don't disagree about the short game, but there are also intermediate patches a high HC can make to duct tape things together if they don't need to do fancy things like flop a chip over a greenside trap, i.e. learning to use 9i-5i with the heel up in a smooth stiff-wristed putting motion can take a large amount of variance out of the short game for those folks. even the chunked shots or thinned shots have a reasonable chance of getting close.

For "weekend warriors" it's going to vary. I'm an 11, and ball striking consistency is 100% what's keeping me from being lower. Distance is also a major factor. I play with a couple young bombers who are 4-6 handicaps, and it's frustrating to see them shoot so much better than me when their short games are 5x worse than mine, but they're 100+ yards past me every tee shot.

I was an excellent ball striker in high school, when I peaked at a 5, and my short game was quite noticeably worse than it is now. I honestly think weight has a lot to do with it; I'm 75 pounds heavier than I was back then, which makes the motions more difficult.

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How old are you Porter?

39

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congrats Porter! you just got 10 years younger from what i thought you were.

He looks much older in his avatar photo. Lotta miles, I guess.

Dead serious. The avatar definitely threw me off.

I honestly always assumed you were 60+ because of the avatar.

Ha, I can't tell who's trolling and who (if any) is actually serious. But yeah, I'm 39 with the knees and joints of a 70 year old.

Drive for show and putt for dough is a saying that I have heard a lot in my life and I think it's not true. I think that driving distance is the most important thing when it comes to golf. If I had to choose one area to be great at it would be driving distance. The reason for it is simple. When you bomb it, you play a different course than everyone else. If you play a par 72 and can hit all the par 5's in 2, you are playing a par 68. To put it into perspective I looked up Tiger's stats during his first years on tour.

1997 to 2001
Par 3's = +5
Par 4's = -81
Par 5's = -713

His 2000 was obviously insane and if you take that out you get:
1997-1999, 2001
Par 3's = +30
Par 4's = -10
Par 5's = -546

I am a scratch golfer and am a really good putter with a good short game, hit it straight but not far, and would say irons was the weakest part of my game. I've had putting contest with a couple of professionals and I can putt just as well as them if not better but their ball striking is in a different universe than mine. The sound the ball makes when they hit their shots is incredible. Another thing about distance is that a lot of it is out of your control. Some players like Nick Faldo, Corey Pavin, and Justin Leonard really tried to change their game to get more distance and couldn't do it. They just couldn't generate the clubhead speed that is needed. I know I tried, I have zero athletic ability and couldn't hit it much farther. Flexibility is key. Rickie Fowler hits it pretty far and is short but has a slinky for a spine. If you look at Butch Harmon, he is one of the most successful instructors ever and he only works with guys who bomb it because it's easy to take 10 to 15 yards off someone's drive to get them to hit more fairways than it is to take a bunter and get him to add 10 to 15 yards.

Putting is one of those things that Dave Pelz has kinda proven to something that is almost impossible to master. He took a straight uphill put 10 feet away and created a putting machine to make a perfect stroke and it only made 7 out of 10. It's really difficult to make a lot of putts every round. Especially when most of the putts will be outside of 15 feet. If you look at the best stats on the PGA tour, their putting average is 1.78 and if you take an average amateur their putting average would probably be 2. So it's not that big of a jump. Few amateurs can rip a 350 yard drive down the middle however.

Bumping for my results this year. I'm almost exactly a 2. FWIW I have been as low as +3 but that's been nearly 15 years ago. This is the first year I tried again since like 2009/10. I was probably a pencil 4 at the end of the 2020 season.

Oops forgot the image

Upshot (I think it's obv) is that my driving is materially impacting my ability to score. Most of the issue is from huge driver dispersion particularly early in the year when I was working through some stuff. Actually drove it better towards the end of the year.

Fwiw here are my results the second half of the season (15 rounds). Started to drive it much better obv. But still the weak point in my game for sure

I'm not sure I'm reading it correctly but it seems like the whole short game section stands out as the relative weak spot?

Anyone have a handy link to "Strokes Gained for Dummies"? I mean the nuts and bolts of calculation, I get the general concept.

Yup. Typically not the case but as I worked hard on my long game this season my short game necessarily suffered

Have you read Broadies book?

Simple calculation. It takes tour players 3 shots to hole from roughly 162 in fairway. Also takes 1.5 to hole out from 8 feet. So if a player hits it to 8 feet from 162 he has moved it 1.5 shots closer to the hole in only 1 shot. Thus he gained .5 on that approach ((3 expectation from original position to 1.5 shot expectation from new position is 1.5 shot expectation improvement) less 1 actual shot). Can do this for every shot

Scott’s Decade stuff has some basic calculation stuff in it

Lengthy interview with Scott in Golf Digest, shorter version in this month’s magazine. Both have the quote where he mentions this thread.

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/tou...est-happy-hour

Interview is awesome. Just so many interesting stats that you wouldn't think about.

My favorite couple so far:

PGA Tour players average 3.5 birdies per round

On average, it takes PGA Tour players 2.8 shots to get in the hole from 100 yards in the fairway

Not sure what the #s are, but pretty sure correlation of PGAT event winners and strokes gained putting for each event is higher than same winners and driving distance for each event.

Some would reply that putting stats for 4 days has a lot of variance, which is true. But the dough is rewarded for winning the event.

If a pro could putt consistently as well as an average event winner, he would crush the long driver all other things being equal.

For sure. I think the key difference is that people have figured out how to be consistently better than the field at Driving, Approach, and Around the Green but nobody has done it with putting. If someone could figure out how to gain 2 strokes per round on the field putting year over year they'd win a lot of tournaments

i might have mentioned this earlier in thread.

i have caddied far amount on pga canada tour (top players get status on korn ferry)

bad scores = wild off the tee

great scores = made some putts

ok scores = get up and down nicely.. or don't miss greens nor make putts

i will also add par 5's are so vital... one area of obvious constant advantage for certain,players

look at the correlation over a large sample and exactly the opposite is true

Using more tournaments in the sample does not change the correlation. The likelihood of SG putting leader for that event and winning is stronger than the longest driver for that event and winning.

(I think) what you are referring to is the number of tournaments won by the season SG putting leader vs. tournaments won by the season driving distance leader. That is something different entirely.

Exactly. The science of putting is in its infancy compared to the other aspects of the game, IMO.