Dave Pelz: Improve Your Putting from 6 Feet to Go from 85 to 79 - Bad Math!

[iacas]

The link takes you here: http://www.golf.com/video/dave-pelz-how-make-more-six-foot-putts-presented-cleveland, where you'll find a little video from Dave Pelz. Now, he never states that you can drop to a 79 from an 85, but let's take the tweet itself at face value and dig a little deeper.

As with many things Dave Pelz says, there are likely golfers out there - exceptions, as you'll see - where this applies. There are probably 85-shooting golfers who are so bad at short putts that they are a statistical anomaly and where, if they could improve to a PGA Tour level, they could occasionally shave six strokes just by making more 4-8 footers in a round.

But, generally speaking, Dave (or Golf Magazine) has got it wrong.

"Half of all your shots are putts [he later amends this to say 43%, which is "almost half"] and half to those are inside six feet. PGA Tour pros are 65% from six feet."

The last one we know to be fairly accurate. What Dave doesn't say? Bogey golfers are nearly 40% from six feet. 85 shooting golfers are about 45% from that distance already.

The "half of half" stats continue to apply what I like to call "Dave Pelz Math." It's a way of inflating Dave's importance by elevating the importance of what he teaches - the short game and putting. Dave loves to tell you stuff like "65% of your shots in golf come from within 50 yards of the hole." Never mind that from 50 yards out, PGA Tour pros average something like 2.7 and bogey golfers average just over 3.0 strokes (their average leave is just over 20 feet from the hole, from where they typically two-putt). There's only about a third of a stroke to be gained by improving from a bogey golfer level to a PGA Tour level, so spending much time practicing your 50-yard shots is, generally, a waste of your time.

"Dave Pelz Math" is abundant here, too. "Half of half" or "half of 43%" tells us that 21% of the putts we face are six feet and in. Let's take that as accurate. 21% of 85 is about 18 putts.

@david_wedzik and I know that the number of tap-ins per round is rather consistent, too: a PGA Tour player has about nine, and the guys who shoot around 100 have about 11. Let's say our 85 shooting golfer golfer has just 9 (though 10 is more accurate, I'm trying to give Pelz every benefit of the doubt). Taking these 9 tap-ins from 18 leaves us 9 putts in the "longer than a tap-in, shorter than six feet" range. This likely means about 2' to 6'.

Shaving six strokes, when only 9 are available, means the 85 golfer in the Golf Magazine tweet has to make 66% MORE of them than they already do. While I suppose that's possible if they make none of them right now, I think you can see how highly unlikely it is that a guy who shoots 85 makes NONE of the nine putts he faces from 2 to 6 feet.

To further drill this home, the average 90 golfer already makes a good number of their two-footers. They even make about 85% of their three-footers. Heck, at 6', the bogey golfer makes about 39% of his putts already. The average 85 shooter probably makes 45%. Improving to a PGA Tour level (despite putting on greens that are not as pure as PGA Tour greens) would require the average player to make 21% more of his six footers.

21% more of 9 putts is only two more putts. So our 85 shooter, by improving to a PGA Tour level, will now shoot 83. And again, that's if he can improve to a PGA Tour level… I can think of a better way to shave two strokes, and we're still quite a ways from shaving six.

The math simply doesn't add up. Heck, even if every one of those 18 putt from six feet and in was six feet long, the average 85 shooter already makes about eight of them, and improving 21% (if that's even possible) would have them making only about four more. That's still only an 81.

Dave's (or Golf Magazine's) math doesn't add up.

---

Now, that's not to say that you shouldn't practice your short putts. Golfers place more importance on short putts than almost any other shot: you feel like a ninny when you miss a six-footer despite the fact that PGA Tour pros miss one out of three (on purer greens). Short putts have higher "separation" than, say, 15-25 foot putts, but they're still only an SV② skill, primarily for two reasons:

• You already make more of them than you think. You're closer to a PGA Tour player than you think (and again, they're closer to your ability level here than you think).
• You don't get many of them per round. You only have nine putts - or fewer - from two feet to six feet in a round of golf. It takes a substantial improvement to see a reduction of even two strokes to your scoring average.

Finally, the game is a good way to practice, when you do spend some of your practice time on these types of putts. So at least the video offers the one redeeming quality, even if the math is screwy…

[bmartin461]

Very well written and explained.  I was watching a work related satire skit where people were giving requirements to a "line" expert, they were questioning why lines in triangle could not also be parallel, and his reply was "geometry", same thing here, why not?  Mathematics.

I think you should do this once a week with all the top teachers and their 5 minute instant fix ideas.

