Drive for show, putt for dough.
Another way it works is psychological. Justin Rose once told me, “My wedge play has to get better. I’m not happy with it, we have to work more on it.” I said, “That’s funny, because Mark has you as No.1 on the PGA Tour in wedge play.” As soon as he saw that, he played with more confidence, standing over a shot thinking, “Man, I’m the best, this is a great opportunity,” rather than, “I’m not really comfortable with this.”
There’s not a psychologist in the world who could do a better job convincing a guy that he’s good than those numbers. They are just too reasonable, there’s too much logic.
On the PGA Tour I’ve watched guys spend hours practicing skills that are just 6% of their score.
Dynamic programming is a systematic approach to thinking ahead. The concept also extends to other sports. “Skate to where the puck’s going to be, not to where it has been.” Dynamic programming allows you to figure out the optimal path through multiple stages of connected problems. The optimal decision on a tee shot depends on what can happen on the tee shot, and what decision and outcomes can happen on the 2nd shot, and so on.
Taking lessons and practicing to improve the weakest parts of your game is a much faster way to lower your score than beating balls on the range.
A score of 75 on a wide-open 5,800y course isn’t at all comparable to the same score on a 7,300y course with narrow fairways and numerous water hazards.
The final score on a hole typically results from the accumulation of fractional gains and losses on each stroke; only occasionally it is due to a single shot. So although it may be literally true that you can make up for a bad drive but not for a missed putt, this observation overvalues the importance of putting and wrongly discounts other parts of the game.
A missed putt can bring on tension and despair and lead to worse results on the next hole. Golf psychologists make their living, in part, by training golfers to minimize these negative spillover effects.
The opposite can happen as well. Getting up and down for par, sinking a long birdie putt, or making a series of short putts can give a golfer confidence that spreads to the rest of his game.
You can hit 3 bad golf shots onto a par-4, and if you hole a 10ft for par, you forget about the 3 bad shots. If you hit 2 good shots and you 3-putt it, all of a sudden you lose your confidence in your swing for some reason.
Confirmation bias refers to the tendency of people to selectively gather or remember information that supports a preconceived idea, while discounting contrary information. “If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.”
Shot count statistic can be misleading. PGA Tour pros average 29 putts per round, with an average score of 71, so putts represent about 40% of their strokes. The number of strokes and the importance of strokes, however, can be very different. 9 of those 29 putts occur within 2.5ft of the whole (where pros make over 99.5%) so putts outside 2.5ft represent 30% of their strokes. Putts make up 30% of high-handicap golfer shots and only about 20% if you exclude putts inside 2.5ft.
These gimmes illustrate a fundamental point: Not all shots are equally important. 2ft putts aren’t as important as 10ft putts. It’s not the sheer number of putts that matters, nor the number of drives or sand shots. Shots are important if they lead to scoring differences.
Greens in regulation (GIR) is a stat that measures tee-to-green performance. GIR = Par - 2.
If an 800m race comes down to a home-stretch sprint between 2 runners, that doesn’t mean the first 750m aren’t important.
An OB drive can lose a hole in match play before a putt ever has a chance to matter.
Since the beginning of golf itself, people have overestimated the importance of putting.
Between almost any 2 groups — the best pros and average pros, pros and amateurs, or good amateurs and poor amateurs — the numbers show that putting contribute about 15% to the difference in scores. Tee-to-green shots explain the remaining 85% of score differences.
Putting is important, but golf is not a glorified putting contest.
He borrowed the word “programming” from the military term for planning and scheduling. The word “program” referred to a plan, policy, or a set of instructions, as in the plan for getting from A to B.
Golfers tend to make strategic decisions based on their stores of accumulated experience, otherwise known as hunches. To make golf decisions more objective and accurate, we can test conventional golf wisdom against the data now available.
A key insight provided by the dynamic programming viewpoint is that progress to the hole is measured in units of strokes rather than distance. Hitting a drive one yard further is not worth the same as hitting a putt 3ft closer to the hole, even though both strokes move the ball the same distance closer to the hole.
In the opening round, Tiger carded a 73, taking 27 putts. PGA Tour pros average 29 putts per round.
Counting putts is a deeply flawed way of measuring a golfer’s skill, because it doesn’t take into account distance, the most important factor in the difficulty of the putt. Distance matters. A 2-putt from 60ft is a good result. A 2-putt from 2ft is a poor result.
PGA Tour pros 1-putt half the time and 2-putt half the time on 8ft putts.
From 60ft the tour average is 2.2 putts to hole out.
- Putts per round is a flawed measure of putting skill because it doesn’t take putt distance into account.
- Strokes gained putting is a better measure of putting skill because it takes into account putt distance, the most important factor in the difficulty of a putt.
