This Short Par 4 - Lay Up or Drive It?

[9wood]

2 minutes ago, Pretzel said:

 it's very doubtful that a 20 handicapper will hit a PW close to the pin to make birdie a full third of the time.

My driving may suck, and my putting may suck, but my short pitching and chipping game is pretty good most of the time. 

5 minutes ago, Pretzel said:

I hate to be that guy, but it's very doubtful that a 20 handicapper will hit a PW close to the pin to make birdie a full third of the time. I'm a +1 according to my recent GG stuff (was 1.0 last fall, but my GHIN number lapsed) and I still don't make birdie even close to 1/3 of the time (I make birdie maybe 1 out of 10 tries, if not more, with a PW) when I hit an approach shot with my PW. 

He recognized that. He said that if it's at your max driver distance to carry the lake, it's in your best interest to layup.

The truth of the matter is, that water isn't a huge penalty if you go for the green and land in the drink. If you hit it in the drink, you're dropping and just trying to pitch and putt for par on what I don't imagine is a terrible undulating green. If you miss the green on your second shot, you're doing the same thing anyways. The difference is the potential to score an easy birdie (2 putts if you hit the green, or pitch and putt if you're next to it) or an even easier par (3 putt if you hit the green, pitch and 2 putts from next to the green) if you don't land in the water. The water itself isn't all that large of a risk if you're aiming for the right portion of the green and can easily clear the water with one of your clubs. Even if you flub it, though, we've shown that it isn't much of a detriment to your score since it's no different than if you missed the green on your second shot had you played to lay up.

But if you drive and end up in the water for a drop, then your chance at a birdie has pretty much disappeared and you may or may not make par

[Pretzel]

22 minutes ago, 9wood said:

But if you drive and end up in the water for a drop, then your chance at a birdie has pretty much disappeared and you may or may not make par

As I said before, if you can easily clear the water with a given club, your odds of actually hitting the water are slim should you aim at the right portion of the green. If you can clear the water in terms of distance, there isn't much danger in terms of side-to-side dispersion provided you aim intelligently.

Your chance at birdie isn't fantastic if you lay up. If you lay up you're trying to get up and down from between 50 and 80 yards. The PGA Tour average (the best players in the world) from 50-75 yards is 15' 6". From 15' 6", a PGA Tour professional would make his birdie putt less than 30% of those putts, meaning not even a PGA Tour pro will birdie it a full third of the time if he lays up, much less a 20 handicap golfer or any other player not making a living from golf.

So let's break it down:

1) You will not make birdie 30% of the time by laying up. In fact, I would be very surprised if someone with a handicap of greater than 10 (I.E., >65% of the golfing population) would make birdie more than 5% of the time on this hole since the worst PGA tour player from this distance with at least 10 attempts (Tyrone Van Aswegen) would still make birdie only ~ 8.96% of the time (average distance to the hole: 23' 5" putting percentage from 20-25 feet: 8.96%).

2) You still have to hit your shot over the water. If you get a penalty because you wedge just didn't quite go far enough, you're near guaranteed a bogey as the best possible outcome. If I hit my tee shot in the water, I still have a good shot at making par. If you flub your pitch or misjudge it at all, you're looking at a bogey as a best-case scenario. I'm minimizing the damage the water hazard can do to my score by only bringing it into play on the tee shot, where I can easily recover from it even if I do take a swim. If you touch the water with a lay up shot you're hosed.

3) My odds of making birdie from up near the green are 45% (my scrambling percentage) or higher. I have a rather poor scrambling percentage, so I imagine most anyone who can hit it far enough to clear the ditch would be able to fairly easily match me there. If I manage to hit the green, I have a very easy birdie or, at worst, a par. This means that even if I hit the green only 1 in 10 tries that go over the ditch I can birdie the hole nearly 50% of the times that my tee shot goes over the ditch.

From my perspective, I look at it this way. I will clear the water maybe 80% of the time if I go for it (a conservative guess), and if I clear the water I have a 50% chance of making birdie, a 45% chance of making par, and only about a 5% chance of making bogey. If I hit the water, which happens 20% of the time, I have a 45% chance at making par, a 50% chance at making bogey, and a 5% chance at making double. This means that 80% of the time I will score an average of 3.55 and 20% of the time I will average 4.6. This gives me an overall average score for the hole of 3.76 strokes. I would be playing this hole, even with the risk of water on my tee shot, at .24 strokes under par and that's with my poor scrambling abilities. Your score just drops further and further the better you are at scrambling.

TLDR: If you can confidently carry the ball over the water, you should go for it. If you aren't confident you can make the carry, go ahead and lay up. If you can carry the water though, you're only costing yourself strokes by laying up.

[9wood]

45 minutes ago, Pretzel said:

 

1) You will not make birdie 30% of the time by laying up.

Yet on this hole I have done exactly that

[Pretzel]

Just now, 9wood said:

Yet on this hole I have done exactly that

I am challenging your assertion. You are claiming to play better than the average PGA Tour player if you say you birdie it 1/3 of the time.

[9wood]

1 minute ago, Pretzel said:

I am challenging your assertion. You are claiming to play better than the average PGA Tour player if you say you birdie it 1/3 of the time.

No I am not. I do not play better, yet I have had excellent success on this one hole. It's the other holes I have sucked on. 

[Pretzel]

3 minutes ago, 9wood said:

No I am not. I do not play better, yet I have had excellent success on this one hole. It's the other holes I have sucked on. 

