Stubbornness or lack of research?: "Drive for Show, Putt for Dough"

[iacas]

3 hours ago, golfsupporter said:

Surely driving distance/ the long game alone isn't how to win tournaments. Take Spieth, tied 43rd last season for driving distance, but won 5 Championship events and took home the FedEx Cup trophy. And for most players (not at professional level) isn't it more likely that strokes are more easily gained putting than from tee to green?

Again… "the long game" is not about hitting the ball far. It's about your full swing.

Jordan was top five last year in ALL categories. Driving strokes gained, Approach shots strokes gained, putting, short game… He was very good - never dominant - in all phases of the game.

Because everyone is a good putter, it's actually the least easy to gain strokes putting. There's a narrower gap. Putting has a lower "Separation Value."

It is the area where a player who is weak can make up a few strokes the fastest, but the returns are capped at a pretty low ceiling. You can only get so good at putting and you can only save so many strokes putting - there's almost always more to be saved by improving your full swing.

Check out http://lowestscorewins.com/ .

[SteveH]

Makes sense to me. Most of my improvement has been in ball striking this past season, with just a little improvement around the green. My putting needs work this year but the fact that I get a lot more GIR has really helped lower my index. Mishits in the fairway cost a lot of strokes.

[stealthhwk]

On January 2, 2016 at 10:16 AM, iacas said:

It's simply a casual stubbornness. There's no ill will or anything in there… they're just ignorant to the actual reasons for their success.

Gary, despite being a relatively short hitter (Lee was a bit longer than average IIRC, but not exactly a thumper), was not "short" - he was just "relatively short."

They're simply, like many people, falling prey to the same types of thoughts others have. When a tee shot misses the fairway a bit in a major, they've cost themselves maybe 0.3 strokes. When their approach shot lands 40 feet away instead of 20, they've cost themselves another 0.4 strokes or whatever.

But when they miss a ten-footer, really, they've cost themselves (back then) about the same 0.3 or 0.4 strokes, and yet… they think they cost themselves a full stroke. Meanwhile they don't consider having cost themselves any strokes on the drive or the approach shot.

It takes a little mental effort to come around to that way of thinking. It's not difficult, it just takes a little bit of effort, and once you do, you can simply "know it" and move on.

I shot my best scores in 2015… and I honestly don't think I practiced my short game at all. Not once, all year.

@Marty2019, you're new, and I won't thump for it too hard, but check out LSW. @vangator, you are not new, and should know better. This isn't really the area of opinion anymore - it's pretty much a fact, in general, that the long game is what separates golfers.

Havnt read lsw yet. But based on my experience, it must be true. Honed my short game to great heights for a weekend warrior. Handicap dropped two strokes and i always shot high 90s to low 100s. Bought new hybrid and added a driver to my bag. My scoring has improved by nearly ten shots a round! I think maybe where that myth comes from is u see lots of guys working on driver at the range thinking if they can just hit it 300 yards theyll be good golfers. This is NOT true, as to be a good golfer u gotta be good at all of it. As long as there are holes in ur game, the golf course is going to find them. U must be well rounded. That being said, distance probably offers the biggest advantage in golf.

[SteveH]

Those 300 yarders suffer much higher penalties if they can't hit them in the fairway 

[stealthhwk]

31 minutes ago, SteveH said:

Those 300 yarders suffer much higher penalties if they can't hit them in the fairway 

For sure!! I have played with many a player who outdrove me by 75 yards on every par four or five but beat most of them cus they cant hit a 7i, a wedge, and they 3 putt every hole. I think thats another thing that impresses me when someone goes low. Its an awful lot to put together in one day.

[saevel25]

43 minutes ago, stealthhwk said:

For sure!! I have played with many a player who outdrove me by 75 yards on every par four or five but beat most of them cus they cant hit a 7i, a wedge, and they 3 putt every hole.

It's rare to find a golfer who can strip a lot of drives down the middle with good distance and then struggle to hit irons and wedge shots. The full swing with the driver is not going to vary enough that it is conceivable that the person would struggle with their irons. Distance and ball striking are interconnected because it's pretty much the same swing mechanics and the need to hit the ball solid consistently. 

46 minutes ago, stealthhwk said:

 I think thats another thing that impresses me when someone goes low. Its an awful lot to put together in one day.

This is true, but you are not getting there with out ball striking.

[natureboy]

2 hours ago, SteveH said:

Those 300 yarders suffer much higher penalties if they can't hit them in the fairway 

Probably only if they miss by a lot. For scoring gains you have to improve both distance and accuracy relative to where your current skill level is. But the ratio is tilted toward distance.

So if you hit it 300 with your current accuracy it could be very penal (depends a lot on the course) if there's a lot of trouble out there. But with your current accuracy if you can find a target area that would safely 'capture' enough of your shots in play (including from adjacent fairways on courses without many trees, deep weeds, or water) then you'd have a big advantage. If you had a tight course with lots of deep woods and other nasty unplayable areas on the margins of the hole, then you'd need to improve your current accuracy by a bit to keep enough in play to see the effect on your score, but distance improvement alone (while at least maintaining your current accuracy) will definitely help.

