Speaker 1: Here's another two for Golf Smarter episodes number four hundred
Speaker 1: thirty two and four hundred thirty three from April fifteen,
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
Speaker 2: insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Speaker 2: Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets Old. Our
Speaker 2: interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
Speaker 2: like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 3: Amateur golfers miss way more than fifty percent of their
Speaker 3: putts on the low side of the hole. The question
Speaker 3: is why is that. So there's several possible explanations, but
Speaker 3: one is if you aim at the apex, you will
Speaker 3: miss low And why is that? Because the apex is
Speaker 3: the furthest point, or the highest point on this curved
Speaker 3: path toward the hole. But that usually happens somewhere near
Speaker 3: the middle of the putt. In order to get the
Speaker 3: putt to go into the hole, you've got to start
Speaker 3: it higher because gravity will immediately start breaking. So if
Speaker 3: your target is the apex, to hit the apex, you've
Speaker 3: got to start it higher than the apex because that
Speaker 3: first half of the putt. It's going to be breaking
Speaker 3: before it gets there. It's not like this putt goes.
Speaker 4: Straight and then it takes a left turn at the apex.
Speaker 3: It doesn't do that. It breaks from the instant that
Speaker 3: you hit it. And that's the physics of it. And
Speaker 3: that implies that you've got to start the putt higher
Speaker 3: than the apex in order to hit the line that
Speaker 3: you're visualizing into the hole.
Speaker 1: Putting is overrated. An introduction to golf metrics and professor
Speaker 1: Mark Brody. This is Golf Smarter. Welcome to the Golf
Speaker 1: Smarter podcast.
Speaker 4: Mark Fred, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure, Thank you very much. I just need
Speaker 1: to know something as we talk about this book, Every
Speaker 1: Shot Counts? Have you always been a troublemaker?
Speaker 3: I don't consider myself a trouble maker, so I'd have
Speaker 3: to say no to that one.
Speaker 1: Well, I have a feeling that you are turning the
Speaker 1: golf world on its head with this kind of information.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm anxious for this book to come out to
Speaker 3: find out whether that's true or not, because I figure
Speaker 3: that there's people that will believe it right away, and
Speaker 3: there's other people that are on the other side and
Speaker 3: need some convincing and I'm wondering if I'll be able
Speaker 3: to convince them.
Speaker 1: So, as we're recording this, the book will be coming
Speaker 1: out tomorrow, but as you are listening to it, it
Speaker 1: has been out a couple weeks. So if you want
Speaker 1: to pick up this book, actually you need to pick
Speaker 1: up this book. Every Shot Counts by Mark Brody. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just think that, you know, I've talked to so
Speaker 1: many different instructors about, you know, the importance of putting,
Speaker 1: and you know, they we even did one episode of
Speaker 1: this show called give me ten yards ten feet closer,
Speaker 1: over ten yards farther every day of the week.
Speaker 3: Oh well, that's that's true, but it's it's pretty hard
Speaker 3: to get to get ten feet closer on your approach shots.
Speaker 3: Every shot ten feet closer is is going from from
Speaker 3: a ninety golfer to the PGA tour sometimes.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean the guy who that interview was somebody
Speaker 1: who manufactures wedges, So why do you think he would
Speaker 1: say that he believes his product will do that? And
Speaker 1: actually it's a very good product. But it's just that
Speaker 1: we're going to call this episode and it follows in
Speaker 1: your book Putting is overrated. Let's talk about this, this
Speaker 1: concept and what you're introducing here. It's so much I mean,
Speaker 1: the easiest way to explain it is like moneyball, right,
Speaker 1: cyber metrics for baseball. People are understand and what's happened
Speaker 1: with the Oakland A's and you know the movie came out,
Speaker 1: But how they Bill James created was it cybermetrics? Ab
Speaker 1: metrics aabermetrics, right, and it changed the way management approaches baseball,
Speaker 1: but with a lot of resistance. I see this going
Speaker 1: in that direction as well.
Speaker 4: Well. I hope that's the case.
Speaker 3: That one of the things when you look at a
Speaker 3: tournament on TV or where you play with your friends,
Speaker 3: you can see the score. That's what golf is about,
Speaker 3: shooting the lowest score. But it's often not so apparent
Speaker 3: where those score differences come from. So when one golfer
Speaker 3: wins a tournament by five shots, you just don't know why,
Speaker 3: Where did those five shots come from? And one of
Speaker 3: the goals of this book is to try and break
Speaker 3: that down and tease out using data, what separates the
Speaker 3: best golfers from average golfers, whether it's in the pro
Speaker 3: ranks or the amateur ranks.
Speaker 1: I'd let the audience know that we're going to do
Speaker 1: this in two parts. The first part I'm going to
Speaker 1: have you explain how this works in the kind of
Speaker 1: information that you've gathered and what you've come up with,
Speaker 1: and the second part will will focus on how do
Speaker 1: it make it work for me? All right, okay, great,
Speaker 1: So just elaborate. I'm not going to interrupt much. You
Speaker 1: can talk as long as you want on this. Explain
Speaker 1: how that how you figured out that putting is really
Speaker 1: only about fifteen percent of what the total score or
Speaker 1: the importance of the score.
Speaker 3: Well, i'd say, you know, fifteen percent refers to how
Speaker 3: much of the strokes that separate the best PGA Tour
Speaker 3: players from average PGA Tour players. That difference in score,
Speaker 3: about fifteen percent of it comes from putting. And if
Speaker 3: you're if you're looking over kind of a long period
Speaker 3: of time, if you look at tournament winners, it turns
Speaker 3: out that putting is a little bit more important than
Speaker 3: it explains about thirty five percent of the difference between
Speaker 3: the winner of a tournament and the field that they're
Speaker 3: playing against.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, because so often, you know, TV needs
Speaker 1: the drama and you'll see a guy making a putt,
Speaker 1: or just the other day Paula Kramer made that amazing
Speaker 1: seventy five foot putt. She needed to make it to
Speaker 1: win if she two putts, which was fine, she ties,
Speaker 1: but you know that kind of drama you see, but
Speaker 1: you don't see how it got to the point where
Speaker 1: she was struggling or she was behind and had to
Speaker 1: come from behind, and it wasn't always on the putting green.
Speaker 3: Correct Well, certainly if you think a seventy five footer
Speaker 3: for eagle, you had to have some help by reaching
Speaker 3: that par five and two. So yeah, right, it's and
Speaker 3: that's one of the things strokes gain does. It quantifies
Speaker 3: how much of that good score came from putting versus
Speaker 3: how much came from the TITA greenshots.
Speaker 1: Right, So generally, I know, personally on my scorecard, I'll
Speaker 1: keep track of fairways, hit greens and regulation and how
Speaker 1: many putts, But that really doesn't explain to me why
Speaker 1: I had a ninety four.
Speaker 4: That day exactly.
Speaker 3: I mean, each one of those traditional stats has fundamental
Speaker 3: fatal flaws. So if you pop up a drive one
Speaker 3: hundred yards into the fairway versus you hit another one
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty yards in the fairway. You both
Speaker 3: get a check mark for a fairway hit, but one
Speaker 3: is a much better shot than the other, So fairways
Speaker 3: hit doesn't capture the difference between those clearly different shots.
Speaker 3: The same way when you count putts, if you sink
Speaker 3: a two footer, you know you miss the green, you
Speaker 3: chip the two feet, and you sink the two footter,
Speaker 3: it's a one put on that green, you say, great,
Speaker 3: it's a one putt. But on another green where you
Speaker 3: hit your approach shot to forty five feet and you
Speaker 3: sink a forty five footer, that's a one putt. Also,
Speaker 3: both of those strokes count as one putt. It looks
Speaker 3: like you're putting is the same, But sinking a forty
Speaker 3: five footer is a much better putting performance than sinking
Speaker 3: a two footer. So neither fairways hit nor putting really
Speaker 3: gives you the true story. And you can say the
Speaker 3: same thing about greens and regulation that if you have
Speaker 3: few greens and regulation, was it because you drove the
Speaker 3: ball poorly, or your iron shots were poor, or your
Speaker 3: you know, your third shot on a par five was poor.
