Great Ball Striking

[NM Golf]

On 1/9/2019 at 7:27 PM, iacas said:

The gap between a PGA Tour player and a scratch golfer might be larger than the gap between a scratch golfer and an 18 handicapper.

Okay, I am glad you elaborated on this, I thought your meant their scores.

On 1/10/2019 at 10:15 AM, iacas said:

A 10 and a scratch player are 10 shots apart. A scratch and a Tour player are about six or seven. Those six or seven are significantly harder to obtain than the 10.

I totally agree with this the lower your handicap the harder it is to improve your handicap. 

13 hours ago, Righty to Lefty said:

When I think of great ball striking handicap actually never comes to mind for me because I don't think it is the truest measure of the skill.  I immediately think of quality of strike with any given club.  Hitting the ball inline with the CoG reliably and consistently is much easier said than done as evidenced by watching Tour Pros hit it all over the yard during a telecast. They are just better at playing the game, which is to get the ball in the hole in the fewest amount of shots. 

I asked a former European tour Pro, that I had the pleasure to play some 50 rounds with over 6 months, what his best ever round was and he said that his best round was hitting all 14 fairways and all 18 greens on a tight long course. He said that even though he shot 5 under, that was his best round ever.  His best score was 10 under, but his best ball striking round was 5 under.  That is why I don't associate handicap and ball striking. Your lowest score is likely a result of a hot putter and saving par for everywhere and will likely give you the feeling like you stole one.  Your best ball striking day will likely feel like you didn't get the most out of it because you will be putting for birdie so much, and not converting most of them, that you will feel like it was a woulda shoulda coulda round. Just my two cents. 

You may shoot your lowest score ever when you get hot with the putter AND have a good ball striking round, but your handicap will most certainly be a reflection of your ball striking skills. You can't fake ball striking. Any idiot can get hot with the putter and make a couple miracle putts, putting is easier than ball striking and takes less skill.

[lastings]

25 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

Paul Casey 2018 to 2014

Tee: 82nd, 41st, 23rd, 24th, 105th,
Approach: 11th, 2nd, 13th, 3rd, 5th,
Putting: 77th, 74th, 77th, 102nd, 38th,

Paul Casey reminds me of Jim Furyk from 2011 thru 2015

Tee: 105th, 56th, 101st, 78th, 96th,
Approach: 9th, 5th, 4th, 1st, 2nd
Putting: 138th, 25th, 77th, 81st, 115th

Top 15 in approach shots, not near the top in tee shots, not great putters. Paul Casey has 13 European tour wins. Overall, Paul Casey has 18 professional wins over 18 seasons, and Furyk has 26 professional wins over 26 seasons. Maybe if Paul Casey played in more PGA Tournaments he would win more of them. I am not sure of his schedule.

Also, Bubba Watson has 14 professional wins over 17 seasons. He is winning at a lower pace than Furyk. Maybe we are thinking Bubba is more successful because he has won more recently than Furyk?

 

Well, first, European wins aren’t exactly PGA wins. 

bubba has those two Masters victories..  Paul Casey has no majors, furyk just has the one US Open.  

But, this is digressing a bit.  I think the general point is you can be an elite player without being a great “ball striker”.  But, to do so, you better have some other exceptional skill, because you have to make up those strokes somewhere. 

Edited January 14, 2019 by lastings

[saevel25]

4 minutes ago, lastings said:

Well, first, European wins aren’t exactly PGA wins. 

bubba has those two Masters victories..  Paul Casey has no majors, furyk just has the one US Open.  

Still, Paul Casey might have more PGA Tour wins if he played only on the PGA Tour. His stats show he's probably a better overall player than Furyk.

Masters victories don't matter much to me. Bubba is a lefty and a bomber, which suits the Masters. Its more that the course fits his style. Even then, people overvalue the quality of win a major is. It might not even be worth 1.10x wins compared to the average PGA Tour event.

[iacas]

16 minutes ago, lastings said:

I think the general point is you can be an elite player without being a great “ball striker”.

No you can't.

Not unless you're restricting "great ball striker" to like 50 people ever in the history of golf.

IMO, there are anywhere between 300 and 1,000 "great ball strikers" alive at any given time. They're almost all playing professional Tours.

You don't get to that level without being, with my definition, a great ball striker.

[lastings]

4 minutes ago, iacas said:

No you can't.

Not unless you're restricting "great ball striker" to like 50 people ever in the history of golf.

