The underrated/misunderstood short game.

[mike_malone]

Before Fleetwood missed that playoff putt I was thinking about the importance of the short game even at the highest levels of golf. The commentators said that Rock was weak and he showed it.  Rai hit two nice chips on 18. Fleetwood missed two short putts but made a clutch one on 18 to force the playoff.


A shot from 150 yards can be 20 feet away from the pin in any direction and it’s good. So there is a margin for error there. From 25 yards three feet off line can determine the winner.


The architecture comes into play as well. The smallest rise in the front of a green combined with subtle putting surface movements tests these pros.

[Tommy Williamsen]

Before Fleetwood missed that playoff putt I was thinking about the importance of the short game even at the highest levels of golf. The commentators said that Rock was weak and he showed it.  Rai hit two nice chips on 18. Fleetwood missed two short putts but made a clutch one on 18 to force the playoff.


A shot from 150 yards can be 20 feet away from the pin in any direction and it’s good. So there is a margin for error there. From 25 yards three feet off line can determine the winner.


The architecture comes into play as well. The smallest rise in the front of a green combined with subtle putting surface movements tests these pros.

I don't know if it underrated, but it certainly is important. I practice my short game more than my long game. It has saved me from big numbers many times. I am always amazed when touring pros lack some of the intricacies of short game shots.
I think its importance has become clearer in recent years. Some of the older pros (Nicklaus is a prime example) didn't possess the same skill as the elite players of today.

[Niall C]

Apparently Rock had been getting coaching on chipping fro Harrington (I think) and certainly some of his short approaches over the last couple of days were outstanding. His chip at the last was a very full swing and when he hit it I was expecting an awful lot of grip that never happened. I suspect that shot was more down to nerves rather than lack of technique. He was only 145 yards out for his second shot so to take a 5 would have been disappointing irrespective of the circumstances. That said, I thought his swing and rhythm in the 3rd round were fantastic and wonderful to watch.


As an aside, on the last in the last round, it was noticeable how many were short even from wedge/9 iron range.


Niall   

[Thomas Dai]

It wasn’t until the cameras moved around a bit during the play-off that it seemed noticeable how much contour there is on the play-off green.
I’m assuming it’s the usual 18th and if so didn’t Tom and Clyde tweak it a bit this past winter?
Atb


PS - the commentators said it was Thomas Bjorn who was giving Robert Rock short game advice as reciprocation for Rock helping Bjorn with his long game.

[Tommy Williamsen]

PS - the commentators said it was Thomas Bjorn who was giving Robert Rock short game advice as reciprocation for Rock helping Bjorn with his long game.

Maybe Bjorn can take Rock out to 16 at Royal Saint George and ask for help in the bunker.

[Tony_Muldoon]

Before Fleetwood missed that playoff putt I was thinking about the importance of the short game even at the highest levels of golf. The commentators said that Rock was weak and he showed it.  Rai hit two nice chips on 18. Fleetwood missed two short putts but made a clutch one on 18 to force the playoff.


A shot from 150 yards can be 20 feet away from the pin in any direction and it’s good. So there is a margin for error there. From 25 yards three feet off line can determine the winner.


The architecture comes into play as well. The smallest rise in the front of a green combined with subtle putting surface movements tests these pros.

Mike does the phrase Spoiler Alert mean anything to you? Doh!

[John Crowley]

Apparently Rock had been getting coaching on chipping fro Harrington (I think) and certainly some of his short approaches over the last couple of days were outstanding. His chip at the last was a very full swing and when he hit it I was expecting an awful lot of grip that never happened. I suspect that shot was more down to nerves rather than lack of technique. He was only 145 yards out for his second shot so to take a 5 would have been disappointing irrespective of the circumstances. That said, I thought his swing and rhythm in the 3rd round were fantastic and wonderful to watch.


As an aside, on the last in the last round, it was noticeable how many were short even from wedge/9 iron range.


Niall

He chose the wrong shot under the circumstances (or almost any circumstances). Should have chipped a low runner (for better distance control) no need to elevate the ball at that distance with nothing in the way. Some of the pros are a bit one dimensional around the green, lofting every chip.

[Tom_Doak]

Apparently Rock had been getting coaching on chipping fro Harrington (I think) and certainly some of his short approaches over the last couple of days were outstanding. His chip at the last was a very full swing and when he hit it I was expecting an awful lot of grip that never happened.

He chose the wrong shot under the circumstances (or almost any circumstances). Should have chipped a low runner (for better distance control) no need to elevate the ball at that distance with nothing in the way. Some of the pros are a bit one dimensional around the green, lofting every chip.

