Pro Golfers Know Working on Short Game Goes a Long Way [NYT]

[pumaAttack]

Lets compare Strokes Gained Approach the Green to Around the Green:

1.  Jason Day - Approach = 50th  |  Around = 43rd  Advantage Around-The-Green
2.  Jordan Spieth - Approach = 113th  |  Around = 6th.  Advantage Around-The-Green
3.  Rory Mcilroy - Approach = 81st  |  Around = 21st.  Advantage Around-The-Green.

So the top 3 players in the world ALL DO BETTER statistically around the green than they do approaching the green.  By a combined 174 ranking spots, no small matter.  It is a HUGE gap between approach and around with Around-the-green smacking approach right in the face.

Yet people still think long game is more important?!  Ha.

Edited June 9, 2016 by pumaAttack

[baller7345]

1 hour ago, pumaAttack said:

Lets compare Strokes Gained Approach the Green to Around the Green:

1.  Jason Day - Approach = 50th  |  Around = 43rd  Advantage Around-The-Green
2.  Jordan Spieth - Approach = 113th  |  Around = 6th.  Advantage Around-The-Green
3.  Rory Mcilroy - Approach = 81st  |  Around = 21st.  Advantage Around-The-Green.

So the top 3 players in the world ALL DO BETTER statistically around the green than they do approaching the green.  By a combined 174 ranking spots, no small matter.  It is a HUGE gap between approach and around with Around-the-green smacking approach right in the face.

Yet people still think long game is more important?!  Ha.

What are the actual numbers for strokes gained in both categories?  I'm not saying this is the case, because I'm too lazy to actually check it, but are they actually gaining more strokes with their long games than they do with their short games?  If they are then one could still make the argument that the long game is more important even with those numbers you have listed because they would be gaining more strokes with their long games even though their short games are better via rankings.

[RandallT]

Here's one for you, @pumaAttack. Maybe you'll think this is a bit of fudging of the numbers, but this below says that prior to the July 2015 RBC, Jason Day was doing REALLY well (only like #8 or #9 in the world), but not #1. Since then, he has gone on a tear. What accounts for his improvement to rocket up to #1? 

His putting and short game? No. 

He improved the most with his driver and approach play, with regard to how many strokes per round he has gained. According to the PGA, since July 2015, Jason Day has beaten the field by 1.42 strokes per round in driving/approaches, and 1.27 strokes per round in and around the greens. So despite his practice on short game, and his impression that his practice is paying off, the numbers say that he is improving most relative to the field in the long game (when compared to pre-RBC).

We can get stats to support whatever we want, so we can go back and forth. There are tons of anecdotes on either side, and you are being totally dismissive of the overall numbers being cranked out by the PGA. 

http://www.pgatour.com/news/2016/05/31/strokes-gained-jason-day.html

Quote

His improvement of 1.95 strokes per round equates to nearly eight strokes per tournament. He has improved by at least a half-stroke per round in three of the four strokes gained statistics. His biggest improvement has been in strokes gained: approach-the-green, which has accounted for 33 percent of his improvement since the 2015 RBC Canadian Open. Prior to that event, approach shots were the only aspect of the game where Day was losing strokes in relation to the field.

Strokes Gained	Before ’15 RBC	Since	Improvement
Off-the-tee	+0.30 per round	+0.8 per round	+0.50 per round
Approach-the-green	-0.02	+0.62	+0.64
Around-the-green	+0.14	+0.32	+0.18
Putting	+0.32	+0.95	+0.63
Total	+0.75	+2.70	+1.95

 

[newtogolf]

If you struggle with your full swing and approach shots it puts more pressure on your short game and compounds the problem.  

[Hardspoon]

8 hours ago, pumaAttack said:

I would tend to side with the PGA Championship winner and World #1.  If he thinks is paramount to devote 2/3 of his time to the short game/putting and only 1/3 to Driving and long irons, who is anyone to disagree?

 

7 hours ago, pumaAttack said:

 Your logic is anecdotal...

This was the exact moment that I gave up.

There are LITERALLY books written on this, and the PGA revamped their entire approach to statistics to make sure that they were able to accurately capture the relative importance of each aspect of the game.

[RandallT]

14 minutes ago, Hardspoon said:

 

This was the exact moment that I gave up.

There are LITERALLY books written on this, and the PGA revamped their entire approach to statistics to make sure that they were able to accurately capture the relative importance of each aspect of the game.

Yep, truth is it's a mix. The question is what mix. 