IMO, there are anywhere between 300 and 1,000 "great ball strikers" alive at any given time. They're almost all playing professional Tours.

You don't get to that level without being, with my definition, a great ball striker.

As was noted above, all tour pros are great ball strikers.  The term great, in this sense, is only a comparison to your peers.   Bubba Watson has been at one time a top 5 player in the world without being a top 50 iron player. 

[iacas]

You’ve gotta qualify statements like that and be more precise. People are on here saying 5 handicappers can be great ballstrikers.

[lastings]

1 hour ago, lastings said:

Obviously, it's relative to who you are comparing against.   I mean in comparison to a scratch golfer, every tour pro is a great ball striker.   but, compared to other tour pros, not every pro is a great ball striker.   

 

I kind of did, here in my fist post..  

 

[iacas]

10 minutes ago, lastings said:

I kind of did, here in my fist post..  

I didn’t quite that post nor did I go back and re-read it. Just be clearer.

[Righty to Lefty]

10 hours ago, iacas said:

No.

Except for the rare cases (like a former Tour player who still absolutely flushes it, but who is 90 so he has a 10 handicap because he only hits it 160 off the tee), handicap is pretty directly correlated with ball striking.

The better the scores the player generally shoots, the better the ball striker. There are exceptions, of course, but they're rare.

And a player's handicap isn't a result of "a hot putting round." If you're "hot" ten times out of twenty, that's just your better half of your rounds, it's not "getting hot."

I never said that a players handicap was a result of a hot putting round. In the example that I gave, that was taken directly from a former European Tour Pro, his own personal experience was that his best ball striking round was not his best score. In my opinion ball striking is a skill used to play the game but there are so many other skills that are required to score well, just as in any sport. It is the compilation of these skills that determines whether a golfer is elite or not. 

Ball striking is very important, but it alone does not determine your score, bad ball striking can be overcome and good ball striking isn't always taken advantage of. I am not a pro, nor do I claim to be, but when a pro tells me that he was only playing with his "A" game a month or two of the season at best, and that the rest of the year he was just grinding out scores, I can relate to that on my own level. I know when I am striking it well for me, and when I am not, but that doesn't mean that I am going to score good or bad on any given day because that is just an aspect of the game and I can hopefully make up for it in another area on any given day to produce my best score for that given day. I have hit 11 greens and shot my personal best of 1 over, and I have hit 12 greens and shot 8 over on the same course. This is a prime example of what I mean by ball striking not determining score. 

If there is separation among pros as to good ball strikers, then there is separation among all skill levels in regards to ball striking.  Striking the ball solidly in no way means that you know how to reliably aim it with all clubs in the bag.  How reliably your aim it and put it on target is what determines how good of a player you are. And you gotta make putts of course !!  I consider how solidly a golfer hits the ball from shot to shot with all the clubs in the bag ball striking, and I consider how good they are at putting it on target how good of a golfer they are.  Just my two cents.  

 

[Righty to Lefty]

11 hours ago, NM Golf said:

You may shoot your lowest score ever when you get hot with the putter AND have a good ball striking round, but your handicap will most certainly be a reflection of your ball striking skills. You can't fake ball striking. Any idiot can get hot with the putter and make a couple miracle putts, putting is easier than ball striking and takes less skill.

The point I was making is that they don't often occur at the same time and that is exactly what my friend who played on tour was expressing when he stated that his best ball striking day and his best score did not occur at the same time.  You can fake ball striking and you witness every week on tour where they hit the ball offline quite often during any given round, but they are so adept at recovery and getting the ball in the hole, which is the name of the game. Hitting every fairway and green in a round is the pinnacle of ball striking, and you will almost never see that on tour.  It is almost irrelevant what score you shot on that day because you better enjoy it because even for a Pro that day is likely never going to happen ever again. He said that he shot 5 under that day and yet his best score ever was 10 under.  He has shot 10 under multiple times since, but he has never repeated his best ball striking day.  Ball striking and scoring are not the same. 

[boogielicious]

@Righty to Lefty,

Please take this the right way. Your posts are just rambling on and sighting one-off examples. We're are talking about overall for the entire population of golfers for all their rounds. 

PGA Tour Players (and Euro, Asia etc.) are by far the best ball strikers. Minor league players (Web.com etc) are the next tier. They are not quite as good at it.

Top AMs are next. But they can't make it on the Web.com because they are not as good at ball striking.

