[Tommy Williamsen]

I played Congressional three weeks ago from the member tees.  It is difficult!!!  How does a guy shoot 63?  When I was youngster in the 1960's I played against the pro's periodically.  My club pro was Lou Graham (1975 US Open Champion) and Knew he was obviously better, but needed only a couple strokes a side.  I'd need 11 strokes a side against any touring pro now even though I am playing as well as I did years ago.Even with that many strokes I'd probably lose.

Last week I played Baltusrol lower from the Open tees and shot 84.  I didn't play as well as I would have liked but in my foursome was a guy who came in 12th in the New Jersey amateur last year.  He shot 80.  I know that 63 will probably be shot at the PGA next month.  

They play a game I don't even understand.

[Rob_Waldron]

Tommy

The gap has always been pretty wide. However I agree that wiht the modern technology, the touring Pros effeciency has increased far beyond that of low handicap amateur. You know what?  THESE GUYS ARE NOT GOOD....THEY ARE GREAT!

[Bob_Huntley]

There are 51 players on the PGA Tour that average 290 yards off the tees that are measured at PGA events.

Imagine if you will, how far they have to the greens on your home course. I think we would see any number of 59's.

[TEPaul]

The gap is pretty wide between good amateur players and tourning pros but if you did something like watch a really good amateur and a tour pro on the range you may not notice that much difference.

On the course watching a really good amateur against a tour pro it may take a bit of time to see what the real difference is and what the big gap in scoring is all about. If you just watch the long game shots you may not get anywhere near the full effect of the real differences.

Good tour players recover from the mistakes they make so much better and they capitalize on their strengths so much move consistently.

Good player on the big tour just understand how to shoot a good score so much better than good amateurs do.

These very points are the same ones that Matt Kuchar made when some kid asked him what the differences were between the Nike or Buy.com tour and the big tour.

And JESII who played a few years of pro and tour golf made a very interesting observation on playing against pros on the mini tours, the Buy.com and the big tour players.

He said he was on the shortish side in distance on the mini-tours, a bit less so against Buy.com pros and pretty close to the big tour pros. (I can guarantee you JESII seemed pretty damn long to me when he played amatuer golf around here.

Those big tour players are just as good as it gets in understanding how to score effectively and that's precisely why it just makes me really laugh when fans and some on here actually think they can and should second guess tour players as to how to play the game more effectively.

One think that always strikes me when I look carefully at tour players is how calm they seem to be in what goes on both the good and particularly the bad. I guess that's all part of what makes them perform as well as they can.

[George Pazin]

Well said, Tom.

One think that always strikes me when I look carefully at tour players is how calm they seem to be in what goes on both the good and particularly the bad. I guess that's all part of what makes them perform as well as they can.

And yet, this same calm in a great player like Davis Love III is all too often seen as a disinterested non-caring attitude, as opposed to the fire of a Floyd, by many of the cognescenti on this board.

Apparently, according to many "in the know", DLIII, Freddie and the many pros who have tasted greatness but not crossed over to the level of a Tiger, are simply a bunch of super talented non-caring chokers. What a joke.

[BCrosby]

Having played with a couple of touring pros over the years,  the differences between them and a scratch amateur are easy to describe.

The do everything better.

They hit the ball better, they hit it straighter (if not always  farther), they recover better and putt as if they exist in another existential plane.

Touring pros inhabit a different golfing universe from even the best player at your club. There is no comparison.

Very intimidating to see up close.

Bob

[TEPaul]

"Apparently, according to many "in the know", DLIII, Freddie and the many pros who have tasted greatness but not crossed over to the level of a Tiger, are simply a bunch of super talented non-caring chokers. What a joke."

George:

So glad to hear you say that. Players like Love and Couples are simply different types of personalities, it's not as if they're chokers or unmotivated as some on here seem to say. I got to know Love some years ago and he's an unusually humble and polite man, seemingly a little shy but he has no insecurities or doubts about how good he is as a golfer, and I doubt he ever has. What some on here don't seem to get is not all these types of players can be Tiger Woods all at the same time and since that can't happen calling them whimps or chokers is a joke.

Tiger Woods, and Nicklaus before him, in my opinion, may be the only two in golf history who seem to have never had a doubt whatsoever that they both can and should beat anyone at any time that tees it up against them. Tiger Woods in a way is about as strong of mind that way, almost a "killer" really, as perhaps any golfer who ever lived and it may be the asset that's even more important and impressive than his unbelievable physical and imaginative skills on the golf course.

