[Jim_Kennedy]

The argument  that most players don't need to know the yardage 'cause they can't hit to it anyway has made frequent appearances on this site. What's the worry?

Through all of golf's evolutionary changes the conversation between the player and the course still remains the same, after 400 +- years. 

[Kyle Harris]

Has it been proven in a statistically significant manner that distance estimation beyond a certain point is a skill and not just luck?

No. It hasn't.

[Peter Pallotta]

Dave - too bad it's on this thread, cause it may get lost, because I think this your latest set of analogies/examples of why judgement is a fundamental part of the game is the most appealing of all, and to me very convincing, especially as I'd never thought of it before. I get an image of why someone like Joe Montana was a great quarterback despite lacking a gun for an arm -- his ability to perfectly and consistently time Rice's crossing routes...it's like a golfer being a terrific wind player.

Peter

[Kyle Harris]

Kyle:  That's because people don't bother to prove the obvious.  Are you honestly suggesting that if you take Golfer A and Golfer B to a variety of places on a golf course and ask them "how far to this?"  and  "how far to that?", and A is consnstently better than B, that's it's luck?

C'mon, man, that's beyond belief, and certainly beyond the waste of time required to study and prove it false. 

Congratulations David, you've proven a coin flip.

The fact is, and this HAS been studied is that people can't deal with number much outside the first combination of simple primes - 2 and 3. Think of the orientation of dots on a die.

2x3 = 6. People can look at those dots and think six. Get much more outside of that and it's 1-6 in various combinations. A 3x3 square is not seen as a discrete "9" but instead as three 3s, for example.

On the golf course, the only standardized size is the cup and for the most part, the flagstick, be it 7 feet or 5 feet. We can easily estimate a 3 foot putt, and even up to 10 feet based on the size of the flagstick and relational. Get outside that, and the distance estimation becomes more and more varied until it's statistically insignificant.

As for your baseball and basketball analogies. Again, we are given discrete distances by which to gauge distance. The bases are 90 feet apart and most humans are able to double and triple that distance to gauge something up to 270 feet. We are then given the confines of the outfield as an outer limit. Same goes for Basketball... do you think that announcers constantly mentioning 17 foot shots are using the floor markings or their own skill at estimation.

Humans are wired to be able to divide and conquer given and upper and lower limit. And they'll divide into the fundamental primes: 1, 2 and 3.

This is the artilleryman's dilemma, and you better believe those guys were using math, calculation and distance gauging equipment back in the 18th century.

Familiarity with a golf course allows us to construct upper and lower bounds for distance gauging, but it's not a skill so much as rote memorization.

Stick the same golfers in an empty field and ask them to gauge distances and you'll see. 

[Joe Hancock]

IDEA:

At the Kingsley event this summer, let's do an informal, non-scientific study. Using 30-50 GCA.com players, we'll play the first round using zero yardage info, to the extent possible. No pacing off...nothing. The second round we'll play using all the gadgets known to man. Then, we'll compare:

1) Enjoyment of the round
2)Pace of play
3)Scores

Then, we'll drink and fight about the results afterward.

Joe

[Kyle Harris]

Kyle:  That's because people don't bother to prove the obvious.  Are you honestly suggesting that if you take Golfer A and Golfer B to a variety of places on a golf course and ask them "how far to this?"  and  "how far to that?", and A is consnstently better than B, that's it's luck?

C'mon, man, that's beyond belief, and certainly beyond the waste of time required to study and prove it false. 

Congratulations David, you've proven a coin flip.

The fact is, and this HAS been studied is that people can't deal with number much outside the first combination of simple primes - 2 and 3. Think of the orientation of dots on a die.

2x3 = 6. People can look at those dots and think six. Get much more outside of that and it's 1-6 in various combinations. A 3x3 square is not seen as a discrete "9" but instead as three 3s, for example.

