Stubbornness on Short Game vs Long Game

[JonMA1]

As others have alluded to, I think it's perception as much as any other reason.

I wouldn't consider Gary Player to be stupid when it comes to winning at a high level. But during an interview with Lee Travino, Jack Nicklaus and Player, the question was asked which was more important, the long game or short game. Player was adamant about the short game being more important. Travino argued that it was the long game and Nicklaus sort of walked the fence.

As far as amateurs, maybe it's because with the short game, it's easier to identify success or failure. You chip close to the hole or you don't... you sink the putt or you don't. 

Perhaps it's also easier to notice/remember when the short game has saved us from a single poor drive than it is to notice that consistently staying out of trouble with the full swing sets us up for success around the green. 

Maybe those who have a good full swing take for granted they're not hitting 4 or 5 tee shots out of bounds every round.

I don't know. I suck at both so my perception is that they're both very important.

[AndyLL]

Today I tied my best round at 83.  So close.

In the past I would have blamed my 3 3-putts, 1 blown chip and 2 missed 4 footers for not breaking 80.

However after reading threads like this I review my round (golf tags) with an attempt to try to determine where I lost the shots.

I had 1 triple and 2 doubles.  In all three cases I had horrible tee shots that lead to poor approach shots.  In all 3 cases I had to make a great chip/pitch to just to save bogey.  I normally play those hole 1-2 over and today I was 7 over.

In addition...

2 of my bogies I missed the GIR with a 9 iron and a Gap wedge.  

2 of my bogies were the result of poorly placed and short drives on holes with water resulting in me having to lay up instead of being able to go for the green. ( in the past I would have tried risky hero shots with the typical results )

An outstanding day of putting/chipping would have allowed me to break 80.

However... just better focus/execution of 4-5 full-swing shots that I already know I can hit would have achieved the same result.

 

[Zekez]

I firmly believe that the drive is the most important shot, especially for the weekend/league player.  As many have alluded too, the drive sets up the rest of the hole, both in the shots you will be playing and mentally..

[alleztom]

I think it also comes from the 15 footer made for par. The idea that if I make lots of these  I will make pars, where if I miss a 15' putt for birdie and tap in for par then I still get a par, but "if I putted better" I'd not only make those pars, but make birdies as well. The thinking is the wrong way round that "if I hit my approach to 25' each time I might make a long putt, but I'm going to 3 putt less" rather that if I make the long putts I'll score well.

[MrDC]

I have no idea why anyone would want to point to any aspect of the game as the most important, it's all important, work on everything, golf is a perishable skill.

 

[scotth]

On 8/5/2017 at 7:50 PM, golfdu said:

I don't understand why so many players and coaches still think the short game (shots from inside 100 yards) is more important than the long game...

The prevailing response from those that say the short game is more important is add where most of your shots come from.... 150 and in, or outside of 150?

Not going to get sucked into the argument, just repeating the line that is recited by those that say short game is more important.

Really it seems to me this is a chicken or egg kind of discussion.  For me, way back in the day scores really started dropping when I was getting more than 200 yards off the tee.  As I progressed the further down the fairway I got the better my scores were.  

Here is the chicken or egg part.....hitting approach shots inside of 150 really helped that, so the short game people would say "see short game more important"  while the long game people would say "see long game more important because now hitting short iron into green because of your drive.

[dennyjones]

1 minute ago, scotth said:

The prevailing response from those that say the short game is more important is add where most of your shots come from.... 150 and in, or outside of 150?

Not going to get sucked into the argument, just repeating the line that is recited by those that say short game is more important.

Really it seems to me this is a chicken or egg kind of discussion.  For me, way back in the day scores really started dropping when I was getting more than 200 yards off the tee.  As I progressed the further down the fairway I got the better my scores were.  

Here is the chicken or egg part.....hitting approach shots inside of 150 really helped that, so the short game people would say "see short game more important"  while the long game people would say "see long game more important because now hitting short iron into green because of your drive.