It keeps going on. There is no way by any stretch that a 5 handicap player (who wasn't a former Tour Pro and only lost distance due to age) could ever be as good a ball striker as a scratch golfer, Top AM, Web.com or PGA Tour player.  They are just not as good at striking the ball and controlling how far and what direction it goes with the correct amount of spin.  

A couple of US Opens ago, Justin Thomas hit a 3W 290 yards with enough spin to stop it on a very fast elevated green where the pin was 5 paces on the green. THAT is great ball striking. A 5 HC can only do that on a video game.

You can keep sighting great putting days or whatever, but you are just not correct with this assertion. 

[Righty to Lefty]

2 hours ago, boogielicious said:

@Righty to Lefty,

Please take this the right way. Your posts are just rambling on and sighting one-off examples. We're are talking about overall for the entire population of golfers for all their rounds. 

PGA Tour Players (and Euro, Asia etc.) are by far the best ball strikers. Minor league players (Web.com etc) are the next tier. They are not quite as good at it.

Top AMs are next. But they can't make it on the Web.com because they are not as good at ball striking.

It keeps going on. There is no way by any stretch that a 5 handicap player (who wasn't a former Tour Pro and only lost distance due to age) could ever be as good a ball striker as a scratch golfer, Top AM, Web.com or PGA Tour player.  They are just not as good at striking the ball and controlling how far and what direction it goes with the correct amount of spin.  

A couple of US Opens ago, Justin Thomas hit a 3W 290 yards with enough spin to stop it on a very fast elevated green where the pin was 5 paces on the green. THAT is great ball striking. A 5 HC can only do that on a video game.

You can keep sighting great putting days or whatever, but you are just not correct with this assertion. 

Look I am not looking to get into anymore arguments on here and am just stating my own personal parameters for what I consider great ball striking.  If you aren't tracking with what then please ask for clarification. I NEVER SAID A 5 HANDICAP IS AS GOOD OF A BALL STRIKER AS A TOUR PLAYER. I said that ball striking is a tool used to score...and among every level of golfer there are good and bad ball strikers. Regardless of whether they are good or not they still grind out the best score they possibly can on any given day. 

I played 50 rounds WITH A FORMER EUROPEAN TOUR PRO...who you in your own words believe are the best ball strikers on the planet... and he explained what the difference between his best BALL STRIKING round and his best SCORING round and they were some 5  shots apart.  I am just blown away at how much anytime I post on here it is just blown out of proportion every time. Then when I quote a FORMER EUROPEAN TOUR Pros thoughts and feelings then that is just glossed over. 

You then cherry picked a "one off " example of a great shot that a tour pro hit and acted as if that proved your point.  Anyone with sufficient club head speed is capable of pulling off that shot as the simple fact is that most don't have enough swing  speed to even attempt it.  That is an example of a great shot and not an example of a great ball striking.  I clarified that in my opinion a great ball striker can come in many forms in relation to their skill level. Just as tour pros are separated between "great ball strikers" and "grinders (just another way to say a shit ball striker that knows how to score), so does every level of golfer.  I can be a great ball striker for a 5 handicap.

I was looking through my scores today and noticed that I had shot 6 over hitting 3 greens and 6 over hitting 12 greens.  Those two rounds will have felt completely different as far as ball striking goes.  I "grinded" out a 6 over in the round where I hit 3 greens and I struck it well in the round where I hit 12 greens.  In my opinion hitting 12 greens as a 5 handicap is pretty damn good ball striking. Conversely hitting 3 is pretty bad, but the score posted was the same.  That is what I mean by scoring and ball striking are not the same as that is my "5 handicap" example of good and bad ball striking for my skill level producing the same end result.  I'm not looking to be right or wrong...the thread is about what each of us consider great ball striking and I'm being told that my OPINION of what it is wrong!!! Come on Man!! 

[Lihu]

43 minutes ago, Righty to Lefty said:

Look I am not looking to get into anymore arguments on here and am just stating my own personal parameters for what I consider great ball striking.  If you aren't tracking with what then please ask for clarification. I NEVER SAID A 5 HANDICAP IS AS GOOD OF A BALL STRIKER AS A TOUR PLAYER. I said that ball striking is a tool used to score...and among every level of golfer there are good and bad ball strikers. Regardless of whether they are good or not they still grind out the best score they possibly can on any given day. 

I played 50 rounds WITH A FORMER EUROPEAN TOUR PRO...who you in your own words believe are the best ball strikers on the planet... and he explained what the difference between his best BALL STRIKING round and his best SCORING round and they were some 5  shots apart.  I am just blown away at how much anytime I post on here it is just blown out of proportion every time. Then when I quote a FORMER EUROPEAN TOUR Pros thoughts and feelings then that is just glossed over. 