[Jay Carstens]

[quote author=TEPaul
Tiger Woods, and Nicklaus before him, in my opinion, may be the only two in golf history who seem to have never had a doubt whatsoever that they both can and should beat anyone at any time that tees it up against them. Tiger Woods in a way is about as strong of mind that way, almost a "killer" really, as perhaps any golfer who ever lived and it may be the asset that's even more important and impressive than his unbelievable physical and imaginative skills on the golf course.

I'd tend to agree with that.    The look Tiger had at Pebble Beach in 2000,  so completely putting his previous shots behind him and concentrating so fully on the shot at hand was truly awesome.  He basically ignored the field and the board and just played golf.   He wasn't a "killer" that week but he certainly has that trait too.  With the huge lead, he seemed freed up to test the waters.  A great golfer, fully on go, with blinders on.  Nobody was going to catch him anyway so he played against history, his only competition that week!

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tommy,

Those guys are incredibly good, and under difficult tournament conditions they're spectacular.

While you and your friends shot the high numbers you indicated, just think how much higher they would have been with 40,000 people watching on site, TV, difficult rough and greens stimping at 12.

When you consider that guys who shoot 20 under on other tours can't make the PGA tour it tells you how good they are.

[Jerry Kluger]

I was at Congressional today and they are simply amazing.  For example, I watched tee shots on number 6 and the group began with Chad Campbell hit a beautiful soft draw, then Charles Howell hits this low bullet and then Vijay launches  this awesome high cut.
What I did notice is that the pros tend to keep their iron shots down, especially with their short irons as they really want to control the shots; I don't see this as much with top amateurs.  They were great at getting up and down from around the green but the putting was not as incredible as I thought it would be.    

[Tommy Williamsen]

I watched the Shell Wonderful World of Golf match between Gene Littler and Byron Nelson at Pine valley in 1962 again last night.  I had played Pine Valley years ago with wooden woods and my old Haig Ultra irons.   I scored the same then as I do now.  

Many of the touring pros of the fifties and sixties were human.  Littler shot 42 on the front side and finished birdie birdie to shoot one under on the back.
Nelson was solid throughout the match.  I understood their game.  Today's pros are so good that I simply cannot comprehend their play.

[TEPaul]

"but the putting was not as incredible as I thought it would be."

Jerry:

There may be a good reason for that. Did you hear Furyk's interview yesterday? He sort of went into that. He mentioned that he old courses and their greens are simply more interesting and tougher to score on then the type of course the tour pros play most of the year. Furyk said he loves courses like Congressional as he grew up around courses like that. He comes from the Lancaster Pa area.    

[Mike_Sweeney]

It is not just golf. The difference between the average Division I college basketball player and the average NBA basketball player is astronomical. Now take the top 50 players in the NBA, and it goes to an even different level.

That said, I am totally bored by the NBA Finals, and I like Tim Duncan's style of play.

[A.G._Crockett]

One key part of the gap between the top pros and the best of the rest is the ability to perform at a high level four days in a row, week after week.  I have seen lots of very good college players not make it as tour pros because one day a week they shoot a 76.  Over the run of the year, that kills 'em.  

The really amazing thing about the top guys is NOT that they can shoot 63 on occasion.  It's that they can play in the 66-70 range 4 days in a row under tournament pressure.  That is primarily because their short games always hold up.  They can get it up and down from anywhere, and they make sure that "anywhere" is a very manageable place.

[Jerry Kluger]

I played Congressional a couple of weeks ago and I must admit that  I really didn't find the greens that difficult in the sense that they were not hard to read.  Besides which these guys were hitting inside 15 feet consistently and making very few putts.  There are many modern courses which I've played recently which had much more difficult greens to read including Galloway and Hidden Creek. On the other hand the 9th is 602 yards into a slight breeze and a slightly elevated green - I saw Mickelson hit it in two.  

[William King]

The really amazing thing about the top guys is NOT that they can shoot 63 on occasion.  It's that they can play in the 66-70 range 4 days in a row under tournament pressure.  That is primarily because their short games always hold up.  They can get it up and down from anywhere, and they make sure that "anywhere" is a very manageable place.