Grab a copy of LSW from @iacas.   He has data from the PGA in the book and a concept called separation value which ranks the priority of each shot.   It's a must read. 

[scotth]

Planning on getting a copy, but again my thought is going to be it really is a chicken and egg thing.  Even if your long game is fantastic, you still have to have a decent short game to score well.

Dustin Johnson's mile long drives would do him no good if he didn't have a great wedge game as well.  

The whole long game vs short game is an interesting if not original argument around golf.  If you ever read Harvey Penick's  Little Red Book, there is a section where Penick, Hogan and Sam Snead had the same discussion and all had different ideas.

 

[iacas]

1 hour ago, MrDC said:

I have no idea why anyone would want to point to any aspect of the game as the most important, it's all important, work on everything, golf is a perishable skill.

Relatively speaking, the short game and putting matter less.

34 minutes ago, scotth said:

Planning on getting a copy, but again my thought is going to be it really is a chicken and egg thing.  Even if your long game is fantastic, you still have to have a decent short game to score well.

 It's not really a chicken and egg thing. You can have an average short game but if your long game is better than average you will be significantly better than average than someone who has a good short game and an average long game.

36 minutes ago, scotth said:

Dustin Johnson's mile long drives would do him no good if he didn't have a great wedge game as well.

Dustin gets a huge advantage getting to hit wedges. He could hit average to poor wedges and because he's hitting wedges and other guys are hitting seven irons he will still be able to contend.

38 minutes ago, scotth said:

The whole long game vs short game is an interesting if not original argument around golf.  If you ever read Harvey Penick's  Little Red Book, there is a section where Penick, Hogan and Sam Snead had the same discussion and all had different ideas.

I think you'll get it when you read LSW, but I know more about this than those guys did. I don't really care what they thought. The data is conclusive at this point.

[Kalnoky]

3 hours ago, Zekez said:

I firmly believe that the drive is the most important shot, especially for the weekend/league player.  As many have alluded too, the drive sets up the rest of the hole, both in the shots you will be playing and mentally..

Agreed. I recently played one of my best rounds while also having my worst putting round of the year. The difference was 100% my driver. 

 

[Marty2019]

I know there is data to back up the fact that the long game is more important than the short game, but I don't need that.   I just need a little logic.   

No one ever had to take a 2 stroke penalty and a do-over after a bad putt.   No one ever had to go buy a dozen more golf balls because their putting was bad.   No one ever had to waste 5 minutes hunting for a bad putt.   No one ever got bitten by a snake or a tick because they were hunting for a bad putt. 

The fact is, so much more can go wrong with the long game than with the short game, and the penalties are so disproportionate, there is no comparison at all.   Put your ball in the damn fairway and you will be fine.  Hit greens in regulation and you will be golden.   Putting?  Chipping?   Sure, they are important, and they should be practiced, but if you can't put your ball in the fairway to begin with, what's the point? 

Edited August 7, 2017 by Marty2019

[mdl]

I'd argue that some of it comes from a perception thing related to recency bias and also people being bad at intuitively understanding long run averages/effects and variance.  Say you and another player both play off a 12 and hit driver a similar distance but you have 20% worse dispersion.  You play together and both hit driver about average.  You hit one more drive in jail than the other player.  You both have pretty wide variance in results with the driver as 12s.  That just feels like some bad luck.  You hit a miss in the wrong spot on the wrong hole, but you both hit a decent number of similar sized misses.

But you get to the green and the other player hits most nGIR pitches within ~15 feet, and sinks a few 10 footers to save par.  You put your nGIR pitches to 10-30 feet, don't sink any of those putts, and 3-putt one of the 30 footers you put on the wrong tier or something.  It feels from that small sample like you've got similar long games.  It feels like you just happened to hit one or two more of those bad drives, on the wrong holes, that you both hit pretty frequently.  But it's super obvious you lost 3-4 strokes around the green.

