The Importance of Putting is Vastly Overstated (and its Contribution to Winning on the PGA Tour)

[RH31]

10 hours ago, Lihu said:

Players in the 7-8 handicap range are better than average ball strikers so it makes sense that they lose proportionally more strokes at putting. If you and they couldn't drive 230+ yards and reasonably hit approaches to greens from 160 yards, then putting would be a much lesser contributor to better scores.

My group must be the extreme exception, because there really aren't any better than average ball strikers in the group. We are mostly old, slow, and past it! We play a short(6000 yards), easy course(69.8 124) and nobody hits a lot of greens with any consistency. The most GIR's I hit last year (100ish rounds) was 13. I probably average 6-7 GIR's a round. My best drives carry 225-230 and I'm longer than most in the group.

I'm not kidding or exaggerating about the putting because we bitch and moan about who wins on a daily basis. The standard gripe, "How is Joe X. getting so many shots? He's killing us!"

Without fail the re: " Well he made everything today, he usually doesn't putt that well."

[Lihu]

2 hours ago, RH31 said:

My group must be the extreme exception, because there really aren't any better than average ball strikers in the group. We are mostly old, slow, and past it! We play a short(6000 yards), easy course(69.8 124) and nobody hits a lot of greens with any consistency. The most GIR's I hit last year (100ish rounds) was 13. I probably average 6-7 GIR's a round. My best drives carry 225-230 and I'm longer than most in the group.

I'm not kidding or exaggerating about the putting because we bitch and moan about who wins on a daily basis. The standard gripe, "How is Joe X. getting so many shots? He's killing us!"

Without fail the re: " Well he made everything today, he usually doesn't putt that well."

Okay, I'll conceded that really good playing senior golfers depend upon putting to separate themselves from the rest. I've got playing partners who do this so it's not a complete surprise. . .However, it really is the exception on the course except for weekday mornings where it seems to be the "norm".

[GolfLug]

3 hours ago, RH31 said:

My group must be the extreme exception, because there really aren't any better than average ball strikers in the group. We are mostly old, slow, and past it! We play a short(6000 yards), easy course(69.8 124) and nobody hits a lot of greens with any consistency. The most GIR's I hit last year (100ish rounds) was 13. I probably average 6-7 GIR's a round. My best drives carry 225-230 and I'm longer than most in the group.

I'm not kidding or exaggerating about the putting because we bitch and moan about who wins on a daily basis. The standard gripe, "How is Joe X. getting so many shots? He's killing us!"

Without fail the re: " Well he made everything today, he usually doesn't putt that well."

You gotta compare yourself to where YOU can do better. Comparing yourself to hot putter (flavor of the day) is misleading in long term improvement and gains. Nobody is saying putting strokes don't matter or even matter less. What they are saying is where you can get the most strokes with improvement in all areas combined.

Now, if you 3-putt a lot from 35-40 feet (let's say more than 30%) or if you miss a lot of 3-4 footers, then by all means, get off the computer and head straight to the practice green. No sense in loosing out on low hanging fruit there. Absolutely practice for the next month all day to fix that FIRST. But after that leak plug you will find that gains to practice ratio will become disproportionately small - i.e. you want to be a hot putter from 8 feet out (holing it out consistently), then well, good luck milking it (BTW, 'consistently hot' is my favorite oxymoron :-)). Skill improvement (and carry it to the course, of course) from there on is not as tangible as just spending more quality time on the practice green.   

Tee to green improvement are much more tangible and benefit to practice time ratio will stay much higher for a much longer time. And just more strokes are gained and lost in this area by a stupid large margin.

Edited February 9, 2016 by iacas
fixed quote?

[Shindig]

5 hours ago, RH31 said:

My group must be the extreme exception, because there really aren't any better than average ball strikers in the group. We are mostly old, slow, and past it! We play a short(6000 yards), easy course(69.8 124) and nobody hits a lot of greens with any consistency. The most GIR's I hit last year (100ish rounds) was 13. I probably average 6-7 GIR's a round. My best drives carry 225-230 and I'm longer than most in the group.

I'm not kidding or exaggerating about the putting because we bitch and moan about who wins on a daily basis. The standard gripe, "How is Joe X. getting so many shots? He's killing us!"

Without fail the re: " Well he made everything today, he usually doesn't putt that well."

I wonder how often he makes putts because he hits a good approach shot on ones where he doesn't make GIR, but ends up in a position for an easier-than-average up-and-down.  In those circumstances, it feels like it's the short game that helps, when it's really the long game setting up an easy chip and putt.

[RH31]

21 hours ago, GolfLug said:

You gotta compare yourself to where YOU can do better. Comparing yourself to hot putter (flavor of the day) is misleading in long term improvement and gains. Nobody is saying putting strokes don't matter or even matter less. What they are saying is where you can get the most strokes with improvement in all areas combined.