Look no firther than Rai's two beautiful running chips to save par on the 18th in regulation and in the playoff.

[Thomas Dai]

Apparently Rock had been getting coaching on chipping fro Harrington (I think) and certainly some of his short approaches over the last couple of days were outstanding. His chip at the last was a very full swing and when he hit it I was expecting an awful lot of grip that never happened.

He chose the wrong shot under the circumstances (or almost any circumstances). Should have chipped a low runner (for better distance control) no need to elevate the ball at that distance with nothing in the way. Some of the pros are a bit one dimensional around the green, lofting every chip.

Look no firther than Rai's two beautiful running chips to save par on the 18th in regulation and in the playoff.

Francis Ouimet gave every member of his St Andrews Walker Cup team a ‘jigger’, a lofted but short shafted iron, and told them to practice intensively with it prior to the event.
And in more modern times Todd Hamilton using his Sonartec hybrid from well short of the greens at Troon when he won The Open at Royal Troon.
‘Horses for courses’?
Atb

[Mark Fedeli]

For average players, I think that once you hit a certain level of ability with your full shots, the short game becomes more and more important as a means of salvaging a round. A lot of mid-handicap players, say 7 to 15, can get the ball going in a forward-ish direction at a decent distance. They can get "near" the green in regulation a good amount of the time. Getting up and down and getting out of bunkers and avoiding 3-putts then becomes the difference between a bad round and a good round. Obviously, for better players, the short game can be the difference between a good round and an epic round, but they key to their consistent success lies more with their ability to collect GIRs on a regular basis and avoid round-destroying mistakes.


The chip by Rock was an abomination. Still can't believe he went with so much loft there. Flashbacks to the US Am at Bandon and some of those players' inability to pull the trigger on a bump and run.

[mike_malone]

Mark,
I saw one match where on 16 at the Am the first guy ran a 50/60 yard pitch over the green into the hazard behind. Armed with that information the second guy did the same thing!!!

[Mark Fedeli]

Mark,
I saw one match where on 16 at the Am the first guy ran a 50/60 yard pitch over the green into the hazard behind. Armed with that information the second guy did the same thing!!!

I saw the same thing. And I think it happened a few times during the last two days — where both players made the same bad lofted play.

[A.G._Crockett]

The short game isn't underrated; it's misunderstood.  The key to a good short game is missing in a place that gives you a chance to get up and down.  The separator is ball striking, not magic with wedges.  (And please resist the temptation to tell me about Phil Mickelson here, or to give me examples of one-in-a-zillion shots hit by whomever throughout golf history; I'm talking macro.)


 You could put a pro in places around almost any green where they would struggle to get up and down, and you could put a decent amateur in places around that same green where getting up and down would be well above a 50-50 deal.  The deal with Tour pros is that they just don't miss very often in places where they are dead.


Go to a Tour event and watch the entire field come thru a particular hole; they're all trying to play the hole the same way, and you might well see zero misses in particular places.  We all know that Tour pros in certain cases choose the miss into a greenside bunker rather than the rough or going long, for instance.

Being able to play a bump and run shot, or even putting from off the green, is a great example of missing in a good place, and pros do that routinely.  Cherry picking examples of guys making a bad play under pressure, or of the converse of the miracle chip or pitch doesn't change that. 


Over the course of multiple rounds by many players, and pretty much at any level, it's ball striking that dominates.  And even for the pros, it's a game of misses, and controlling WHERE you miss is the key to the short game.  That doesn't mean that the short game and putting aren't a big deal; they are. 

[JESII]

Over the course of multiple rounds by many players, and pretty much at any level, it's ball striking that dominates.  And even for the pros, it's a game of misses, and controlling WHERE you miss is the key to the short game.  That doesn't mean that the short game and putting aren't a big deal; they are.

AG - hope you're well!


Why is it then that the only time Rory wins is when he putts well? Same for DJ...

[mike_malone]

 “Misunderstood “ works for me. I was trying to find  a word that implied that the short game doesn’t get enough respect.

[Jim Sherma]

I agree that the Good Miss - Bad Miss dynamic is what really drives the short game effectiveness.


Getting back to how this related to specific architecture I find that some courses really play up the good miss-bad miss aspects more than others.


Alec Findley courses tend to accentuate this. They tend to have areas around the greens, usually over and around to one of the sides, that you just can't expect to get up and down from with anything less than a great or lucky shot. The rest of the surrounds lend themselves to much higher conversion probabilities.


