[Tom Huckaby]

OK, so I've been watching "live @17" a lot yesterday and today, and as so many balls were hit in the water, it was comforting... you know, in a "I could do that, these guys aren't supermen" kinda way.

BUT... so many of them then just calmly moved to the drop area, knocked it tight, made their 4.  Or at worst they knocked it on, made 5.

So it got me to thinking... isn't this yet another way that tour pros are not like us average joe golfers?  Playing that hole and dunking it in the water, wouldn't we be so pissed off / unglued / depressed that we'd likely lose focus and dunk another one from the drop area?

OK, maybe it's just me.  But does this strike anyone else?

And what the hell - besides just hitting the ball more consistently well, what are some other ways tour pros differentiate themselves from us average joes in how they play the game?

[Brent Hutto]

1) Let a pro watch someone putt on a similar line and they seem to make their putt every time. Let most of us watch someone putt on a similar line and it just gives us too much to think about and we'll usually get the speed totally wrong (even if we make a decent stroke).

2) Compared to most of the "rest of us" I've played with, the biggest difference in the pros is the way they play their wedges. A pro with even a halfway decent wedge game (by their standards) will from a good lie knock it stiff the vast majority of the time anywhere inside 120 yards. That's also a big factor in what you see from the drop area on the island green.

3) I think there is an invisible but real difference in how much information they are able to process. Some of them do it by talking numbers with their caddie and others by just looking around and going on intuition. But however they go about it they notice, account for and compensate for dozen of factors that most of us would never even notice.

[Sean Leary]

On easy chips, they are truly trying to make it, not hoping to make it and REALLY hoping, if not, that it ends up close.

[Phil Benedict]

Tom,

When I lose a ball I feel real pressure on the reload to not lose another ball.  At $4 per ball it can add up.

This is one source of stress that the pros don't have to worry about.

On a more serious note, it amazes me how well the pros cope after hitting a truly wretched shot, Tiger being the master in this regard.  They just know how to score.

[Jerry Kluger]

Tom: There is no question in my mind that the biggest difference between them and us is their absolute confidence in their ability. They get all the info and then they execute - they never second guess themselves.  This is especially true after they've hit their drive and are in a scoring position.  Sometimes they get a bit more relaxed with their drivers because they are confident that they will hit it far enough that barring absolute disaster, they will be able to get themselves into position to make birdie, etc.  This is why it is important to put themselves into position to win as often as possible so they don't second guess themselves when the time comes to execute.

Relating this to architecture - the features that intimidate us are nothing to them except in some rare circumstances.  What intimidates them more is conditions, espescially high winds, where a variable they can't control comes into play.  Water, sand, etc., are not a factor as they have confidence that they will execute the shot which will not bring that hazard into play.

[Jason Topp]

The difference that stands out for me between pros and good club players is in the quality of iron shots.  Beyond power, it is the one area where I think, "I could never do that."

[Tom Huckaby]

All great stuff so far.

CONFIDENCE has to be the biggest one, wouldn't you think?  Or at least it is between them and ME, Tom Huckaby... I see them pulling off shots around the green that I would even think of trying, for fear of chunk or skull.  They at times also take the route requiring the MOST precision, but with the best upside... ie a hard-spinning pitch over a running 7iron.. because they don't have this fear.  That's why they're them and I'm me.  

[JohnV]

Pros turn doubles into bogies and bogies into pars.  Most amateurs go the other way.

When they do make a double, they turn around and make birdies to make up for it.  At the US Open qualifier here this week, one of the qualifiers who plays on the Hooters Tour started with a double bogey 7 on the first hole.  He didn't let it bother him, birdied two of the next four, shot 70 and won a playoff for the last spot with another birdie.

[Tom Huckaby]

JV:  yes!  That's what I'm witnessing on Live @ 17... and have seen before from pros.  And oh yes how we ams go the other way...

[Phil McDade]

Huck:

I once heard someone say this: The difference between the fade/banana that many players hit off the tee, and the ones the pros hit, is night and day. I'm incapable of hitting anything other than a fade with my driver, and on my very good days, I can sort of tell where it's going to end up. On bad days, it just takes a big right turn and ends up miles from the fairway.

So, after hearing that, I went to the first round of the old GMO tourney in Milwaukee (the one Tiger made his pro debut at) and sat directly behind the tee to watch about 20 players tee off on a slightly doglegging hole that required a fade of some sort off the tee, and long enough to require either driver or 3-wood for the big guns. Sure enough, almost every single one of them had this perfect fade -- just a cannon shot from the tee, and this perfect little fade at the end of it. No big banana-like curves to the shot, just a touch of a fade, right when the ball reached its apex, for a soft landing in the fairway.

