Are you spending 70% of your practice time on your short game like Michael Breed implies you should?

[RFKFREAK]

Also, PGA Tour pros do not spend 70% of their time practicing their short games.

You mean Michael Breed is talking out of his keister?!

[No Mulligans]

For a high handicapper, how much time should be spent on full swings?

If I'm focusing on a priority piece, 20 minutes as session is all I seem to need.  After that, I really think I'm losing focus on the priority item and getting diminishing returns.

Yes, it's most important to my scoring to improve my ball striking but, I really think those 20 minutes are the most efficient use of my time for that one area.  Then it's pretty easy to spend another 20 minutes on chipping, short pitches and putting.

That gets me to 50/30/20 which is close enough to 65/25/10 for me.

[Grinde6]

You can't be very confident of that, when the best players with the best conditions (PGA Tour players) are not getting up and down frequently enough to be "very confident that [they] will at least get the ball up and down or maybe chip in." Your odds of getting up and down are ALWAYS lower (given a large enough sample size, and one shot doesn't count) than your odds of two-putting from the same distance (let alone a shorter distance). Check this thread out @Grinde6 : [CONTENTEMBED=/t/58816/65-20-15-practice-ratios-where-to-devote-your-practice-time layout=block] [/CONTENTEMBED] Also, PGA Tour pros do not spend 70% of their time practicing their short games.

I'm sorry that I have/do put in enough time at the chipping green to be very confident that I can get a ball up and down from just about anywhere. On that same windy day where I only hit around 38% GIR, I had 3 chip-ins and hit the flagstick a couple other times. I have a lot of confidence that if I can be within 20 or so yards of the green that I have a good chance of chipping in or getting very close. I'm not talking about over bunkers to a tight pin chipping in, I'm saying I'm just short of the green and there is plenty of green to work with, this is where I plan my misses for if it is going to miss at all.

[David in FL]

Once I start hitting 70% GIR I'll start spending 70% of my time working on my short game..... I've never cared for Breed and his brand of one size fits all McLesson.....

[saevel25]

Once I start hitting 70% GIR I'll start spending 70% of my time working on my short game.....

I've never cared for Breed and his brand of one size fits all McLesson.....

So long game % = 1 - GIR %

[RFKFREAK]

Oh, Breed, you just keep bringing it. I wonder where he got his 70% figure from.

[Gunther]

I like Breed, seems like a great person who truly wants people to get better and given the platform he has, I think he covers his bases well. I'm not always interested in his lesson that day but I never fail to pick up some small nugget from him.

[dkolo]

I feel like it's easier for them to teach people how to fix their short games than long games via a broad TV presentation. There's a lot more moving parts and issues with full swing mechanics whereas with putting or chipping, some simple points can be picked up and applied pretty easily. So they make the short game sound more important than it actually is.

[joekelly]

Agree that the short game is much more defined and amenable to correction/improvement than long game.  And for me at least, far less expensive than long game practice as chipping/pitching/putting green offered free in my locale.

Why not practice that which brings the soonest reward?  Sure, if i were a pro/scratcher my opinions may be different.

[Ernest Jones]

Why not practice that which brings the soonest reward?  Sure, if i were a pro/scratcher my opinions may be different.

Well, you'll never get close to a pro/scratcher with than plan. That's the point people are try to make.

[Shindig]

I wonder where he got his 70% figure from.

Tune in tomorrow, when a doctor with a flashlight shows us.

[Ernest Jones]

Tune in tomorrow, when a doctor with a flashlight shows us.

Ooohhh! Did he make the flashlight? :-P

[RFKFREAK]

I get that perhaps it's easier to help viewers get better at golf though tv by helping them with the short game rather than with the full swing, but my guess is he's either pretty ignorant as to how much, percentage-wise, PGA pros are spending on their short game or, if he knows better, then he's being pretty dishonest in saying they're spending that big of a percent of practice time on their short game and it's even worse if he's doing it to build the narrative for his show.

[Tgb02]

For a month or two this year I spent a fair amount of time maybe around 50 percent or so on my short game just because it was that awful, I could get near greens in 2 but I usually had around a 5% chance of getting up and down and I 3 putted at least 6 times a round basically. But now I usually spend around 25-35% on short game including putting

[DrvFrShow]

They love to help you fix your short game because you can see instant results and with some practice you'll keep seeing those results.

The long game is harder to fix. It's correct repetition thousands of times.

[DrvFrShow]

Oh, Breed, you just keep bringing it.

I wonder where he got his 70% figure from.

It's all in the definitions, guys. Short game practice begins with hitting the green from your 8 iron distance, then start moving in.

[billchao]

It's all in the definitions, guys. Short game practice begins with hitting the green from your 8 iron distance, then start moving in.

Is that Breed's definition, or yours? It doesn't really matter either way, but if it's his, he's manipulating the numbers to make his point.

Hitting greens with your 8 iron (and 9, PW, full GW, SW and so on) requires full swing mechanics, which really falls under long game. It doesn't matter if you can only hit your full SW 75 yards. Having to hit a full swing to hit that yardage makes it the long game, not the fact that the yardage is under 100.

[natureboy]

Generally speaking the only time I practice my short game is right before a round. I'll usually spend about 20 minutes hitting pitches from 30 yards and in on the practice green to loosen up and also get a feel for the green speeds.  I may or may not hit some putts too but generally I just pitch using my #sexxyknees technique.

I'm not saying short game doesn't have it's place in the practice but 70% is ridiculous.

That's a good point. Even though the pros are in great shape, 4-5 hours a day working on the full swing would be extremely hard on one's body. There comes a point where physically you just cannot put in more hours on your swing.

For the harder working pros out there, I'd imagine that tilts the scale towards short game.

I suspect that his observation is based on pre-tournament warmups that he sees when the GC is on-site. I expect with off-course work and pre-tournament work with coahces, the pros are primarily concerned with warming up their full swing muscles and checking how they are swinging for the day, then they spend most of their time fine-tuning feel for their short touch and seeing how firm / fast the greens are on short shots (which will inform their long game choices too) and putts.

I'm sure he's read Every Shot Counts. When he does a segment as a tv personality that topic momentarily becomes the most important thing in the universe.