- The definition of strokes gained putting is the tour average number of putts to hole out from a given distance, minus the number of putts taken.
Golf ball trajectory calculations from the basis of the slope-adjusted distance information provided by golf laser range finder. One number in the range finder gives the usual straight-line distance to the hole, and a second number gives the effective distance taking into account the difference in elevation between the current position and the hole. The artillery firing tables contained similar adjustments for elevation, wind speed, temperature, atmospheric pressure, and other factors, and were indispensable for military operations.
Ben Hogan is said to prepared for majors by playing worst-ball scramble. At the peak of his career, Greg Normand practiced using worst-ball scramble. “I’d play 2 golf balls, and you always had to hit the worst shot. So if you hit a great drive, you had to hit the next drive great, too.”
On many par-5 holes, a Tour pro is close to the green in 2 shots, and sometimes even on the green. Most amateurs need 3 good shots just to get within 100y of the hole.
For almost everyone, the best and surest way to lower your score is to work on the short game, because rapid improvement is possible there, quickly. Making substantial improvements in the long game takes months and years of hard work.
For the year, he did not even make the top 50 in 3 of the main golf statistics: total driving, greens in regulation, and strokes gained putting. How could Rory have had such a remarkable year and yet have been mediocre in all the classic areas covered by statistics: getting off the tee, getting to the green, and getting the ball in the hole? Something is rotten in the land of standard golf stats.
Strokes gained paints a clear picture: Rory’s long game contributed the most to his stellar season.
If you put your feet in the oven and head in the refrigerator, on average you should be comfortably warm. Averages are flawed when effects are nonlinear.
Every man in the world wants to hit it long. They want to be able to say, I hit that past you.
Yet averaged across the top 40 golfers, driving was nearly twice as important to scoring as putting.
Driving contributed 28% to the top 40 golfers’ scoring advantage, putting contributed 15%, and all other shots accounted for 57%.
20y is worth only three-quarters of a stroke per round to pros, but it’s worth almost 3 strokes to a short-hitting 115-golfer. Short-hitting golfers often can’t reach greens in the regulation number of strokes, so extra driving distance has even more impact on scores for these golfers.
For pros, driving distance is more important than driving accuracy. For amateur golfers, driving distance is even more important for scoring than driving accuracy.
The “approach shot” category includes all shots over 100y from the hole, except for tee shots. Pros hit an average of 18 of these shots per rounds. That compares to just under 14 tee shots on par-4 and par-5 holes, 10 short-game shots, and 29 putts per round.
Another short-game stat is scrambling. The scrambling stat measures the fraction of time a golfer makes par after missing the GIR number of strokes.
Among the top 40 PGA Tour pros, approach shots accounted for 40% of their scoring advantage, driving accounted for 28%, the short game 17%, and putting 15%.
Many pro recognize the primacy of the long game, Rory McIlroy has commented, “Guys say you have to have a short game to win tournament and it is not the case. Not at all.”
If I can hit 15 greens a round and hit a couple of par-5s in 2 and if I can make all my putts inside 10ft, who cares where I chip it?
3 ingredients are needed to sink a putt:
- Green reading, or assessing the contours of the green, its slope and speed.
- Distance control, which involves hitting the putt at the right speed for the green you are on.
- Directional accuracy, or hitting the put along the right line for the speed you’ve chosen.
One player told me he doesn’t have his caddy help him read the greens because the caddy doesn’t know ho hard he plans to hit the putt. Green reading, speed, and line are inextricably linked.
When an amateur asks his partner or caddie for a read, a typical question is, “How much break do you see?” It is rare that you hear, “How steeply uphill is the slope for this putt?” Yet for most putts, and certainly for putts of any length, the most important judgment to make is the slope of the green, for slope determines both how hard or softly a putt needs to be hit and how much it will break.
A Stamp reading of 9 is now found on many good public and private courses. PGA Tour courses are even faster: The average Stimp reading of greens at PGA Tour events is 11. For some major tournaments, the Stimp reading might be as high as 13 or even 14.
Fast greens are so much more difficult to putt than slow greens. Fast greens require a lot more touch than slow greens. Another reason is that putts need to be hit softer on fast greens, bringing nerves more into play. Smooth greens, which also tend to be fast greens, take some of the luck out of putting.
Setting the target at the hole, that is, zero feet beyond the hole, can be called the “die-it-in-the-hole” strategy. You’ll often hear the advice “just lag it close” as another way to express it. For short putts, this strategy is so far too conservative: It will lead to leaving 50% of putts short of the hole, with fewer made putts as a consequence. So let’s start by restating that on short putts, choosing a target beyond the hole is necessary for best performance.
