Is there any strategy in the professional game...?

[APBernstein]

I am watching the Genuity Classic (Doral) and got to thinking about strategy and the professional game.  Also, how it differs so much from how the average player can benefit from this use of strategy.

Woods and Els were both faced with shots of around 150 yards at different points in the round.  The hole is not important, nor is the circumstance (lead, etc.).  What I saw finally clicked in my mind as an explanation of this "phenomenon".

As I said, Tiger had a shot of about 150 yards.  The shot was slightly uphill, but what struck me were the bunkers that fronted the green.  For the average golfer, this would not normally be the preferred placement.  However, from 150 yards, Tiger is not thinking bunkers.  It is unlikely he is thinking more than 20 feet from the hole.  What firmly cemented this in my mind was Johnny Miller comment that, "bunkers to the right and he just blasted it down the middle".  Would he have had a better angle from the right side of the fairway?  Absolutely.  Did it matter?  Not a bit.  The same situation presented itself with Els.

I would have done everything in my power to hit the right side of that fairway.  I am only hitting an 8 iron from 150 yards, but if I had a nickel for everytime I had hit an 8 iron into a bunker....well, you get the idea.

To play devil's advocate here, do we honestly think that the professionals would evaluate this strategy if an Open were ever held at Merion?  Wouldn't they just take it down the middle and then use their skills to fly 7 irons into greens from 180 yards?

[Jeremy Glenn. (Guest)]

The problem is not professional golfers, the problem is the lack of ground game.

Essentially, if I know I can fly the ball 150 yards and stop it within a few feet of where it lands, anything between me and the flag is irrelevant.

This is why the ground game is crucial to meaningful strategy.  If it takes the ball 30 yards to stop, those bunkers are very much in the way.

Flying bunkers don't exist.  

[David_Elvins]

Totally agree with Jeremy,

The flatness of a lot of courses doesn't help either.  THis topic sort of reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from a US player I can't remember about 4 years ago.  He won the tournament after hitting it stiff on the seventeenth to all but seal the win.  In the post round interview he was asked about the shot and replied something like this: "Yeah, it was the toughest shot I had to hit all day.  I had 165 to the hole, I hit my 8 iron 158 and my 7 iron 172 so it was going to be really tough for me to get it close to the hole."  I thought to myself that these pros don't know what they are missing out on.

Further to talk about the ground game.  One of the problems is the ability of the pros to "place" the ball 100 yards out on Par 5 and 4 holes.  THen they can hit full wedge into a green and stop it easily.  I enjoyed watching the first hole on the east course at Royal Melbourne during the Heineken Classic.  THe hole is about 330 yards long played over and down a hill.  If the player lags up to leave his 100 yard approach then he faces a blind shot.  So no-one does this.  Over the week, often depending on the pin positions, tee shots were made to anywhere between on the green and 80 metres short of the green. They were also probably spread from the left edge of the fairway to the adjacent fairway on the right. (A good 80 metres lateral difference.  Because the approaches were between 80 metres and 20 metres, they had to be played with the lay of the ground and the position of the bunkers constantly in mind.  Made for very interesting golf and two exacting shots had to be hit to have a good shot at birdie.

I would love to see a the pros play alot more courses that provided subtle challenges from 100 yards out.  ie blind shot, severely sloping lie.  OF course, back to the original point, I would also love to see the courses play a lot firmer.

[APBernstein]

What courses does it take 30 yards for a shot from 150 yards to stop?  I honestly don't believe those exist.  I have played some courses that maintain their playing conditions fast and firm and I can still stop an 8 iron reasonably well.

Do these courses exist?  I tend to think not.

I can understand advocating the ground game for a shot of 180 yards or so.  But to think that any courses, on Tour or not, will be maintained SO firm that one can not stop (in a reasonable distance) a short iron under normal circumstances is being unrealistic.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Andrew,
...but on another hole the shot of choice was to hit irons to the left side of a bunker that was located in the middle of the fairway. This left the best angle in to the hole location. The greens seemed pretty firm out there today but they did have room behind many of the hole locations.
I don't think better players would opt to fool around with a fairway bunker just to get better position unless they could not feasibily hold or play a high shot. If, in your example, you hit it in the fairway bunker while trying to get an angle away from the greenside bunkers you would be kicking yourself for not playing it more safe off the tee. Just taking a longer club for your approach would almost guarantee that you would not find the bunkers short.
The approach to 18 by Lonar was a great example of strategic shotmaking. He bent his ball over the green part of the picture on his scorecard and kept it well away from the blue part, perfectly following the safest and smartest way to play the hole.  