[Howling Coyote]

Hi, I am new to this site.  Just had to reply, because this quote has always bothered me.

"You drive for show and putt for dough"

If that were true why is it that in most golfers bags there are 3 woods, 6 irons, 4 wedges and 1 putter?  I think people think that way because it is the last shot made.  If golfers putted first and drove last, then perhaps after losing a game the last bad shot on their mind would be that awful drive.

Good putting can't on its own win a game.  However, bad putting can lose one.  I am thinking about Rory Mcilroy 4-putt at the BMW championship in 2014.  Which is my own good segway to my own putting woes: I am a terrible putter.  But I will post more on that using a separate topic.

[frank lewis 77]

you gotta putt pards....

[iacas]

47 minutes ago, frank lewis 77 said:

you gotta putt pards....

And…?

Most people are pretty good putters already. Just today I saw a 3-year-old make a 35-foot putt. It's not particularly difficult.

[Lihu]

1 hour ago, Howling Coyote said:

Hi, I am new to this site.  Just had to reply, because this quote has always bothered me.

"You drive for show and putt for dough"

If that were true why is it that in most golfers bags there are 3 woods, 6 irons, 4 wedges and 1 putter?  I think people think that way because it is the last shot made.  If golfers putted first and drove last, then perhaps after losing a game the last bad shot on their mind would be that awful drive.

Good putting can't on its own win a game.  However, bad putting can lose one.  I am thinking about Rory Mcilroy 4-putt at the BMW championship in 2014.  Which is my own good segway to my own putting woes: I am a terrible putter.  But I will post more on that using a separate topic.

Ah, you are thinking of most good golfers, the rest of us need all the distance we can possibly get. . .

[boogielicious]

9 hours ago, Howling Coyote said:

Hi, I am new to this site.  Just had to reply, because this quote has always bothered me.

"You drive for show and putt for dough"

If that were true why is it that in most golfers bags there are 3 woods, 6 irons, 4 wedges and 1 putter?  I think people think that way because it is the last shot made.  If golfers putted first and drove last, then perhaps after losing a game the last bad shot on their mind would be that awful drive.

Good putting can't on its own win a game.  However, bad putting can lose one.  I am thinking about Rory Mcilroy 4-putt at the BMW championship in 2014.  Which is my own good segway to my own putting woes: I am a terrible putter.  But I will post more on that using a separate topic.

Welcome to the site. Good first post.

We have a lot of content on putting and other aspects of golf. Check out this thread.

 

 

[Marty2019]

On 2/2/2016 at 9:33 AM, iacas said:

Again… "the long game" is not about hitting the ball far. It's about your full swing.

Jordan was top five last year in ALL categories. Driving strokes gained, Approach shots strokes gained, putting, short game… He was very good - never dominant - in all phases of the game.

Because everyone is a good putter, it's actually the least easy to gain strokes putting. There's a narrower gap. Putting has a lower "Separation Value."

It is the area where a player who is weak can make up a few strokes the fastest, but the returns are capped at a pretty low ceiling. You can only get so good at putting and you can only save so many strokes putting - there's almost always more to be saved by improving your full swing.

Check out http://lowestscorewins.com/ .

I think you're right.   (Yes, I have changed my mind.)

A bad putt is maybe one stroke lost, but a bad tee shot is a disaster.    A 20 foot putt left 6 feet short, you can still make that 6-footer.   A tee shot in the woods is gone. 

Chipping means par at best, while hitting the green in regulation means birdie sometimes, par at worst.  I don't care how good one gets at chipping, a 2-putt is a LOT easier to achieve than a chip and a 1-putt.  

In my case, I drive the ball pretty well, but I can't get below 80 because I don't hit enough greens in regulation to make up for those occasional disastrous tee shots that everyone will have.  Birdies are such a tonic to my score.   I need more birdies.   That means  I need more GIR.  In my particular case, here I am working on my chipping because I can't hit a big fat green with a 6-iron.  Well, instead of practicing the chip shot that makes up for the bad 6-iron shot, maybe I should fix the bad 6-iron shot.  Duh. 

 

 

[Lihu]

6 hours ago, Marty2019 said:

I think you're right.   (Yes, I have changed my mind.)

A bad putt is maybe one stroke lost, but a bad tee shot is a disaster.    A 20 foot putt left 6 feet short, you can still make that 6-footer.   A tee shot in the woods is gone. 

Chipping means par at best, while hitting the green in regulation means birdie sometimes, par at worst.  I don't care how good one gets at chipping, a 2-putt is a LOT easier to achieve than a chip and a 1-putt.  

