I figured this might be an interesting thread for both the advanced and the beginner golfers in this forum.

The goal is to provide situations (preferably with pictures / descriptions) and to hear the thoughts of what people think is the optimal shot / approach / course management strategy for the circumstance.

It'll (hopefully) provide a bit of in-depth discussion about why play A is better than play B etc.

I'll start:

Here's the scenario:



Hole is a 420 yard par 4. We're in the middle of the fairway with 140 yards in. The black lines on the green represent the slopes (pretty severe in this case). Red lines represent the wind which is blowing right to left at about 25-30 mph. There is also a significant slope over the green and a collection area to the right of the green as well. Bunker is also protecting the hole, which is about 6-8 feet off the left edge.

So what's the best shot here? Do you like the low draw shot that rides the wind? Or a cut at the middle of the green with the wind holding it up (bonus being ball gets pushed closer and closer to the hole if wind gets out of control).

Anyways, hopefully this thread gains some traction and others can contribute some strategy discussion too!

For the shot at hand I would say that your target is the dead center of the green with whatever your natural shot is. The phrase "bonus being ball gets pushed closer to hole" is not something you ever want to think. You must pick an exact target and commit to putting the ball right there, exactly right there. If you choose a conservative target but acknowledge that "if the ball moves closer to the hole all the better" then your actual target is in fact not the conservative spot, it is somewhere between your spot and the hole. Thus you are now officially hitting a shot without an EXACT target.

If you cut the ball naturally but for this shot try to "ride the wind" more often than not you will overcook it and short side yourself. If your natural shot is a draw but for this shot you try to "hold it into the wind" you will more often than not flare it and come up short. ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS hit your natural shot. If you natural shot will not work because the hole is a dogleg take less club and hit your natural shot to the corner of the dogleg. PERIOD. If you take a driver and try to work it around a corner against your natural shot you will more often than not over cook it or flare it and be in more trouble than hitting your natural shot to the meat of the FW and having a little longer 2nd.

Beyond that:

Only try to hit one shot shape EVER.

If you are over a 2 handicap ALWAYS aim at the middle of the green.

If you are going to lay up, LAY UP. Don't ever, EVER, lay up into a hazard by trying to get it closer for your next shot.

If there is any chance AT ALL the shot you are playing could result in a double, pick a safer shot.

I would hit a knockdown gap wedge if I felt like I could get a little help from the wind. If conditions were damp or it was cooler out I am probably looking at a pitching wedge.

I would aim at the right edge of the green and let it ride the wind towards the flag but staying on the fat part of the green. My prefered miss would be slightly short as the chip uphill looks easier than anything else if you aren't putting.

Tough shot here so anything on the green inside of 25 feet is pretty solid imo

agree with Ship also...play your normal shot and adjust for wind. Hitting a hold off cut against the wind and hope it pushes it closer is something a PGA tour player would be thinking and could execute.

If this is the case that anything inside of 25 feet is pretty solid (PGA Tour average this year from 125-150 is 24', so yeah, anything inside 25 feet would be a good result) then you shouldn't be trying anything other than hitting the green. So riding the wind with a gap will most likely result in more missed greens due to lack of ability to control the distance than just a nice solid punch PW.

Pick a spot pin high dead center of green and try to hit the ball there.

does it refer to this particular circumstances or to every hole in every conditions?

The goal with this shot should be to miss right. Missing left is going to be a disaster with the green sloping away from the flag. You will leave yourself a difficult up&down. In windy conditions I play knockdowns, so I'll club up and choke down and make a 9 o'clock swing.

Every shot, every hole. If you have 100 yards or less you can aim SLIGHTLY to the side of the green that the hole is on, but I would tell you to go 50/50 between the center of the green and the hole location.

The reason being, it is SOOOOO much easier to not make bogeys than it is to make birdies. Make fewer bogeys, get more looks at birdie, take advantage of par 5s, and your score will drop I guarantee it.

No, the goal with this shot is to hit the green, not miss it right. I know what you mean obviously, and acknowledging where to miss it is fine. But I truly think you should be aiming at the center of every green and not worried about which side has the trouble to avoid. Especially on this shot with a strong wind. The odds of anyone over a zero handicap making birdie here are very slim. So the main way you help your score here is by hitting the green and eliminating bogey. You will by luck have some balls that wind up close and some that wind up with long 2 putt attempts. But the average score here will be the best if you aim at the center and more importantly actually try to hit it there. No subconscious "if the wind takes it left that is fine as it will get closer." No, your target is the center of the green and that is 100% where you are trying to hit it.

so ship are you saying you shouldnt try and hit it both ways?

ok with this shot if i was playing well id take my 125 to 130 club and hit a flat burning draw that would land on front third and skip up the hill my landing target would be just a bit right of the center arrow.