On the golf course, the only standardized size is the cup and for the most part, the flagstick, be it 7 feet or 5 feet. We can easily estimate a 3 foot putt, and even up to 10 feet based on the size of the flagstick and relational. Get outside that, and the distance estimation becomes more and more varied until it's statistically insignificant.

As for your baseball and basketball analogies. Again, we are given discrete distances by which to gauge distance. The bases are 90 feet apart and most humans are able to double and triple that distance to gauge something up to 270 feet. We are then given the confines of the outfield as an outer limit. Same goes for Basketball... do you think that announcers constantly mentioning 17 foot shots are using the floor markings or their own skill at estimation.

Humans are wired to be able to divide and conquer given and upper and lower limit. And they'll divide into the fundamental primes: 1, 2 and 3.

This is the artilleryman's dilemma, and you better believe those guys were using math, calculation and distance gauging equipment back in the 18th century.

Familiarity with a golf course allows us to construct upper and lower bounds for distance gauging, but it's not a skill so much as rote memorization.

Stick the same golfers in an empty field and ask them to gauge distances and you'll see. 

Kyle, what are you smoking my good man?

What does any of this have to do with the skill of gauging distance?  If you really think it's luck, I take it you also think green reading is all luck, too?

Burn that Strawman right now.

Green reading is explicitly within the bounds I explained above. Too bad you slept through your psych and stat courses in undergrad on your way to Law School. ;-)

[PCCraig]

Shivas-

If it wasn't half the game we would all still be walking around with three clubs whacking the hell out of the ball in every direction. Quite frankly if you were playing with 14 clubs and no yardages you would be a complete hypocrite because yardage calculation is the reason people carry so many clubs in the first place.

Of course it is half the game, yardage is just part of the greater strategy of the game.

Playing with no yardages, either at St. Andrews or Butler National, does a great disservice to the golf course architecture. I could play 18 holes at the Old Course with just a 7 iron, but I really wouldn't be playing the golf course.

Let me remind everyone that I don't use a rangefinder, but I hardly think looking at a 150 yard post in the fairway or knowing the yardage on the tee is ruining the game of golf.

You still don't realize how innane what you're saying is, do you?

No.

You acknowledge that having the correct distance is half the game.  Yet you want that half of the game to a non-skill.  So what is that half of the game once you take the skill out of it?  I'll tell you:  it's no longer part of the game. 

As I stated STRATEGY is half of the game, the other half would be the actual physical hitting of the golf ball, yardage is just one part of strategy, not all 50%.

As to this ridiculous notion that 14 clubs is related to distance, are you aware that players were carrying 20 and 30 clubs WELL BEFORE people started marking yardage on golf courses?  Yes, that's correct.  People were carrying tons of clubs for reasons that had nothing to do with distance. 
You didn't know that, did you?  I doubt it or you couldn't have made that comment.

Yes Shivas I did know that golfers once used bags full of clubs for specific reasons, one of the reasons they carried so many clubs was DISTANCE difference. It's hard to imagine that no golfer on a links course in the land of wonderment never decided to take a little extra club because he noticed he didn't hit it far enough off the tee to reach a specific landmark. 

Also, while you're looking up the history of the 14 club limit, you might want to look up what hypocrisy means.  There is no way carrying 14 clubs is hypocritical unless that person has either criticized doing so or espoused carrying fewer. 

It is hypocritical because the more clubs you carry in your bag the more standardized your swing becomes and the less you "feel" a golf shot. If I decided to go play any course with just a 7-iron and no yardage (which I have) I would play shots with different swings for different results. However the more clubs you carry the more it allows a player to use almost the same default swing to hit the ball longer or shorter yardage. Do you understand my arguement? If you were to play blind of yardages why in the hell do you need 14 clubs?

And where do you get this silly example of playing TOC or Butler with one club if yardage markers disappeared?  Please explain where that came from. 