You then cherry picked a "one off " example of a great shot that a tour pro hit and acted as if that proved your point.  Anyone with sufficient club head speed is capable of pulling off that shot as the simple fact is that most don't have enough swing  speed to even attempt it.  That is an example of a great shot and not an example of a great ball striking.  I clarified that in my opinion a great ball striker can come in many forms in relation to their skill level. Just as tour pros are separated between "great ball strikers" and "grinders (just another way to say a shit ball striker that knows how to score), so does every level of golfer.  I can be a great ball striker for a 5 handicap.

I was looking through my scores today and noticed that I had shot 6 over hitting 3 greens and 6 over hitting 12 greens.  Those two rounds will have felt completely different as far as ball striking goes.  I "grinded" out a 6 over in the round where I hit 3 greens and I struck it well in the round where I hit 12 greens.  In my opinion hitting 12 greens as a 5 handicap is pretty damn good ball striking. Conversely hitting 3 is pretty bad, but the score posted was the same.  That is what I mean by scoring and ball striking are not the same as that is my "5 handicap" example of good and bad ball striking for my skill level producing the same end result.  I'm not looking to be right or wrong...the thread is about what each of us consider great ball striking and I'm being told that my OPINION of what it is wrong!!! Come on Man!! 

What’s your definition of good ball striking? Good contact or contact with control, direction and speed?

[saevel25]

19 minutes ago, Righty to Lefty said:

I NEVER SAID A 5 HANDICAP IS AS GOOD OF A BALL STRIKER AS A TOUR PLAYER. I said that ball striking is a tool used to score...and among every level of golfer there are good and bad ball strikers. Regardless of whether they are good or not they still grind out the best score they possibly can on any given day. 

Ball striking is so intrinsically link to scoring that there really isn't that many good ball strikers at the mid to high handicap levels. You might have the rare instance, but it is rare. Using outliers is not a good way to make a point.

21 minutes ago, Righty to Lefty said:

I played 50 rounds WITH A FORMER EUROPEAN TOUR PRO...who you in your own words believe are the best ball strikers on the planet... and he explained what the difference between his best BALL STRIKING round and his best SCORING round and they were some 5  shots apart. 

Yea, it's called getting hot with the putter. A golfer can absolutely hit 18 GIR, average 40 FT for their birdie putts and end up shooting even par. Or, they could hit 15 GIR and average a bit closer and have a good putting day.

In the end, he's not having his best scoring day unless he a very good ball striking day. 

34 minutes ago, Righty to Lefty said:

That is what I mean by scoring and ball striking are not the same as that is my "5 handicap" example of good and bad ball striking for my skill level producing the same end result.  I'm not looking to be right or wrong...the thread is about what each of us consider great ball striking and I'm being told that my OPINION of what it is wrong!!! Come on Man!! 

You talk about nit picking, but you then come with two examples of probably the many rounds you have played. What is the average score when you hit less than 5 GIR per round? That is what matters more. Of course you can have a hot day with your short game. In the end, hitting lower GIR will produce higher scores. That is a fact. Stating outliers doesn't disprove that.

 

[iacas]

8 hours ago, Righty to Lefty said:

In the example that I gave, that was taken directly from a former European Tour Pro, his own personal experience was that his best ball striking round was not his best score.

We realize that.

What you don't seem to realize is that one round or a few rounds or whatever is a negligible sample size. It's irrelevant.

8 hours ago, Righty to Lefty said:

In my opinion ball striking is a skill used to play the game but there are so many other skills that are required to score well, just as in any sport. It is the compilation of these skills that determines whether a golfer is elite or not.

And what I'm saying, and have the data that backs it, is that ballstriking is far and away the most important of all of those skills.

8 hours ago, Righty to Lefty said:

Ball striking is very important, but it alone does not determine your score, bad ball striking can be overcome and good ball striking isn't always taken advantage of.

Nobody's said otherwise.

But ballstriking is the most important piece, by far.

8 hours ago, Righty to Lefty said:

I have hit 11 greens and shot my personal best of 1 over, and I have hit 12 greens and shot 8 over on the same course. This is a prime example of what I mean by ball striking not determining score.

You really need to stop using small sample sizes. They aren't illustrative at all.

8 hours ago, Righty to Lefty said:

Striking the ball solidly in no way means that you know how to reliably aim it with all clubs in the bag.

Who's said that? Huh?