An interesting course that also drives this is Hershey's East Course. A George Fazio with the high point of most green complexes being in the middle of the green with fall off's to all sides on most of them. This is the one course I've payed where you are almost always better short siding yourself and chipping into the slope as opposed to having to come across the high point.


Both are definitely cases where the ability to miss in the right place in the long game drives the effectiveness of one's short game.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Before Fleetwood missed that playoff putt I was thinking about the importance of the short game even at the highest levels of golf. The commentators said that Rock was weak and he showed it.  Rai hit two nice chips on 18. Fleetwood missed two short putts but made a clutch one on 18 to force the playoff.

If a player misses an eight-foot putt for the win, he still beat 142 other players or whatever, and the other 270 shots he hit that week still matter. You're looking at a few shots and giving them more importance than they deserve. Had the one guy not hit it in the fairway bunker, and the other not missed the fairway in the rough (I think I have those right, but I may be off about the rough - I'm fairly certain I saw a guy in a fairway bunker), they'd have not needed their short game.

A shot from 150 yards can be 20 feet away from the pin in any direction and it’s good. So there is a margin for error there. From 25 yards three feet off line can determine the winner.

A shot from 150 yards to 20 feet is hit to 4.4% of the distance of the shot. The chip from 25 yards to 3 feet is hit to 4%. They're almost equivalent shots as far as that type of thing goes, but the 150-yard shot to 20 feet is often more impressive and gains more strokes.

For average players, I think that once you hit a certain level of ability with your full shots, the short game becomes more and more important as a means of salvaging a round.

A good short game can definitely help "save" a round from being bad, but it's rarely what makes a round "great." That's ballstriking. There are days when you get hot with the putter, for sure, but that's a highly fluctuating thing. You can raise the baseline, but you can't be so good you make 75% of your ten-footers for an extended period of time, and for those to be for birdie, you'd have to hit it inside 10' anyway.

A lot of mid-handicap players, say 7 to 15, can get the ball going in a forward-ish direction at a decent distance. They can get "near" the green in regulation a good amount of the time.

Getting "on" instead of "near" is a matter of ballstriking.

Getting up and down and getting out of bunkers and avoiding 3-putts then becomes the difference between a bad round and a good round.

I would say they become the difference between a bad round and an average round. The good rounds are the days their ballstriking is better than average (and their putting is average to slightly better, etc.).

AG, good post.

Why is it then that the only time Rory wins is when he putts well? Same for DJ...

Because to generalize a bit… ballstriking gets you in the top 20, and from there the guy with the hot putter is often the winner.

“Misunderstood “ works for me. I was trying to find  a word that implied that the short game doesn’t get enough respect.

I think it gets a bit too much respect. People still "feel" like "drive for show, putt for dough" has more weight than it deserves.


Tried to keep these replies short as I am interested in the discussion about architecture as it applies to the short game.


To that, I will mention the Donald Ross style greens (whether designed that way originally or whether they've become that over time): there are still guys who will play better by hitting pitches that fly up onto the top, and others who play best with the lower chip-and-runs or even putting it up the slopes. I think there's value in two things, which are at a conflict with each other a bit:

• being versatile and having a lot of short game shots at your disposal
• not being a "jack of all trades, master of none." I think you have to be good at a few short game shots, but competent at a bunch. That, or you might just want to be really good at a few, and hope you don't need the other shots the weeks you're ballstriking it well, or that you can miss in the right types of places to play your "good" shot types.

[Tom_Doak]

Had the one guy not hit it in the fairway bunker, and the other not missed the fairway in the rough (I think I have those right, but I may be off about the rough - I'm fairly certain I saw a guy in a fairway bunker), they'd have not needed their short game.

Actually it was the winner, Rai, who hit it into the fairway bunker, both on the 72nd hole and then again in the playoff.  And both times he got a 9-iron or whatever out of the bunker, not all the way to the green, but close enough to save par both times with fine little chips.

[Mark Fedeli]

Erik, regarding my point about "Getting up and down and getting out of bunkers and avoiding 3-putts then becomes the difference between a bad round and a good round." — I agree that more GIRs is equally as impactful, if not more so, when it comes to the final number. However, if we accept that GIRs are not consistent for this mid-handicapper, then he will have to rely more often on his short game. And when the short game works, he will have a very strong sense of satisfaction that he was able to scramble and salvage the round. Perhaps an even higher sense of satisfaction than if his score was a stroke or two lower but he had a couple more GIRs on the easier holes. The emotional impact of scrambling can be more powerful than a GIR, and if the player has accepted that he is doomed to be inconsistent in terms of GIRs, it can be his easiest pathway to joy. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything. 