Playing St. Andrews (random links course) and Butler (random parkland course) with no yardage markers would be vastly different because of their specific environments. Due to the wind, firm soil, ran, etc yardage means far less. If someone tells you its 187 yards to X grean on The Old Course in a rain storm what would that mean? Nothing, you would need to create and feel a shot. However if someone told you it was 187 yards on a soft parkland course it would be a safe bet that you would want to hit a 187 yard shot. In short the same club changes with your environment.

Pat, you're young.  You've probably never played a course where there is simply no access to distance knowledge (and if you did, I take it you played SFGC with only your 7 iron!)  ...

I have, and no I didn't play it with just a seven iron. The fact that I'm "young" hardly means I haven't seen many different golf courses.

Let me tell you, it's a much different and better game when you have to use your own distance estimation skills to pull a club.  It's a far better game and the guy who knows what he's doing has a gigantic advantage.

For the last time, I 10000000000% agree with you, however you and raplh and melvyn don't understand that knowing a yardage doesn't ruin the game. You can tell me 100 times that a hole is 143 yard but unless it is dead flat, soft, and no wind, I am not going to actually play the shot 143 yards. Once again yardage is only a small part of the strategy of the game. Again I never have and never will have a yardage gun, and I use my eyes to gauge distance most of the time, however if I have never played a course I'm not going to stand there looking at a green trying to guess the distance, that is freaking crazy...just walk twenty feet and get a yardage to give you an idea!!!

And let me tell you this, also:  you've got the relation to architecture 180 degrees backwards.  When you have no yardage markers, things like false fronts and horizon greens and raised bunker lips disguising greens and other optical illusions mean something and the architect can use them to fool you.  But whether you're zapping a rangefinder or checking a sprinklerhead and a pin sheet, the connection to the architecture is actually disconnected, and becomes less relevant, if not irrelevant, in terms of distance-related club choice.  So basically, you've got it backwards, grasshopper...      

I 90* dissagree  because while I agree you may be fooled by false fronts and the such, even if you know the exact yardage, there is far more strategy to a golf shot, would you not agree? Don't you still need to actually hit a golf ball??

Finally, I don't fault you for looking at the game from only one perspective, but what you need to realize is that people played this game in a very different manner for centuries before some dope decided marking up their golf courses like football fields.  And if you tried it (which, BTW, his hard to do because yardage marking litter is everywhere and unavoidable!), you'd know what I'm talking about.  Unfortunately, you have to go to SFGC or Friars Head, not to mention telling your caddy to stifel himself, to do so...

Once again I have played golf w/o any sort  of yardage and I don't have nearly as much trouble doing it as others. It really isn't that hard on courses you have already played, because you generally know what clubs you hit from the tees. Remember that most of the time I play golf now (and get out of work) I'm trying to get in as many holes as possible, so I really don't care what the yardage is because I just like hitting golf shots.

I'm on the side of not using all that much yardage...in fact I HATE rangefinders, but perhaps I don't understand how someone can be so freaking against it.

[RSLivingston_III]

IDEA:

At the Kingsley event this summer, let's do an informal, non-scientific study. Using 30-50 GCA.com players, we'll play the first round using zero yardage info, to the extent possible. No pacing off...nothing. The second round we'll play using all the gadgets known to man. Then, we'll compare:

1) Enjoyment of the round
2)Pace of play
3)Scores

Then, we'll drink and fight about the results afterward.

Joe

Joe, it'll never work. Everybody will cheat. They're so hooked on having yardage handed to them on a silver platter, they'd go into convulsions having to play pure eyeball golf.  I'll bet you 90%+ of this board simply cannot play 18 holes without searching for their their yardage fix at least once or twice in a round no matter how hard they try not to.

I bet half the group has seizure's in the first fairway...

[RSLivingston_III]

Ralph..so you are saying they had no interests in knowing that the shot they "felt", and hit, was 20 paces?  I find that a bit difficult to belief.  A HUGE part of programing that "feel" in the brain comes form a curiosity of knowing the distance...using your eyes...sizing up the distance, and giving it your best 20 paces swing.... 