8 hours ago, Righty to Lefty said:

How reliably your aim it and put it on target is what determines how good of a player you are.

That's part of what makes up ballstriking - a player who hits it flush but 30 yards offline isn't a good "ball striker." (Not that such a player really exists.)

7 hours ago, Righty to Lefty said:

You can fake ball striking and you witness every week on tour where they hit the ball offline quite often during any given round, but they are so adept at recovery and getting the ball in the hole, which is the name of the game.

The data doesn't back this up at all. Not for any reasonable definitions of the words you're using.

7 hours ago, Righty to Lefty said:

Hitting every fairway and green in a round is the pinnacle of ball striking, and you will almost never see that on tour.

That's not how I'd define it. And… Golf is hard.®

7 hours ago, Righty to Lefty said:

He said that he shot 5 under that day and yet his best score ever was 10 under.  He has shot 10 under multiple times since, but he has never repeated his best ball striking day.  Ball striking and scoring are not the same. 

Over a large enough sample size, they're directly correlated.

4 hours ago, boogielicious said:

Please take this the right way. Your posts are just rambling on and sighting one-off examples. We're are talking about overall for the entire population of golfers for all their rounds.

Bingo.

Dude, enough of your observations. Guess what: your friend the former Euro Tour player could very well be wrong. There are people out there who still think "drive for show, putt for dough" is accurate. Tour pros get stuff wrong all the time.

Nobody's saying ballstriking is the ONLY thing that matters, but the data also shows that it's the thing that matters the most.

1 hour ago, Righty to Lefty said:

I played 50 rounds WITH A FORMER EUROPEAN TOUR PRO...

Dude, we know.

1 hour ago, Righty to Lefty said:

and he explained what the difference between his best BALL STRIKING round and his best SCORING round and they were some 5  shots apart. I am just blown away at how much anytime I post on here it is just blown out of proportion every time. Then when I quote a FORMER EUROPEAN TOUR Pros thoughts and feelings then that is just glossed over.

Once again:

• Small sample sizes/exceptions/outliers.
• Just cuz he's a former Euro Tour player doesn't mean his opinions are "right."

It's not glossed over. There's just not much actual substance there.

1 hour ago, Righty to Lefty said:

I clarified that in my opinion a great ball striker can come in many forms in relation to their skill level. Just as tour pros are separated between "great ball strikers" and "grinders (just another way to say a shit ball striker that knows how to score), so does every level of golfer.  I can be a great ball striker for a 5 handicap.

A "shit ball striker" relative to his peers on the PGA Tour is still gonna be several notches above a scratch golfer.

Nobody's said you couldn't be "great" compared to your 5-handicap peers.

But in general, scratch golfers are going to be better ball strikers than 5 handicappers, who are going to be better ball strikers than 10 handicappers.

There's a fairly strong direct correlation.

1 hour ago, Righty to Lefty said:

I was looking through my scores today and noticed that I had shot 6 over hitting 3 greens and 6 over hitting 12 greens.

Do you understand why the words "small sample size" keep being used?

Goodness.

[NM Golf]

1 hour ago, Righty to Lefty said:

Look I am not looking to get into anymore arguments on here and am just stating my own personal parameters for what I consider great ball striking. ..the thread is about what each of us consider great ball striking and I'm being told that my OPINION of what it is wrong!!! Come on Man!! 

No you said this

On 1/13/2019 at 11:41 PM, Righty to Lefty said:

When I think of great ball striking handicap actually never comes to mind for me because I don't think it is the truest measure of the skill. 

What is the truest measure of skill, putting? Short game? 

7 hours ago, Righty to Lefty said:

I have hit 11 greens and shot my personal best of 1 over, and I have hit 12 greens and shot 8 over on the same course. This is a prime example of what I mean by ball striking not determining score.   

Again you have all these outlier rounds, these sample size of one examples that mean nothing. I absolutely guarantee you your ball striking has a bigger influence on your overall score than putting or short game does. Maybe not on one outlier round but over a span of 25 or 50 rounds. If you don't believe that to be true, then let's play a game. We will play 18 holes, lets start at the green. I will drop my ball on the green 30 feet from the hole 12 times and chip 6 times. You put your ball on the green 6 times and chip 12 times. We will see who shoots the better score. I wouldn't make that bet with a 10 handicap. Their advantage would be too great.

7 hours ago, Righty to Lefty said:

The point I was making is that they don't often occur at the same time

Says who? My lowest scores always happen on my best ball striking days...because they have to. If I am not hitting the ball well, then my chances of scoring well are not very good. You cannot score well missing greens. How are you going to make birdies when you are constantly putting for par?

