[Michael Felton]

Is it possible that working harder on your 200-225 game is more valuable than working on your putting?  If so, why is it that virtually every winner is among the leaders that week in putting?

So the thing with that is most players have a baseline range of scores that they shoot. For most tour pros it's probably in the 65-72 range. For the most part, where they fall in that range is dependent on how many putts they happen to hole. But putting is a bit of a crap shoot. Tour pros hole about 15-20% of putts from 20 feet. The nature of statistics is that some tournaments that will be 10% and others 30%. The tournaments where it's 30% are the ones where they have high strokes gained putting and not surprisingly the ones where they are at the top of the leaderboard. The weeks where it's 10% are the weeks they miss the cut.


I think what happens is that in a given round, the range of strokes gained putting could go from -2 to +5 for a given player. But the averages across a season range from about -1 to +1. Sometimes people hole a lot of putts, but no one can do that every week.


Conversely, strokes gained approach across a season ranges from about -2.5 to +2.5. A far higher range, which is why that has more impact than putting. But a given player who has a good approach game probably ranges from +1 to +2, while a bad player might range from -1 to -2. I'm making these numbers up, but the point is that week to week people's strokes gained approach doesn't change very much, while their putting number fluctuates a lot more.


What that means is that someone like Tiger in his pomp could have a bad week putting and his strokes gained tee to green puts him in the mix. When he has a good week putting, the rest of the field look like they weren't even there that week. An average player tee to green is giving up 10 shots on Tiger in a week tee to green. That's an awful lot of putts you have to make up.


The issue I think with Broadie's stuff is that he gives you part of the analysis. If you are a mid handicap say and you look at the difference between you and Dustin Johnson. It likely breaks down something like this:


Off the tee: -6
Approach: -9
Short game: -4
Putting: -4


Clearly there is a bigger difference in the long game. So that might imply you should work on your long game. What I don't think Broadie's stuff shows you is how much work might be involved in improving those. What I mean there is it might be that if you spent 15 minutes a day in your basement working on your putting from 6-8 feet for a week before a tournament, you could make the putting number -2 instead of -4, so you could pick up 2 shots right there. To gain two shots with your long game might need months of work to be done.


Where Broadie's stuff is useful is with a 15 year old kid who wants to go pro. That kid has the opportunity to really work on his game and make real improvements. For him it is useful to know that long game is where it's at.

[Michael Felton]

I really enjoyed Broadie's book and found the conclusions very compelling. They seemed obvious after reading the book and seeing the data. However, it took me reading the book to see the obviousness of the conclusions.


However, I have found the work of Scott Fawcett more compelling because he makes use of the data but provided better practical application of the data, at least in terms of the way I think. I'm pretty sure Bryson DeChambeau is a big proponent of Fawcett's decade system. And, Fawcett works with many high level college programs. So, his strategy ideas are going to become more common on Tour.


Tom Doak - I highly recommend that you check out some of Fawcett's videos and thoughts in addition to Broadie's.

Seconding this. Scott Fawcett's stuff is great. Here is a link to his video on youtube about driving. It's what I first saw to get into his stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziCTTnmGPzU


As to the architecture side of this, one of my favourite aspects of GCA is the situation where you can decide where to take your punishment. You can either be aggressive off the tee and take your risks there, with the benefit being that you have a much easier approach if you pull it off. Or you take a safer route from the tee, but that leaves you with a much more difficult approach. I think most of the time, the Broadie/Fawcett approach only really looks at the next shot. So if you have water on one side, you should aim slightly away from that towards the rough on the other side. So I would say as a GCA you want to make sure that the trouble on the right is worse than it looks. Take 14 at TPC Sawgrass. There is the water and bunker left, so a lot of players aim at the right edge of the fairway. Half the time they're fine, but half the time they're in the right rough and then they're in all those humps and hollows. Not a good spot, but the image of the water on the left pushes more of them into it than would happen if that was just a bunker on the left.