I thought, that's the difference.

[Tom Huckaby]

Phil - great stuff too - their curves ain't like our curves for sure... and their worst shots generally would be VERY acceptable by us.

Man I am just intrigued though by pro after pro who hits it in the ater on 17 just calmly getting the next one close, or at least on.  I guess I shouldn't be... it's only a 100 yard or so pitch from the drop area - perfect wedge distance... but still... the first dunking doesn't seem to faze these guys at all.  Maybe it would in 4th round?

[Matt_Ward]

Huck:

The main one between pros and ams is the famour Clint Eastwood line, "A man's got to know his limitations." Pros understand what they can and cannot do under most situations and they rarely, if ever, attempt to make a shot they have not played / practiced / perfected, call it what one will, a shot under tournament conditions.

Amateurs simply believe that the hand of God will bless them as they attempt shots that few, if any, pros would attempt to try.

[Phil Benedict]

I played with a really good senior last weekend - he lost in the second round in the Senior Am last year and has qualified at some point during his life for the USGA Junior, Amateur and mid-Am.  He really knows how to get his ball in the hole, so he tends to score close to where he ought to score given the way he's playing, whereas I (a 7 heading up) routinely waste 5 strokes or so every round through short-game breakdowns, weak wedge play or poor decisions.

The strength of my friend's game is his iron play.  He puts a lot of irons close.  But his driving is a real weakness relative to the competition he plays against - high level amateurs and senior amateurs.  He's not very long and less accurate than he would like to be.  He would have been better off playing my tee ball last week than his own, even though he outscored me by 10 strokes overall.

At the highest level - the PGA Tour - virtually no player has something in his game that we would consider a weakness relative to our own games (even the really good players on this site of whom I am not one).

[Tom Huckaby]

That's another good one, Matt.

Now I wonder.... and perhaps this ties into architecture, saving me Muccian wrath....

Would this knowledge change the design of a course geared toward tour pros?  Would you even bother to try to build in some temptation, given they are not bloody easily tempted?

A similar discussion has occurred re #10 Riviera, and I was shown that pros do succumb to temptation more than I thought on that hole... but they also are really looking at 5 max there, so the risk isn't all that great...

[Jerry Kluger]

TH: I think what you are seeing is a combination of Finchem keeping an eye on behavior at their home venue combined with the fact that part of attaining their level of play is knowing how to contain their emotions - you've played the shot, you can't do anything about it, it's over, now hit the next one better.  My 13 year old is getting much better but he hasn't learned to control his emotions and it hurts his game - it is a maturity that they need to develop.

[Tom Huckaby]

Phil - more good stuff, very revelatory.  

And Jerry, great points also.  But what impresses me is also not so much that they've mastered their external outbursts of anger - I've managed to do that since the club-throwing teen I was, and I suck as a player - but more that they also seem to manage their internal anger/disappoint/etc. and put it behind them, as you say.  Their next shots after bad ones seem to be so much better than mine... maybe it is just me... but I doubt it.  

[Steve Kline]

Speaking as someone who played college golf and has carried a plus handicap for almost all of my adult life, the biggest differences are:

1. Short game
2. Short game
3. Short game

Yes the pros hit the ball better than top amatuers, perhaps it farther more consistently, their confidence is higher more often, etc. but it is the short game that separates the pros from everyone else. That's how they turn doubles into bogies and bogies into pars. At the 2005 U.S. Open I watched the 5th hole at Pinehurst all day. Only 25% of the players hit the green in reg. Many had to pitch out 75 yards or so short of the hole. The number of guys that got up and down from there was just sick.

I'm not sure if you any of have used the golf digest challenge web site, but I've been using it this year. For the last 14 years my handicap has been +2-1. According to the challenge my long game handicap is a +2 but my short game handicap is 5 or 6. I bet most regular golfers suffer a similar fate.

As far as pros sticking there wedges in tight all time, that's not really true. Try looking up the average distance from the pin the pros hit the ball from certain distances. The Tour keeps these stats but I'm not sure if they are online. I remember a few years seeing that from 100 to 125 yards Tiger's average distance to the pin was something like 15 or 18 ft. I wouldn't call that knocking down the flag all the time. Us TV viewers just think that because we see the guys who are on each week, not the guys "hacking" it up.

