he does.

I think you'd be surprised. In my experience, that's not the case at all. If you're a higher handicapper, (12+), it's better than even money that if you're bad with your driver, you're as bad with your 3W. Smaller clubface, ball teed up closer to the ground, and only an inch or two shorter? Yeah, a bit more loft, but again, a much smaller clubface.

Hasn't been my experience at all. Heck, I and several of the PGA guys I play with would rather bunt a driver off the first tee than start the day with a 3W because it's got a bigger clubface… :)

That's just making stuff up. But, you stepped into a nice little trap. Mark Broadie has actually charted thousands of rounds of golfers of all ability levels. He pulled all of their data (where they hit each shot, their score, etc.), then simulated rounds with golfers of different ability levels, and produced this chart:

So let's go back to your example.

Let's assume the person in your trial gains 2° of accuracy and loses only 20 yards instead of the 25 you've given him. Since a PGA Tour golfer is about +/- 3.5°, an 80 golfer is about +/-5.5° or so, 90 is about 6.5, and 100 is about 7.5°, note that the 2° we're giving them is a significant increase in accuracy from hitting their 3W).

Golfer

Strokes Saved Accuracy

Strokes Lost Distance

Strokes Total

PGA Tour

2 * 0.8 = 1.6

-0.8

+0.8

80 Golfer

2 * 0.9 = 1.8

-1.3

+0.5

90 Golfer

2 * 1.0 = 2.0

-2.3

-0.3

100 Golfer

2 * 1.1 = 2.2

-2.7

-0.5

Contrary to your position that accuracy is more important to higher handicappers, the chart demonstrates the exact opposite: accuracy is more important (relatively) to the better player. It's never more important than distance when measured this way (1° versus 20 yards), despite the fact that 20 yards is a significantly smaller improvement than a degree (let alone two) of accuracy gained.

Is accuracy important?

Nobody is saying it's not.

But generally, distance is a little bit more important.

The upside: improving at your technique in general improves both.

As I said above, golf is simply a game of these two factors: you have to hit the ball far and accurately. It's basically a two-variable problem repeated 18 times. And, when you consider that golf is really only those two factors, distance has the edge. It's not an 80/20 edge or something. It might not even be 60/40. But it's in the lead, and thus, to answer the question… it's very important.

Everyone's free to have their own opinions, but Mark Broadie's got actual data on this from thousands of rounds of regular golfers, and nobody has (nor can they, really) countered this. Y'all can create hypotheticals (though as shown above even those can blow up in your face - @rb72 can you admit this?), but you're just literally making stuff up based on what you think your experiences have been.

I'll say that again: You're just making stuff up based on what you think your experiences have been.

You know how people are unreliable witnesses? They'll say the guy had a black cap on when it was red, and that he was 6'3 when he was 5'7" and stuff? Well, the same kind of blindness affects golfers. I've had a guy not breaking 90 tell me he'd be scratch with a better mental game. I've had someone ask me in all seriousness if he could make it to the PGA Tour when he'd yet to win a city championship. That's not to say you're all wildly off base, but you're unreliable witnesses to say the least.

Is accuracy important? Yes.

In general, is distance slightly more important to the amateur golfer? Yes.

Does this necessarily apply to single examples and hypotheticals? No.

And here's the problem with the figures in your table. The 2 degrees IS the constant. For a good golfer, that's significant because he's probably no more than 5 degrees off on most of his shots, for the HH who averages 15 degrees offline  it's a drop in the bucket. it's the difference between going OOB at the 150 mark and going OOB at the 160 mark. It's still OOB. So of course the extra twenty yards is going to help him because while his bad shots are still bad shots, his good shots are 20 yards longer, putting a shorter club in his hand for the approach. The part of the story it doesn't tell is that what he really NEEDS is a 10 degree improvement in accuracy which would be way more important than 20 more yards.

[Somerset Simon]

Lets talk numbers...

If your average from 150 is 3.2 shots and your average from 130 is 3.0 shots, then an extra 20 yards will gain you 1 shot every five holes on average.

