The misperception of the short game.

[Mike_Young]

If the sport was as formulaic as this thread's direction implies, we wouldn't be here today. But, if Crane continues to get the whisper, we likely won't be here in the future.

The kid that's leading the NOLA event this week is No. 1 in scrambling this week. fwiw.

Someone needs to rush out and let that kid know he leads that stat...

[Brent Hutto]

Surely the "I know it when I see it" brigade must be failing to understand what "stats" mean in this context.

They looked at every single shot in ever single PGA Tour event over a decade's time. And the pattern is clearly that the guys who hit it closest from 200 yards score better than everyone else.

Equally clear over those thousands of rounds is that the advantages due to good scrambling, good putting or good anything else are small in comparison to the advantage due to good long approach shots.

There's no obfuscation, math tricks or subtlety to this analysis. You just add up the results of all those shots and the pattern emerges quite clearly.

I realize every guy over 40 who has spent a lifetime in the game has been programmed to spout "Short game, short game, short game" every time this topic comes up. It's like trying to carry on a rational conversation with a Hare Krishna. But lots of people spouting something doesn't make it any more true.

[Mike_Young]

I realize every guy over 40 who has spent a lifetime in the game has been programmed to spout "Short game, short game, short game" every time this topic comes up. It's like trying to carry on a rational conversation with a Hare Krishna. But lots of people spouting something doesn't make it any more true.

I've had many rational conversations with Hare Krishna.  And spouting does make something true if you believe that perception is reality.

[BCowan]

Brent,

   I find it funny you spend time working on your 60 yard shot.  Stats don't tell the whole picture, just as a GPS doesn't have common sense, and often gives you a bad route, but gets you there.  Yeah, and the inflation rate is 1.6% (but they say it is)

[mike_beene]

Perhaps working in the 60 yard shot is the better for your long game than mindless full shot sessions and helps your wedge game as well...

[Michael Felton]

For those of you who are ignoring the actual statistics that demonstrate clearly that long game is more important, what about what Lee Trevino said: two things that won't last very long, dogs that chase cars and pros who putt for pars. Long game is where it's at.

For each of you personally do you think if you could get Tiger's long game or his short game, you would be better with his long game and your short game or your long game and his short game? Tiger at his peak.

[Mike_Young]

When Tiger was at his peak he made 100% of his putts from three feet and in...if he averaged 1500 such putts over a year and he only made 90% of them he would have added 150 strokes to his game for that year.  I'll take my long game and his short game...

[Phil McDade]

When Tiger was at his peak he made 100% of his putts from three feet and in...if he averaged 1500 such putts over a year and he only made 90% of them he would have added 150 strokes to his game for that year.  I'll take my long game and his short game...

And making 100 percent of those putts from 3 feet and in was the result of avoiding unnecessarily long lag putts; it's easy to make 3 ft and under putts for your second putt when your first is from 15 feet away.

[Padraig Dooley]

Let's look at this from the club golfer standpoint.

In general, if you hit more greens you score lower. It's very straight forward. What kind of score would you have if you averaged 3 greens in regulation or if you averaged 9 greens in regulation?? A great way to improve a 16 handicap scores is to have them in play more often off the tee. For the lower player is to get them to hit more greens.

Now look at a golfer who might improved chipping, if the average distance from the hole was 25 feet for the golfer and it improved to an average distance of 15 feet, how much would the score improve. The answer is not really a whole lot, not three putting that much from 25 feet and not holing a whole lot more from 15 feet.

The biggest impact on scoring is the long game. That is not to say the short game doesn't have an impact, it does, just not as much impact as the long game.

[Jason Thurman]

The hilarious thing about this thread is that the original post suggests that the short game doesn't get enough respect, when in fact most dopes at the local muni believe adages like "Drive for show, putt for dough!" The general golfing public already thinks it's the most important aspect of the game.