The claim you are making is you saying you play better on this hole than the average PGA tour player would if he were to make the same decision to lay up as you. This is akin to you saying you play better for an entire hole, on average, than the average PGA Tour player. I believe that to be false, and that you are misremembering how frequently you may birdie this hole since the positive experiences stick out in your mind. 

[SavvySwede]

28 minutes ago, Pretzel said:

The claim you are making is you saying you play better on this hole than the average PGA tour player would if he were to make the same decision to lay up as you. This is akin to you saying you play better for an entire hole, on average, than the average PGA Tour player. I believe that to be false, and that you are misremembering how frequently you may birdie this hole since the positive experiences stick out in your mind. 

It would be a par 3 on Tour and they would be making par a lot more than 30% of time. That being said, I still don't see @9wood making his 3 30% of the time since he lists his handicap at 19.1. Selective memory perhaps.

[9wood]

9 minutes ago, SavvySwede said:

It would be a par 3 on Tour and they would be making par a lot more than 30% of time. That being said, I still don't see @9wood making his 3 30% of the time since he lists his handicap at 19.1. Selective memory perhaps.

My memory is fine. Doesn't matter to me what ya all believe. 

 

46 minutes ago, Pretzel said:

The claim you are making is you saying you play better on this hole than the average PGA tour player would if he were to make the same decision to lay up as you. This is akin to you saying you play better for an entire hole, on average, than the average PGA Tour player. I believe that to be false, and that you are misremembering how frequently you may birdie this hole since the positive experiences stick out in your mind. 

Believe whatever you want. I don't lie as you are falsely asserting

[SavvySwede]

1 minute ago, 9wood said:

My memory is fine. Doesn't matter to me what ya all believe. 

 

Doesn't matter to me what you claim to do. I'm just going by the stats and common sense.

[Pretzel]

17 minutes ago, SavvySwede said:

It would be a par 3 on Tour and they would be making par a lot more than 30% of time. That being said, I still don't see @9wood making his 3 30% of the time since he lists his handicap at 19.1. Selective memory perhaps.

I used the statistics to show that if they laid up to 50-75 yards the average tour player would birdie the hole less than 30% of the time. 

6 minutes ago, 9wood said:

Believe whatever you want. I don't lie as you are falsely asserting

I'm not saying you're lying, I'm just saying that a 19 handicap golfer making birdie 33% of the time, more frequently than the average tour player does from the same location is highly improbable. I know I tend to overestimate how well I do on my favorite holes and I think this may be similar. 

[9wood]

2 minutes ago, SavvySwede said:

Doesn't matter to me what you claim to do. I'm just going by the stats and common sense.

So you're calling me a liar. Just so you know, I don't lie and I think you owe me an apology for falsely accusing me of lying.

[SavvySwede]

4 minutes ago, 9wood said:

So you're calling me a liar. Just so you know, I don't lie and I think you owe me an apology for falsely accusing me of lying.

Lying and selective memory are two very different things in this case. How often do you play there anyway? If you made something like 2 birdies in 6 rounds it could just be a lack of data.

[9wood]

43 minutes ago, SavvySwede said:

Lying and selective memory are two very different things in this case. How often do you play there anyway? If you made something like 2 birdies in 6 rounds it could just be a lack of data.

I played the course for the first time last year. I played it either 9 or 10 times. Not more and not less. I birdied the hole twice in two days, and then one other time. Parred it five times and bogeyed it once. So not a matter of having to go back more than a year memory wise. It was less than a year ago. And once again I don't lie. You owe me an apology for falsely accusing me of lying.

[Lihu]

47 minutes ago, 9wood said:

I played the course for the first time last year. I played it either 9 or 10 times. Not more and not less. I birdied the hole twice in two days, and then one other time. Parred it five times and bogeyed it once. So not a matter of having to go back more than a year memory wise. It was less than a year ago. And once again I don't lie. You owe me an apology for falsely accusing me of lying.

Don't get too upset. Statistics do not tell people how good you could be with any particular club. Maybe your SW and PW are freakishly good. Only you know. Nobody else will know.

However, that's a very unusual condition, that's all they're trying to say. I honestly don't think they are calling you a liar. I mean, if I take a look at your Avatar and assume you're a really crotchety 80 year old man I might think "selective memory" as well.

[billchao]

51 minutes ago, 9wood said:

And once again I don't lie. You owe me an apology for falsely accusing me of lying.

Nobody called you a liar. Relax.

[iacas]

1 hour ago, billchao said:

Nobody called you a liar. Relax.

Ditto.

[9wood]

6 minutes ago, iacas said:

Ditto.

Say what you will. Basically I was being called a liar. I am many things, but I am not a liar and my memory is intact and fine.

[JonMA1]

1 hour ago, billchao said:

Nobody called you a liar. Relax.

Nobody used the word but that's what was implied.

If someone was to exaggerate how well they played a hole, or how far they hit their clubs, or how deep the water was that they hit out of (as examples), wouldn't they also exaggerate their HI? Wouldn't there be a pattern? 

Lots of folks BS about golf, but that doesn't mean everyone does. If the OP played this hole 100 times, it's likely he would not continue to birdie the hole at the same rate. Or maybe, for some reason, this hole is just easy for him. Is it possible he's exaggerating or has a selective memory? Sure. Most of us do to some small degree. But he seems to have kept pretty good track.

In any event, you don't call someone out without a better reason than statistics on a such a small sampling, IMO.