There’s a trade-off between putting with enough aggressiveness to give the ball a chance to go in the hole versus too much aggressiveness, which leads to long comebackers.
Die it or jam it? Neither is correct for short putts. An intermediate strategy makes sense for short putts, one that will have the ball rolling 1-2.5ft by the hole depending on the green slope and putt angle. As the putt distance increases, the die-it strategy makes more sense, especially for uphill putts.
Downhill putts break substantially more than uphill putts, because of the physics of a ball rolling on the green.
Putts break more on steeper greens than on flatter greens. Putts break more on faster greens than on slower greens.
The path of a putt after hitting is visible, but the aim line is not. This makes it hard to learn from your own putts and to go to school on others’ putts. You can, however, get useful feedback on a practice green by putting through a “gate”. It makes it easier to visualize the putt’s true aim line.
To improve putting performance, learn the green slope and speed by watching your first putt and the putts of others in your group.
Distance is the most important factor in putt difficulty: Except on a very fast steep green, a sidehill putt is easier than a 2-foot-longer uphill putt.
The most important putt distance for amateurs is 4ft. Short putts are slightly more important for amateurs than they are for pros.
For pros, 5ft is the most important putt distance; for amateurs, it’s 4ft. Short putts matter a lot.
Sure enough, for putts between 4-7ft, pros sink 3.6% more par putts than birdie putts. But that figure doesn’t take into consideration that par putts in this range tend to be 2nd putts, while birdie putts tend to be first putts. We already know that 2nd putts are easier than 1st putts because of the learning effect.
For long putts, focus on getting the ball to stop as close to the hole as possible, whatever the putt angle. Better to take a downhill putt a foot or two closer than a longer uphill putt.
For both pros and amateurs, 3-7ft is the distance range that most separates good putters from average putters.
When it comes to strategy, most golfers don’t have a clue.
One good outcome doesn’t prove that a strategy was the best choice, and one bad outcome doesn’t mean it was a poor decision.
A good strategy is one that gives you the best chance of success.
Good golf decisions depend on 2 main ingredients: a golfer’s shot patterns (the range of outcomes that can happen on any golf shot) and the features of the golf hole (the width of the fairway, placement of hazards, and the shape of the green).
When Phil Mickelson hired Dave Pelz in 2003, he told Pelz he wanted to be one shot better at the end of 4 rounds.
The surprising result was that the average-scoring-minimizing target for a typical 100-golfer is a few yards into the left rough. That’s right, a typical 100-golfer should choose a target so far left that it’s not even in the fairway.
When there is a safe route to play the hole, hitting out of bounds should be avoided at nearly all costs.
Optimal strategies change with a golfer’s skill: More accurate drivers should choose a more aggressive target.
Weekend golfers are poor strategists. I can only speculate why. In their foursome, golfers might seen one shot out of four go out of bounds. They might incorrectly conclude that what does happen is that should happen. Perhaps golfers are overconfident in their ability to avoid the trouble. Perhaps there’s a fear of your buddy saying, “Aiming that far left? What a wimp!” Perhaps golfers don’t fully appreciate the 2-shot penalty for hitting gout of bounds. The simplest explanation might be the most likely — golfers derive more pleasure from a drive in the fairway with the possibility of a par or birdie, even if it carries a greater chance of a double or triple bogey.
Many amateur golfers treat out-of-bounds and lateral hazards the same, and attempt to avoid both equally, but this wastes strokes.
Most golfers will score worse from 80y from the hole than from 30y, even if every layup to 30y lands in the rough, and every layup to 80y lands in the fairway.
The pro requires, roughly, between 70-90% chance of success to make the risky play worthwhile. Amateurs, however, are known to attempt the risky play with a slim chance of success.
Tee shots that land in the rough cost about 0.1-0.25 of a stroke; shots into a recovery situation cost about 0.5 of a stroke; shot into water or a lateral hazard cost a full stroke; and shots that land out of bounds cost 2 strokes.
Awful shots — tops, chunks, shanks, and others — add up faster than many golfers think. A typical 100-golfer loses 10 strokes per round due to these swings.
3 key steps to lowering golf scores: measure, analyze, and improve.
For most amateurs, reducing the number of awful shots is the single easiest way of shaving strokes off your scorecard.
It quickly became apparent that measuring golf performance would require comparing skills that had been thought of as apples and oranges. Bombing a drive down the middle of the fairway requires strength and timing. Hitting a chip shot requires precise contact for the ball to travel the desired distance. Sinking a a putt requires green-reading skill and putting touch. One appeal of golf is the many different skills required, yet this also makes it challenging to figure out a method for measuring the relative importance of different parts of the game.