Blaming Strategy? Or Execution?

[jamo]

I agree wholeheartedly with the OP. I've played a few times with a guy who, to me, is just insufferable. He's a 90s-shooter who blames absolutely anything but himself when a shot goes wrong. His strategy, club selection, the wind, course conditions.

Most of the time - the vast majority of the time - he just hit a bad shot. At his level, he should expect to hit a lot of those.

[MRR]

17 minutes ago, jamo said:

He's a 90s-shooter who blames absolutely anything but himself when a shot goes wrong. His strategy, club selection, the wind, course conditions.

Most of the time - the vast majority of the time - he just hit a bad shot. At his level, he should expect to hit a lot of those.

Outside of possibly "the wind", I consider all of those to still be personal blame.  I, at least, am man enough to know that Course Conditions can horrible affect my shot while further knowing that it's my personal skill that makes me unable to compensate for it.  Course conditions this past weekend caused the ball to sit so high on the grass that I went under the ball a few times.  Course Condition was the fault, but my (lack of good and consistent) skills made it so I couldn't compensate.

 

To the original question;

Quote

"can only advise on course strategies"

I take that as he cannot give "swing adjustments" (your grip is too strong) or even "swing tips" (hit it like this for more backspin on this shot).  With that understanding, I think that the information Jack could give to an 18 handicapper is either too limited (18 handicapper should know which side of the fairway is higher and how the ball will roll, so we're looking at very subtle things like how a particular green reacts to a shot from that specific angle and distance) or not relevant to the player's ability ("make a Mickelson swing to get the ball 20 feet in the air while traveling only two feet").

I honestly think it's zero, but I went with 1-2.

If, on the other hand, Jack could give advice like "you aren't good enough to make it; lay up with a 7", he can probably save 4-5.

[14ledo81]

I think execution is huge for me.  Although I do think they kind of can go hand-in-hand.

If I execute properly, it takes a lot of the strategy out of it....

Driver 230 to the center of the fairway, 9 iron about 131 to center of green, 2 putts from 29'.  Not a whole lot of "strategic" options for me there.  Of course, I rarely execute that well.

[billchao]

2 hours ago, Kalnoky said:

Where I sometimes am indecisive is in the rough around the greens, where I should be able to scramble for par. I see different lies, different types of grass, and I sometimes choose the wrong club or make the wrong play.

What's your scrambling rate, and are you sure you're not just being too hard on yourself? The median player on the PGA Tour is something like 60% in scrambling.

Short game is still more execution than strategy IMO.

[oregongolfguy]

I went 3-5.  simply because maybe he could convince the player to club up on approach shots as most mid cappers leave it short most of the time.  

  In premise i completely agree, miss hits instead of strategy most of the time.  Although i occasionally make a mistake im sure, i feel pretty confident on my course strategy.  But, i still hit bad shots plain and simple.

  

[mcanadiens]

Oh sure it's the execution over strategy in most cases. But there's one exception.

That exception is when you are counting on yourself to execute. Bad strategy. Really ought to leave the important shots to the professionals. 

[JonMA1]

3 hours ago, jamo said:

...a 90s-shooter who blames absolutely anything but himself when a shot goes wrong.

It's like those who blame bad luck on their high score... as in "I hit 4 balls into the woods today, and not a single one bounced back onto the fairway". 

1 hour ago, 14ledo81 said:

Driver 230 to the center of the fairway, 9 iron about 131 to center of green, 2 putts from 29'.  Not a whole lot of "strategic" options for me there.  Of course, I rarely execute that well.

This is why a tour pro would be an odd choice to give advice. I don't know how a pro - especially one of the best of all time - would have any reference on how to make intelligent choices based on the type of games some of us play with. Give me the kid who caddies for crappy players all day long. I might listen to him.

---

I really wish much lower scores was as easy as learning to make better strategic decisions. Improvement would then seem possible - as opposed to learning a good swing, that is.

[iacas]

59 minutes ago, oregongolfguy said:

I went 3-5.  simply because maybe he could convince the player to club up on approach shots as most mid cappers leave it short most of the time.

