This seems very opposite than Pelz told us and also to my experiences. Long shots are important to get the ball to the decent place to avoid bogeys, but 10m miss with those are not so bad. Instead we got 6-8 wedges to the green per round and those should be in 3yds to make birdies with good %.
Is that maybe because all tour players are so good with wedges nowadays that they can't make the difference by that?
It has nothing to do with how good Tour players have gotten with their wedges. They haven't gotten any better since 2000. And if cancel out the ball traveling further (i.e. hitting a SW 125 yards today versus hitting it 105 yards in 1975), I don't believe they have gotten any better. Where the Tour players have gotten better is with the putting.
This is mainly due to the greens becoming easier to putt on as they are smoother with less severe undulations. The green size on Tour has nearly doubled from 1980. So with the older, smaller greens...if you found the green you had a shorter putt. The designers would counter that by making the greens more undulated with more of a severe slope. With the modern greens being twice the size...they are now flatter, partially to help with the fact that the putts are going to be longer, but also to help with the increasing speed on greens as everybody wants fast greens to putt on. Combine that with better grass surfaces, particularly on the non-bent grass greens...you're getting players making a lot more putts.
In counter to that, the driving on Tour has become worse. They hit it longer, but now they can miss by a mile and get away with it. While I don't like the 'Total Driving' metric, if you go back as far as 1980 and look at the correlation of Adjusted Scoring Average to Total Driving...you will see the correlation become less and less over time. Back in the 80's, you almost had to drive it well to have any real success on Tour. Now that is often untrue...even if you use my Driving Effectiveness ranking.
However, recently Driving appears to becoming more and more important. I think it's because we are seeing great players like Bubba, Dustin and Rory that can hit the driver well and play the rest of the game well enough to where they can beat out a Phil Mickelson who drives it all over the lot.
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The common fallacy with golfers is that they often look at how many times a certain club is used and assume that the more it is used, the more valuable it is. I used to have the same misperception as well until I studied the data.
This is why we often hear well,
putting is most important because nearly half of your shots come on the putting green.
You generally have 2 areas of importance when it comes to areas of the game that matter:
- Frequency of Shots
- Likely Deviation of Results
The misperception is that it is just frequency of shots or that frequency of shots matters more than the deviation of results all of the time.
The deviation of results is what separate players from handicaps. I'm sure you've been on the range and have seen Tour players hit drivers and see that their results are usually fairly similar. For example, a Tour player that hit is 290 yards off the tee and finds 65% of their fairways is likely going to hit it about 290 yards and be fairly accurate. Compare that to a 10 handicap that can hit it max 250 yards. They may hit one drive 250 yards right down the middle, then the next 175 yards and miss 40 yards right.
That's part of the reason why the
putting is half of your shots is inaccurate in how it applies to your score. The average Tour player makes putts inside 2-feet roughly 99% of the time. The average golfer will give themselves a 2-footer so they effectively make them 100% of the time. Given many putts are inside 'gimme range' where there is no significant difference between how much a Tour player or a 20 handicap can make...the net result is that you can disregard those gimme putts and that putting really accounts for more like 25-30% of your strokes, not 50%.
The same applies with iron shots, but at a different scale. Here are the proximity to the cup on shots from 75-100 yards in 2013:
Best (Lee Williams): 13.7 feet
Worst (Shawn Stefani): 23.3 feet
Tour Average: 18.5 feet
There's a misperception that Tour players
are getting the ball in the hole in 2 shots whenever they get a wedge in their hands. Instead, at a Tour average of 18.5 feet from just 75-100 yards...the average Tour player makes that 18.5 foot putt only 16.5% of the time.
At the worst (Stefani at 23.3 feet), that make % drops to 11%. But the real kicker is that at the worst...a guy like Stefani is finding the green from 75-100 yards most of the time.
Now, compare that to shots from 175-200 yards in 2013:
Best (Robert Garrigus): 30.3 feet
Worst (Steven Bowditch): 42.7 feet
Tour Average: 36.8 feet
The deviation is greater than it is from 75-100 yards. But the real kicker here is that we are now getting further away from the cup which means that the deviation is greater than the numbers actually show because the further away from the hole the ball is...the more likely the ball is not going to be on the green. And that results in shots that can end up in water (which the Tour does record), bunkers, deep rough and generally unfavorable positions.
So from 75-100 yards...the best on Tour and the worst on Tour are likely to still hit their shots on the green.
But from 175-200 yards...the best on Tour will be on the green much more often than the worst on Tour.
Also...the average Tour player hit 0.9 shots per round from75-100 yards. But hit 2.8 shots per round from 175-200 yards.
So there is a misperception as to how frequently a Tour player hits shots from various distances. I had one client that first told me he wanted to be the best wedge player in the game. When I told him how overrated wedge play was he didn’t believe me. But after a few months he was sold on that statement and said ‘y’know, there’s just not many holes on Tour where you’re going to have a wedge into the green.’
My research shows that if you look at the Best player on Tour from 175-225 yards versus the Tour AVERAGE from 175-225 yards…all other things being equal the best player will be about 0.4 to 0.45 strokes better in Scoring Average at the end of the year.
That may not seem like much, but on Tour that is worth around 40-60 spots on the Money List.
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For amateurs, there is a little difference mainly because the scale is different. They are usually not playing 7,200+ yard golf courses so they are not likely to see as many shots from 175-225 yards. Also, the deviation in results changes a bit with certain clubs than the Tour player.
Essentially, to make it on Tour you are going to have to drive it with a certain level of efficiency. You’re going to need at least 104 mph of club head speed and if you’re at that amount of club head speed, you need to be able to find roughly 70% of your fairways. As you generate more club head speed, you don’t have to as accurate. If you can’t meet that prerequisite…you cannot stay on Tour no matter how good your putting is.
For the amateur golfer…even good ones…their largest deviation in results usually occurs with the driver (again, the golfer that hits a 250 yard drive down the middle then hits one 200 yards and missed 50 yards left).
But the longer approach shots are still more important than the short approach shots because they will hit those shots frequently enough and combined with the deviation in results…it becomes important for them to hit those shots well. If a 10-handicap has a 170 yard shot into the green and duffs it…now they have a 150 yard shot into the green which is still a tough shot for them. Conversely, if they chili-dip a 70 yard shot…they may be left with a 50-yard shot into the green which is much easier for them to execute.
3JACK