If you put 10 drives in play, then you gain 2 shots per round on average.

Does that really make a significant difference to an 18-handicapper?

The only way an 18-handicapper is going to break 80 is to get more accurate.

Simon

[Ernest Jones]

I haven't posted on the thread yet because I wasn't too sure I had anything to add.  But I think I do after I have read a number of the posts.  I think it is pretty difficult to argue against the premise the closer you are to the hole the better off you are, assuming you have a play of course.  But it is also pretty difficult to argue against the premise given by Dr. Bob Rotella in "Golf is not a game of Perfect" which is "you should always hit the shot you can hit, not necessarily the shot you think you ought to".  So answering the question of "are you better off at 130 yards from the pin in the rough versus being 160 yards away in the fairway?" has something to do with your skill level I believe.  But for me I believe every shot is a new decision depending on a multitude of variables such as how are you playing today, what is the lie, where do you want to land the ball, and etc.  But always going for distance isn't the right thing to do all the time for very many of us.  I think you should always go for as much distance as you can within the boundary of being confident you can pull off the shot.  Maybe in match play there might be a reason to hit a low probably shot, but in metal play there is seldom a reason to hit any shot you are not confident of.

Yes, I agree with all of that, and nobody (at least not me) is advocating for all driver, all the time, MOAR DISTANCE!!!! There are always things to weigh in your decision making process.

[Jakester23]

Lets talk numbers... If your average from 150 is 3.2 shots and your average from 130 is 3.0 shots, then an extra 20 yards will gain you 1 shot every five holes on average. If you put 10 drives in play, then you gain 2 shots per round on average. Does that really make a significant difference to an 18-handicapper? The only way an 18-handicapper is going to break 80 is to get more accurate. Simon

An 18 handicapper shouldn't even worry about breaking 80. How about comparing how many shot it takes an 18 capper to finish a hole with a pw vs a 7i the distance is different from one player to the next. Or a 4i to 7i. I'd bet it's more than 2 shots a round when your doing it on every hole.

[saevel25]

Okay I'm going to repeat myself here, although no one saw the original post because it was deleted (by someone who can apparently dish it out but can't take it), but what I've done here, in response to someone who asked for a better experiment was to put forth a hypothesis. My hypothesis is based largely on my personal experience (in terms of the percentages indicated).

Then you are just one data point in that experiment. Which means absolutely nothing.

The stimulus is a given distance and accuracy relationship. the observed reaction is the golf score. As in any scientific experiment attempting to prove or disprove a hypothesis, you must hold all other things (skill level of player, golf course played,..etc.) constant. My hypothesis states as follows: If the ratio of distance lost in yards to accuracy gained in % of balls in play is 30:10, it will result in lower scores. Now the 30:10 may seem arbitrary or unrealistic, but it is in fact what I experienced and while i understand a sampling of one does not prove a trend (one person not one round because I experienced this over at least 27 rounds) I'm sure I'm not some freak of nature who is the only one who could possibly experience this.

Here's the thing though, skill level of the golfer fluctuates as well. You can play good or bad one day from another. Not eve PGA Tour players play the same every day. Their skill fluctuates. The courses change as well. Did you pick the exact temperatures, wind conditions, moisture content of the ground. Did you measure all of these to make sure you are keeping everything constant? Were the green speeds the same? All of these things can effect the score you are searching for.

My hypothesis states as follows: If the ratio of distance lost in yards to accuracy gained in % of balls in play is 30:10, it will result in lower scores. Now the 30:10 may seem arbitrary or unrealistic, but it is in fact what I experienced and while i understand a sampling of one does not prove a trend (one person not one round because I experienced this over at least 27 rounds) I'm sure I'm not some freak of nature who is the only one who could possibly experience this.

Ok, the study I posted was close, 21% distance loss, you gain 11% accuracy. Heck that is a better deal right? Instead of 30% loss in distance, you get 21%, and you still get your near 10% accuracy loss.

Lets go with your example.