[Jeremy Glenn. (Guest)]

Firm, tight fairways are, as we all know, part of the recipe for the ground game.  However, such fairways result in tight lies from which it is difficult to get "under" the ball.  The firmer and tighter the lie, the more one needs to put the ball back in the stance, thus resulting in a lower trajectory.  

This compounds with the firm conditions to produce 30-yard runs.  Not with short irons, and maybe not 30-yards, but you get the idea.

And, receptive greens that don't slope back-to-front to "hold" the shot.

In Scotland, you hit off a tight lie to a hard green sloping away from you.  Trust me, the balls gonna run...  If you land it on the green, you've missed your short.

Of course, you don't HAVE to hit it lower of tight lies, but hitting towering 6-irons is more difficult.  Could this be an added element of strategy?

[Tim_Weiman]

Andrew:

If you meant to suggest that professional golf has become pretty boring, I agree with you.

[Richard_Goodale]

Andrew

This is a very interesting premise.  Let me give you some personal observations.

The most strategic player that I know is a long time friend from Northern Ireland, wee Brian, who plays off 17 or so and can't carry the ball more than 150-170 yards, but hits the ball pretty straight, within his limitations.  When he plays the 14th at Dornoch ("Foxy"), he tees off towards the right, at an angle dependent on the strength and direction of the wind, but sufficiently so as to carry the rough on the left which increasingly encroaches the further left you go.  Once he has negotiated this hurdle, he then tacks back to the left, hitting whatever infernal sort of fairway wood he happens to be carrying in his bag that day, clear of the "cromarties" on the right, and to the middle of the narrow 150 yard run-up to the green.  From there, he hits whatever club he needs to bump and run the ball onto the putting surface, and then hopes to get down in two for a well-deserved 5. On the day that he first had a 4, after about 150 tries, was a very, very good one for the barman at the Burghfield House Hotel.

As for me and my peers, who play off various flavours between scratch and 7, the play is to aim down the extraordinarily narrow "fast lane" to the left, hope that we make contact with the ball and then watch and hope.  If we come over the ball, we are in the relatively light rough, but 50 yards or so back, and must decide if and how to try to roll the ball onto the green.  If we come off it to the right, we have a long blind shot over the cromarties, probably out of semi-rough, and we hit and hope.  If we are in "position A" the fun really begins. Fly it, punch it, bump and run it, sting it, lay up short left, fly it long right.  Sometimes we make what turns out to be the right "strategic" choice.  Why and how we do is ALWAYS a complete mystery to us.

Of course, if you are a real player, you hit it down the middle, air mail a short iron straight at the flag, expect it to stick, and then try to make the putt.  That is how I saw Tom Watson do it, in 1981, with a persimmon driver and blades, downwind, to a rock hard green.

Any of us who have the chutzpah to even think that we play the same game as the pros should have seen Watson's 8-iron to that green on that day, so long ago.  We don't.

Nobody, except maybe wee Brian, really plays "strategically."  the great unwashed masses of us just hit and hope and then try to find our ball and then hit and hope again.

IMHO.

[Justin_Zook]

Granted I haven't watched much, but the TPC at Scottsdale had the most strategy I've seen out on tour.  The one dogleg par 5 on the back nine, I don't remember the number, is a great example of a great par 5.  If you hook your tee shot, you have around 300 yards for you second, but if you hit an ideal shot, you may only have 200 yards left.  Also that short par 4 is a great hole as well.  Anyway, the courses on tour, don't really provide much strategic challenge anymore.  The ones that used to have it, now have been altered to form something that is very generic, and boring, but provides the professional with a challenge that will test their skill, and not ingenuity.  When seeing the courses, they all resemble each other, and they don't really seem unique anymore.  I think it was either Bobby Jones or Alister Mckenzie who talked about when professionals played in Great Britain, they could play a hole many differents ways, but in America, you can play the hole the same way every time.  So in the words of David Duval, in his wonderfully comical Tour Accuracy Commercial, I say, "There ya have it."