[Lou_Duran]

Following A.G.'s logic, the iron game is misunderstood as well.  Good iron play should result in better misses.  And it would follow that the tee shot is also misunderstood as it is a whole lot easier to miss an iron in the proper spot from a shorter distance on the correct side of the fairway than from the hay or a deep fairway bunker.


Me, I'd rather take my chances with a consistently straight driver that's a good iron player.  I don't see very many putts made from outside 15' anyways and even good putters have a hard time getting up and down from 60' above the hole. 

[Peter Pallotta]

One of the beauties of the game is that it tests you even when you don't know you're being tested -- and I think the subtlest and least-often-recognized such tests involve the short game.

That's because over the course of a week's play, on well contoured greens with 4 different pin positions on each of the 18 holes, even good players will have a hard time consistently identifying/recognizing the 'good miss', let alone actually missing there, where they want to miss it, all of the time.

Which means that over a week's play (or a month's play at your home course) every golfer -- pro or scratch or mid handicapper -- will have many more than a few 'bad misses' to deal with, e.g. putts from above the hole at the 12th on a Monday, an explosion shot from the left side bunker at the 5th on a Tuesday, a chip from behind the 18th green on a Wednesday.

The short game 'variables' on a well-designed course seem almost endless, and they change everyday; the golfers with the lowest handicaps, those who score well day-in and day-out, are those who not only have many 'good misses' every day but who also, and I think more importantly, are able to best handle and overcome their many 'bad misses' on a daily basis.
   
AG's post resonated with me because, when I think of the few times now that I've shot in the 70s, I can't really tell you why/how I did it, i.e. I don't think I hit that many more fairways or greens than I do when I shoot 84 or 88 or 92. What must be happening, I think, is that a) I've inadvertently had more 'good misses' than normal, and b) that while I've had my usual/average number of (unrecognized) 'bad misses', I somehow managed to handle those 6 or 7 mishaps in 6-7 shots instead of 12-14.   
 

[Rob Marshall]

The quickest way to become a better player is to work on your short game. There really isn't anything that prevents you from having a putting stroke as good as any top putter other than time to work on it. The same in my mind is true of chipping and pitching.

[Kalen Braley]

The quickest way to become a better player is to work on your short game. There really isn't anything that prevents you from having a putting stroke as good as any top putter other than time to work on it. The same in my mind is true of chipping and pitching.

Rob,

This has always seemed to be a conventional wisdom in golf, and perhaps it may be true for beginners.  But one can become proficient on or around the greens, but if it takes too many strokes to even get near the green it quickly turns into 40 yard pitches for par, and 20-30 footers for bogey.

I know Erik has studied this a ton, and given SG is a stat based on gaining advantages thru distance, seems like spending time to get it near or on the green efficiently is the key to lower scores.

[Ken Moum]

   
AG's post resonated with me because, when I think of the few times now that I've shot in the 70s, I can't really tell you why/how I did it, i.e. I don't think I hit that many more fairways or greens than I do when I shoot 84 or 88 or 92. What must be happening, I think, is that a) I've inadvertently had more 'good misses' than normal, and b) that while I've had my usual/average number of (unrecognized) 'bad misses', I somehow managed to handle those 6 or 7 mishaps in 6-7 shots instead of 12-14.   
 

I think this is undoubtedly the case. I have been told by several low handicappers that I either played with or against that my chipping, pitching and putting made them envious. I am pretty good at those things, especially relative to the rest of my game.


But I've told people many times that my short game prowess depends on a big component of luck. I have almost no idea where my misses are going, but when they end up in a "reasonable" opportunity for a save, I'm good enough at those shots to recognize it and take advantage of it.


This relates to architecture in my appreciation or distaste for courses. A course that leave me with no options around the green or punish my short, crooked driving too much are quickly written off. It's why I like links golf so much.

[Rob Marshall]

The quickest way to become a better player is to work on your short game. There really isn't anything that prevents you from having a putting stroke as good as any top putter other than time to work on it. The same in my mind is true of chipping and pitching.

Rob,

This has always seemed to be a conventional wisdom in golf, and perhaps it may be true for beginners.  But one can become proficient on or around the greens, but if it takes too many strokes to even get near the green it quickly turns into 40 yard pitches for par, and 20-30 footers for bogey.

I know Erik has studied this a ton, and given SG is a stat based on gaining advantages thru distance, seems like spending time to get it near or on the green efficiently is the key to lower scores.

Kalen,
I don't disagree. My point was how quickly you can improve. It could take months or years to cure your slice but you can take strokes off your game very quickly just by working on your short game unless you all ready are a skilled short game player.  As far as Erik...no comment.