which area should I practice? Here's info from my last round

[edhalsim]

Last round shot 46/41=87 with 36 putts.  Here's where I lost shots:

Irons/approach 4
Short game 6.5
Putting. 2.5
Driving. 2

Driving is OK, but obviously I need work in all other areas.  With limited practice time, suggestions on priority?  My thoughts:

1. I'm not a good putter, but I don't feel like there's anything I can really do about it (I've been told my stroke is good and my putter has been fitted).
2. My short game needs improvement, but our practice green offers very few different shots (e.g., a long carry or long bump and run) so I never really get any better.
3. Full swing is a mixed bag with my irons/approach shots.  I haven't felt like I've had a stable, effective swing in quite some time despite taking a few lessons.

Just too many of these upper 80s rounds for my taste.  if I could limit the damage I'd be much happier.

[pganapathy]

Assuming your lost shots is accurate (a lot of people fool themselves regarding their strengths and weaknesses) first short game then Irons/approach.  Short game is the easiest to work on.  You don't need a huge area.  In fact, if you have a lawn at home, you can even practice there.  The best short game pro's used to practice by hitting into a bucket or net.  It allows you to get your distance control right.  Teaches you more than anything else.  Different shots and distances

[No Mulligans]

Seeing that your a 5.6 and that round was an 87... That data is not representative.  Accumulate more data.

[tristanhilton85]

I would say you need to work on the irons. I'm assuming you considered some of your short game shots to be good ones during the round, meaning that you had more than 6.5 short game shots. If that's the case, you're missing too many greens. Getting more GIRs or nGIRs will get your score down.

[RandallT]

In the big picture, I mostly look at it this way (full swing vs putt vs short game):

Nearly everyone will be taking 35-40 full swings (typically 14ish drives plus 20+ iron/approaches, depending on if you're hitting greens in 2 for par5, or driving greens on par 4's, of course). That's a ton of Opportunities (or O in LSW).

Many rounds will have about 20 consequential putts. If you're a good putter, that goes down. Bad putter, that goes up since you stink at lag putting. Ballpark numbers though. But a large fraction of our putts are tap-ins, so no need to practice those.

Short game shots are there if you miss the green. It should be less than 18! Just get on the putting surface. Hopefully you'll hit some greens in regulation, so we'll assume less than 18. Let's say 10-15 short game opportunities. Again, fewer if you're low handicap, more if you're high handicap.

Full swing: 35-40

Putting: 20

Short game: 12

 

So in the grand scheme, my default presumption is that we have the most consequential opportunities in the full swing, and our practice is likely the most useful there.

If there's one bothersome round like you've described, maybe clean up that one area- but that's a short term fix of a specific issue. If you've lost 6.5 strokes in short game (how many opportunities that round???), that's likely an outlier for you. You can definitely clean that up. For bogey-ish golfers who have about 15 opportunities, they're mostly only losing about 4 strokes to PGA players.  

 

 

[p1n9183]

4 hours ago, No Mulligans said:

Seeing that your a 5.6 and that round was an 87... That data is not representative.  Accumulate more data.

Agreed. 1 Round is just one round. You need at least 10 rounds to find an area of weeknees in your game.
And keep gathering stats to track your game for improvements.  

 

[iacas]

On 12/14/2016 at 1:57 AM, edhalsim said:

Here's where I lost shots:

Irons/approach 4
Short game 6.5
Putting. 2.5
Driving. 2

It's unlikely, unless you're experienced with this, that you assessed those "lost shots" accurately.

[edhalsim]

18 hours ago, iacas said:

It's unlikely, unless you're experienced with this, that you assessed those "lost shots" accurately.

Hi.  I don't disagree with you, but here's basically what I'm doing.  If I miss a green, that's a 1/2 shot full swing since I can still get up-and-down.  If I then don't hit the chip/patch within 5-6 ft., and then miss the putt, that's a 1/2 shot to my short game.  if I chip it close, but miss the putt, that's a 1/2 shot to my putting.  All three putts are a shot to putting.  Any driver/tee ball that puts me in a place where I have to pitch out is a full shot.  I don't take credit (perhaps I should) if I make par from the fairway with one putt.

[iacas]

4 minutes ago, edhalsim said:

Hi.  I don't disagree with you, but here's basically what I'm doing.  If I miss a green, that's a 1/2 shot full swing since I can still get up-and-down.  If I then don't hit the chip/patch within 5-6 ft., and then miss the putt, that's a 1/2 shot to my short game.  if I chip it close, but miss the putt, that's a 1/2 shot to my putting.  All three putts are a shot to putting.  Any driver/tee ball that puts me in a place where I have to pitch out is a full shot.  I don't take credit (perhaps I should) if I make par from the fairway with one putt.