[Bill_McBride]

Rich, couldn't agrree with you more about amateurs attempting "strategic" play.... most of us are just happy to hit one more or less in the desired direction some of the time. I love the talk about strategic play when it's possible that only one in a hundred golfers can consistently hit the ball the direction and distance he wishes to!  

[Mike O'Neill]

Rich,

Were those the days of square grooves?

Andrew,

Isn't this why we love Augusta so much? The pros having to hit to places on greens 30 from the cup just to have a prayer at two-putting? Hold out for a few more weeks and hope for some dry, windy conditions in Georgia.

[APBernstein]

Rich:

I will agree with you that most amateurs will be happy with middle of the fairway everytime.  Heck, I'm not going to be the one to complain.  However, that is not going to stop me from trying to hit that "strategic" shot to give myself a better angle.

The professional mindset is different.  And this is exactly why we now see rough at Augusta.

To us, a 70 yard-wide fairway is a very interesting proposition.  Where do I hit my shot.....what side of the fairway?  All of us at GCA would think long and hard about which side of the fairway is the best angle into the green and the position of greenside bunkers and whatnot.

The professionals...?  Not a chance.  Bomb the drive as long and straight as humanly possible (of course, different than that of humanly possible of 20 years ago) and hit your short iron.  They would not think twice, and barely even once.

Augusta could no longer "survive" in that kind of setup.  Mike O'Neill is right....it is very fun to watch a shot to the 14th or 16th use the slopes to get close to the hole.  But the majority of the course was sitting their naked for the player to bomb a drive and make a birdie.  ANGC added the rough to at least make them hit a straighter drive.  We see it as less thinking involved, but was there every any thought involved in the first place.

I tend to think not.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Rich,
I find it hard to believe that you and your good player friends just hit it and hope. You would not be good if you didn't manage your game around your abilities.
If you said that you don't always find the magic, well that is more believeable.  

[Brian Walshe]

To back up the point that Andrew has just made about the pro's bombing it, a couple of lines about Tiger today,

"Woods came charging out of the gates with a powerful drive that covered 385 yards when it finally stopped rolling. That left Woods a sand wedge for his second shot into the 529-yard opening hole. He two-putted for birdie, but it set the tone for his day.

With the wind behind him again, he drove into a greenside bunker on the 376-yard second hole."

Does he care which side of the fairway when he has a sand wedge second on a par 5?

[Justin_Zook]

385 yards!!!!!   Thats insane!  That new Nike driver really must be great...just kidding.  Anyway, great point

[APBernstein]

To me, the 385 yard drive is irrelevant.  That is obviously a combination of three things: wind, Tiger, and the equipment.  But that is not the debate.

Even if the drive had been 250 yards, Tiger could have hit it 150 yards anywhere in the fairway and still have that easy shot.  I could almost do that (the stress being on almost).

Mike:

I think your point deserves more focus.  Those slopes and contours are what makes this tournament (The Masters) so fun to watch, at least for me.  I saw NONE of those contours at Doral.  Granted, Doral is a flat course in Miami, but I saw nothing of interest.  I see very little of interest in a lot of Tour courses.  But again, this is another debate.

Maybe it is a combination of things that leads to zero strategy.  The skill of the players, the courses, equipment, etc.  It almost seems like it would be boring to the players, but then again, you add TV, pressure, and money, and you have yourself some drama.

To me, I would rather watch a few mid-ams battle it out at Pine Valley.

[Tim_Weiman]

Andrew:

You are absolutely right.  Watching a few mid handicappers play Pine Valley is far more interesting than watching professional golf.  It's not even close.

[R.S. Barker]

Strategy as we know it on the PGA tour is not really shown much in the verbage on tv, or in person. During the practice rounds the pro and his caddy figure out where they want to hit and then go from there. Some like Hale Irwin make notes to be referred to during the round, and others like Greg Norman use a visual cue.

I truly believe that the only time they are really concerned about specific strategy, is when they are facing the approach into the green...taking into account grees slopage, placement of ball, how far on the pin is, how far from their ball is the front edge of the green, etc.