I read a very interesting article by Chuck Cook in GD on how Payne Stewert prepared for the last Open @ Pinehurst and in fact one of the main strategies was just this, identifying "anywhere" and shooting for a spot on the green, the same spot regardless of pin postition, where any miss would be recoverable.

[Mike_Young]

IMHO a 0 handiicap is much closer to the 85 shooter than he is the tour player.

[Jason Topp]

What would be a reasonable handicap to assign to a tour player?  I've always assumed around +5 under the US system.  How about a top player?

[Chris Kane]

Aren't the top American amateurs all +4 to 5 (USGA system)?  Woods, Singh, Els, Mickelson, Goosen, Scott, Garcia etc. would be signficantly lower than that...

[ForkaB]

I seem to remember somebody computing Wood's handicap in 2000 and coming up with +10 or +11.  Also, as Mike Young implies, handicaps are not linear.  The lower you get the harder it is to get even lower.  The Masters and the two Opens prove every year that (usuallly with an exception or two) the top amateurs (+4 or so) cannot come close to competing with the pros (average +7 or so) .  You don't notice much difference in their swing or their ball flights--it all comes about in the ineffable "ability to score."  The pros can go lower, more often, and as has been said above, their "bads" rounds are miles better than the bad rounds of the wannabies.

It is an illusion that we play the same game that the pros do.  We are as relatively inadequate as a club tennis player would be to Roger Federer.  The difference is that in tennis the club player would not win a point against Federer, while in golf anybody on who has ever had a birdie could beat Tiger on just about any golf hole in the world.

[Jack_Marr]

They were talking about this subject on TV recently. The guy on Sky Sports said that an amatuer scratch golfer would struggle to break 80 on courses set up for trournament play.

[texsport]

The gap is much larger than single digit handicappers would like to believe! This is almost a ridiculous question, like, can a high school kid hit a Nolan Ryan fastball, or curveball, or circle change once he's seen the fastball?

Physical Differences:

Pure distance
Almost complete absence of "missed shots"
Precise distance control(+/- less than 5 yards on iron shots)
Accuracy
Number of different shots available
Short game
Scrambling game
Putting

Mental Differences:

Confidence
Playing under pressure
The ability to elevate their games under pressure
Course management
Shot decision making

Not only are Tour pros better in each of these areas, they're better in all these areas at the same time than single digit handicappers.

It's just a completely different set of physical and mental abilities, unimaginable to those hoping they're in the same class with the best 200 players in the world.

PGA Tour players are in a  much more select group than major league baseball or NFL football players because of the much smaller numbers of players on the PGA Tour.

[JESII]

When discussing a Tour players handicap, it is safe to assume that the people that establish the slope and course rating for a course (not that I have any idea what the formula actually is) do not establish those numbers when the course is set up for the PGA Tour's tournament week. If so I would bet those handicaps would be even lower as the ratings and slope must be higher.

Another interesting piece, that I would need Tom Paul to verify and expand on, is something he mentioned to me a few weeks ago about the USGA Handicap formula is inaccurate for players with plus handicaps. Something about the mathematical formula is flawed once you get onto the negative side of zero so that numbers are skewed up towards zero. As a measure of potential, this would actually become an issue when you are dealing in this plus 4,6 or 8 neighborhood. Tom does not claim to understand the entire formula, just that some mathematicians pointed this out to the Golf Association of Philadelphia who then took it to the USGA. I don't think the USGA responded very aggreeably to this notion.

p.s. the grand canyon is a smaller gap.

[JESII]

Thanks for that confirmation Mr. Redan, think about that in terms of guys shooting 10 over or better for those four rounds in last years US Open.

Sounds like some of these Tour player handicaps might actually be better than plus 5 or 6.

[Andy Hodson]

The is the most astute thread out of the hundreds on this board.

Maybe instead of the Handicap system, we need something like the Richter scale to describe the differences between amateurs and the guys on the PGA tour. You know, like the difference between an 6.5 and a 7.0 earthquake is much greater than a 4.0 and a 5.0. Or something like that.

A tangential topic that has been broached many times before on this thread lies in the shadows of this discussion. Namely, why do we care what the guys on Tour shoot on our beloved courses? Or how far they hit it, or  how "hot" the balls are for them? As most are in agreement they do play a different game. Let 'em. We'll play ours, on our courses. That aren't jacked up to 7400 yards.

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