Personally...

My normal shot is about a 3 yard fade, I'm taking almost dead aim here, probably 5 feet right of the hole, for a few reasons that are specific to my game

1) chipping is the strongest point of my game at the moment, with any kind of lie within 5 yards of the green I would fancy myself to get up and down at least 7/10

2) lag putting is probably my weakest point

3) short irons are solid and my miss is right most of the time

Having said that, I have to agree with ship for the majority of players centre of the green is probably the play, maybe it still is for me but I would go at this flag.

EDIT: Loving the idea of the thread

In response to LEO, not to be cocky, but....

+6.8 - ship---this - 8/4/2011
+2.9 - stadler - 8/4/2011
+2.8 - Shoot59 - 8/4/2011
+2.7 - rianb - 8/4/2011
+2.5 - PRINCEofSTUD - 8/4/2011

I hit 100% of my shots in 2011 with a cut. Period. I did not try to draw a single golf shot ALL YEAR. That was my mission starting the year and I accomplished it.

On the PGA Tour probably 80% of the guys play one shot shape on over 90% of their shots. Very few actually try to move it both ways very often. Reason being that while yes if I could move it both ways I would probably be able to get the line correct more often to get is close to the pin, but I would almost certainly have worse distance control by hitting it both ways. Now I am not talking much different, but you also aren't hitting it that much closer by working it both ways.

Do Rory, Tiger, Phil, Bubba hit it both ways, yes. Do you/I have their game? No. As your skills increase your targets can become more aggressive.

I literally just had this conversation with the jr. I help last week. He tied for 1st in a high school event and he hit it OB on the 15th hole trying to drive the green. The hole was 356 and playing very firm and fast with wind of the right and down. Pretty tight hole between houses on an older golf course. He tried the hero shot to ride the wind and put it on and over cooked it and it ran out pin high in the left houses. He could hit 4 iron SW all day and have 15 foot or less 80% of the time. Yes it would be cool to drive the green and it would really impress the 2 kids he was paired with...but it would have been cooler to win the tournament by 2 and have all the kids know it.

His response to me when I told him my thoughts on the attempt was "the guys on the PGA Tour would try to drive that green every time." Which I almost agree with, probably more like 75% of the time...but my response to him was "are you on the PGA Tour? Yes, one day when you are a better player and in more control of your tee ball you can try that shot, but for now you will hit it the houses probably 10-20% of the time and there is no way the other 80% will offset that double+"

@ship have you ever heard the saying it aint bragging if you can back it up? you have every reason to be as cocky as you want.

ok i understand your thought process. and you are good with eliminating say half the pins?

See, I don't look at it as eliminating half the pins. I actually purely look at expectation. Through superior distance control due to only hitting one shot I am pin high all day. Pin high and 15 feet right is the same (roughly) as 9 feet right and 6 feet long. But, by hitting the safe shot I don't give up too much in distance from the pin and I eliminate more short sided misses which will result in a lower average score.

I have said it before and truly believe it that if you are over a 2 handicap and go out and play an uber conservative game you will 100% lower your handicap 20-30%, if not more, purely by playing safer shots. If you are under a 2 I think that a blend of center of green from over 140 or so and then not aiming less than 15 feet from the edge of the green from closer range is the best strategy.

A rough estimate of a good shot for the PGA Tour is somewhere between 5-7% of the distance of the shot. Meaning for our 140 yard example here a shot within about 25 feet (6% of 140 yards) is an acceptable shot. So the PGA Tour average from 100-125 this year is 20.6 feet…6.1% ish based on 112.5 yards being in the middle. So for a country club weekend pin that is “tucked” 15 feet from the edge even the PGA Tour guys would miss some greens short sided, you folds scoring at home would miss way more than you think you would from a mere 112 yards. So for that 15’ from the edge pin if you aimed 10 feet right of the pin you remove a lot of the short siding. And really don’t do too much to hurt your overall proximity for your birdie putts. The Tour boys make their birdies from inside of 15’ so it is imperative they get aggressive with wedges as those really are the only clubs that have expectation to get that close.