Mike's first post basically suggests that the short game (and putting) deserves more attention, and then he builds an entire "argument" around conventional wisdom. I guess I'm too ambitious, but it amazes me that anyone can't see the hilarious irony. I've been laughing for four pages now.

I don't think anyone's saying the short game is wholly unimportant. That sort of binary reaction is just stupid. Personally, I just think its importance is just about properly rated, and probably just slightly overrated.

[Padraig Dooley]

When Tiger was at his peak he made 100% of his putts from three feet and in...if he averaged 1500 such putts over a year and he only made 90% of them he would have added 150 strokes to his game for that year.  I'll take my long game and his short game...

If I had my own short game and Tiger's long game, you would have heard of me as a multiple winner.

Brett Rumford is known as having one of the best, if not the best short game on the European Tour, if I had my own long game and his short game, I might be on tour but certainly wouldn't be a multiple winner.

[Mike_Young]

When Tiger was at his peak he made 100% of his putts from three feet and in...if he averaged 1500 such putts over a year and he only made 90% of them he would have added 150 strokes to his game for that year.  I'll take my long game and his short game...

And making 100 percent of those putts from 3 feet and in was the result of avoiding unnecessarily long lag putts; it's easy to make 3 ft and under putts for your second putt when your first is from 15 feet away.

I think 90% wold be a great number on such putts...

[Sam Morrow]

I don't think most of you guys realize how good the pros really are.

[Mike_Young]

Well let me put it this way.  If the guys whose long game stats are being measured did not have exceptional short games , they would not be on tour where one could measure their long game stats......

[Tom_Doak]

Well let me put it this way.  If the guys whose long game stats are being measured did not have exceptional short games , they would not be on tour where one could measure their long game stats......

Exactly.  The problem with statistics is confirmation bias ... if you only keep track of the guys who are already ON the tour, you can't tell anything about what keeps others off.

I have played with lots of guys who hit it as good as Ben Crenshaw, who could never have made it on Tour, much less won a major.

[Jason Thurman]

Tom, there have been studies that show the same trends in guys who aren't on Tour.

Crenshaw is actually a great example of how wrong the idea that "short game and putting is everything" really is. So is Brad Faxon, for that matter. Those guys are two of the greatest putters ever. If putting was really everything, they'd be the guys racking up 18, 14, 9, and 7, and 6 majors. Instead, they were very successful but never dominant players, while the guys with the aforementioned totals of majors were all among the best ballstrikers ever. And again, they were two of the absolute best ever at what guys like Mike believe is the single most important aspect of the game.

Doing anything at an elite level is obviously an asset. But facts just repeatedly bear out that you gain more by being great at hitting it than you do chipping it and putting it.

[Sam Morrow]

All I want to know is why Moe Norman did so little. You read stories you'd think he stiffed it every hole.

[Jud_T]

Jason,

Yes, but the big knockers- Tiger, Phil, Bubba et al still only win when they have lights out weeks on and around the greens.  Bomb and gouge is great, that is if you can make all those 8 footers you're left with for birdie.

[Mike_Young]

Jason,
You keep talking about two or three of the top guys....I'm calling all large tour guys great players.  They advanced through their short games...a question...do you think a tour player with the top long game stats lines up a shot at the pin from 200 yards?

[Jason Thurman]

Jud, you're not wrong. If you look at the winner on Tour in any given week, you'll generally find a guy whose numbers were good all across the board, and it often comes down to one or two 20 foot putts made that week. Those putts are essentially random - there's no one on Tour who makes a significantly higher number of them than his peers across any meaningful sample size - but they still count.

Plenty of guys win a single event with merely decent ballstriking and an inexplicable hot streak around the greens. The guys who are CONSISTENTLY at the top of the leaderboard though, week in and week out, are excellent ballstrikers almost without exception. It's the only way to get consistent enough to contend consistently. They're the guys at the top of the world ranking, the guys at the top of the money list, and the guys who rack up the most wins. And likewise at lower levels, the guys who advance from amateur golf to professional ranks are the ones who consistently strike it better than their peers. The guys who consistently contend for your club championship also are generally the best ballstrikers.