Now, if you 3-putt a lot from 35-40 feet (let's say more than 30%) or if you miss a lot of 3-4 footers, then by all means, get off the computer and head straight to the practice green. No sense in loosing out on low hanging fruit there. Absolutely practice for the next month all day to fix that FIRST. But after that leak plug you will find that gains to practice ratio will become disproportionately small - i.e. you want to be a hot putter from 8 feet out (holing it out consistently), then well, good luck milking it (BTW, 'consistently hot' is my favorite oxymoron :-)). Skill improvement (and carry it to the course, of course) from there on is not as tangible as just spending more quality time on the practice green.   

Tee to green improvement are much more tangible and benefit to practice time ratio will stay much higher for a much longer time. And just more strokes are gained and lost in this area by a stupid large margin.

I agree with everything in this post.

It's just that their are a number of factors that work against tee to green improvement.

Age. Younger and stronger players can practice longer, should get the most out of tee to green practice.

Golf experience. The longer you've been at it, the more ingrained it is, the harder it is to change. Less experienced golfers have an easier path to tee to green improvement.

Athletic ability. Some guys have much better hand/eye coordination than others. You can't outwork your talent level.

Drive/Want to/available time. Pick one. Whether it's a tight schedule, lack of fortitude, some(most) people, especially those who have played for years, don't want to or can't put the time into improving their ball striking significantly.

So, when I ask myself, what can I do better? I already know what I can and have put into it. I'm 56, been playing since I was 25, once peaked at a 5 handicap(age35), am not as strong or as flexible as I used to be, and have a significant decrease in my want to practice daily, compared to when I was first learning the game.

Day to day, I have a better chance of playing exceptionally well on and around the greens than I do tee to green.

[iacas]

1 hour ago, RH31 said:

So, when I ask myself, what can I do better? I already know what I can and have put into it. I'm 56, been playing since I was 25, once peaked at a 5 handicap(age35), am not as strong or as flexible as I used to be, and have a significant decrease in my want to practice daily, compared to when I was first learning the game.

Day to day, I have a better chance of playing exceptionally well on and around the greens than I do tee to green.

I agree.

And for the rest, please, believe me when I say that it's far more important to enjoy golf, so if you find a plan of action that works for you and lets you play golf to your fullest enjoyment, cool. The rest of my post is almost a hypothetical sort of thing.

I agree with all of what you say, right up until the end. You're talking about your perceived ceiling(s), imposed by nature and physics. I agree, too - a 90-year-old man could become the world's best putter, but he'll never be the world's greatest driver 195-yard-approach-shot player. Older age simply puts a different ceiling on his skills, and it is significantly lower for the full swing than it is for chipping and putting.

But, there's also a limit to how good you can get at the short game and putting. No amount of practice will have you draining every 20-footer. Heck, odds are you will never get good enough to make 20% of them over a period of time.

Golfers lose about 25% of their strokes to driving, 40% to approach shots, 35% to the short game and putting combined. This is from any one group to any other group, and holds to within a pretty narrow window. So let's say you average shooting 85, and thus you lose 10 strokes to a scratch golfer who averages 75 (some slight rounding here to make the numbers easier to work with).

Of those 10 shots, 2.5 come from driving, 4* from the approach shots, and 3.5 from putting.

What this means is that, if you become world-class at putting and your short game (despite playing on conditions far from the ideal putting surfaces and well conditioned green surrounds they have on the PGA Tour), you're going to average… 81.5. And that's if you get as good at those skills as a PGA Tour player.

Contrast that with getting a bit better at your driver, or learning to take some curve off your irons, or adding 10 yards to your tee shots and a few to each of your irons, or something like that. A skill bump that doesn't require you to be as good as a PGA Tour player. Since you have 6.5 shots to play with, even improving a little will knock a stroke or two off pretty quickly.

In other words, and if I were you, and had limited time to practice, I might adjust the 65/20/15 rule, but only slightly. You're already closer to being a PGA Tour player (or a scratch golfer) at your short game and putting, the skills are pretty easy to learn, and there's limited numbers of strokes you can save there. Practicing that exclusively will likely not result in even a two-shot savings, and your full swing or long game may suffer, too.

* Mark Broadie defines approach shots as 100+ yards, and the short game as inside that, while as you know LSW calls it "full swing motion" which extends up to about 60 yards for many people, so in reality that 4 shots is probably closer to 4.5 while the short game+putting drops to about 3.

[Lihu]

3 hours ago, RH31 said:

So, when I ask myself, what can I do better? I already know what I can and have put into it. I'm 56, been playing since I was 25, once peaked at a 5 handicap(age35), am not as strong or as flexible as I used to be, and have a significant decrease in my want to practice daily, compared to when I was first learning the game.

Day to day, I have a better chance of playing exceptionally well on and around the greens than I do tee to green.

Need to go with Erik on this one, 56 is not too old to improve your ball striking. Many new golfers are around that age.

My concession in the previous email was under the assumption that you were like 20+ years older. A 56 year old can still be or get flexible and strong enough. I even know people who are in their 70s working and improving their long games or at the very least sustaining them.