From a common sense standpoint, why aren't the best players in the world playing for the most money leaving the pin in? Could it be that they don't hit as many bad putts as amateurs where the pin will help. ie: They are awesome putters.
Tour players aren't always the brightest strategists. They used to lay up to 120 yards, too, until they accepted that they'd shoot lower scores by getting the ball as close as possible to the green (as long as they could do so relatively safely).
And from inside 20-30 feet, given their leaves are at about 8% of the distance, they don't need the flag to help them. Inside of 3' by speed (almost 4' on Tour), the flagstick neither helps nor hurts. But beyond that, it helps… and yet Tour players take the flagstick out for some chips, and then they sometimes race by the hole, indicating that they should've left it in.
Keep beating the drum, man - the data is out there. PGA Tour players are only slightly better putters than scratch golfers. For all common definitions of "awesome" you're wrong.
Note: This site has a long history of believing that it is smarter about all things golf than the tour pros. Like Nicklaus doesn't get classic golf course strategy.
Tour pros though the path determined the starting direction of the ball, John, until we advanced our understanding. Tour players thought laying up to 120 was better than going for stuff. Justin Rose thought he had to spend one winter working on his wedges from 50-125… right up until Sean Foley looked up his stats and found that Justin was the best in the world for the yardages he was talking about.
From 20', a PGA Tour pro averages 1.87 putts. You know how many a scratch golfer averages? 1.89. A 90-golfer? 2.02. Put a Tour player and a 90 golfer 20 feet away from the hole 18 times in regulation and the Tour player shoots 69.66 and the 90-golfer shoots 72.36. 2.7 shots. And 10% of the time (since those are averages, there are ranges), the 90 golfer shoots a lower score than the Tour pro by out-putting him.
The scratch golfer, btw… if you can't do the math… shoots 70.02, 0.36 shots higher. And shoots a lower score than the Tour pro over 30% of the time.
AND those stats are compiled from PGA Tour players playing PGA Tour greens, and average golfers playing average greens. And you know what else other scientifically conducted studies have found? That players of all ability levels (excluding maybe those who can't break 110) putt better on faster greens. They three putt a bit more often, but they make more one-putts to more than off-set their three-putts. PGA Tour players have that advantage every week, while amateurs are playing slower, bumpier greens that require bigger strokes to send the ball the same distance and a greater likelihood that the ball will get bumped offline. Plus, they're often playing vastly different green speeds each time they play. Anyway, again, the study said that everyone putted measurably better (non-negligibly) by putting PGA Tour level greens than slower greens.
So:
- The gap between PGA Tour players and average golfers is much narrower than many people believe it to be.
- The gap shrinks further if average golfers were able to putt on PGA Tour type greens all the time.
Those are the facts, John, and you can close your eyes, plug your ears, and keep humming your tune, but it won't change the fact that if the PGA Tour converted to an all-putting Tour and kept purses the same, and opened qualifying for the new all-putting Tour to the world, you'd find that the odds of even a single current PGA Tour player making it through would be incredibly small.
But hey, keep blathering your nonsense John. Doesn't affect my life in the slightest, except for the added workouts to whatever muscles are used to roll my eyes, and the time it took to write this post (I type quickly, though).
My advice remains the same:- If the flagstick is leaning so much that a ball can’t fit* or it’s whipping around in the hole due to high winds, take it out from short range or have it tended from long range (the flagstick and the person tending it can help with distance perception). These situations are incredibly rare.
- If you’re certain that you can control the ball speed to within about 3′ past the hole (at stimp 9.5), there’s no difference, so do whatever you like. A few of every hundred putts that would have gone in will be kept out, but about an equal number of putts that would have popped out will go in. There’s no real net advantage or disadvantage.
- For every foot that your ball has the potential to roll further than 3′ past the hole, the advantage of leaving the flagstick in grows. Balls that would miss will go in or stay closer to the hole than they otherwise would have.
P.S. Kalen, "theory" does not mean the same thing in science as it does outside of science. C'mon man. And I've been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and have two degrees in the sciences (along with one in French). I wouldn't have changed much about my own tests of over 2,000 balls rolled to make it perfectly acceptable to the scientific community, had that been a desire of mine.