The tilted green as Tom mentions is a really good one since it's more subtle than those humps and hollows. I think the other would be to have trouble by the green that makes it harder to get at it from the safer side. So a deep bunker on the right side of the green that you only have to go over if you're on the right edge of the fairway. Works much better if the greens are firm.

[Kyle Harris]

I just ordered the book and it arrives Sunday.


What is the equivalent statement in golf to:


"It's better to have a man on second with one out than a man on first with one out."

[Steve Kline]

I just ordered the book and it arrives Sunday.


What is the equivalent statement in golf to:


"It's better to have a man on second with one out than a man on first with one out."

Perhaps:


It's better to be 20 yards closer in the rough with a wedge than hitting an 8 iron from the fairway.


There's data to show what the real number is for my hypothetical 20 yards above. Both Broadie and Fawcett could tell you what it takes the average tour pro to hole out from certain distances in the rough and fairway.


What was shocking to me in all of this is is the dispersion pattern in shots for Tour pros and how they don't make birdie as often as you think. But, they are way better at avoiding doubles and/or bogeys than the rest of us (high level ams that is).

[Steve Kline]

Re: dispersion patterns


The left to right distance between Jason Day's tee shows is 65 yards or so. 65 yards! So, Fawcett shows that unless there is really 65 yards between hazards and trees you shouldn't be hitting driver. However, if there is 65 yards between hazards and trees bombs away! And, aim so that the center of your shot pattern is in the middle of that 65 yards, even if your aim point is smack dab in the middle of a bunker. There's more nuance to what he's advocating but that is the basic idea.

[Tom_Doak]

it seemed to me that buried in [Pelz's] stats was another conclusion:


1. only players hitting lofted iron approaches regularly get within 20 feet of the pin, and
2. only players who are long off the tee regularly hit lofted iron approaches, (That data is probably dated now. No one on the Tour today hits mid or long iron approaches. But bear with me.)
3. then shouldn't I spend my limited time and money in learning to be longer off the tee?


In short, becoming a better putter doesn't help much unless I am hitting my approaches within 20 feet and I can't do that unless I am hitting approaches with lofted clubs.

Yes, and this is where the Broadie book really takes off.  He is calculating values for every shot, and what he's showing is that getting inside 20 feet more often will do you more good than just making a fraction more putts from inside 20 feet.


To another poster's question, he and Dave Pelz have compared notes and both seem to respect and generally agree with the other's work.  As A.G. says, their career paths based on their ideas are just very different.  Indeed, I think Mark Broadie would be the first to agree that if he'd taken all of his data in 1980, the numbers from 100 yards and in were probably quite a bit different and the curve much steeper, and Pelz's work with TOUR players on their wedge games is a big part of what's changed the dynamic.  You can only bomb and gouge if you are pretty good at gouging!

[Tom_Doak]

Re: dispersion patterns


The left to right distance between Jason Day's tee shows is 65 yards or so. 65 yards! So, Fawcett shows that unless there is really 65 yards between hazards and trees you shouldn't be hitting driver. However, if there is 65 yards between hazards and trees bombs away! And, aim so that the center of your shot pattern is in the middle of that 65 yards, even if your aim point is smack dab in the middle of a bunker. There's more nuance to what he's advocating but that is the basic idea.

This was the next piece of info I saw that lit up the light bulb over my head.  Because 65 yards is also the number that we've all been using for years as the minimum "playable" width needed for the average golfer to get around without losing a lot of balls.


But, it turns out that making things precisely that wide has also enabled Jason Day [and everyone else on TOUR] to let it rip.


So, what to do?  My first simple conclusion would be that "pro strategy" doesn't have anything to do with fairway width, so we might as well keep building the fairways pretty wide.  But we need to start creeping in hazardous conditions [trees, long rough, water] inside of the 65 yard width 270-330 yards from the tee, where the pros hit it.  And maybe put the regular tee where the average golfer still won't reach that zone ... or way up where he can get past it.