Speaker 3: It doesn't really explain what's what's going wrong.
Speaker 1: So we're going from subjective to objective information exactly. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know that I frequently say the one the only
Speaker 1: thing I hate more than a one putt bogie is
Speaker 1: one putt double bogie. But so let's how did you
Speaker 1: get to this place? Please give us some background on
Speaker 1: where it brought you to, how you brought it to
Speaker 1: the PGA, what they're doing with it, go from that.
Speaker 3: So, so it was sort of a a fortunate confluence
Speaker 3: of events. I'd say that my day job is being
Speaker 3: an academic at Columbia Business School, where my research is
Speaker 3: in quantitative finance. But I'm a golfer and I have
Speaker 3: a passion for golf, and I realized that I could
Speaker 3: take my academic training and put it together with my
Speaker 3: golf hobby to try and answer these questions that are
Speaker 3: at the heart of golf. But it all boils down
Speaker 3: to having some data. And so some of the questions
Speaker 3: that I wanted to answer were where did the ten
Speaker 3: strokes come from that separate a ninety golfer from an
Speaker 3: eighty golfer? Or what's the difference between an eighty golfer
Speaker 3: and a pro where did those strokes come from? Or
Speaker 3: as you mentioned earlier, what's the value of hitting the
Speaker 3: ball twenty yards further. And for any of those questions,
Speaker 3: I didn't know the answer, I didn't know anybody else
Speaker 3: who knew the answer, and I didn't have the data
Speaker 3: to answer it. So first step was trying to get
Speaker 3: data to then do the analysis. And so I developed
Speaker 3: a program called golf Metrics that would could be used
Speaker 3: to collect and analyze amateur data. And unbeknownst to me,
Speaker 3: at the same time, the PGA Tour was starting to
Speaker 3: collect data with their shot Link system, and so they
Speaker 3: partnered with CDW and since two thousand and three, they've
Speaker 3: recorded every shot of every pro golfer in every one
Speaker 3: of the PGA Tour events, and so they have this
Speaker 3: massive amount of data and they wanted a way to
Speaker 3: use this data to better understand performance. And they thought
Speaker 3: their weakest stat was putting. In fact, they had three
Speaker 3: putting stats. One was just counting putts. They realized that
Speaker 3: wasn't so good. So they also had putts per green
Speaker 3: and regulation, which very few people understood. And they also
Speaker 3: had had length of putts that were hold. So every
Speaker 3: time you sink a twenty foot or it adds twenty
Speaker 3: feet to your length of putts hold. Anyway, none of
Speaker 3: those three putting stats really gave a good picture of
Speaker 3: who was the best putter.
Speaker 4: And so at the time that I was doing.
Speaker 3: This analysis and they very nicely gave me access to
Speaker 3: the PGA Tour data, they also wanted a better putting
Speaker 3: stat and this thing, this work led to the strokes
Speaker 3: gained putting stat that the PGA Tour rolled out in
Speaker 3: May of twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: On the strokes gained putting, you give a great example
Speaker 1: about Rory McElroy. Did you expand on that for us?
Speaker 3: Well, if he was the player of the year in
Speaker 3: twenty twelve, he won a bunch of tournaments, he had
Speaker 3: the lowest scoring average, he won, he had almost every
Speaker 3: tournament he was in he was in in the top ten.
Speaker 3: So this was just a fantastic year twenty twelve for
Speaker 3: Rory McElroy. And then you take a look at his
Speaker 3: stats and he's not in the top fifty in driving,
Speaker 3: he's not in the top fifteen in greens and regulation,
Speaker 3: and he wasn't in the top fifty in in strokes
Speaker 3: gain putting. So here you have the best player of
Speaker 3: the year who can't get the ball off the tee.
Speaker 3: He can't hit the green and he can't putt according
Speaker 3: to the stats, And there's this complete disconnect between the
Speaker 3: information provided by the stats and the performance that you're
Speaker 3: seeing on the course. And if you look at this
Speaker 3: through this new lens of strokes gain, you can exceed.
Speaker 3: You can see exactly why Rory McElroy had the twenty
Speaker 3: twelve that he did.
Speaker 1: And I mean it's like, wait a minute, you just
Speaker 1: disproved yourself that now expand why tell me why that
Speaker 1: for you? That became heaven to have all this information?
Speaker 1: But how you can prove that he wasn't the best player,
Speaker 1: He just had the best year.
Speaker 3: So in this measure called strokes gain driving, which measures
Speaker 3: how well he hit the ball off the tee on
Speaker 3: par fours and fives, he was ranked second in his
Speaker 3: approach shots meaning all shots starting outside of one hundred
Speaker 3: yards excluding driving, he was ranked second. He was ranked
Speaker 3: thirty fourth in a short game shots inside one hundred
Speaker 3: yards except for putts, and he was ranked seventy third
Speaker 3: and putting, so that was, you know, the weakest part
Speaker 3: of his game. A short game was a little you know,
Speaker 3: both his putting and a short game were slightly above
Speaker 3: tour average, but outside one hundred yards he killed it.
Speaker 3: He was just phenomenal from outside one hundred yards. So
Speaker 3: he gained most of his strokes outside one hundred yards
Speaker 3: and strokes gained and kind of clearly shows where he
Speaker 3: was getting his advantage on the field.
Speaker 1: So the age old addict of drive for show, putt
Speaker 1: for doe doesn't really hold up, does it.
Speaker 4: Well not in this case.
Speaker 3: I mean, he gained eighty five percent of his strokes
Speaker 3: on the field came outside one hundred yards and fifteen
Speaker 3: percent came from inside one hundred yards. But you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's different for different golfers, and when you
Speaker 3: average over the top ten twenty thirty forty golfers on tour,
Speaker 3: you'll find that kind of similar result. But within there,
Speaker 3: you look at a particular golfer and there's definitely there's
Speaker 3: definitely variation.
Speaker 4: So it's it's true that.
Speaker 3: Luke Donald is one, you know, has one of the
Speaker 3: best putting and one of the best short games in
Speaker 3: the world, and you can see that. You can see
Speaker 3: Steve Stricker has one of the best short games in
Speaker 3: the in the world. So everybody's a little bit different,
Speaker 3: but more often than not, it's it's the long game
Speaker 3: that separates the best pros from the average pros.
Speaker 1: So the big drives really do make a.
Speaker 4: Difference, absolutely.
Speaker 3: And uh, you take a look at some of the
Speaker 3: you know, the best drivers in the game, and they
Speaker 3: would be like Bubba Watson or Dustin Johnson, and they
Speaker 3: hit the ball really far and they hit it pretty straight.
Speaker 3: So when you look at fairways hit, they're certainly down
Speaker 3: on the list, but they're straighter.
Speaker 4: Than than than us, than us by far.
Speaker 3: What's you know, I'm hitting the ball two thirty or
Speaker 3: two forty and I'm hitting you know, fifty percent of
Speaker 3: my fairways. They're hitting at three twenty and they're hitting
Speaker 3: sixty percent of their fairwys or something like that.
Speaker 1: That's why we hate those guys.
Speaker 4: Oh, I think that's why we love to watch them, right.
Speaker 1: Right, exactly your example of Jason Day, I think everyone
Speaker 1: can relate to. And how does that compute?
Speaker 3: And please give the example, right, if you pop the
Speaker 3: ball up and hit one hundred yards in the fairway
Speaker 3: counts as a fairway hit. You hit it three twenty
Speaker 3: in the fairway counts as a fairway hit. So they
Speaker 3: both look they both look the same but when you
Speaker 3: measure it on strokes gained. I unfortunately picked on Jason
Speaker 3: Day because it was such an unusual example. When at
Speaker 3: Kapalua on the I believe it was the eleventh hole.
Speaker 3: You know, he he hit a fat drive. I think
Speaker 3: he was trying to drive the green or something. He
Speaker 3: swung so hard, but he hit it, hit so fat
Speaker 3: that it went just over one hundred yards, and in
Speaker 3: strokes gained, you can see he lost about seven tenths
Speaker 3: of a stroke on the field with that with that drive.