Hank Haney next?

 

[DutchGolf]

Thanks for your nice explanation @iacas. But I have one question for my own understanding. In your explanation you are deducting 9 tap-ins, but could some of those tap-ins not be the result of a 2-6 feet putt? So that you should deduct less than 9 putts? I agree with you that 6 strokes is probably very optimistic, and I am not  trying to be an ass, but I do not totally understand it .

[saevel25]

Good stuff as usual 

 

[RandallT]

@rkim291968, @billchao, @RFKFREAK, @Fairway_CY have all helped compile details on their putting last year. Together, the 5 of us compiled 28 random rounds, and I think recorded decent putting length data best we could. Average round score was 93.0, by the way, but that's irrelevant other than perspective on the skill level.

As a group, we lost over 24 strokes per round to PGA players based on tee shot lengths of every hole in those 28 rounds. Fewer than 5 strokes per round were lost on the greens. 3.7 strokes per round lost in the 3-15ft range, so no way we could've saved 6 strokes by hitting all of our putts inside 6ft.

Our little sample size struggled off the green, clearly. I suspect that overall, we are decent putters relative to others who have an average score of 93. This data set is nowhere near as robust as what you have access to, but it's a modest random sample of people we know and who tracked their rounds honestly, and then analyzed against Broadie's published numbers (and double/triple checked for accuracy). So it's something... and agrees with your premise: Pelz's math is way off. Doesn't pass the sniff test, nor anecdotal data we've compiled here.

 

 

 

 

[iacas]

5 minutes ago, DutchGolf said:

Thanks for your nice explanation @iacas. But I have one question for my own understanding. In your explanation you are deducting 9 tap-ins, but could some of those tap-ins not be the result of a 2-6 feet putt? So that you should deduct less than 9 putts? I agree with you that 6 strokes is probably very optimistic, and I am not  trying to be an ass, but I do not totally understand it .

What length putt those tap-ins come from is neither here nor there. It doesn't matter if it's the result of a 20-footer or a missed three-footer. Or a six-footer.

You can't just look at tap-ins and say something like "half of half of your shots come from putts six feet and in." That skews the stats.

Yes, some of them could be the result. Let's say the golfer has nine six footers in a round (instead of nine from 2-6 feet, they're ALL six footers). He is going to make about 4 of them, so what does it change things if 5 of the six-footers result in a tap-in? It just means that 4 to 6 of the remaining tap-ins came from putts outside of six feet.

[Hardspoon]

I guess "Turn your 85 into an 83 about 50% of the time, and an 81 about 10% of the time, by making more of your short putts" wouldn't have been very good click-bait...

 

[DutchGolf]

3 minutes ago, iacas said:

What length putt those tap-ins come from is neither here nor there. It doesn't matter if it's the result of a 20-footer or a missed three-footer. Or a six-footer.

You can't just look at tap-ins and say something like "half of half of your shots come from putts six feet and in." That skews the stats.

Yes, some of them could be the result. Let's say the golfer has nine six footers in a round (instead of nine from 2-6 feet, they're ALL six footers). He is going to make about 4 of them, so what does it change things if 5 of the six-footers result in a tap-in? It just means that 4 to 6 of the remaining tap-ins came from putts outside of six feet.

I'm sorry, after reading the OP again I saw Pelz only talked about 6 feet and in, I thought he was making the distinction between tap-ins and 2-6 feet putts as well. Thats what caused the confusion here. Thanks. 

[RFKFREAK]

9 hours ago, RandallT said:

@rkim291968, @billchao, @RFKFREAK, @Fairway_CY have all helped compile details on their putting last year. Together, the 5 of us compiled 28 random rounds, and I think recorded decent putting length data best we could. Average round score was 93.0, by the way, but that's irrelevant other than perspective on the skill level.

As a group, we lost over 24 strokes per round to PGA players based on tee shot lengths of every hole in those 28 rounds. Fewer than 5 strokes per round were lost on the greens. 3.7 strokes per round lost in the 3-15ft range, so no way we could've saved 6 strokes by hitting all of our putts inside 6ft.

Our little sample size struggled off the green, clearly. I suspect that overall, we are decent putters relative to others who have an average score of 93. This data set is nowhere near as robust as what you have access to, but it's a modest random sample of people we know and who tracked their rounds honestly, and then analyzed against Broadie's published numbers (and double/triple checked for accuracy). So it's something... and agrees with your premise: Pelz's math is way off. Doesn't pass the sniff test, nor anecdotal data we've compiled here.

 

 

 

 

Sorry for bringing the numbers, fellas!