Before one of my pet trolls starts to object to this thought, keep in mind, I am only discussing this in the context of building a course to challenge TOUR pros.  I've only built one course in my career so far where that was a goal for my client, but I am working on another now.

[Nigel Islam]

My reading of the books has the “so what” as determining an optimal strategy based on a true understanding of the distributions from which your different shot outcomes are resulting from. The dynamic programming solution he advocates as an optimal strategy is the lowest aggregate expected value given the expected value of each shot in succession. Hence the conversation of playing to the left rough when your dispersion is bringing ob right into play.

I've not had time to read it from cover to cover yet; I've only read about halfway so far, and then glanced through the rest.  I'll have more time this weekend to get up to speed, once I've signed about 400 more books and dug out addresses for sixty people who will soon have a nice gift!


The diagrams of strategy on a par-4 with water or o.b. in play did stand out to me.  His recommendation is for players to aim 32.5 yards wide of a hazard whether it's in the fairway or not, because the penalty shot costs them so much more than the fractional penalty for being in the rough.  In theory, those numbers would change with the length of the hole -- i.e. it might be worth the risk if you could drive the green and make eagle sometimes -- but he does not present that scenario as far as I've seen.


The reason this is so important to me is in trying to design strategy into golf holes.  If great players are so convinced by the general arguments in the book that they shouldn't ever aim to one side of the fairway for strategy [because there's no statistical advantage on the average hole], or their decisions are all driven by the presence of water and o.b. instead of bunkers, then the Pete Dye approach would be to try to maximize the disparities they don't acknowledge. 


I'm only starting to get a sense of what those disparities are, but the one I've mentioned already is tilted greens.

   This is a great thread, but aiming 32.5 yards away from trouble is what stood out to me. I do this, and have done this for years. Are you saying that Broadie is advocating tour pros aim this far? I always assumed that they only got defensive in crunch time on Sunday.
    The scoring average being equitable from above and below the hole makes some sense. Who hasn’t played a course in less than ideal conditions where being above the hole makes it easier to make the putt? I’d venture to guess that in the early days of ANGC that might have held true there as well. Hammering a putt on a green stimping 6 brings a whole lot of bad things to my stroke. Broadie’s data also takes into account all weather conditions. The trouble with analytics is you have to understand why the data tells the story it does. That’s what separates the Dave Roberts and Alex Coras of the world🙁

[Kyle Harris]

So, what to do?  My first simple conclusion would be that "pro strategy" doesn't have anything to do with fairway width, so we might as well keep building the fairways pretty wide.  But we need to start creeping in hazardous conditions [trees, long rough, water] inside of the 65 yard width 270-330 yards from the tee, where the pros hit it.  And maybe put the regular tee where the average golfer still won't reach that zone ... or way up where he can get past it.


Before one of my pet trolls starts to object to this thought, keep in mind, I am only discussing this in the context of building a course to challenge TOUR pros.  I've only built one course in my career so far where that was a goal for my client, but I am working on another now.

I feel almost liberated artistically by this thought simply because creative use of side-slope and site dependent weather conditions narrow these corridors. At some point players will begin to underpower the golf course if the hazards are menacing enough and then the long approach comes back.


Going back to my original question about the efficacy of the bunt and the out v. runner conversation - how does one move the statement to "It's better to be 20 yards back in the fairway than it is to be 20 yards forward in the (bunker/rough/water/whatever)?

[Nigel Islam]

Re: dispersion patterns


The left to right distance between Jason Day's tee shows is 65 yards or so. 65 yards! So, Fawcett shows that unless there is really 65 yards between hazards and trees you shouldn't be hitting driver. However, if there is 65 yards between hazards and trees bombs away! And, aim so that the center of your shot pattern is in the middle of that 65 yards, even if your aim point is smack dab in the middle of a bunker. There's more nuance to what he's advocating but that is the basic idea.