Speaker 3: So the key is, in order to compare driving with
Speaker 3: appro shots, with sand shots, with putting, you need a
Speaker 3: common scale. You can't measure drives in yards with putts
Speaker 3: that are measured in strokes. So what strokes gain does
Speaker 3: is allow you to put all of these different shots
Speaker 3: on a common footing, so you can compare not only
Speaker 3: who's the best driver, but how does driving compare with
Speaker 3: a pro shots, short game shots and putting.
Speaker 1: I need actually for the stats freaks out there, it
Speaker 1: was the thirteenth hole in twenty eleven.
Speaker 4: Oh thank you, Okay.
Speaker 1: Not a problem, because I dog eared that page as well.
Speaker 1: In all this, you know, going in background of all this,
Speaker 1: the dynamic programming. I thought was really fascinating explanation to
Speaker 1: help us get there. And as a professor of business,
Speaker 1: you must love that stuff.
Speaker 4: Oh absolutely.
Speaker 3: It's you can use this idea of you know, what's
Speaker 3: the quickest way to get to a goal? And it
Speaker 3: happens all the time in everyday life. And whenever you
Speaker 3: get into a car and you want to drive somewhere,
Speaker 3: you can press a button and it will tell you
Speaker 3: the shortest route to get to your destination. That's one
Speaker 3: example of how do you make multiple decisions in a
Speaker 3: way that satisfies an objective, in this case getting to
Speaker 3: your destination fast. But there's other examples in you know,
Speaker 3: finance and investing. When you want to improve your investing
Speaker 3: performance so that you have enough money to retire, on
Speaker 3: what's the best way to invest over time so that
Speaker 3: you have an adequate amount in your retirement account. And
Speaker 3: the connection with golf is what's the quickest way to
Speaker 3: get to the hole? And the way you do that
Speaker 3: is you measure not in terms of yards or feet,
Speaker 3: but you measure in terms of strokes. And the reason
Speaker 3: for that is one yard more on your drive isn't
Speaker 3: worth the same as getting a putt three feet closer
Speaker 3: to the hole, so not all three three foot gains
Speaker 3: are the same. But if you measure it in terms
Speaker 3: of strokes, then you can compare drives, approach shots, and puts.
Speaker 1: But you need a tremendous amount of data to be
Speaker 1: able to it would be Is it hard to do
Speaker 1: it for yourself to figure this out?
Speaker 4: No, it's not.
Speaker 3: I mean you need a tremendous amount of data to
Speaker 3: figure out what the benchmark is or what you're comparing against.
Speaker 3: So in the example of Jason Day where he hit
Speaker 3: this unusually short te shot for himself, what you need
Speaker 3: to know is what was the PGA Tour average score
Speaker 3: on the tee and then what's the PGA Tour average
Speaker 3: score from his position in the fairway. And it turns
Speaker 3: out that on that shot he was four strokes away
Speaker 3: from the hole when he started.
Speaker 1: And he was because it was a par four.
Speaker 4: It was a it was an.
Speaker 3: Average par four, so some par fours it would be
Speaker 3: more or less than that, but it was an average
Speaker 3: par four, and at the end of the shot, the
Speaker 3: PGA to were average from that position would be three
Speaker 3: point seven strokes. So he took one swing and he
Speaker 3: only got point three strokes closer to the hole, which meant,
Speaker 3: you know, he lost point seven And so you might
Speaker 3: not follow the math. But you know, if a PGA
Speaker 3: Tour player hits one hundred yard drive, you know, with
Speaker 3: a driver on a long par four, on a.
Speaker 1: Par four, it's not funny. We all do this, we
Speaker 1: all do that.
Speaker 3: So the funny part is Jason Day smiled after this,
Speaker 3: he laughed. Whereas the guys in my forest and after
Speaker 3: a shot like that are about to break their club
Speaker 3: over their knee. He shook it off and ended up
Speaker 3: up paring the hole. And that's That's one of the
Speaker 3: things that I'm so impressed with these PGA Tour pros,
Speaker 3: which is they not only hit better shots, but their
Speaker 3: mental game is better. They can forget about the bad
Speaker 3: shots or laugh them off better. They practice better, they
Speaker 3: probably eat better, they work out better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they're constantly traveling, they have to be in
Speaker 1: a different bed, they have different food all the time.
Speaker 1: It's not an easy life to be able to perform
Speaker 1: at that level when you have all these different factors
Speaker 1: weighing down on you.
Speaker 3: Well, I think they do it all all the more
Speaker 3: impressive what they do. They're playing different courses. I have
Speaker 3: trouble enough playing you know, the same course over and
Speaker 3: over again. They're playing a different course every week. It's
Speaker 3: it's just amazing how how good they are. And those
Speaker 3: courses that they're playing aren't like our course. The greens
Speaker 3: are much harder, the rough is much thicker, and of
Speaker 3: course the holes are much longer.
Speaker 1: I kind of get it once you start getting the decimals.
Speaker 1: I'm like, how did you get that? That's where I
Speaker 1: get lost. I'm not a math guy ever. I'm a
Speaker 1: recording engineer, and maybe I should be a math guy
Speaker 1: by doing that, But that's where I get lost. But
Speaker 1: that's what I loved about being able to read the book,
Speaker 1: because you really did give a lot of graphs and images,
Speaker 1: and you explain like a college professor. You explain it
Speaker 1: quite well. And that's what I really enjoyed about this book.
Speaker 3: Well, well, I appreciate that, But one of the things
Speaker 3: I hope the readers will find is that this is simple.
Speaker 3: It's at the heart, it's just subtracting two numbers and
Speaker 3: to give you, to give you an idea if you
Speaker 3: knew nothing about strokes gain and I said, if you
Speaker 3: missed the two footer. How many strokes do you think
Speaker 3: you low lost? What would your answer be?
Speaker 1: Two?
Speaker 3: If you if you two putt from two feet, how
Speaker 3: much do you think you would lose to most of
Speaker 3: your fellow competitors if you had a two putt from
Speaker 3: two feet?
Speaker 1: Oh to Mike, bet one one.
Speaker 3: You would lose one. Right, That's exactly what strokes gain
Speaker 3: tells you. Oh you lost, you lost a stroke if
Speaker 3: you missed a two footer.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's not that hard. So how about a thing
Speaker 4: it was for me?
Speaker 1: I didn't ask the questions failed, Sorry, professor after class?
Speaker 3: Oh, so about how about a thirty footer? So the
Speaker 3: PGA Tour average from thirty actually thirty three feet is
Speaker 3: two putts, but.
Speaker 1: For us, So.
Speaker 3: For us it's a little bit more. But suppose you're
Speaker 3: a PGA Tour player and you sink a thirty three
Speaker 3: footer one putt from thirty three feet, how much did
Speaker 3: you gain versus your competitors?
Speaker 1: One?
Speaker 4: Exactly what happens If you three putted from thirty three.
Speaker 3: Feet one less, you lose, you lose, you lose one.
Speaker 3: And if you two putt, yeah, zero, Zero's that's all
Speaker 3: there is to it.
Speaker 4: That's not that hard, is it. No?
Speaker 3: But the difference is if you one putt from two feet,
Speaker 3: you gain or lose zero. If you one putt from
Speaker 3: thirty three feet you gain a stroke. So both are
Speaker 3: one putts, but one is better than the other. One
Speaker 3: is gaining on the field, the others staying even with
Speaker 3: the field.
Speaker 1: Now that we've kind of gotten an overview of strokes
Speaker 1: gain putting strokes gained, how the golf metrics kind of work.
Speaker 1: But you've got to look at the book to get
Speaker 1: a full explanation for yourself. I want to figure out
Speaker 1: how we can make this work for us. And you know,
Speaker 1: yes there's tons of statistics from the tour, and yes
Speaker 1: it's fun to watch and see how they're using it.
Speaker 1: But on a Saturday, for ourselves, that doesn't help much, right,
Speaker 1: because we really cannot compare ourselves to the pros.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 3: You can use the same idea to compare yourself to
Speaker 3: a scratch golfer, or if your goal is to get
Speaker 3: from ninety to eighty, you can compare yourself to an
Speaker 3: eighty golfer. And this way of thinking, the strokes gained
Speaker 3: approach to measuring golf will will show where you're gaining
Speaker 3: or losing strokes to any player. So if your goal
Speaker 3: is to drop ten strokes, it will tell you where
Speaker 3: you're losing ten strokes to.