Some weeks, a guy wins with short game/putting being what separates him by more from the field. Some weeks guys separate themselves off the tee or approach.

Each week, the PGA puts out a page like this: http://www.pgatour.com/statsreport/2016/05/30/strokes-gained-colonial.html

Quote

Here’s a strokes gained breakdown of the top nine finishers at the DEAN & DELUCA Invitational:

	Strokes gained per round (ranks in parentheses)
Player	Total	Drive	Appr	Short	Putt
Jordan Spieth	4.4 (1)	0.8 (5)	0.2 (36)	1.1 (5)	2.3 (2)
Harris English	3.6 (2)	0.1 (31)	0.8 (16)	0.7 (17)	2.0 (3)
Ryan Palmer	3.4 (T3)	1.4 (1)	1.3 (6)	0.7 (13)	-0.1 (46)
Webb Simpson	3.4 (T3)	0.1 (35)	1.4 (4)	0.9 (8)	0.9 (17)
Kyle Reifers	3.1 (5)	0.2 (26)	2.6 (1)	-0.4 (55)	0.6 (25)
Matt Kuchar	2.4 (T6)	0.9 (3)	-0.1 (45)	0.0 (41)	1.6 (5)
Jason Dufner	2.4 (T6)	0.3 (23)	1.5 (3)	0.6 (19)	0.0 (42)
Martin Piller	2.4 (T6)	0.5 (16)	0.1 (41)	0.6 (21)	1.2 (12)
Anirban Lahiri	2.4 (T6)	0.8 (6)	0.2 (37)	-0.2 (49)	1.6 (4)
Top 9 average	3.0	0.6	0.9	0.4	1.1
Fraction of total	100%	19%	29%	15%	37%

 

Their charts are tough to copy/paste for my own analysis since they put the parentheses in them for rankings, but I might go through and tabulate across the season by opening up each page of each tournament. But viewing multiple tournaments, it's definitely true that some winners separate with putting/short game. Spieth and Day do that regularly, it seems. No doubt.

Do all winners win because they dominated in putting/short game? Not even close to true. Sergio, Bubba, Adam, Hideki- just off the top of my head. 

It's a mix, and to be so adamant about one or the other is to ignore the facts. We can haggle over what the mix is, fine. Different weeks and different course setups and randomness probably determine the weekly outcome. Over a season, the numbers will tell a story over time. Numbers are numbers, so I might dig into the broader picture sometime. Those darn parentheses on that PGA page chart prevent a clean copy/paste for easy analysis! Maybe someone has already done it.

[Hardspoon]

11 minutes ago, RandallT said:

Do all winners win because they dominated in putting/short game? Not even close to true. Sergio, Bubba, Adam, Hideki- just off the top of my head. 

Also, something that was argued with earlier in this thread, but is important to restate: looking at winners is not the best way to evaluate which aspect of the game is more important.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but even if the winner every week was the best putter, long game could still be more important.

Think about it this way: if, every week, I took the 10 best three-point shooters in the NBA and put them in a dunk contest, the winner every time would be the best guy at dunking the ball that week.  But, if you were a random NBA player and wanted to win that contest, you'd be much better off practicing three-point shooting!

[nevets88]

6 minutes ago, Hardspoon said:

Also, something that was argued with earlier in this thread, but is important to restate: looking at winners is not the best way to evaluate which aspect of the game is more important.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but even if the winner every week was the best putter, long game could still be more important.

Think about it this way: if, every week, I took the 10 best three-point shooters in the NBA and put them in a dunk contest, the winner every time would be the best guy at dunking the ball that week.  But, if you were a random NBA player and wanted to win that contest, you'd be much better off practicing three-point shooting!

Yep. If you take the aggregate of the best performing players, the ones who place high consistently, make the most money, their long game strokes gained is higher than their their putting + short game strokes gained.

The players w/the best putting + short game strokes gained, not many of them are high on the money list compared to the above.

[boogielicious]

The trap that we mid-handicappers get into when we read articles like this is thinking the short game is a savior. We miss the green on an approach shot. Then we have a bad pitch or chip and miss a 10 foot putt. We get into thinking, "if only my short game were better, I would be scoring lower. This is certainly true. But if we hit the green in regulation, we would actually score even lower.

All aspects of the game are important to some degree. The relative importance is key though. You have to be honest with yourself and figure out where you major weakness is. For me, it is the driver, FW and long irons off the tee and with approach shots.If I am only in the fairway 40% of the time, my opportunity for a GIR goes down significantly. If from the fairway I still only have 40% GIRs, then my chance at par diminishes. 