This was the next piece of info I saw that lit up the light bulb over my head.  Because 65 yards is also the number that we've all been using for years as the minimum "playable" width needed for the average golfer to get around without losing a lot of balls.


But, it turns out that making things precisely that wide has also enabled Jason Day [and everyone else on TOUR] to let it rip.


So, what to do?  My first simple conclusion would be that "pro strategy" doesn't have anything to do with fairway width, so we might as well keep building the fairways pretty wide.  But we need to start creeping in hazardous conditions [trees, long rough, water] inside of the 65 yard width 270-330 yards from the tee, where the pros hit it.  And maybe put the regular tee where the average golfer still won't reach that zone ... or way up where he can get past it.


Before one of my pet trolls starts to object to this thought, keep in mind, I am only discussing this in the context of building a course to challenge TOUR pros.  I've only built one course in my career so far where that was a goal for my client, but I am working on another now.

Isn’t this the conclusion Pete Dye came to? I live 75 minutes from French Lick, and Dye built the playing corridors very wide, but the fairway cut very narrow. His theory being that the average player is better off in a first cut of rough than the fairway anyway. I suspect a lot of the stuff that you, Pete, C&C, Hanse, etc. do already inherently reflects 85% of his data.

[Nigel Islam]

So, what to do?  My first simple conclusion would be that "pro strategy" doesn't have anything to do with fairway width, so we might as well keep building the fairways pretty wide.  But we need to start creeping in hazardous conditions [trees, long rough, water] inside of the 65 yard width 270-330 yards from the tee, where the pros hit it.  And maybe put the regular tee where the average golfer still won't reach that zone ... or way up where he can get past it.


Before one of my pet trolls starts to object to this thought, keep in mind, I am only discussing this in the context of building a course to challenge TOUR pros.  I've only built one course in my career so far where that was a goal for my client, but I am working on another now.

I feel almost liberated artistically by this thought simply because creative use of side-slope and site dependent weather conditions narrow these corridors. At some point players will begin to underpower the golf course if the hazards are menacing enough and then the long approach comes back.


Going back to my original question about the efficacy of the bunt and the out v. runner conversation - how does one move the statement to "It's better to be 20 yards back in the fairway than it is to be 20 yards forward in the (bunker/rough/water/whatever)?

I think the problem with both questions is that there is no absolute answer. The answer also varies for whose involved. As a hospital physician it drives me crazy when administrators try to make decisions on treatments based on statistics. A 40 year old healthy golf course architect is not treated the same as his 85 year old grandmother with a terrible heart and advanced dementia. I LOVE statistics, but using statistics to make pathway decisions is not using them properly.

[Tom_Doak]

   This is a great thread, but aiming 32.5 yards away from trouble is what stood out to me. I do this, and have done this for years. Are you saying that Broadie is advocating tour pros aim this far? I always assumed that they only got defensive in crunch time on Sunday.

Yes, that's his generic number if there is out of bounds on one side of the hole ... because he has done the math on how many times you'd have to miss in the rough to offset the penalty strokes you'd get for going o.b.  The 65-yard wide cone is based on a 2% error rate ... so only 1% would miss on the wrong side over the fence.  So, oversimplifying the math, if going o.b. is costing you two shots, missing in the rough must be worth no more than 0.04 shots [you could do it fifty times out of 100 and still be just as well off].


When I worked for Mr. Dye, he always stressed how hard it was to build a hole where a TOUR player might actually hit it in the water, because of how conservative they were in their strategy.  I thought he felt they were TOO conservative and it worked against them, but based on my math in the paragraph above, it certainly pays to be hyper-conservative where o.b. is a factor.  [That's why it seemed like so many more players at the Road Hole just hit it in the hay to the left than they used to ... I'll bet anything there were fewer balls o.b. there than in past Opens because they've all read Broadie's book.] 