Speaker 4: Your competitor or to your goal.
Speaker 1: How is this impacted this information, Haws? This impacted your game?
Speaker 3: Well, one of the things that I thought, I'm a
Speaker 3: thoughtful guy, and I'm doing all this analysis. It should
Speaker 3: be obvious to me, and it wasn't. So I will
Speaker 3: keep track of all my shots and enter it into
Speaker 3: this golf metrics program and I'll get reports out, and
Speaker 3: you know, I'd play, you know, two or three rounds
Speaker 3: and I'll remember some good shots and try and forget
Speaker 3: some bad shots. But at the end, when I get
Speaker 3: a report, it says I'm two shots worse this month
Speaker 3: than last month in my short game, and I go, really,
Speaker 3: I thought I was paying attention. But when you have
Speaker 3: a report staring you in the face where you're messing up,
Speaker 3: I say, okay, I've got to go to the short
Speaker 3: game area and practice. Or if it's putting or if
Speaker 3: it's my iron shots, it will tell me. And it's
Speaker 3: just hard to ignore when you have the facts in
Speaker 3: front of your face. And so I've gone out and
Speaker 3: you know one you know, one week, I'll work on
Speaker 3: my short game because it needs it. The next week
Speaker 3: or two weeks after that, I'll work on my putting.
Speaker 3: And so it really does to help to know where
Speaker 3: your your individual strengths and weaknesses are because it's hard
Speaker 3: to remember. It's hard to remember all the shots that
Speaker 3: you that you hit and they all matter, they all
Speaker 3: add up, and sometimes a couple of shots that you
Speaker 3: forgot about can really impact your score.
Speaker 1: How do we how are we able to keep track?
Speaker 1: What's the method you use to keep track of this
Speaker 1: information so that you can analyze it later? What's the
Speaker 1: best How would you advise us to do that?
Speaker 3: Well, one of the things that you can do is
Speaker 3: just say, you know, look at the average golfer and
Speaker 3: where do they gain or lose strokes. So, if, for instance,
Speaker 3: you want to work on your putting and you're trying
Speaker 3: to decide should I work on my short puts or
Speaker 3: should I work on my medium length puts or should
Speaker 3: I work on my long puts? Of course you should
Speaker 3: work on everything, but which do you think is the
Speaker 3: most critical putt distance?
Speaker 4: If you had to pick a particular.
Speaker 3: Foot four feet, eight feet twelve feet twenty five feet.
Speaker 3: Where do you think the average golfer loses more strokes
Speaker 3: to a scratch golfer.
Speaker 1: I read the book, I would say that it's the
Speaker 1: five to ten foot range.
Speaker 3: Five to ten feet, Yeah, so for amateur go that's
Speaker 3: pretty close. For amateur golfers, it's four feet. There's nothing
Speaker 3: magical about four feet if you want to say three
Speaker 3: to five feet, three to six or seven or eight feet.
Speaker 3: But what was surprising to me is how short the
Speaker 3: putts were that were the most critical, were the ones
Speaker 3: that most separated average golfers from scratch golfers. And there's
Speaker 3: two reasons for that. One is pretty simple, which is
Speaker 3: you have more four footers than you have ten footers.
Speaker 3: And the other is that there's a skill difference between
Speaker 3: good putters and poor putters in the four foot range.
Speaker 3: So you may have a lot more one footers, but
Speaker 3: if everybody sinks their one footers, it doesn't matter. But
Speaker 3: not everybody sinks all their four footers, And so it
Speaker 3: has these two characteristics.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of.
Speaker 3: Them, and there's a lot to be gained from becoming
Speaker 3: better at them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and really, how many how many opportunities do we
Speaker 1: have to make one footers because most of the time
Speaker 1: you get one foot inside and people go, you're good, right, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: So you don't even know. I have a friend that
Speaker 1: I do I won't I won't let him pick it up,
Speaker 1: and he's like, come on, i'd let you pick I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you may miss it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's the it's the three, four and
Speaker 3: five footers that you that you pick up that can
Speaker 3: really give you a warped impression of what what your
Speaker 3: score really is. So you know, you're playing in a
Speaker 3: tournament you're not used to playing in a tournament, in
Speaker 3: a you know, club championship or a weekend match, and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, people are taking tens on a
Speaker 3: hole because they can't pick up after a double bogie,
Speaker 3: or they can't pick up when they've got five feet.
Speaker 1: Left right right. And I'll tell you one of the
Speaker 1: things that I walked away from this book that I
Speaker 1: think was very helpful for me is that I've noticed
Speaker 1: that if I'm having a poor day of putting, if
Speaker 1: I have multiple three putts in a round, that will
Speaker 1: affect every shot that I take. It will affect my
Speaker 1: attitude for the whole I'll just beat myself up. I
Speaker 1: may be hitting fairways and then greens and regulation I'm
Speaker 1: stroking the ball well, but my putting game that will
Speaker 1: impact how I feel during the day.
Speaker 4: So I'd say a couple of things. One is that.
Speaker 3: It's also true probably if you hit a drive out
Speaker 3: of bounds, that that's going to affect your attitude.
Speaker 4: So it's not just putting.
Speaker 3: But one way to look at it that I find
Speaker 3: helps me a little bit is if I miss innate
Speaker 3: foot putts, the first reaction is I lost a stroke.
Speaker 3: It was a birdie putt. I really wanted to get
Speaker 3: that birdie and I missed it. But when you miss
Speaker 3: innate footer, you're not losing a stroke. You're only losing
Speaker 3: about a half a stroke. Because nobody sinks all of
Speaker 3: their eight footers, and the pros only sink about half
Speaker 3: of the eight footers. So in fact, and of course
Speaker 3: amateur golfer sink sink less than that, So if you
Speaker 3: miss an eight footer, you're only giving up a fraction
Speaker 3: miss stroke, and you should think not about, oh, I
Speaker 3: just missed that eight footer, but over the course of
Speaker 3: the round, you would hope to sink close to half
Speaker 3: your eight footers. But you just can't beat yourself up
Speaker 3: over one missputt. It's counterproductive because first of all, it's
Speaker 3: not true. You're not losing a full stroke, and as
Speaker 3: you said, you don't want that to impact the next shot.
Speaker 3: Why should you have one missputt then lead to throwing
Speaker 3: away more strokes after that?
Speaker 4: That doesn't make sense. Easier said than done.
Speaker 1: Of course, of course, and now I can see that
Speaker 1: you know that it's my approach shots where I probably
Speaker 1: lose more stroke in anything.
Speaker 4: And that's true for everybody.
Speaker 3: It's high handicappers, low handicappers and NPGA tour pros.
Speaker 4: And I think one of.
Speaker 3: The reasons it's so hard to put your finger on
Speaker 3: that is that proximity to the hole is measured in feet,
Speaker 3: and if you could put your average approach shot three
Speaker 3: feet closer, it just doesn't sound like much. If your
Speaker 3: proximity is thirty feet and you improve it to twenty
Speaker 3: seven feet, you say, so what I was going to
Speaker 3: two putt from thirty feet, I'll two putt from twenty
Speaker 3: seven feet. It just doesn't sound like it's that big
Speaker 3: a deal. And that's just the wrong way to think
Speaker 3: about it. And what I found in crunching the numbers
Speaker 3: is that it's the shots that are in the rough,
Speaker 3: just off the green that three feet closer they're now
Speaker 3: on the green that matters. The ten footers that become
Speaker 3: seven footers matter, the five footers that become two footers,
Speaker 3: they all matter. And so if you put your shots
Speaker 3: on average three feet closer to the whole, you pick
Speaker 3: up a lot of strokes on the field or on
Speaker 3: your competitors, or just on your your own score. So
Speaker 3: approach shots are really really important. And so you know,
Speaker 3: the long term plan is make you know, for amateurs,
Speaker 3: if you can get better in one hundred to one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty yard range, that's the that's the area
Speaker 3: that's most correlated with amateur scores.