Take a golfer who hits the ball 250 yards, and you miss it 20 yards right. Lets say the fairway is 30 yards wide. So you are are in the rough by 5 yards.

If you want a 10% increase in accuracy, you would be only 18 yards right of the center of the fairway. You would gain only 2 yards of accuracy. Heck if you miss the center by 40 yards, you are still only gaining 4 yards in accuracy.

Now if you say you want to see a 30% reduction in distance. From that 250 yard golfer that would be nearly 60 yards loss of distance.

The problem with your hypothesis is, you are looking at percentages. The issue is, the distance is always a much larger value than the dispersion left or right. When you take a percentage of that, the value for the accuracy is much smaller than the value for distance.

So in your hypothesis. You are only gaining 2-4 yards of accuracy, but you are hitting 60 yards less off the tee. If I take your 30% and 10% numbers.

So lets make a bet, one hole. I'll go out 250 yards, and drop the ball in the rough. You walk back 60 yards and walk towards the fairway 4 yards and drop the ball. Now lets play the hole in. Who ever takes the least amount of strokes in from there wins. Willing to make that bet based on your hypothesis?

On the PGA Tour, you see guys rankings on proximity to the hole from different distances. Sometimes they are MUCH better form 100-125 than they are from 75-100. Where would they rather play from?

From 2013, 70% of PGA Tour players hit the ball closer from 50-75 then they did from 75-100, and the average distance off was 4 feet. Not sure if that is a big deal when you are talking the average putting distance from 50-75 yards is 16 feet and 75-100 yards it is 17 feet. That is really in that no mans land of putting.

And here's the problem with the figures in your table. The 2 degrees IS the constant. For a good golfer, that's significant because he's probably no more than 5 degrees off on most of his shots, for the HH who averages 15 degrees offline  it's a drop in the bucket. it's the difference between going OOB at the 150 mark and going OOB at the 160 mark. It's still OOB. So of course the extra twenty yards is going to help him because while his bad shots are still bad shots, his good shots are 20 yards longer, putting a shorter club in his hand for the approach. The part of the story it doesn't tell is that what he really NEEDS is a 10 degree improvement in accuracy which would be way more important than 20 more yards.

Yet going from 10 to 5 degrees is a 50% improvement, not your 10% improvement you state in your hypothesis.

For a HH who probably averages around 200  yards off the tee, 20 yards improvement would be 10% improvement in distance, not 30%.

Again you are highly OVERESTIMATING accuracy.

[boogielicious]

Lets talk numbers...

If your average from 150 is 3.2 shots and your average from 130 is 3.0 shots, then an extra 20 yards will gain you 1 shot every five holes on average.

If you put 10 drives in play, then you gain 2 shots per round on average.

Does that really make a significant difference to an 18-handicapper?

The only way an 18-handicapper is going to break 80 is to get more accurate.

Simon

Huh???  Is this a trick question?  Of course it will matter.  On those 10 drives, I will gain two shots.  On the other 4 drives, I may gain another shot because the rough isn't too bad.  That's three shots per round.

What surprises me about all your responses is that for a math major, you have a cavalier disregard for data and would rather go by anecdote.  You have been presented data, but then insist that UK course are completely different so you can disregard the data.  They must have 12 yard wide fairways with 3 foot high fescue and OB on every fairway.  Last time I checked, UK courses have tees, fairways, bunkers, rough, greens and hazards like all courses.  Some links courses have much wider fairways than US parkland courses.

Your argument is weak and tiresome.

[Somerset Simon]

An 18 handicapper shouldn't even worry about breaking 80. How about comparing how many shot it takes an 18 capper to finish a hole with a pw vs a 7i the distance is different from one player to the next. Or a 4i to 7i. I'd bet it's more than 2 shots a round when your doing it on every hole.

When I was a beginner, breaking 80 was my holy grail.

If people want to make significant improvements, e.g. 90 down to 80, or 80 down to 70, then they need to focus on accuracy.

There is no limit to how much you can improve if you focus on accuracy.

If you focus on distance, you will only ever make marginal gains.