[Michael Felton]

I would think that if your goal is to make scores among the pros higher, you can do that in a couple of ways. The scores get higher if you're further from the hole, so you can do things to encourage them to lay up. Or you can encourage them to hit it further, but have more trouble around that will increase scores. Strokes taken from recovery situations are much higher (i.e. trees).


So you could use some combination of sand, water and trees to narrow significantly the driving area from 270 onwards. That will encourage them to hit it 260, not 310.


One thing you rarely ever see on the PGA Tour is a player hitting it in a fairway bunker in a spot where they can't advance it very far. The bunkers are all shallow with low lips. Make the bunkers deep, with big lips and if you're feeling really mean you could even build them with a little downslope in the base so they have to work really hard to lift the ball up.


Or you could build holes with a penalty hazard on one side and trees on the other. If it's more than 40 yards between the two, they'll hit driver and more towards the trees too. That would up their scoring average.


I think partly the issue is if you stick to what the stats tell you to do, it really works. Take 13 at Augusta for example. Off the tee, you have big trouble down the left, so they aim further to the right. That means a lot of them wind up in the trees on the right. They know that. They hit it towards the trees on the right. 50% of the time they hit it in the left side of their shot pattern and they're in great shape. 50% of the time they're in the trees and then they either get lucky and have a shot, or they don't. If they don't they can still get it down there 100 yards short and then they have a decent chance at a 4 anyway. They know all this standing on the tee, so they can aim it where they like and let it rip. And they're not particularly worried where it goes.

[Tom_Doak]

I think the problem with both questions is that there is no absolute answer. The answer also varies for whose involved. As a hospital physician it drives me crazy when administrators try to make decisions on treatments based on statistics. A 40 year old healthy golf course architect is not treated the same as his 85 year old grandmother with a terrible heart and advanced dementia. I LOVE statistics, but using statistics to make pathway decisions is not using them properly.

Yes, exactly.  The player who knows his 98% success ratio is 55 yards wide instead of 65 yards has a clear advantage; he doesn't have to aim as far to the safe side, and he will hit the fairway more often, so his scoring will improve fractionally by avoiding the rough on the "safe" side more often.  That's probably the kind of thing that Luke Donald took away from the book.


Reading the numbers on Tiger's advantage in approach play [and his stats in the book are averages from 2004-2012, so Tiger was even more dominant than these numbers at his peak] helped confirm what I'd suspected about Tiger's strategy.  He knew exactly what his average miss was, and that it was less than his opponent's, and that allowed him to press home his advantage strategically.  For example, not having a three-putt at The Masters means you are consistently staying below the hole; not hitting into a bunker over 72 holes at St. Andrews means you have kept them all out of your likely landing spots.  But Tiger could take that "conservative" approach AND make a lot of birdies, because his dispersion pattern with his irons was so tight that he could aim below the hole AND not worry about missing in the water, where other guys cannot.

[Peter Pallotta]

Really interesting thread.
Reminds me of how so many great players of the past, each in their own way from Hogan to Nicklaus to Trevino, focused on 'eliminating one side of the golf course' -- Nicklaus most famously perhaps with his fade.
But then what might happen if the side they *haven't* eliminated is canted/sloped, or if it offers the poorest angle into one heck of a cool green?
I envy you Tom the fun & challenge of figuring out this new kind of puzzle.
P   

[Tom_Doak]

I would think that if your goal is to make scores among the pros higher,

That isn't necessarily my goal.


The primary goal would be to make them think about the risks and rewards a lot more than they do now by mixing things up on them.  My feeling is that the new "book" has given them more confidence about their default choices and they do not go against the book very often -- like managers who bring in their closer, they will take their lumps if the obvious choice doesn't work out, vs. sticking their necks out because the situation is different than normal.


So, most of all, I'd like to find ways to reward players for making unconventional choices [and pulling them off].  That would cause them all to have to think about it more, and as Mr. Dye once explained it to me, that's when you get them outside their comfort zones ... just by making them think.