Do you feel the need to pace off all your putts? I assume you putt by feel...
Why is it such a giant leap to understand that people played all their shots by feel?

[PCCraig]

Ralph..so you are saying they had no interests in knowing that the shot they "felt", and hit, was 20 paces?  I find that a bit difficult to belief.  A HUGE part of programing that "feel" in the brain comes form a curiosity of knowing the distance...using your eyes...sizing up the distance, and giving it your best 20 paces swing.... 

Do you feel the need to pace off all your putts? I assume you putt by feel...
Why is it such a giant leap to understand that people played all their shots by feel?

Because they didn't? 

[RSLivingston_III]

Ralph..so you are saying they had no interests in knowing that the shot they "felt", and hit, was 20 paces?  I find that a bit difficult to belief.  A HUGE part of programing that "feel" in the brain comes form a curiosity of knowing the distance...using your eyes...sizing up the distance, and giving it your best 20 paces swing.... 

Do you feel the need to pace off all your putts? I assume you putt by feel...
Why is it such a giant leap to understand that people played all their shots by feel?

Because they didn't? 

I don't even know how to answer that.
??Pig headed belief??

[PCCraig]

Ralph..so you are saying they had no interests in knowing that the shot they "felt", and hit, was 20 paces?  I find that a bit difficult to belief.  A HUGE part of programing that "feel" in the brain comes form a curiosity of knowing the distance...using your eyes...sizing up the distance, and giving it your best 20 paces swing.... 

Do you feel the need to pace off all your putts? I assume you putt by feel...
Why is it such a giant leap to understand that people played all their shots by feel?

Because they didn't? 

I don't even know how to answer that.
??Pig headed belief??

You're right...the idea that golfers of yore played every single shot by feel is 100% a "pig headed" belief.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Ralph,
You've said this about 'feel' and I don't doubt it, but, you also said that much of the golf played in 'those' days was limited to a few courses and that the players got very familiar with the courses. So, for them familiarity was their yardage aid.

That way of playing still occurs today and I probably am not the only person here who can give you examples(in my case, quite a few) of guys who know their home course and a few others like the back of their hand, negating the need for help with yardage just as in OT's era.

Range finders or other yardage aids might take the guesswork out of the figuring, but that's not much different than learning a course over time. Actually, they're really just little hand held time machines for players of this very mobile era.  

[RSLivingston_III]

Ralph,
You've said this about 'feel' and I don't doubt it, but, you also said that much of the golf played in 'those' days was limited to a few courses and that the players got very familiar with the courses. So, for them familiarity was their yardage aid.

That way of playing still occurs today and I probably am not the only person here who can give you examples(in my case, quite a few) of guys who know their home course and a few others like the back of their hand, negating the need for help with yardage just as in OT's era.

Range finders or other yardage aids might take the guesswork out of the figuring, but that's not much different than learning a course over time. Actually, they're really just little hand held time machines for players of this very mobile era.  

You are making poor assumptions.
Without a number of you guys reading, and comprehending, a few books from pre-1900 (even pre-1930) I am just beating my head against the wall. There are no real parallels between golf in the 19th and the 21st centuries. You continue to impress concepts developed in the last half decade on golf 150 years ago. The most written about game of all time and this is all you guys think there is to the game. Open your minds, you might learn something.

I guess I am done, I don't know how to explain it to you.

[Kyle Harris]

The thing that Dave, Melvyn and a number of other people on this thread are neglecting is that the concept of the human ability to calculate and measure distance accurately has been studied for as long as projectile weapons have been used in warfare, such usage predates golf by over 1000 years. Artillery has long used trigonometry and outside measuring aides to determine the distance and necessary trajectory for a shot. If it were able to be done without, you better believe that the military would have trained and used that skill as the enemy is not going to kindly sit around while someone measures a distance.