My short game is better than others at my HC level. So I will continue to focus on the long game.

[iacas]

@pumaAttack, dude, take a breath. Like someone said books have been written on this stuff. You're ignorant to those positions and research. You're not showing why that research is wrong, you're just dismissing or ignoring it. And you're doing yourself no favors by tossing out the "anecdotal" accusation while relying almost entirely on what ONE player says he did.

The guys who finish in the top ten each week tend to be the best ball strikers that week. Hitting greens is still way, way more important than the short game and putting. Quite often, the one of those top ten that wins is the hot putter that week. Generally speaking.

But even hot putting - a skill you can't reproduce, but can only increase the chances of it happening - doesn't account for the majority of the strokes gained on average. It contributes about 35% to winners. In fact, have a look at this chart, which has a much larger sample size than your "this year" or "at the Dean & Deluca" stuff.

You'll notice a few things.

• Only two players in this span won despite losing strokes off the green. One of them won a very limited field event of 29 or 30 players. The other lost only 0.03 strokes off the green.
• Only eight are shown, but at least eight players won their tournaments (none with fields as small as 30, and two were WGCs where they're competing against 70 or so really good players) losing strokes putting. And not only that, but the "best" of them lost 0.22 strokes putting - over seven times as many strokes lost as the 0.03 guy who ranked SECOND out of TWO above.

The chart shows the top, bottom, and middle third. Hence the 33-34% is the median. In wins, putting contributes 34% or so to the victory. But "wins" is a small sample size of one each week.

You cherry picked a few guys from the top ten ranking list, but ignored the overall theme @RandallT pointed out to you: more guys were ranked highly in driving or approach shots.

Here are the stats of a pair of guys ranked #1 and #2 the year this applies.

Here's more:

I also wrote a big topic on this:

And finally… let's assume Jason Day is telling the honest truth about spending 2/3 of his time from 150 yards and in. Do you consider a 145-yard shot "short game"? Because I don't. Broadie doesn't. Even Broadie  caps short game at 100. So you could take Jason's anecdotal tale as gospel and you're still doing bad math because you don't know how much of that practice is 150-80 or so.

9 minutes ago, nevets88 said:

Yep. If you take the aggregate of the best performing players, the ones who place high consistently, make the most money, their long game strokes gained is higher than their their putting + short game strokes gained.

The players w/the best putting + short game strokes gained, not many of them are high on the money list compared to the above.

Yup. Proven out time and time again.

@pumaAttack, answer this question:

11 hours ago, iacas said:

Quick question for you. Take two identical 80s shooters. Two identical PGA Tour players. Put them on a 7000 yard course. One team has the PGA Tour player hit every shot outside of 60 yards, and the 80s shooter everything 60 yards and in. The other team does the opposite.

Which team wins? By how many?

(Imagine they play 100 rounds, or 1000 rounds, or 10,000, and that I'm asking for the averages of the results. Which team wins and what do they shoot, on average?)

[saevel25]

8 hours ago, pumaAttack said:

 A PGA tour player is pretty automatic from within 7 feet putting.  

If automatic you mean they miss 40% of their putts from 7 feet, miss 30% of their putts from 6 feet, and miss 20% of their putts from 5 feet. 

8 hours ago, pumaAttack said:

 The odds are proven you won't drain that 30 foot birdie putt often at all.  But if you suck at the short game and fail to get up and down you are LOSING strokes.  

Stats from Mark Broadie. From the fairway PGA Tour players average 2.4 shots from 20  yards. PGA Tour players average 2.21 shots on a  60 ft putt (20 yards).

Just hitting the green saves a PGA Tour player 2/10ths of a stroke. 

8 hours ago, pumaAttack said:

It is far more important to RECOVER and save a score than it is to have a ho hum two putt par. 

You'd be wrong

8 hours ago, pumaAttack said:

 Should McGirt only focus on his long iron game for the next month and assume he will hit 100% of greens in regulation?  Or should he keep honing that short game that saved him and ultimately won the tournament?

If you ask McGirt the following,

Would you rather have a putt for birdie, a very high chance of making par, and a very low chance of making bogie? 

OR

Would you take a short game shot where you have a 60% chance of making par , a very slim chance of making birdie, and a moderate chance of making bogey? 