7 hours ago, Righty to Lefty said:

You can fake ball striking 

I totally disagree. The skill necessary for good ball striking is the most difficult skill to attain in golf. My 7 year old made a 15 foot putt the other day, but she can't hit a 150 yard drive or even make contact on a reliable basis. People with little or no skills can learn to putt pretty well in a relatively short time. 

7 hours ago, Righty to Lefty said:

Ball striking and scoring are not the same. 

No there are several factors that go into scoring, all I am saying is ball striking, the full swing, is the biggest determinant in scoring. It plays a bigger role. There are 10 even 15 handicaps I know that putt as well or even better than I do, but my long game (ball striking) is far superior. Therefor I am 15-20 strokes better than they are most of the time.

I have no doubt that your "European Tour Pro" buddy fall into the same trap that most golfers do. He is probably a very poor judge of his own game. 

 

 

[Righty to Lefty]

19 minutes ago, Lihu said:

What’s your definition of good ball striking? Good contact or contact with control, direction and speed?

I consider good ball striking the ability to hit every club in the bag with ball first contact and leverage, more often than not,  in relation to your current skill level.  Speed, control, trajectory, and direction are not needed to strike the ball purely, but they are needed to be a good golfer.  Are you tracking with what I'm saying Lihu? A ball can be struck pure at any speed, trajectory, or in any direction and it was still struck well. The ability to put it on target is and control the speed, trajectory , and direction is called...playing golf ! That is why I said in other threads that "You aren't even playing golf until strike can be almost ignored until after the shot is hit because a beginner is just trying to hit the ball...anywhere..on the planet...solidly, where as the Tour Pro doesn't even have to think about strike and can almost take it for granted because of the sheer number of repetitions." If you are not standing over a shot focused on the task at hand, which is to get the ball to fly in a certain way to your target, then you are not playing golf. We all fall in between a rank beginner and a Tour Pro and as we move further away from rank beginner the less ball bound we become and the more focus gets devoted to the task at hand of getting the ball to do what we need it to do to score as best we can.  I hope I was clear with my explanation and if not please let me know. 

 

[Righty to Lefty]

18 minutes ago, NM Golf said:

No you said this

What is the truest measure of skill, putting? Short game? 

Again you have all these outlier rounds, these sample size of one examples that mean nothing. I absolutely guarantee you your ball striking has a bigger influence on your overall score than putting or short game does. Maybe not on one outlier round but over a span of 25 or 50 rounds. If you don't believe that to be true, then let's play a game. We will play 18 holes, lets start at the green. I will drop my ball on the green 30 feet from the hole 12 times and chip 6 times. You put your ball on the green 6 times and chip 12 times. We will see who shoots the better score. I wouldn't make that bet with a 10 handicap. Their advantage would be too great.

Says who? My lowest scores always happen on my best ball striking days...because they have to. If I am not hitting the ball well, then my chances of scoring well are not very good. You cannot score well missing greens. How are you going to make birdies when you are constantly putting for par?

I totally disagree. The skill necessary for good ball striking is the most difficult skill to attain in golf. My 7 year old made a 15 foot putt the other day, but she can't hit a 150 yard drive or even make contact on a reliable basis. People with little or no skills can learn to putt pretty well in a relatively short time. 

No there are several factors that go into scoring, all I am saying is ball striking, the full swing, is the biggest determinant in scoring. It plays a bigger role. There are 10 even 15 handicaps I know that putt as well or even better than I do, but my long game (ball striking) is far superior. Therefor I am 15-20 strokes better than they are most of the time.

I have no doubt that your "European Tour Pro" buddy fall into the same trap that most golfers do. He is probably a very poor judge of his own game. 

 

 

Well then you have all the answers then and since you aren't engaging any conversation and simply want to once again try and tell me MY OPINION is wrong I am not going to explain or clarify any further to you as you just simply want to be "right" which I don't believe that you are.  And now you want to discount the opinion of a golfer who played on Tour and them tell him that the way he sees things is wrong also so we are done here. So even when the Tour Pro's opinion is said to be wrong then I as a 5 handicap have no chance.  Once again I am being viewed as a "troll" for simply stating my view on things. I am sure that iacas will do what he often does to me and examine every single sentence that I wrote in my OPINION and then try to tell me that my opinion is wrong also. Fair enough then why even ask for everyone's opinion?