The fact of the matter is that what we confuse for an innate skill in determining distance is actually a product of rote memorization. Binocular vision and our height limits our ability to calculate distances beyond 30 yards or so, even on a golf course. In fact, the less visual clues their are, the more inaccurate we are. We NEED things to help us determine distances. No wonder it is easier for us to use *skill* on the short game than the long game because those distances are hardwired for us. Golf is the only game where the scale is taken beyond the ability of our brains to come up with the distance without other cues. Any scientifically sound experiment will show this, especially as compared to those claiming to possess such "skill."

A golfer's so-called ability to calculate distance is very much based in experience and memorization and is not a skill transferable from golf course to golf course.

[Joe Hancock]

OK, raise your hand if this is one of your assumptions:

"The ball will come to rest somewhere reasonably close to where it lands"

and then ask yourself if that was the normal expectation 100 or more years ago.

Just thinking out loud....

[Jim_Kennedy]

Ralph
I thought my last post was mostly in agreement with what YOU wrote earlier:

I know it's a huge jump for many to make, but they FELT the distance and swung the club to accomplish it.

These guys played on courses they were familiar with. It might be best described as home-home matches. There weren't that many courses then (1830-1880). And the matches typically were played across multiple courses, not on a single course

Of course they knew the distances, these were their courses. If your state only had 5-6 courses and you played weekly matches over them, don't you think you would come to know them fairly well?

..but I guess you are stuck where you are, and as you seem to think I am stuck where I am, we're done.

[Peter Pallotta]

Sundance: You just keep thinking, Butch. That's what you're good at.
Butch: Boy, I got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals.

Peter

[Bart Bradley]

Kyle's above response makes a lot of sense.  3D stereovision is created by visual parallax...light rays coming from more than 20 ft away are mostly parallel and, therefore, don't create much, if any, parallax.  Distance judgement of far away objects would then be reliant only on "monocular clues" which are very inexact.  Looking at objects in the distance in an unfamiliar setting would certainly not allow for consistent precise distance estimation, no matter one's talent for it.

Bart

[John Chilver-Stainer]

As well as the distance guage we need wind speed and direction measurements, air pressure, humidity and temperature. The GPS mounted on our head can  compute the topography of our lie.

With our personalised swing weight, morphology and the courses characteristics and pin positions already programmed into the on-board computer our caddy car can read out exactly which club and which direction, we should play.

In fact the computer depending on our score and handicap can suggest a strategy of play.

Our computer caddy reads out.

“This is your caddy speaking - the next shot is 135yard 2 feet and 3 inches to the hole. Taking into account topographic and climatic conditions I suggest a layup with a sand wedge gripped down with a 3/4 swing at 12.5 degrees to the right of the line to the flag. 
I cannot  be held responsible for any mishits or damage to any property or persons, you must look for your own balls - this advice has just cost you $1.75 your credit is $12.50”.

[Rob Rigg]

For anyone arguing that even a "sense" of distance is something that 19th century golfers did not use, because they were 100% feel - c'mon!!!

Any shot you ever take on the golf golf takes into account the myriad of factors that have been brought up repeatedly. Distance IS one of them.

Whether you know a shot is 147 yards or not your brain is certainly using distance as one factor of how you feel the shot.

Whether you have 3 clubs or 20 clubs you factor in distance plus a bunch of other factors into a shot.

We can debate whether knowing distance is good/bad for the game, but it seems ridiculous to debate whether or not knowing or judging distance is important.

It is.

That is why, if you ever play a course without distance info (which I have done and actually find quite enjoyable), you will get better with time as you build experience and a "distance" database (along with a myriad of other factors database).

I would welcome the opp to play in competition on a new course where nobody knew distance for any of the rounds, never mind just the first. I think it brings an entirely different skillset into the equation. I would also imagine that everyones score would improve over 4 rounds - whether that was Melvyn, Tom, Ralph, Kyle, or anyone else - because the experience database would grow and knowing the actual yardage would become less important.