Speaker 1: Putting so much of it. You know it is important,
Speaker 1: it isn't important, but so many shots. It's so obvious
Speaker 1: that we're missing so many losing so many shots there
Speaker 1: because you're in this confined area and you're not making
Speaker 1: a lot of progress. Do most amateurs versus pros come
Speaker 1: come up short of the hole in their putting and
Speaker 1: does that have a significant impact?
Speaker 4: Oh? Absolutely so.
Speaker 3: I think one of the easiest ways for amateurs to
Speaker 3: improve is to focus more on the distance to the
Speaker 3: hole rather than the break. And I'm not saying you
Speaker 3: shouldn't think about the break. What I'm saying is that
Speaker 3: not all twenty footers are created equal. And even if
Speaker 3: you're pacing off your putts and you say I have
Speaker 3: a twenty foot putt, you still want to look at well,
Speaker 3: is it twenty foot in steeply uphill or is it
Speaker 3: twenty feet and slightly downhill? That matters a huge amount
Speaker 3: in how hard you need to stroke the putt. And
Speaker 3: what you'll see between the best PGA Tour putters and
Speaker 3: average PGA Tour putters is the better putters are slightly
Speaker 3: more aggressive, and of course they have better distance control.
Speaker 3: And anybody can take a ten footer and make sure
Speaker 3: that they get it to the hole, But the key
Speaker 3: is not ramming them eight feet by. So you want
Speaker 3: to get it to the hole, but but not too
Speaker 3: far by. So distance control on putting is one of
Speaker 3: the easiest ways that amateurs I think can lower their score.
Speaker 3: But it's not just pacing off your putts. It's also
Speaker 3: being very aware of how steep the green is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was something here that kind of blew my
Speaker 1: mind when I saw and maybe maybe it's an error
Speaker 1: in the printing or something, but it talked about downhill putts.
Speaker 1: The steeper, the green, the farther the target should be
Speaker 1: beyond the hole.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's absolutely right.
Speaker 1: And I think really because I would think if it's
Speaker 1: a downhill putt, you want to like aim so it
Speaker 1: comes up all with short so you can let the hill,
Speaker 1: let gravity take over.
Speaker 3: So that's very surprising, and I think I can I
Speaker 3: can explain the intuition behind it, which is on on
Speaker 3: downhill putts, it's harder to control distance. So I talk
Speaker 3: about shot patterns in the book, and just like you
Speaker 3: have shot patterns on your t shots your putts, you
Speaker 3: can imagine a shot pattern for your putts. And so
Speaker 3: since downhill puts are tougher than uphill putts, the shot
Speaker 3: pattern is bigger, okay for a downhill putt than an
Speaker 3: equivalent distance uphill putt. So if your shot pattern is bigger,
Speaker 3: that means to get it to the hole, you've got
Speaker 3: to be a little bit more aggressive. You've got to
Speaker 3: set the target a little bit further beyond the hole
Speaker 3: in order to make sure you don't come up short.
Speaker 4: Another way to.
Speaker 3: Think about it, which maybe is even easier. If you
Speaker 3: have a ten foot uphill putt, you can be pretty
Speaker 3: firm with it and it's not going to roll too
Speaker 3: far by. But on a ten foot downhill putt, to
Speaker 3: make sure that you get that putt to the hole,
Speaker 3: you've got to be comfortable in letting it go to
Speaker 3: two and a half feet by again in order to
Speaker 3: give it a chance to go in the hole. And
Speaker 3: it's much more important on ten footers to give it
Speaker 3: a chance to go in the hole then to lag
Speaker 3: it to the hole to make sure you don't three putts.
Speaker 3: So you know, from a ten foot range, you ought
Speaker 3: to be thinking how can I make this putt? Not
Speaker 3: how can I avoid a three putt?
Speaker 1: Oh? Absolutely, but aiming past the hole, meaning if I'm
Speaker 1: aiming past the hole. Maybe I'm unique in this, but
Speaker 1: if I'm aiming past the hole, I'm going to hit
Speaker 1: it harder than if I was aiming at the hole.
Speaker 3: Well, you want that if you're aiming at the hole,
Speaker 3: you'd leave fifty percent of your put short and that
Speaker 3: would be a disaster on time.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about downhill. I'm talking about downhill.
Speaker 3: Even downhill right, if you aim at the hole, you
Speaker 3: don't want to leave fifty percent of them short. So
Speaker 3: I actually don't think about it in terms of how
Speaker 3: far beyond the hole I'm aiming. I think about it
Speaker 3: as if I have a ten foot downhill putt, I
Speaker 3: want to hit this hard enough so at least nine
Speaker 3: out of ten get to the hole. I don't want
Speaker 3: to leave any more than ten percent of those puts short,
Speaker 3: so I want to be I don't think if you know,
Speaker 3: as my target won two three feet pet on the whole,
Speaker 3: I think of I want to get nine out of
Speaker 3: ten of these putts to the hole and how hard
Speaker 3: do I have to hit it to make sure that's
Speaker 3: the case. And what you'll find with many amateurs, and
Speaker 3: you know, worse putters more so than good putters, is
Speaker 3: they can leave thirty forty of their ten foot or
Speaker 3: short and that's really giving up strokes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're familiar with aim point, I am, yeah.
Speaker 1: And we did a couple episodes on aim point with
Speaker 1: with Mark Sweeney last year. Is is that what you
Speaker 1: use is that accurate?
Speaker 4: So I don't use am point, but I know what
Speaker 4: it's about and I.
Speaker 3: Know how they come up with the the aim point charts,
Speaker 3: and I have my own system where I can kind
Speaker 3: of replicate their their results. What I what I really
Speaker 3: like about the aim point way of thinking is that
Speaker 3: it focuses on how much putts break depending on where
Speaker 3: the putt starts relative to the fall line. So clearly,
Speaker 3: if you have a straight downhill or straight up hill putt,
Speaker 3: there's there's no break. Side hill putts break a lot,
Speaker 3: but downhill side hill putts break a lot more than
Speaker 3: uphill side hill putts. And so if you imagine where
Speaker 3: your putt starts relative to a clock face or relative
Speaker 3: to the fall line, it really helps you with what
Speaker 3: line should you should you start this put on.
Speaker 4: So I think it's.
Speaker 3: Really critical for golfers not to think in terms of
Speaker 3: just how much does this break, but where's the fall
Speaker 3: line and where is my putts starting relative to the
Speaker 3: fall line, because that will ultimately tell you how much
Speaker 3: break you need to play.
Speaker 1: Another version, vector putting putting those.
Speaker 3: Angles well, vector victor putting is is basically identical to
Speaker 3: aim point. There it's it's it's the same and they
Speaker 3: have the same charts and they use the same Uh,
Speaker 3: it's actually the same number. So vector putting is actually
Speaker 3: no different than aame point.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that I noticed in your
Speaker 1: book that blew my mind is that if you're you know,
Speaker 1: I generally look for the apex, people go, oh, just
Speaker 1: you know, one cup outside, and I'm like, no, I
Speaker 1: don't look at the cup. I'm looking at where the
Speaker 1: break would be and then where it's going to make
Speaker 1: the turn. But your stats are saying that you've got
Speaker 1: to aim above the apex there or it's going to
Speaker 1: fall below the hole.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's uh, blew me away, Absolutely true. And you
Speaker 3: look at the data and this is not new to
Speaker 3: this book. It's it's it's been around for a while
Speaker 3: and it hasn't changed. Amateur golfers miss way more than
Speaker 3: fifty percent of their putts on the low side of
Speaker 3: the hole. So the question is why is that. So
Speaker 3: there's several possible explanations, but one is if you aim
Speaker 3: at the apex, you will miss low.
Speaker 4: And why is that?
Speaker 3: Because the apex is where you know, it's the furthest
Speaker 3: point or the highest point on this curved path toward
Speaker 3: the hole. But that usually happens in the somewhere near
Speaker 3: the middle of the putt. In order to get the
Speaker 3: putt to go into the hole, you've got to start
Speaker 3: it higher because gravity will immediately start pulling the putt down.