I would bet you money that McGirt would take the putt all day long not the short game shot. Maybe if McGirt practice his long game more he wouldn't have had to lean on his average short game. McGirt's short game is average at best for a PGA Tour player. He's +0.026 strokes gained short game. 

8 hours ago, pumaAttack said:

Jason Day is gaining 1.33 strokes with his short game.
Jason Day is gaining 0.89 strokes with his long game.

Jason Day's short game is +0.231 - http://www.pgatour.com/stats/stat.02569.html
Jason Day's combined Tee Shot + Approach shot is +0.723 - http://www.pgatour.com/stats/stat.02568.html and http://www.pgatour.com/stats/stat.02567.html

I have no clue where you got those numbers from. 

8 hours ago, pumaAttack said:

Please tell me how it is his long game that is winning tournaments... Don't tell me he would win more with more long game practice.  7 out of 17 is really damn impressive.  You do not know how he should practice better than he and his team does.  

He would win more. If he had a top 5 approach game he would stand to gain 0.641 strokes on the field per round. That means he would improve 2.5 strokes over an entire tournament.

 

[newtogolf]

23 minutes ago, boogielicious said:

The trap that we mid-handicappers get into when we read articles like this is thinking the short game is a savior. We miss the green on an approach shot. Then we have a bad pitch or chip and miss a 10 foot putt. We get into thinking, "if only my short game were better, I would be scoring lower. This is certainly true. But if we hit the green in regulation, we would actually score even lower.

All aspects of the game are important to some degree. The relative importance is key though. You have to be honest with yourself and figure out where you major weakness is. For me, it is the driver, FW and long irons off the tee and with approach shots.If I am only in the fairway 40% of the time, my opportunity for a GIR goes down significantly. If from the fairway I still only have 40% GIRs, then my chance at par diminishes. 

My short game is better than others at my HC level. So I will continue to focus on the long game.

My short game is weaker compared to others at my HC level but the bolded area is exactly the same experience I have had.  My worst short game days also happen to be the days I mess up the majority of my approach shots.  

[Hardspoon]

19 minutes ago, newtogolf said:

My short game is weaker compared to others at my HC level but the bolded area is exactly the same experience I have had.  My worst short game days also happen to be the days I mess up the majority of my approach shots.  

FWIW, I'm almost certain that I am in that category of "players who have a glaring weakness", and would be better off shifting some practice time to the short game and putting. My practice ratio for the past year has been around 90/5/5. 

It's just tough for me to switch because I find full-swing work so much more fun and rewarding, even if it would help me score better to practice short game more.

 

[pumaAttack]

You all seem to miss my points about being to recover.  PGA pros can all hit their irons really well.  But the difference is what happens when they miss a green.  

People who can scramble SCORE better than those who struggle with that aspect.  

The numbers and stats from SG proof that.  

Yes I understand what you guys mean about working on the long game if you can't hit the green.  That's not really a huge deal for tour players like it is amateurs.  Them devoting an extra hour to a swing that's already automatic isn't gonna change much.   Developing a short game that saves them strokes has proven to lead to winning. 

Them I don't think it's any secret Day started winning when he worked on the short game.  Spieth returned to winning once he brought back that focus.  That Luke Donald went from world #1 to falling off the face of the earth when he tried to gain distance and lost focus on his amazing short game. 

Again nobody here has done both.  I have only heard claims that the only way to improve is by spending 65% of your time on the full swing. But what control group are you comparing that to?  You say Day could win more by focusing on his long game but have no proof that won't take away from his amazing short game skills.  Even though their have been plenty of historical cases stating this. 

Just because a book was written doesn't make it the bible.  It's funny you guys want to follow this long game plan to improve but throw away the WINNERS on tour as not important. 

[Groucho Valentine]

You guys are using a lot of stats and figures based on what elite players do on in competition. That really inst realistic to the amateur game. They're world class ball strikers who hit their targets 60% of the time or better. So its easy to say that everyone should just hit the ball to 15 feet all the time if you want to save strokes. I mean, how hard can it be, right?  

But the reality is that most of you will never be that proficient of ballstrikers and spend most of your rounds recovering. Im not that good and most of you will never even be as good as i am.  You put me in the fairway 150 yards out with a 8 or 9 iron in my hands and i probably will hit the green 5 or 6 times out of 10. So thats a lot of times i need to get up and down to keep a round going. If i did have stats on what i do vs what a 4 or 5 handicap does, i bet you'd find i that i scramble far better than that player. I believe that is what separates closely packed classes of player. Its what separates elite players from me, and what separates me from a 5 handicap. Its a skill thats very important if you want to be a 70s shooter. So it makes sense to put more stock in your ability to scramble than your ability to hit 75% greens all the time. 