That's a simple way that's not too bad, but for example if you three-putt from 55 feet, it's often the shot that put you to 55 feet that's responsible for some strokes lost, not the three putts. Even pros don't average 2 putts from there (they're only 2.0 at about 33').

[Marty2019]

I go along with what @RandallT said.   If you're losing strokes off the tee, there's only one way to fix that: fix your tee shot.  But if you're losing strokes in the short game, there are at least 2 ways to fix that: improve your short game, or improve your approach shots.  It's something I never thought about until I started reading this website.  I think it came up in a topic like, "what is more important, long game or short game."   The fact is, you can eliminate your short game with an effective long game.  Hit the green in the first place. 

[p1n9183]

2 minutes ago, Marty2019 said:

I go along with what @RandallT said.   If you're losing strokes off the tee, there's only one way to fix that: fix your tee shot.  But if you're losing strokes in the short game, there are at least 2 ways to fix that: improve your short game, or improve your approach shots.  It's something I never thought about until I started reading this website.  I think it came up in a topic like, "what is more important, long game or short game."   The fact is, you can eliminate your short game with an effective long game.  Hit the green in the first place. 

Wrong, wrong, wrong ! even pro miss the green 33% of the time. It´s like saying, im a bad putter, let´s just hole out from outside de green.

You have to be good at driving, approach, around the green and on the green, you can´t avoid any of that areas if you want to improve.

At the moment im bad on approach to the green from 150 to 230 yards. Been at 2 handicap i have to play thouse shorts in almost every par 4 on a 7000 yards course, so i can´t avoid the problem. I have to get better if i want to be scrath, playing shorter tees is not the solution.   

[Marty2019]

1 minute ago, p1n9183 said:

Wrong, wrong, wrong ! even pro miss the green 33% of the time. It´s like saying, im a bad putter, let´s just hole out from outside de green.

You have to be good at driving, approach, around the green and on the green, you can´t avoid any of that areas if you want to improve.

At the moment im bad on approach to the green from 150 to 230 yards. Been at 2 handicap i have to play thouse shorts in almost every par 4 on a 7000 yards course, so i can´t avoid the problem. I have to get better if i want to be scrath, playing shorter tees is not the solution.   

You're a 2 handicap, and you want to get it to 0, and you're missing the green on almost every par 4?  

You're a 2 handicap, and I shoot in the mid-80s, so I don't want to tell a 2 handicap like you how to play golf, but when you say you have to use your short game on almost every par 4, I would say, of course you will need a great short game to minimize the damage, but why not avoid the damage by hitting the green in the first place?  

My advice to everyone would be to practice everything, but the question I was trying to answer was, "which area should I practice?"  

Perhaps I should have phrased it differently.   I shouldn't say you can eliminate the short game, or that you shouldn't work on it.   I'm saying, you can minimize your lost strokes in the short game by hitting more greens in regulation.  If one says, for example, my total lost strokes in the short game is x, so I need to work on my short game, I would ask, how many times do you have to use your short game to produce that number?   If you have to chip on every single hole, I don't care how many strokes you are losing on your short game, you need to work on your approach shots and hit more greens. 

 

[Hatchman]

Well I try not to complicate it.  Yea right.    Drive, approach, then putt er' in.  But I honestly know the end result of that.   Where I skew it is how many strokes to get on, then get in.   Might be 4 to get on then 1 (or 3) to get in the hole for bogey (or higher), maybe even par on a par 5.     So that type of playing effects everything.   Scorecard notes looks like a bad encrypted message board.    So what do I practice?  

Edited December 22, 2016 by Hatchman

[p1n9183]

5 hours ago, Marty2019 said:

You're a 2 handicap, and you want to get it to 0, and you're missing the green on almost every par 4?  

You're a 2 handicap, and I shoot in the mid-80s, so I don't want to tell a 2 handicap like you how to play golf, but when you say you have to use your short game on almost every par 4, I would say, of course you will need a great short game to minimize the damage, but why not avoid the damage by hitting the green in the first place?  

My advice to everyone would be to practice everything, but the question I was trying to answer was, "which area should I practice?"  