For example, one thing I've learned from the book is that there seems to be no thought to hitting a fade or draw off the tee ... Broadie is just looking at a certain width of landing zone, not the trajectory that gets you there.  Our old friend Paul Cowley and I used to talk about making the fairways CURVE gently to encourage a draw or a fade, so your ball would be less likely to run through the other side into the rough, and back in the day, his boss might well have picked up on that, at least on the holes where it fit his fade.  Today, it seems like players just aren't looking at the fairway lines anymore ... the target area they're visualizing is a much wider area that they are sure they can hit, and the little stuff doesn't matter much.


But that's an oversimplification:  I've gotta look much more carefully at the numbers to see what happens when there's no water or o.b. in play.  At that point, the default is surely just to aim at the middle of the fairway, but it would be interesting to sort out what sort of trouble around the green would be enough to override the default setting for the tee shot.

[Jim Sherma]

I'm convinced that strategy for better players simplifies as the greens get softer and more receptive. When the greens are holding angles matter much less, rough versus fairway for the approach matters much less, and tilt of the fairway lie versus tilt of the green matters much less.


When greens are firm the prospect of hitting an approach off of a hook lie to a green tilted right to left makes you really think if that's the shot you want to leave yourself. When they are receptive it's one less concern. Same with the need to control the ball stopping with spin compared to angle of descent making fairways hit much more valuable than additional yardage off the tee but in the rough.

[Nigel Islam]

I'm convinced that strategy for better players simplifies as the greens get softer and more receptive. When the greens are holding angles matter much less, rough versus fairway for the approach matters much less, and tilt of the fairway lie versus tilt of the green matters much less.


When greens are firm the prospect of hitting an approach off of a hook lie to a green tilted right to left makes you really think if that's the shot you want to leave yourself. When they are receptive it's one less concern. Same with the need to control the ball stopping with spin compared to angle of descent making fairways hit much more valuable than additional yardage off the tee but in the rough.

I’m trying to remember how the Webb Simpson US Open at Olympic compared to the Lee Jansen one off the tee. Olympic Lake employs a lot of the things you are describing there. But the problem is with a wedge in your hand a lot of this just goes out the window....

[Nigel Islam]

I wonder how one could apply Broadie’s data to the old template holes? I suspect it would have Old Charlie doing a 360 in his grave to here the best scoring average to a Redan might be to just aim right at the flag and let the shot dispersion dictate the result.

[Tom_Doak]

the best scoring average to a Redan might be to just aim right at the flag and let the shot dispersion dictate the result.

Well, the best miss has always been long left.  The worst is in the back bunkers, so you've gotta avoid those, which leaves two strategies:


1.  Aim at the flag or just left of it, let the ball run away to the back left, and putt uphill [if you are good enough to consistently carry it back there], or


2.  Make sure you don't have enough club to reach the back bunkers -- which also means you can't carry the front left bunker, so you aim right of the flag.

[Buck Wolter]

Andy and Zac Blair have sort of a twitter war with Scott Fawcett as SF basically says strategy doesn’t matter (you should never play towards a preferred angle you should aim between hazards to allow for dispersion). I believe Andy and Zac think this short changes a good players ability to do that which allows for a better score.


One of his other keys is missing to the fat side of greens — you aim your approach based on dispersion between the pin and the preferred side to miss. Unless a pin is middle a hole in one is a push or pull. I seem to remember him saying this was one of Tigers biggest advantages — he almost never short sided himself.


Buck

[Steve Kline]

I think the problem with both questions is that there is no absolute answer. The answer also varies for whose involved. As a hospital physician it drives me crazy when administrators try to make decisions on treatments based on statistics. A 40 year old healthy golf course architect is not treated the same as his 85 year old grandmother with a terrible heart and advanced dementia. I LOVE statistics, but using statistics to make pathway decisions is not using them properly.