In my case, I drive the ball pretty well, but I can't get below 80 because I don't hit enough greens in regulation to make up for those occasional disastrous tee shots that everyone will have.  Birdies are such a tonic to my score.   I need more birdies.   That means  I need more GIR.  In my particular case, here I am working on my chipping because I can't hit a big fat green with a 6-iron.  Well, instead of practicing the chip shot that makes up for the bad 6-iron shot, maybe I should fix the bad 6-iron shot.  Duh. 

It's good you agree with the concept of getting more GIR and near GIR, but it takes a lot of time and effort building a good swing to be able to do that. Not trivial by any means. In the book you really should purchase there is a phrase in it "Golf is hard". It really is.

The way you are making it sound is "I just have to fix this one thing" while in reality you need to fix all your glaring weaknesses, then you can shoot in the mid to low 80s. Then you need to work on all your not so glaring weaknesses to shoot lower. . .

I'm not going to go on some expose about knowing how far you hit your clubs and stop conning yourself and all that other negative stuff, but here's a little story that I think is appropriate to this situation. Someone I often see at the range was hitting balls next to me this morning and was comparing our shots and noted that I hit my 8i 150 yards or so, and they were in a little pile 150-160 yards from where we were swinging. Range balls 155 yards roughly? Okay that's fine, but that's the range with perfect conditions for a 55F morning. So, he mentioned that he hits his 8i about 140, which is 10-15 yards less than what I was hitting on the range. So, I told him that 140 yards is basically how far I hit my 8i. I carry it about that far, and on the course that's the total distance my 8i goes. I showed him my stats in Game Golf to prove that I hit that much shorter on the course. Next, he hit 4 6i shots varying distances with the best shot going about 150 or more yards and the worst one about 120 yards. I told him that he kind of averages about 135 yards with 6i. He was not very happy about that, but I showed him my best and worst 8i shots ranged from 104 yards to 172 with a median at 141***. Most of us don't really know what to expect from our shots. You pick a club and hope to hit it some distance.

Those are really big ranges of distances to be hitting a lot of GIR even from 140 yards. In fact, a lot of luck is involved to do so with those skill levels.

The main reason people say improve your GIR to improve your score is that in order to improve your GIR you need to improve your accuracy on all approaches anywhere from 60 to 250 yards. The better you are at hitting targets from over 150-180 yards the higher are your chances of GIR and therefore better scores. It sounds trivial and easy but is extremely hard. To do this, it's not just about fixing that "one thing" but fixing all those issues you know about and many more. Takes years to do this for 99.999% of golfers.

 

***Actually, I knew all my distances before I started using GG.

However, I have to say that GG really makes it easy to track all this crap, and gives you better numbers.

[iacas]

9 minutes ago, Lihu said:

The way you are making it sound is "I just have to fix this one thing" while in reality you need to fix all your glaring weaknesses, then you can shoot in the mid to low 80s. Then you need to work on all your not so glaring weaknesses to shoot lower. . .

Totally disagree that he has to fix "all" of his weaknesses to shoot in the mid to low 80s.

I'm not sure what the rest of your post was supposed to say. I know my yardages too, but still have variances in GG because sometimes shots are uphill and into the wind, or vice versa.

Let's try to stay on topic here @Lihu. Thanks.

[DrvFrShow]

"Drive for show. Putt for dough."

I think the saying should be: "If you can't putt you can't win. If you can't drive you can't play."

I need more accuracy with my driver, but I need to keep it in the bag because I am not going to make birdies by hitting 6 irons into greens. I need to hit long drives so I can hit a 9 iron into the green so I have a good chance at getting a GIR and that increases my chances for par or better. I have to get on the green before I can putt. 

[Mike Boatright]

He is correct to a degree it depends on what your putting for meaning if your have 12 footers for par all day then your probably not going to score very well. Take a look at this video this dude has a great swing and could dominate the pga tour with a hybrid of the tee! He hit's his hybrid very straight 340 yards or more.

 

Edited March 26, 2016 by Mike Boatright

[Lihu]

7 hours ago, DrvFrShow said:

"Drive for show. Putt for dough."

I think the saying should be: "If you can't putt you can't win. If you can't drive you can't play."

I need more accuracy with my driver, but I need to keep it in the bag because I am not going to make birdies by hitting 6 irons into greens. I need to hit long drives so I can hit a 9 iron into the green so I have a good chance at getting a GIR and that increases my chances for par or better. I have to get on the green before I can putt. 

This sums it up for me. Approach shots are left out, but I like the idea.

Maybe "Putt for dough, approach to go low, drive to play." ???

 

7 hours ago, Mike Boatright said:

He is correct to a degree it depends on what your putting for meaning if your have 12 footers for par all day then your probably not going to score very well. Take a look at this video this dude has a great swing and could dominate the pga tour with a hybrid of the tee! He hit's his hybrid very straight 340 yards or more.

If he could dominate the tour, he would be dominating the tour. 

Yeah, eagles from 430 yards is pretty amazing.