This is quantifiable and all you have to do is a quick Google search for "golf analytics." It's like arguing about whether the world is flat or not while standing on top of the Willis Tower. It doesn't matter whether you're anecdotally able to see the curvature of the Earth or not - we have real data compiled that proves it's there.

[Norbert P]

 
   How do we use this information (?) to make more interesting golf courses for real people?



  Who'll win in Nawlins today?   Soon you'll know.

[Mike_Young]

Sounds like it would be fun to play a pga tour event with a 15 inch cup one week.....

[Patrick_Mucci]

Surely the "I know it when I see it" brigade must be failing to understand what "stats" mean in this context.

They looked at every single shot in ever single PGA Tour event over a decade's time. And the pattern is clearly that the guys who hit it closest from 200 yards score better than everyone else.

Brent,

A 200 yard approach shot is more of an exception than the norm.
With the average drive of 290 how many 200 yard shots are there ?

Doesn't it also presume that the 200 yard approach comes from the fairway ?

Tough to make birdie from OB or water

 

Equally clear over those thousands of rounds is that the advantages due to good scrambling, good putting or good anything else are small in comparison to the advantage due to good long approach shots.

There's no obfuscation, math tricks or subtlety to this analysis. You just add up the results of all those shots and the pattern emerges quite clearly.

I realize every guy over 40 who has spent a lifetime in the game has been programmed to spout "Short game, short game, short game" every time this topic comes up. It's like trying to carry on a rational conversation with a Hare Krishna. But lots of people spouting something doesn't make it any more true.

[Peter Pallotta]

I'm an average golfer. Somedays I hit it a little better, sometimes a little worse, while my chipping and putting are what they are and fairly consistent. I've played one great classic in my life, Crystal Downs. I hit the ball really well that day and still shot something around 10 strokes over what I usually do.

If I had taken that same ball striking day to the modern course I play, I think I would've been about 5 strokes lower than usual. In short, CD 'played' about 15 strokes different than its modern counterparts.  (If I took all of my really good ball striking rounds on that modern course, there is no way the difference between my best day and my worst is 15 shots.)

Any guesses about what it is about CD that made such a difference? Any guesses on whether that's intentional/designed or just an accident? Seems clear to me: on a typical golden age course, the relative importance (and total number) of short game shots is higher than at a typical modern course.

It isn't about whether we drive for show and putt for dough. And it isn't about whether great golfers both hit good shots and scramble well -- they all do both, and better than the vast majority of golfers who've ever lived. It's about whether architecture/design can create a field of play -- whether it wants to create a field of play -- where the relative importance of these two aspects of the game are closer together rather than farther apart. 

Peter

[Phil McDade]

Jason,

Yes, but the big knockers- Tiger, Phil, Bubba et al still only win when they have lights out weeks on and around the greens.  Bomb and gouge is great, that is if you can make all those 8 footers you're left with for birdie.

Um, no -- not at least when it comes to winning majors (the only true and worthy definition of assessing greatness in golfers).

Take a look at the list of folks who have won the most majors. See any similarities? All were really long (for their era) or considered great ball strikers (or both). Even Faldo (T-12 for most major wins with 5) was probably the preeminent ball striker of his era -- perhaps along with Norman (another very long guy off the tee). Nicklaus, Woods, Hagen, Hogan, Player, Watson (not short off the tee in his prime), Sarazen, Palmer, Snead, Jones (esp. Jones), Trevino, Faldo and Mickelson from the modern era -- all very long for their era, or considered among the very best ball-strikers of their eras. Sure, many of them had solid short games around the green and were good putters, and had some great demonstrations of short-game ability at majors, but what ties them together is length and/or ball striking.