What comes back to me more than anything is on four seperate occasions I've had the opportunity to speak with Fred Couples at Muirfield Village. Twice during a rain delay the year he won, we spoke for about 4 minutes the first time, and as the rain was letting back up the second time for nearly 12 minutes, as I was waiting under a tree near his mark.

He actually remembered me from the practice round, and on that Saurday I asked him what his main goal was on each hole.

He stated that his caddy and he worrie more about the approach, since he can often work the ball slightly, although he does favor the fade. His major concern is as Andrew stated, because of the ball's flight, he does not worry much about bunkers near the green, since he is very sure that he can fly the ball to the pin.

I asked him what he felt was the hardest hole to play, and he said for him a fairway that narrows sharply and has bunkers near the " preferred landing zone "..since he sometimes wants to lay back..but inadvertently lets the big dog eat.

R.S. Barker

[LeeHarris]

what a lovely thread, with so many angles.

I've often thought (and hinted at with questions) that for pro golfers, is there even such a thing as strategy, and thus for courses built to host professional events it is not surprising to see strategic ideals not exactly adhered to :-)

For really crap golfers, like me, the same applies because just hitting the damn thing is a success so the nuances of strategy are lost on me.

Which begs the question, is "strategy" a concept that actually only applies to players of a certain ability, namely those of handicap of around 10 ?
Add to that the suspicion thatI have that a large number of golfers dont even notice strategy (or maybe good strategy is just invisible) and its an interesting point.

I am gettting a bit bored of pro golf, it doesnt help with those crap commentators you have in the US droning crap, and the courses are pretty naff, and adverts every 2 shots, its actually getting hard to watch. Give me the odd event on BBC any time :-)
I would actually like to watch more golf played by less skilled players but would it catch on TV? I doubt it.

It would be really interesting if someone came up with an idea to put the worlds best golfers into some silly season events armed with persimmon or even hickory ! a featherie or two, and send them off on some of the courses that are revered in these circles

any chance of this happening ? LOL

[Tim_Weiman]

Lee Harris:

If you really want that to happen, come to Cleveland.  The boys here pretty much control things.  They put together the mixed couple event with Tiger, David, Annika and Kerrie and that didn't go over very well.  Maybe they would like some new ideas.

[LeeHarris]

Id love to come over to Cleveland Tim :-)

Yeah those TV events are pretty lame, but it would be interesting to see how the likes of Tiger got on with the old equipment, I guess they wouldnt want to risk messing up their swing dynamics by trying it though

I believe there are clubs and associations that have meetings and events where they play with the old kit on courses like Machrihanish etc...

I would just really like to see how the ground game would be played by a top class professional or very good amateur

I do a pretty good impression of the ground game, but Im not sure an 8i is supposed to have a trajectory thats about 12" off the floor, grounds after 20 yds and rolls on about 50 ;-))

[LeeHarris]

well they shoot really really low scores anyway ;-)

[LeeHarris]

I would have thought that a prerequisite of strategy would be multiple options
there are no options for a tour player who can nail 280+ yard drives and hit SW approach to most every hole
Strategy might apply to the shorter players who might very well need to consider their options on any given hole, but I doubt if Tigers strategy ever goes much beyond, driver - wedge, or 2i - 8i for the "tricky" holes

[LeeHarris]

so isnt the point that the original poster is correct and that there is no strategy in the pro game? Im leaning towards that view, but I read it as you were implying that the game played by Tiger was strategic in its own right, if a little different to how we see it. Im not talking about the strategy mentally, there really is none of that in golf, you always go out to shoot your best, although I suppose you could count playing aggressively or conservatively as self imposed strategy
but I think strategy in the question is talking about the kind of ideals often discussed here etc etc

[GolfCourseSuper]

Andrew,

I appreciate your view on strategy as it pertains to your own golf game, but for crying out loud I get on the tee and i just want to hit the fairway (who cares about right or left side!).

I sometimes get bored watching some pro's play because I know certain hazards don't come into play.

Without getting into things that can be changed that have been hashed around in here forever, I say each and every course only allow tournaments to play under their own rules like Augusta!