Since there is no way to have ShotLink data for mid to high handicappers we can purely guess it probably isn’t pretty based on the fact that the Tour pros don’t really hit it that close on average. But they offset that by typically having a pretty conservative game plan. Again, yes the guys you see every week on TV are hitting it at the flags, but that is not the norm on Tour.

CONSERVATIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yay, this thread is gaining traction

100% agree with this. My senior year of HS/freshmen year of college when I was playing my best i played a cut nearly exclusively and would only draw it when i had to. This doesn't totally agree with what ship is saying of 100% hit one shot, but I would would venture to guess that it was about 95%. Some situations require the other direction, but in general I was hitting it one way and that meant I never had to worry about the left side of the golf course.

My sophomore I noticed I started trying to hit it both ways and had my worst results in a long time. There really is very little benefit to hitting it both ways cause that means your misses are both sides rather than one. Needless to say I am back to trying to hit everything that is pretty straight or falls slightly right (cut).

I see lots of the weekend golfers I play with try to work it into left and right pins which I think is nuts since most of them dont have a clue what they are doing. I see guys in college do it and some do it well cause they have always played that way (think bubba) but for most I see them all hit the same shot virtually all the time and only hit it the other way if their normal shot is obstructed.

Keep it simple, hit one shot shape.

I truly tried to hit a cut on 100% of my shots more as a challenge and experiment, obviously as he states I did hit a draw if it were physically impossible to hit a cut though. Stadler is certainly a good enough player that he can try to hit some creative shots as need be but even he has found that movement for the sake of movement doesn't yield results.

Again, watching the guys on TV hit "all the shots" is not helpful. They are on TV for a reason!

Exactly! My coaches would say try and play from the center of the green out hitting different shape shots so I started doing that and stopped hitting >70% GIR. I would over do it and short side myself often. Part of it was probably that I had never played that way before...I would just hit it high and pretty straight/slight fade all the time and I struggled. Since then I have stopped trying to hit it close by shaping it.

When I hit just one shot my distance control was really good. I would just aim a little right of left pins and left of right pins and try to hit it to 15 feet all day (obviously not realistic, but I wasn't trying to make it from everywhere). I have learned that playing to the fatter areas is better and I am a +5/+6 so there is something to be said there about how weekend golfers should manage their game.

Could be a fun thread, I have a nationwide Monday and a couple other tournaments coming up so posting some situations from these could be interesting

By middle of the green do you mean truly the middle of the green (both side-to-side and back-to-front), or pin-high middle of the green? I'm about a 5 hdcp who feels pretty good about my distance control, but I'll be honest: my course strategy consists of "aim for the fairway" and "aim for the flag" which is pretty terrible. I mean there are obviously cases where I aim elsewhere, like if the flag is tucked by a bunker or other trouble but thats about it

It is a good idea and I didn't want to shoot it down to quick with a "center of green and don't make double /end thread"

But honestly I think that for 98%+ of players that strategy would yield lower scores.

Center of the green is fine. Approaching each green knowing which side you can't miss is essential to eliminate bogeys. I'm not saying don't aim center of the green, I'm saying shape your shot in a manner where you won't miss left. The goal is to have an uphill putt at birdie (or an easy uphill chip to get up&down for par. You should only miss left if you hit a horrible shot, but if you do miss left it shouldn't be by much. With the wind blowing right to left I probably aim right edge, with no draw (being a righty of course).

feel free to post your own too!!!

this post is so awesome.

ship may i ask how much you cut the ball? 5yd cut? im assuming you are saying that if pin is 3 on from left and you have a 5yd cut that your starting line is pin your landing target is 5yd right of flag.

that would be my thought. if i was playing a cut. unfortunately when i played it was much easier for me to turn it left and see that shot.

First, I want to say that I almost completely agree with you. I'm about 99% sure that if you took the flag sticks out of the holes people's average score would go down because they would be forced to just aim to the middle of the green.

Buuutttttt, shooting the lowest score possible isn't always everyone's goal. Other good course management advice for shooting the lowest score could be for 80% of players to take the driver out of the bag. But that's no fun.

Trying to hit shots is fun. Pulling off the hero shot is fun. Hitting a par 5 in two from the edge of your comfort zone is fun.

Anyway, I guess the moral is: decide what you want out of your round. If you want to shoot your lowest possible score every time out, I think ship's advice is spot on. Take your normal shot, aim it at the center of the green, two putt. If you get enjoyment from playing different shots, play different shots.

Couldn't put it better myself, love that feeling when you pull off a 'hero shot' exactly as you saw it