Amateurs don't miss short as often as people think. Their short hits are due to mis-hitting the shot, and they hit some cleanly, too. Generally speaking, being long is worse than being short (there are fewer bunkers long, but most greens slope back to front.

Plus if you tell a high handicapper to hit a 5-iron from what they think is a 7-iron yardage, they're gonna swing it differently than normal and may actually hit it worse. Less loft also means more curve, too.

I think 3-5 is ambitious. I think the "most players need to club up" has a grain of truth, but no more than that. I think most choose fairly appropriate clubs when they're playing (it's when they brag about it later that they really exaggerate things).

I could be wrong, and I used to feel similarly, but I've charted 100+ Shot Zones now and most of them are more of an issue left/right, not short (or long).

[Kalnoky]

4 minutes ago, iacas said:

Amateurs don't miss short as often as people think.

I could be wrong, and I used to feel similarly, but I've charted 100+ Shot Zones now and most of them are more of an issue left/right, not short (or long).

Exactly right. I rarely miss short. Usually left or right, and sometimes long. Usually I have a really long putt or chip to the pin.  

I had an eagle opportunity similar to your "Bob Ross" example and I missed the shot to the right into the rough, but the distance was good. 

When I was struggling to break 100 a few years ago, that's when I used to leave shots short of the green, because I would hit them fat. I haven't hit the ball fat (or sliced) in a long time.

 

 

[oregongolfguy]

11 minutes ago, iacas said:

Amateurs don't miss short as often as people think. Their short hits are due to mis-hitting the shot, and they hit some cleanly, too. Generally speaking, being long is worse than being short (there are fewer bunkers long, but most greens slope back to front.

Plus if you tell a high handicapper to hit a 5-iron from what they think is a 7-iron yardage, they're gonna swing it differently than normal and may actually hit it worse. Less loft also means more curve, too.

I think 3-5 is ambitious. I think the "most players need to club up" has a grain of truth, but no more than that. I think most choose fairly appropriate clubs when they're playing (it's when they brag about it later that they really exaggerate things).

I could be wrong, and I used to feel similarly, but I've charted 100+ Shot Zones now and most of them are more of an issue left/right, not short (or long).

  Yeah, i guess looking at it that way its a fair statement.  The short misses are from miss hits.  Which would not be strategy.  And you have definitely run the numbers. 

[Kalnoky]

13 minutes ago, oregongolfguy said:

  Yeah, i guess looking at it that way its a fair statement.  The short misses are from miss hits.  Which would not be strategy.  And you have definitely run the numbers. 

Yes, that's right, that's what I was trying to say also. It's not club choice it's a bad shot. 

[JonMA1]

21 minutes ago, iacas said:

Generally speaking, being long is worse than being short.

This is normally the case on the courses I play.

12 minutes ago, Kalnoky said:

Exactly right. I rarely miss short. Usually left or right, and sometimes long. 

Statistically, I do miss short more often than long or left/right - especially as the distance to the green increases. I'm sure some of that is due to my statement above, but a lot are due to miss hits.

The thing is, I can't pull a longer club just because the possibility of a duff exists.

[phillyk]

I voted 3-5, because I was thinking mostly about my course and 18caps.  My course is more difficult and there are a lot of tricky holes where just choosing the right play off the tee will save you hazard trouble.  Thinking about the average course, I still see bogey golfers trying to hit the hero shot out of trees that they knew would only work 1 in 10 times, if that.  And that's not necessarily trees only, could be anything that requires a different shot than they normally hit.  Do they try something new or go with what they know that can do and save themselves from too high a score?

[MacDutch]

First and foremost: Execution is way more important for the score. An 18 capper hits a lot of bad shots during a round. There is no caddie in the world that can change that. Same for me as a 7 capper, but I get away more often with bad shots, because they are not deep in the woods, water or out of bounds.