Yes, exactly.  The player who knows his 98% success ratio is 55 yards wide instead of 65 yards has a clear advantage; he doesn't have to aim as far to the safe side, and he will hit the fairway more often, so his scoring will improve fractionally by avoiding the rough on the "safe" side more often.  That's probably the kind of thing that Luke Donald took away from the book.


Reading the numbers on Tiger's advantage in approach play [and his stats in the book are averages from 2004-2012, so Tiger was even more dominant than these numbers at his peak] helped confirm what I'd suspected about Tiger's strategy.  He knew exactly what his average miss was, and that it was less than his opponent's, and that allowed him to press home his advantage strategically.  For example, not having a three-putt at The Masters means you are consistently staying below the hole; not hitting into a bunker over 72 holes at St. Andrews means you have kept them all out of your likely landing spots.  But Tiger could take that "conservative" approach AND make a lot of birdies, because his dispersion pattern with his irons was so tight that he could aim below the hole AND not worry about missing in the water, where other guys cannot.

Actually, I think Fawcett's point is that the dispersion patterns aren't dramatically different from player to player. Basically, every single golfer, virtually regardless of skill level has a dispersion pattern that is +/- 10% of the distance the shot travels. It has more to do with physics than skill level. (I think Broadie makes this point too).


Tiger simply knows the reality of the dispersion pattern better than the others and plays for the dispersion pattern better than the others. He knows he needs to aim for the fat side of the green so that his dispersion pattern keeps him from getting short sided. I'm sure Nicklaus and Hogan knew this too. However, I would venture to say that Mickelson didn't know this as well, which is why he didn't do as well as in majors (where you really have to avoid bigger numbers).

[Steve Kline]

Really interesting thread.
Reminds me of how so many great players of the past, each in their own way from Hogan to Nicklaus to Trevino, focused on 'eliminating one side of the golf course' -- Nicklaus most famously perhaps with his fade.
But then what might happen if the side they *haven't* eliminated is canted/sloped, or if it offers the poorest angle into one heck of a cool green?
I envy you Tom the fun & challenge of figuring out this new kind of puzzle.
P   

What Fawcett shows is that it is a fallacy that golfers eliminate one side of the golf course by playing a draw or fade or working the ball away from trouble, etc. Because even if you play a fade consistently 50% of your shots will end up left of your target and 50% of your shots will end of right of your target.


The only way to eliminate one half of the golf course is to aim at a point where you dispersion pattern won't get you in trouble.

[Steve Kline]

Here's a video of Fawcett's on driving thoughts and strategy.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziCTTnmGPzU&app=desktop


I've watched almost every video he has out there and in his app the last few months. As a plus handicap for most of the last 30 years, these videos and his strategy ideas have been a revelation to me.


Although, the hardest one for me to mentally accept basically relying on one shot shape only and playing for that dispersion pattern. I'm used to working the ball both ways. So, when my eye sees a fade because either the green or fairway (as Tom mentioned above) is curved or slanted that way, then it is very hard for me to trust myself to play my natural draw and its dispersion pattern. I keep thinking I'll blast it through long left.

[Tom_Doak]

One of his other keys is missing to the fat side of greens — you aim your approach based on dispersion between the pin and the preferred side to miss. Unless a pin is middle a hole in one is a push or pull. I seem to remember him saying this was one of Tigers biggest advantages — he almost never short sided himself.

I know how to attack that part.  There are certainly some greens designs that make "short siding yourself" irrelevant, because it's better to be on the short side.


At least, that's true if Broadie's numbers are wrong about there being no general advantage to putting uphill or downhill.


He also doesn't make a distinction about short-siding yourself in any of the numbers on approach shots or bunker play or recovery from the rough.  That would be harder to do because it's three-dimensional and not 2-D, and all of the ShotLink data is 2-D.  You'd have to know the course and the greens in order to divide the data appropriately to deal with short-siding.


Regardless of that, I will seek to design at least a couple of greens where avoiding short-siding is a mistake, because I know some pros are just used to aiming at the middle of the green instead of thinking which side is better to miss on.

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