[Jeremie Boop]

9 hours ago, pumaAttack said:

Look at your own stats you listed.  Jordan is 106th in approach...  And 1st in around the green and 6th in putting.  It's pretty obvious why he wins.  It's not his iron game...  It's 100% his short game. 

Ask yourself this, when Jordan struggles where is he losing the most strokes? Why isn't he winning more? Because he needs to work on his approaches. If he improved his approaches even to into the 50's or 40's he'd dominate the game. Even if he lost some ground in the putting and around the green stats doing that he'd still be the best player on tour and win more than anyone in the history of the game.

The most telling thing in the list above is how Spieth vs Watson. Guess who has more wins since 2010? Watson, 9 vs 8.

 

5. Jordan Spieth	9th	106th	1st	6th
6. Bubba Watson	2nd	4th	102nd	135th

[pumaAttack]

2 minutes ago, Jeremie Boop said:

Ask yourself this, when Jordan struggles where is he losing the most strokes? Why isn't he winning more? Because he needs to work on his approaches. If he improved his approaches even to into the 50's or 40's he'd dominate the game. Even if he lost some ground in the putting and around the green stats doing that he'd still be the best player on tour and win more than anyone in the history of the game.

The most telling thing in the list above is how Spieth vs Watson. Guess who has more wins since 2010? Watson, 9 vs 8.

 

5. Jordan Spieth	9th	106th	1st	6th
6. Bubba Watson	2nd	4th	102nd	135th

 

That is such one way logic.  You can't assume by spending more time on his long game he would win more.  You are 100% assuming this.  But it is a fact he has won two majors and a fed Ex cup by being great at the short game.  Why would he change this?!  To lose his touch around the green and stop saving pars?!

You are using most wins from 2010 to compare the two? Two years before Jordan even turned pro?!  Oh my. Lets compare wins since Jordan was even eligible to win tournaments, you know, on the PGA tour.  Those numbers?  Jordan 8 wins. Bubba 5.  Still sticking with your long game approach now?

14 minutes ago, Groucho Valentine said:

You guys are using a lot of stats and figures based on what elite players do on in competition. That really inst realistic to the amateur game. They're world class ball strikers who hit their targets 60% of the time or better. So its easy to say that everyone should just hit the ball to 15 feet all the time if you want to save strokes. I mean, how hard can it be, right?  

But the reality is that most of you will never be that proficient of ballstrikers and spend most of your rounds recovering. Im not that good and most of you will never even be as good as i am.  You put me in the fairway 150 yards out with a 8 or 9 iron in my hands and i probably will hit the green 5 or 6 times out of 10. So thats a lot of times i need to get up and down to keep a round going. If i did have stats on what i do vs what a 4 or 5 handicap does, i bet you'd find i that i scramble far better than that player. I believe that is what separates closely packed classes of player. Its what separates elite players from me, and what separates me from a 5 handicap. Its a skill thats very important if you want to be a 70s shooter. So it makes sense to put more stock in your ability to scramble than your ability to hit 75% greens all the time. 

Agreed!  

It appears a lot of people here are chasing the magical green dragon.  No matter how much you practice your long game you will never average more than 60/70% GIRs.  You will be lucky, as an amateur, to ever sniff 50% GIR on average.  But yet you want to spend countless hours chasing that dream while blantedly ignoring an aspect of the game that comes up on 50/60% of holes you play every round.  Why?  All because some book promised you lower scores?

 

[DaveP043]

25 minutes ago, Hardspoon said:

It's just tough for me to switch because I find full-swing work so much more fun and rewarding, even if it would help me score better to practice short game more.

I keep going back to the original article, and this is the thing that I keep coming away with.  Improving your weakness isn't fun.  It doesn't matter whether that weakness is driving the ball, chipping, putting, it doesn't matter, its no fun because you do it poorly.  Its no fun to fail repeatedly.  What Jason Day did was to recognize that he needed to improve his short game, and do the drudge work to improve it.  That's one individual evaluating and improving his own game.  To say that because Day concentrates on short game, I should also concentrate on short game just as much is ludicrous, I should work to improve my specific weakness(es). The part that applies to every one of us, assuming we want to improve, is the honest evaluation, and the willingness to practice the "un-fun" stuff.