[Tom Huckaby]

Steve:  fantastic.  Short game difference is HUGE for sure.  I guess that's part of what I'm seeing at 17... the drop area being a pitch, after all.  But I know also that's not what you mean.  Yep, those guys can get down in two from anywhere and often do... and the simple up and downs are a given for them.  That's a HUGE difference from 4 handicap me... and I see from your post it's a pretty big difference from +2 you.  

BTW, isn't part of this also that they don't tend to miss in the wrong place all that often?  That is, if they short-side themselves it's a huge error in the approach and  pretty darn rare one at that?

[Phil Benedict]

Steve makes a good point about how we tend to assume that everyone hits the ball the way the guys we see on the weekend - the leaders - do.  These are by definition the guys who are "on" that week.  I think that's one of the reasons why it surprises us when someone stinks up the joint in the Ryder Cup - there's only 12 guys and inevitably someone will be off that week.

[rjsimper]

One thing and one thing only, from a physical standpoint...

Ball flight/trajectory on wedges.

[Dan Joseph]

If we are comparing your average single digit handicapper then there is a huge difference between us and the pros.  Let's look first at the courses they are playing, 7,000+ yards, lightning fast greens, and tall rough, then add the pressure of the cameras and the tee lined with people yelling you are the man and it's in the hole as soon as you make contact.  I would bet that any average single digit handicapper could not break 90 if they where in the pro's shoes.

Now to be more specific, I've been to a number of PGA tournaments and noticed that the golfers that are not playing well that are in the middle to the end of the pack are spraying their tee shots more and are missing more greens, but what sets them apart the most from us is their short game and their ability to score.  A very bad day for the average pro in the difficult conditions they play is still mid 70's.

[Mark_Rowlinson]

I'm often surprised at how a high proportion of top amateurs, having played Walker Cup and all that sort of thing, sink without trace on turning professional.  While some very big name pros (Nicklaus, Woods, Faldo) were also top amateurs, many of the tour pros don't seem to have come through the amateur ranks.

[Wayne_Kozun]

As far as pros sticking there wedges in tight all time, that's not really true. Try looking up the average distance from the pin the pros hit the ball from certain distances. The Tour keeps these stats but I'm not sure if they are online. I remember a few years seeing that from 100 to 125 yards Tiger's average distance to the pin was something like 15 or 18 ft. I wouldn't call that knocking down the flag all the time. Us TV viewers just think that because we see the guys who are on each week, not the guys "hacking" it up.

I agree - if they really were that accurate from < 100 yds then they would all birdie #7 at Pebble Beach when it is not windy but that doesn't happen.

[Ken Moum]

A pro with even a halfway decent wedge game (by their standards) will from a good lie knock it stiff the vast majority of the time anywhere inside 120 yards.

They are VERY good, but they aren't knocking it stiff from 50-125....

2005 Shot Link stats

Proximity to the hole on approach shots

From 50-75 yards 16'3"
From 75-100 yards 17'11"
From 100-125 yards 20'4"
From 125-150 yards 23'5"
From 150-175 yards 28'3"
From 175-200 yards 34'5"
From outside 200 yards 43'0"

Around the Green

Proximity to the hole 7'7"
Scrambling from 10-20 yards 61.4%
Scrambling from 20-30 yards 45.5%
Scrambling from more than 30 yards 32.7.8%

Proximity to the hole from sand 9'10"
Sand saves 48.7%

And Putting: (this from 2004)

Inside 3 feet 99.1%
3-4 feet 90.9%
4-5 feet 80.8%
5-6 feet 69.8%
6-7 feet 61.6%
7-8 feet 54%
8-9 feet 47%
9-10 feet 42.2%
10-15 feet 31%
15-20 feet 18.9%
20-25 feet 13.2%
Over 25 feet 5.8%

[Kalen Braley]

I think unconditional confidence in thier game and skills is a huge component of this.

I read an article years ago, where a reporter was aruging why big league baseball players get to where they are, and we mere mortals don't.  He was watching an infielder take ball after ball after ball in warmups before the game.  One of the balls got past him and went right thru his wickets.  He said the player took off his glove, looked at in amazement as if it had a gaping hole in it, scratched his head and went right back to it, not missing another grounder.  The implication was that because he was so sure of his skills, it couldn't have possibly been him that made the mistake, but the problem lie with "faulty equipment".  This really kind of stuck with me thru the years about just how much confidence the pros have in thier game.

I would imagine for alot of these guys on 17, they have the mindset that they didn't hit a bad shot, it was just the wind, or the fickle nature of trying to hit to such a demanding target.  Hence no big deal, nothing wrong with them, move on to the next shot.

[Tags:]

Tags:

[Tags:]

Tags:

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()