I'm still far from convinced that its the right decision for the other 99% of every day players, even if it is the right choice for pros who have the skills to consistently hit out of different kinds of roughs and various lies.
Assuming the rough isn't 6" PGA Tour rough or something, 50r < 120f for every level of golfer.
This doesn't account for the width available at 50r (i.e. water, OB, thick trees, etc.) vs. 120f (i.e. the shot to get there). Only the expected score from those positions.
If anything, what I've noticed in my own game and those around me of similar skill is that aggressive play and hitting it as far as you can usually works against them. As opposed to taking the foot off the pedal and trying to play a bit safer and taking double bogey or worse out of the equation most of the time. Even the most difficult holes can be fairly easy bogeys for High cappers when you plan and play around the trouble and not go for par.
You might be right. I also think you'd be surprised.
For example, a 450-yard hole. And someone comes along and says "just hit your 5H 190, your 7I 150, and then hit your wedge 110. Two putt for bogey." All sounds great, except the guy is gonna miss the green 50% of the time from 110, miss the fairway 50% of the time with his 5H, shank his 7I 10% of the time perhaps… etc.
I always have preached that in many cases that's a bad idea.
Now you have to hit THREE good shots to make a bogie(unlikely for a mid-high handicapper)-and at least one good putt.
Hardly taking double out of the equation.
Besides being boring as.....
Jeff,
No disrespect, but outside of when you were first learning the game, when was the last time you were a poor golfer?
Even at my best over a 2 year period about 10 yeas ago, i only got my HC to a 12.
In my experience thou, I started scoring a lot better when I stopped going for the hero shots to tucked pins or carrying bunkers and just went for the safe areas doing my best to avoid OB, water, and trouble otherwise. I also don't think Erik's 3 irons analogy is very representative either, for me or the myriads of other high cappers I've played with. We will often choose 3 or 5 wood, and occasionally a long iron, but i can't ever recall using the 3 shorter irons strategy. But even if I did choose to hit 8 iron, 8 iron, wedge on a hard long par 4, that would still be plausible as other than the putter, my PW thru 7 iron have always been the best clubs in my bag in terms of hitting the intended shot with relative accuracy most of the time.
I'm only one data point, but I can say with absolute certainty that playing safer had a huge impact in significantly reducing doubles and worse. But yes as a high capper, they are always there. I doubt I've ever shot a round without taking at least one DB...even my best round ever, a 77, included one.