Speaker 3: It will immediately start braking. So to hit the if
Speaker 3: your target is the apex, to hit the apex, you've
Speaker 3: got to start it higher than the apex because that
Speaker 3: first half of the putt it's going to be breaking.
Speaker 4: Before it gets there.
Speaker 3: It's not like this putt goes straight and then it
Speaker 3: takes a left turn at the apex. It doesn't do that.
Speaker 3: It breaks from the instant that you hit it. And
Speaker 3: that's the physics of it. And that implies that you've
Speaker 3: got to start the putt higher than the apex in
Speaker 3: order to hit the line that you visualizing into the hole.
Speaker 1: That's what made Paula Kramer's seventy five foot are so
Speaker 1: amazing because the amount of break that that thing had
Speaker 1: was just remarkable.
Speaker 4: And it had some speed going into the hole.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean the hole a fairly got it
Speaker 1: to the top of the hill there and then you
Speaker 1: saw it turn and just take off.
Speaker 3: If the hole hadn't been there, that would have been
Speaker 3: ten feet by and there's probably nothing she could have
Speaker 3: done about it. But that's also an example where you
Speaker 3: don't want to lag that one up to the hole.
Speaker 3: She gave it a chance to go in, and sure enough,
Speaker 3: it was really an exciting, an exciting end too.
Speaker 1: That tournament amazing, it was so amazing. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: strategy and how we can be more strategic in our
Speaker 1: game by using this information.
Speaker 3: So one, we already talked about strategy in putting in
Speaker 3: terms of how conservative or aggressive you want to be,
Speaker 3: and it turns out that amateur golfers tend to be
Speaker 3: too conservative in their in their putting, but when you
Speaker 3: move off the green, it's generally the opposite. That amateurs
Speaker 3: tend to be too aggressive in their in their shot selection.
Speaker 3: And by that I mean that they don't they don't
Speaker 3: pay enough heed to the to the hazards that are
Speaker 3: out there. You've got to give the hazards, uh plenty
Speaker 3: of respect, and most amateurs.
Speaker 1: Don't give me an example.
Speaker 3: So the example that I have in the book, and
Speaker 3: there's other examples, but the example I have in the
Speaker 3: book is where you have out of bounds on one
Speaker 3: side of a hole and the other side is just
Speaker 3: rough or not as as much of a penalty, and
Speaker 3: so you know if you hit the ball out of bounds,
Speaker 3: your strokes gained is minus two, right, because you're going
Speaker 3: to tee it up hitting three from the same spot,
Speaker 3: So you basically have used two shots and you haven't
Speaker 3: made any progress to the hole, so out of bounds
Speaker 3: you will lose two shots.
Speaker 4: That's a huge penalty.
Speaker 3: If you hit it in the rough, you have somewhere
Speaker 3: between a tenth and a quarter of a shot penalty
Speaker 3: for hitting the ball in the rough rather than the fairway,
Speaker 3: So you're trading off a huge penalty for going out
Speaker 3: of bounds with a small penalty for hitting in the rough.
Speaker 4: What does that tell.
Speaker 3: You you should do, which is you should shade the
Speaker 3: t shot your target toward the rough and away from
Speaker 3: this huge hazard which is out of bounds.
Speaker 4: And most golfers realize that.
Speaker 3: Intuitively, but they don't take into an account nearly enough,
Speaker 3: and they hit way more balls out of bounds than
Speaker 3: they should. So even with the same swing, I don't
Speaker 3: have to change anything about your swing. You don't have
Speaker 3: to go to a pro for a lesson. If you
Speaker 3: just take a more conservative, conservative line off the tee
Speaker 3: when there's these hazards in play, you can shave a
Speaker 3: lot of strokes off.
Speaker 1: Your score, and when can we be aggressive off the
Speaker 1: tee versus being more conservative?
Speaker 3: Well, if you're if you're too conservative. So I've heard
Speaker 3: this strategy of you know, it's a long part four,
Speaker 3: let's instead of hitting a driver, let's take a five iron.
Speaker 3: Then you hit another five iron, then you'll be one
Speaker 3: hundred yards away and then take a wedge from there
Speaker 3: and you're going to do it worse to bogie. So
Speaker 3: that's an example of being way too conservative because you
Speaker 3: can look at the data and do the analysis and
Speaker 3: you find out that on a long part four, if
Speaker 3: you give up that many yards with a five iron,
Speaker 3: you'll be losing a ton of strokes. It's just not
Speaker 3: worth giving up fifty sixty yards by hitting an iron
Speaker 3: instead of a driver. And amateurs often aren't that much
Speaker 3: more accurate with the shorter clubs than they are with
Speaker 3: the longer clubs. So you know, the expression goes, it's
Speaker 3: better to be long and crooked than short and crooked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, So here's something that I do strategically,
Speaker 1: and maybe you can clarify if I'm doing this the
Speaker 1: right way or if there's a better way to do it.
Speaker 1: Let's say, so on a par five, what I try
Speaker 1: to do is, you know, on a part four, I'm
Speaker 1: just going to drive the ball either with my driver
Speaker 1: or my my three wood. But on a par five,
Speaker 1: what I'm going to try to do is get my
Speaker 1: second shot into a space where I'm the most comfortable,
Speaker 1: which is probably either one hundred or one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty five yards, okay, or ninety or one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty five yards. So let's say so, let's say that
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty five yards is my nine iron, okay.
Speaker 1: So so to me, it's like that's the club I'm
Speaker 1: most confident with. That's the club that I'm the most
Speaker 1: comfortable and feel that I can, you know, give myself
Speaker 1: a great opportunity to get close to the pin. So
Speaker 1: if my drive leaves me two hundred and fifty out
Speaker 1: and my playing partner his ball lands right next to me,
Speaker 1: my playing partner will take his three wood and hit
Speaker 1: it as hard and far as he can and lay
Speaker 1: and comes up thirty yards short. And he's not that
Speaker 1: good at thirty yards in, so he'll get from thirty
Speaker 1: yards and then he'll take two more shots to get
Speaker 1: onto the green. And then he may have to do
Speaker 1: you know, we'll just say he gets two putts, so
Speaker 1: he bogies the hole. Where for me, at twoin fifty,
Speaker 1: I'll take my nine iron and hit it twice because
Speaker 1: I know I cannot reach the green at two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty yards away, so I'll hit one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty five yards, and if all goes well, I'll take
Speaker 1: out the rangefinder and say, oh perfect, I'm one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five yards to the pin. And then I
Speaker 1: hit that third shot and I'm within let's call it
Speaker 1: the ten foot range, and I'm a very happy guy,
Speaker 1: and hopefully I can get that birdie. Is that statistically?
Speaker 1: Is that the way to approach that?
Speaker 4: So if.
Speaker 3: You are this anomalous golfer that is better from one
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty yards than thirty yards, you should follow
Speaker 3: your strategy. What I found and looking at amateur data,
Speaker 3: is there are very few golfers that are better from
Speaker 3: one hundred or one hundred and twenty yards than they
Speaker 3: are from thirty. Almost everybody would be better off hitting
Speaker 3: the ball closer. I didn't say everybody, I said almost everybody.
Speaker 3: So if you have the chip yips, if you hit
Speaker 3: a thirty yard shot fat one time and you scull
Speaker 3: it over the green the next time. Then that tells
Speaker 3: me two things. One is, yeah, you don't want to
Speaker 3: hit to thirty yards. You want to lay back to
Speaker 3: where you've got a full swing or you've got a
Speaker 3: comfortable swing. And the second thing it tells me is
Speaker 3: you ought to get a lesson because you should be
Speaker 3: much better from thirty yards than one hundred or one
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty yards. Every tour pro is better from
Speaker 3: thirty yards than one and one hundred and twenty yards.
Speaker 3: Almost every amateur that I look at is better or
Speaker 3: from thirty yards than they are from one hundred to
Speaker 3: one hundred and twenty yards. The data is crystal clear
Speaker 3: when you took when you talk about averages, if you
Speaker 3: talk about most ninety golfers or most eighty golfers. But
Speaker 3: there there are exceptions, and if you're if you're the exception,
Speaker 3: then that that points out that you're losing a ton
Speaker 3: of strokes by not improving your short game, and you've
Speaker 3: got to go take a lesson and work on it
Speaker 3: and get better, because that would be an easy way
Speaker 3: for you to drop strokes off your score.