But still difficult to tell in how much a good caddie could help to shave off strokes, it depends. Lets say the caddie knows the course really well and also the 18 cappers game. If the 18 capper play's that course a lot it could make up for 0-3 shots. 3 if the player gets extra confidence out of the caddies suggestions how to play the next shot. There is a reason why caddies always say 'love it', they try to get the player in a scoring state.

If the player doesn't know the course, a good caddie could help a lot more. Maybe up to 7 shots, when its a tricky course. Without the caddie the 18 capper would probably struggle to break 100.

[onthehunt526]

I think it's more of an execution errors. The mental game is only a small fraction of it. 

I think Jack would probably save the 18 handicap, 1 stroke maybe 2 with basic course strategy.

A 90s shooter, probably loses most of their shots on poor execution. They may lose 2 shots for going at the darker egg too much.

[Shooting29]

On 6/1/2017 at 5:10 PM, iacas said:

Amateurs don't miss short as often as people think. Their short hits are due to mis-hitting the shot, and they hit some cleanly, too. Generally speaking, being long is worse than being short (there are fewer bunkers long, but most greens slope back to front.

Plus if you tell a high handicapper to hit a 5-iron from what they think is a 7-iron yardage, they're gonna swing it differently than normal and may actually hit it worse. Less loft also means more curve, too.

I think 3-5 is ambitious. I think the "most players need to club up" has a grain of truth, but no more than that. I think most choose fairly appropriate clubs when they're playing (it's when they brag about it later that they really exaggerate things).

I could be wrong, and I used to feel similarly, but I've charted 100+ Shot Zones now and most of them are more of an issue left/right, not short (or long).

To the first bolded sentence: Not being facetious, seriously wondering, when was the last time you played with someone who was in the 12-20 range who hit a solid shot over the green? I play with all manner of handicaps in men's league and can't remember one hitting a non-bladed, solid shot and it flying past the front third. Maybe I live in an area that would be considered an outlier when looking at statistical data.

To the second bolded sentence: Playing in a four ball tournament my partner habitually comes up short because he thinks he hits it further than he does. I start adding 8 yards to whatever number the rangefinder gives me and he starts hitting more club and gets the ball to the hole. Had I told him to hit more club he would have adjusted and still came up short giving an excuse such as I wasn't comfortable hitting that club. My deception helped us win that day.

[JonMA1]

On 6/1/2017 at 4:57 PM, JonMA1 said:

It's like those who blame bad luck on their high score... as in "I hit 4 balls into the woods today, and not a single one bounced back onto the fairway". 

Completely off-topic but I thought the irony was worth noting... I hit three trees today and all three balls bounced back onto the fairway. To be fair, 2 of the 3 would have probably been in play, but the third should have been gone.

Nicklaus wouldn't have approved of that strategy.

[No Mulligans]

6 hours ago, Shooting29 said:

To the first bolded sentence: Not being facetious, seriously wondering, when was the last time you played with someone who was in the 12-20 range who hit a solid shot over the green? I play with all manner of handicaps in men's league and can't remember one hitting a non-bladed, solid shot and it flying past the front third. Maybe I live in an area that would be considered an outlier when looking at statistical data.

To the second bolded sentence: Playing in a four ball tournament my partner habitually comes up short because he thinks he hits it further than he does. I start adding 8 yards to whatever number the rangefinder gives me and he starts hitting more club and gets the ball to the hole. Had I told him to hit more club he would have adjusted and still came up short giving an excuse such as I wasn't comfortable hitting that club. My deception helped us win that day.

I hit it a little bit long sometimes, it's not that rare, happens pretty much every round.  The reason I'm often short is not because I mis-estimate my distances, it's because of mishits.  How often do you think a high handicapper mishits the ball.  Myself, I'd guess about 30 to 40 percent of the time.  I've scoped my distances over multiple sessions at the range, and many many balls.  I have those distances embossed on a card and taped to my golf push cart.  I really, really, know my distances.  Maybe better than some single digit handicappers.

The data in the image is from 100 to 200 approach shots.

 

Edited June 4, 2017 by No Mulligans