Perhaps I should have phrased it differently.   I shouldn't say you can eliminate the short game, or that you shouldn't work on it.   I'm saying, you can minimize your lost strokes in the short game by hitting more greens in regulation.  If one says, for example, my total lost strokes in the short game is x, so I need to work on my short game, I would ask, how many times do you have to use your short game to produce that number?   If you have to chip on every single hole, I don't care how many strokes you are losing on your short game, you need to work on your approach shots and hit more greens. 

 

Wrong again!

First, i never said that i miss almost every green. Just said that mid/long irons are my weeknees. In fact i hit 10 GIR in average, only 2 less than a tour pro.

Second, no matter how much you practice your approach shots, you are always going to miss greens. Tour pro practice all day long for lots of years and still miss 1 out of 3 greens in average.

Third, Long game it´s the hardest thing to improve. Takes a lot more effort to get better at it. But short game doesn´t, you can improve it a lot an be close to a tour pro level without that much of time spend on it. Beeing close to a tour pro´s long game it´s almost imposible.  

So i will suggest him to practice short game for a short term benefit and then focus on the long game for a long term benefit.

 

[iacas]

6 hours ago, p1n9183 said:

Wrong, wrong, wrong ! even pro miss the green 33% of the time. It´s like saying, im a bad putter, let´s just hole out from outside de green.

They do. And they scramble about 2/3 of the time, so they average about +2 for those six holes. Some of those are from barely off the edge of the green, which inflates their scrambling stats, too.

6 hours ago, p1n9183 said:

You have to be good at driving, approach, around the green and on the green, you can´t avoid any of that areas if you want to improve.

You do. But the point @Marty2019 is saying is that all too often people look at their short game as a weakness instead of realizing that they have too many opportunities to use their short game.

6 hours ago, p1n9183 said:

At the moment im bad on approach to the green from 150 to 230 yards. Been at 2 handicap i have to play thouse shorts in almost every par 4 on a 7000 yards course, so i can´t avoid the problem. I have to get better if i want to be scrath, playing shorter tees is not the solution.   

If you're bad at those, work on them.

2 minutes ago, p1n9183 said:

Wrong again!

That can be taken more strongly than you probably intend to say it.

2 minutes ago, p1n9183 said:

So i will suggest him to practice short game for a short term benefit and then focus on the long game for a long term benefit.

That's fine too, but you're still recommending he practice the full swing stuff.

@p1n9183, have you picked up a copy of Lowest Score Wins?

And as I said before, most players are not very good at assessing where they should hit the ball. From 230 if you just get near the green without being buried in the lip of a bunker, you're gaining strokes on scratch golfers. From 150 you have to hit the green to gain strokes, but hitting it to the fringe is missing the green but pretty much stroke neutral.

[Marty2019]

31 minutes ago, p1n9183 said:

Wrong again!

First, i never said that i miss almost every green. Just said that mid/long irons are my weeknees. In fact i hit 10 GIR in average, only 2 less than a tour pro.

 

 

Then I misunderstood you.  You said,

6 hours ago, p1n9183 said:

At the moment im bad on approach to the green from 150 to 230 yards. Been at 2 handicap i have to play thouse shorts in almost every par 4 on a 7000 yards course, so i can´t avoid the problem.

I thought you were saying you had to use your short game on almost every par 4. 

[p1n9183]

8 minutes ago, iacas said:

16 minutes ago, p1n9183 said:

Wrong again!

That can be taken more strongly than you probably intend to say it.

Just been funny, not trying to piss off anyone. My apologies if i did.  

11 minutes ago, iacas said:

@p1n9183, have you picked up a copy of Lowest Score Wins?

I would like to, but here in Argentina our coin (El peso argentino) it´s way too devaluated and the customs don´t let product´s came in argetina so easyly. If it would it could cost 5 times the US price so i can´t afford it.

23 minutes ago, iacas said:

And as I said before, most players are not very good at assessing where they should hit the ball. From 230 if you just get near the green without being buried in the lip of a bunker, you're gaining strokes on scratch golfers. From 150 you have to hit the green to gain strokes, but hitting it to the fringe is missing the green but pretty much stroke neutral.

Agreed 100%. I´m happy every time i hit GIR from 150-200 and hitting an n-GIR from 200-250. But the reallity is that a hit a few long irons into bogey or double bogey troubles.

5 minutes ago, Marty2019 said:

Then I misunderstood you.  You said,

I thought you were saying you had to use your short game on almost every par 4. 

Bad spelling, my bad. I meant i have to hit long irons into par 4´s, i have to play thouse shots in almost every par 4