Speaker 1: But as an amateur who doesn't get a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of time to practice, I find that taking full strokes,
Speaker 1: I have more confidence with my full strokes than I
Speaker 1: do taking you know, short strokes, as a thirty yard
Speaker 1: shot would be versus pulling out a wedge from sixty
Speaker 1: five yards solo sewage.
Speaker 3: So let's let's change your example slightly. Unless you take
Speaker 3: it a par four and you hit a drive, and
Speaker 3: you hit your second shot, and you come up thirty
Speaker 3: yards short in the fairway, and I give you this
Speaker 3: free option, you can pick up the ball, walk sixty
Speaker 3: yards back and now you have a ninety or one
Speaker 3: hundred yard shot from the fairway. Would you do that
Speaker 3: if I allowed you to do that for free?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 5: Okay, then I think, yeah, I actually, I actually I've
Speaker 5: been working a lot on my short game lately, but
Speaker 5: I think that, Yeah, I think that I'd like do
Speaker 5: you thank you?
Speaker 1: I think I would do that.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, you again, you are not a typical amateur golfer.
Speaker 1: Because no, I'm not. I don't think I am.
Speaker 3: So if you take a look at how often golfers
Speaker 3: hit the green, amateur golfers hit the green from one
Speaker 3: hundred yards or so it's typically much less than.
Speaker 4: Fifty percent, say, whereas.
Speaker 3: From thirty yards it's a lot more than fifty percent.
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, many people have in their mind, Oh,
Speaker 3: I'm one hundred yards away, it's just a wedge or
Speaker 3: a nine iron, I'll put it on the green. Nine
Speaker 3: out of ten times, amateur golfers from one hundred yards
Speaker 3: put the ball on the green less than half the time.
Speaker 3: And so you also got to tell me that from
Speaker 3: thirty yards they must put the ball on the green
Speaker 3: less than half the time. Also, otherwise it's not it's
Speaker 3: not worth it, or it would be worth it to
Speaker 3: walk the uh to walk back you know, pick up
Speaker 3: your ball and walk walk backwards. And I just don't
Speaker 3: see that in the data.
Speaker 4: Thirty yards is a little chip shot.
Speaker 3: You can you can if there's no bunker in between,
Speaker 3: you could take out a putter.
Speaker 1: All right, let's call it forty yards. Then thirty yards
Speaker 1: maybe would be the right example. But I can't. I
Speaker 1: can remember so many times going, oh my god, it
Speaker 1: took me two shots to get yeah, four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty yards, and it took me four shots to get
Speaker 1: the next forty You know.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 3: So if again, if that's the case, one of the
Speaker 3: things that this strokes Gained analysis would show is that
Speaker 3: you're incredibly weak and you're throwing away strokes from forty yards.
Speaker 3: You better go practice that area of your game because
Speaker 3: it shouldn't be that hard.
Speaker 4: It's not that hard of a shot.
Speaker 3: And for most people, even most amateurs, it's not that
Speaker 3: hard of a shot, meaning it's not harder from forty
Speaker 3: yards than it is from one hundred yards. So again,
Speaker 3: I know people that are like that, but they're in
Speaker 3: the minority. And like I said, that's the If that's
Speaker 3: true of you, then it's an easy place.
Speaker 1: To focus on what I need to practice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to improve your game? Yeah, to lower your score.
Speaker 1: You weren't really laughing at me, were you, Mark, Yes,
Speaker 1: you are, Okay, I'm curious.
Speaker 4: Maybe that's not the right way to say it.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's then obvious that that's where you should
Speaker 3: work on, right, right, Right, that's probably a better way
Speaker 3: to say it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly, And this is and to me, that's
Speaker 1: the point of this book is to figure out what
Speaker 1: do I need to work on to drop those ten strokes?
Speaker 4: Where?
Speaker 1: Where are those ten strokes? Going, are they where they
Speaker 1: coming from exactly? And it's and statistically is it mostly
Speaker 1: approach shots?
Speaker 3: It's mostly shots outside of one hundred yards And if
Speaker 3: you want to break that down even more, it's mostly
Speaker 3: the approach shots, so full swinging iron shots for most people,
Speaker 3: or if you're short hit or sometimes one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty yards shot is a hybrid or a seven wood
Speaker 3: or a five wood, and.
Speaker 4: Those you know, getting the.
Speaker 3: Where of those balls on the green, getting those balls
Speaker 3: that are on the green a little bit of the
Speaker 3: hole is where you can you can save a lot
Speaker 3: of shots.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that when when you know, when
Speaker 1: I talked about someone, we're two hundred and fifty yards
Speaker 1: out and they're just going to hit it as hard
Speaker 1: and far as they can. I don't think that they
Speaker 1: necessarily take into account all the trouble that they could
Speaker 1: get into, you know, how aggressive they should be. Do
Speaker 1: I really need to hit the ball as far as
Speaker 1: I can here because I'm I'm opening the door for problems.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, you want to hit the ball as far
Speaker 3: as you can, taking into account the hazards. So you
Speaker 3: don't want to hit the ball, you know, three hundred
Speaker 3: yards if that's where the fairway gets the narrowest, that
Speaker 3: brings fairway bunkers into player, that brings water out of
Speaker 3: bounds into play for sure. So it's not just you know,
Speaker 3: bomb and gouge or grip it and rip it. You've
Speaker 3: got to pay attention to the hazards. And you know,
Speaker 3: going back again to the you know, the forty yard
Speaker 3: fat shot. You know, one of the things that I
Speaker 3: recommend amateurs do is take a look at their awful shots.
Speaker 3: So in around you'll have one of those where you
Speaker 3: hit it fat, you skull it, you know, the ball
Speaker 3: goes nowhere, or you miss a two footter. You can
Speaker 3: identify those shots that really lose a lot to your
Speaker 3: score and then see whether that's better or worse than
Speaker 3: the average golfer for your handicap level, for your average score,
Speaker 3: and then identify those areas where you need to improve.
Speaker 3: And many golfers if they got out of a bunker
Speaker 3: in one shot, if when they're in the hay or
Speaker 3: in the woods, they get out of trouble in one shot,
Speaker 3: rather than trying to pull off the miraculous rescue and
Speaker 3: then hitting it out of bounds, you know, falling up
Speaker 3: a bad shot with a worse shot. Reducing the number
Speaker 3: of awful shots is another kind of easy way to
Speaker 3: shave strokes off your game, or at least give you
Speaker 3: an idea of what you need to practice.
Speaker 1: One of my all time favorite lines that I continue
Speaker 1: to tell myself never follow a bad shot with a
Speaker 1: stupid shot.
Speaker 4: I like that. That's great.
Speaker 3: I thought you're going to say, bad shot with the
Speaker 3: bad shot, but that's very good. Never follow a bad
Speaker 3: shot with a stupid shot is great advice.
Speaker 1: Put in the book and talk about golf smarter. Don't
Speaker 1: care about me. Talk about two ingredients to making your decision.
Speaker 1: Things are the factors? What are the main things statistically speaking,
Speaker 1: what are the main things we should be thinking about
Speaker 1: when we're trying to decide which club to hit?
Speaker 3: So which club to hit? The first thing is you
Speaker 3: want to know your club distances? And yeah, it's absolutely critical.
Speaker 3: And if that also means when you're sixty yards away,
Speaker 3: what is my sixty yard swing if it's not a
Speaker 3: full swing? What is my forty yard swing if it's
Speaker 3: not a full swing. And it's also you know not
Speaker 3: only your club distances, but it's your carry distance. So
Speaker 3: depending on where you play, if you get a lot
Speaker 3: of roller or not. Then a two hundred yard shot
Speaker 3: may be one hundred and ninety yards of carry, or
Speaker 3: it may be one hundred and seventy yards of carry.