I'd bet it's a somewhat similar psychology among the (ex) pros or coaches who say this.  When a pro wins, usually they're playing better than their average and better than most of the field across most aspects of the game.  Then by Sunday, other players who aren't really firing on the long game are already long out of contention.  And it's super obvious, makes a big impression, when you win and compare yourself to a few of the other players who were also hitting good long shots but did pitch or putt as well on Sunday.  You might feel like you won cause you could put a few tricky pitches close and drain a few 30+ foot putts when your competitors couldn't.

[TN94z]

I agree with it being a stubbornness of people not wanting to admit that they are wrong. Even if you have statistics to give these people, it won't sway many of them. The old "drive for show, putt for dough" has been beat into their heads for so long, it's got to be true. Since reading LSW, I have been quoting statistics to my 15 year old about putting, getting up and down, etc...and it blows his mind. It actually has made him feel a little better on missed putts and par saves. If people would just sit back and honestly think about their round and how much different it could have been had they hit the ball further off the tee, they would understand. But so many think that putting will make up the difference. I mean, I'll agree that hitting a 30ft putt will sometimes save a par, but how often does that realistically happen....that's what they are not understanding.

And of course, watching golf on television and seeing the miraculous up and downs along with long bombs of putts being made skews their mentality. Not to mention that most of the local players I see in my area already think they are long ball hitters off the tee, so that is not even a thought for them. They consistently spout "300 yard drives" when I'm inside them with my 250 yard drive.

[Patch]

Not too many years ago, the old saying on the various tours was "drive for show, putt for dough". This saying by the pros could easily be construed as the short game (putting) being more important than their long game. 

Later  on that saying was replaced to some extent with " bomb and gouge" meaning hit (bomb) the ball as far as you could, without regards to accuracy, then hit (gouge) the ball out of what ever lie it was in with a better degree of (short game) accuracy. 

I agree that for most golfers the the tee shot is more important. But, here's the deal. For myself, and others like me, my long game is no longer that long, which means, I need to save shots with my more important short game. This,  while playing from the middle tees. 

 

[Missouri Swede]

19 minutes ago, Patch said:

Later  on that saying was replaced to some extent with " bomb and gouge" meaning hit (bomb) the ball as far as you could, without regards to accuracy, then hit (gouge) the ball out of what ever lie it was in with a better degree of (short game) accuracy. 

Yeah, but I think they mean it in a derogatory fashion. 

[Joe92385]

4 hours ago, Marty2019 said:

No one ever had to take a 2 stroke penalty and a do-over after a bad putt.   No one ever had to go buy a dozen more golf balls because their putting was bad.   No one ever had to waste 5 minutes hunting for a bad putt.   No one ever got bitten by a snake or a tick because they were hunting for a bad putt. 

You've never seen me putt...

Kidding aside, I recently realized that I blamed my short game for everything because it's more frustrating for me to hit a great drive and fall apart close in, as opposed to hitting a bad drive and making a good recovery.  The holes that get stuck in my mind as "good holes" are the latter, even though I typically end up with a worse score.  

I suppose it's recency bias, but I prefer to call it Tin Cup Bias.

[TN94z]

12 minutes ago, Joe92385 said:

You've never seen me putt...

Kidding aside, I recently realized that I blamed my short game for everything because it's more frustrating for me to hit a great drive and fall apart close in, as opposed to hitting a bad drive and making a good recovery.  The holes that get stuck in my mind as "good holes" are the latter, even though I typically end up with a worse score.  

I suppose it's recency bias, but I prefer to call it Tin Cup Bias.

It's funny how everyone is so different. For me, if I had bad contact on my tee shots (whether I had to drop, or they were just not a good swing but ended up in the fairway), I remember that more than anything else about my round. I can go out and manage to score pretty well during my round, but always have that "what if" lingering when I think about my bad shots from the tee. Recovery shots are good and do leave me with a good feeling, but I undoubtedly think "I shouldn't have had to attempt that recovery shot in the first place"...haha.

[Joe92385]

Interesting.  Though, at my level, it really just boils down to "get better at literally any part of golf, and the score will improve," haha.