[Sean_A]

OK, raise your hand if this is one of your assumptions:

"The ball will come to rest somewhere reasonably close to where it lands"

and then ask yourself if that was the normal expectation 100 or more years ago.

Just thinking out loud....

Joe

This is exactly why I don't buy that knowing distance back in the day was anything like as important as today.  It would seem that many folks don't seem able to place themselves back in time to get a real flavour of golf was like.  This is why I think Ralph is saying that folks need to hit old balls and clubs on old courses - then a taste of the game will truly be apparent.  Those guys knew shots, not yardages.

Ciao 

[Craig Sweet]

Sean...

I think you are assuming that the modern golfer does not know shots...only yardage. Today's golfer knows how far he hits a certain club...just as a golfer did 150 years ago....knowing how far to hit the ball is the essence of hitting shots...how that distance is derived, measured, whatever is, is totally beside the point.

[Sean_A]

Sean...

I think you are assuming that the modern golfer does not know shots...only yardage. Today's golfer knows how far he hits a certain club...just as a golfer did 150 years ago....knowing how far to hit the ball is the essence of hitting shots...how that distance is derived, measured, whatever is, is totally beside the point.

Craig

Stick me on a course which is properly firm and I can't tell how far my pitching wedge will go let alone a driver.  I am apt to bounce a an 8 iron 100 yards if I can rather than throw a wedge in the air.  This is the reason angles and f&f go like a hand in a glove.  One without the other is largely pointless.  As I said before, distance became paramount once courses became codified and standardized in terms of maintenance and yardage.  You need to place yourself back in the day to get any perspective on the matter.  This is why I say through experience the ODGs learned shots, the yardage didn't matter nearly as much as giving oneself a play.  I don't know how this isn't apparent to anyone who has played in firm conditions.  Perhaps you are confusing the issue with knowing how far one carries the ball with a certain club rather than knowing a fairly precise yardage for how far a ball goes with that same club.  I recall reading that Vardon struggled like mad on a few courses during his 1900 tour of the US because courses were wetter than he was used to and he kept coming up short with approaches. 

Ciao

[John Burzynski]

The third baseman must gauge the hop of the scalding grounder as it approaches him -- to avoid getting handcuffed.

He does not consult a physics or geometry primer.

While in the air, the basketball forward must instantaneously judge the distance of his turnaround jumper -- or he throws up an airball.

But he does not break out a tape measure.

The quarterback must throw his out patterns and post routes by gauging the timing and distance of his passes -- or else the pass gets picked off.

Yet, he does not whip out a rangefinder.

These are fundamental skills that determine the success or failure of the sporting endeavour.

Melvyn and Ralph are right.

Judging distance is a fundamental skill of the game.  We have subverted a fundamental skill of the game with all the distance gauges we use.  And the game is worse for it. 
 

All those sports are played on field that have standardized sizes.  If every golf course had identical length holes with the same architectural features, I'd suggest that nobody would have the use for distance aids at all.  

That's all besides the point.  The larger issue is that once you allow one type of distance guage, allow them all.  There is no difference between a 150 yard post and a rangefinder.  Either allow everything or ban every single one.  

I will agree with those that say the game is much more romantic without distance aids.  If I were to build a course with imaginary money, the Friar's Head model would be my pick.  I don't mind using golf as a time warp, but won't begrudge those who do.

CPS

yes, compare it to your own experiences on courses.  On my home course, I know when I get to a certain position on a hole it is a '5 iron shot', or whatever.   Through experience and hundreds of rounds on the same course, i know what needs to be hit from where, all other atmospheric conditions being equal.  This is much like the athlete pulling up for a 15 ft. jumper or whatever, you know what type of shot you are taking based on where you are on the court.

But on a new-to-me course, a shot might look like a 5 iron shot but actually be deceiving due to architectural features or other unknown factors.   Until I play the hole a few times I need to know what yardage I am playing from, at least within +/- 10 yards, which course markings more than amply provide.

[Tags:]

Tags:

[Tags:]

Tags:

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()