Speaker 3: You know, one with ten yards of roll, the other
Speaker 3: with thirty yards a roll. And if you have a
Speaker 3: hazard to clear and it's two hundred yards away, a
Speaker 3: lot of amateurs will say, oh, I'll take out my
Speaker 3: two ten club, But that may not be right because
Speaker 3: you need to keep track of not only your club distances,
Speaker 3: but what are your carry distances.
Speaker 1: And plus they think they have a two to ten
Speaker 1: club and it really is one hundred and eighty five.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's so many people that you know, how far
Speaker 3: did I hit that drive? It must have been two
Speaker 3: fifty two sixty And when you look at it and
Speaker 3: you know plot it, it's you know, to ten. And
Speaker 3: so many people hit the ball shorter than they think
Speaker 3: they do for a number of reasons. So knowing your
Speaker 3: club distances is certainly a good place to start. But
Speaker 3: when it's a question of strategy, I think of, you know,
Speaker 3: the main ingredients are what does your shot pattern look like?
Speaker 3: By that, I mean not how well does my best
Speaker 3: shot go? But if I hit ten or twenty or
Speaker 3: fifty shots. What would that distribution of shots look like
Speaker 3: if I plotted it on this particular hole. And you
Speaker 3: need to think about your target as moving around your
Speaker 3: shot pattern, and so one ingredient is what your shot pattern,
Speaker 3: what is your likely miss going to be? The other
Speaker 3: ingredient is what are the features of the hole and
Speaker 3: where are the hazards? You know, how wide is the
Speaker 3: fair way, where are the bunkers, where's the water, where's
Speaker 3: the of bounds? And you want to put those two
Speaker 3: ingredients together, your shot pattern with the features of the
Speaker 3: hole in order to decide how aggressive or how conservative
Speaker 3: you should be. And clearly, if it's a long part
Speaker 3: four and it's wide open, you can grip it and
Speaker 3: rip it. But on other holes you need to be
Speaker 3: more more conservative to make sure you don't have one
Speaker 3: of those awful shots that go out of bounds.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that you're you've been witnessed to this, You've
Speaker 1: a thousand times because we all have. And I'm curious
Speaker 1: to what your reaction to it is. Maybe not verbally
Speaker 1: to yourself, but you may say something when you walk
Speaker 1: up to a t box and your partner says, I
Speaker 1: hit it in the water here every time.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, when when when that happens, you got to
Speaker 3: say you got to step back and say, well, what
Speaker 3: can I do differently to to avoid that?
Speaker 1: And and they pull out the same club that they
Speaker 1: always use in.
Speaker 3: The right there's there's there's another manifestation of that. That's
Speaker 3: one of the you the fun things that I've gotten
Speaker 3: to do playing with some club pros and some PGA
Speaker 3: tour pros, and you can see them from one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty yards and sometimes they'll hit a club that's
Speaker 3: two or three clubs different than they did on the
Speaker 3: last shot from one hundred and fifty yards, whereas most
Speaker 3: of my friends that I play with one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty yards is a seven iron. It could be downhill,
Speaker 3: it could be uphill, it could be downwind into the wind,
Speaker 3: and they might change from a seven iron maybe to
Speaker 3: a six or maybe to an eight, but they wouldn't
Speaker 3: think about changing more than that. And the good players
Speaker 3: know how to adjust, you know more, and they typically
Speaker 3: take all those factors into account and they're willing to move,
Speaker 3: you know, one, two or three clubs away from their
Speaker 3: normal club from that distance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I played band in Dunes last year, and luckily
Speaker 1: we had caddies because there were shots where it was
Speaker 1: a four club win right in our face. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's like usually i'd hit a nine iron here, pull
Speaker 1: out your you know, your three wood, you may reach it.
Speaker 3: And if you didn't have that county there, you'd say, ah,
Speaker 3: nine iron, there's a lot of win in my face.
Speaker 4: Maybe you go to a seven right.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe exactly, and it's uphill and it's uphill right?
Speaker 1: What is? What is the This to me is interesting
Speaker 1: because I live next to a country club that I'm
Speaker 1: not a member of, and I like playing different courses
Speaker 1: a lot. But country club players, I think that their
Speaker 1: handicap may be not representative of their game because they
Speaker 1: get so comfortable with this course, so confident they just
Speaker 1: know what to do. But if you take them out
Speaker 1: to another course that they're not familiar with, their game changes.
Speaker 4: Oh absolutely.
Speaker 3: I think it takes you know, at least two rounds
Speaker 3: and maybe more in order to learn a course. And
Speaker 3: one of the fun things I've I've gotten to do
Speaker 3: is go out with the PGA Tour pros on the uh,
Speaker 3: you know, the Monday or Tuesday of a tournament where
Speaker 3: they're preparing for the tournament, and they and their caddies
Speaker 3: will map out the course, see what's changed from last year,
Speaker 3: and they really develop a strategy to attack the course.
Speaker 4: Whereas I remember.
Speaker 3: It, you know, playing at Bend and Dune's, you know,
Speaker 3: with with the caddy and I didn't know where to
Speaker 3: hit it or what club to hit. And he goes, ah,
Speaker 3: you know, just stame there, which so I did, and
Speaker 3: you know, I took out you know, he saw I
Speaker 3: had a driver in my hand, and I hit it
Speaker 3: exactly where he said and it went into the trees.
Speaker 3: Because he looked at me and said, oh, he's not
Speaker 3: going to hit the ball more than two hundred and
Speaker 3: thirty yards. And I hit it two hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: yards into the trees. And I was so mad because
Speaker 3: they hit a perfect shot and now I'm in the woods.
Speaker 3: And that's a case of just not knowing the course
Speaker 3: and that can really add up two three four shots easily.
Speaker 3: So having a yardage book, mapping out the course pros
Speaker 3: do it because it's their livelihood if you're just playing
Speaker 3: another course for fun. That's why when I go to
Speaker 3: a place like Banded Nun's, I would much rather play
Speaker 3: the same course five times than to play five different courses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I sometimes I find it to be an advantage
Speaker 1: of you know, just tell me my target line here.
Speaker 1: I've never played this course. Just tell me which direction
Speaker 1: you know, and and you know, if I don't want
Speaker 1: to go all the way, I don't want to be
Speaker 1: too aggressive. That I don't have these preconceived notions of
Speaker 1: what has happened in the past, so I can just
Speaker 1: relax a little more.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, I think that's that's the goal, which is
Speaker 3: you you approach each shot with what's my target?
Speaker 4: What do I need to do?
Speaker 3: And you just get up and that's your entire focus
Speaker 3: is hitting the shot you know in that in that direction,
Speaker 3: with with that club, and having having a good caddy,
Speaker 3: which you can get at a lot of courses, is
Speaker 3: really helpful when you're playing, you know, a new course
Speaker 3: that you're not you're not familiar with.
Speaker 1: Well, Mark, this has been a graduate level education. I
Speaker 1: truly appreciate your time. The book. This is Mark Brody.
Speaker 1: It's b R O A d I E. The website
Speaker 1: is every Shot Counts dot com. Just give you a
Speaker 1: little more about the book and the book. Every Shot
Speaker 1: Counts using the revolutionary strokes gained approach to improve your
Speaker 1: golf performance and strategy. It's available, and it is an
Speaker 1: important book to have in your library because it's going
Speaker 1: to change the way you think about your game. And
Speaker 1: it's a necessary change in your thought process because they're
Speaker 1: doing it on the tour too. And if we if
Speaker 1: we buy balls, if they play in the tour, if
Speaker 1: we buy equipment they play in the tour, then you
Speaker 1: should be thinking like tour players.
Speaker 4: Do you agree? Oh? Absolutely agree that.
Speaker 3: As I mentioned, the PGA's war players not only hit
Speaker 3: better shots, but they but they think better. And I
Speaker 3: hope that this book gives you a little bit of
Speaker 3: a clue or insight into into how they think.
Speaker 4: And uh, it's it's meant for the average golfer. It's
Speaker 4: not meant for the graduate student of golf.
Speaker 3: So I think anybody can can read this and get
Speaker 3: a little bit of value and hopefully a little bit
Speaker 3: of fun and a couple of good stories out of it.