Formula for Improvement in 2016

Before we start, let’s try a quick mental exercise: You are playing a par-4 hole under benign conditions, and your drive has left you 130 yards to a pin cut just four paces on the front of the green with no hazards to clear. What is your approach? Do you pick your 130-yard club and go right for the pin, knowing if you may stiff it, but if you mishit it you may be 10-15 feet short of the green and have to chip to recover, or do you take your 140-yard club and hit for the center of the green, knowing you may have a downhill 30 foot putt but probably won’t be close to the flag for a realistic birdie chance? Hold that answer for later.

In my ongoing effort to improve, I just completed a full game analysis which included a statistical review of over 200 rounds played since 2010 and a subjective self-evaluation. Combining the two, I think I’ve landed on a reasonable strategy to take a couple strokes off my game in 2016.

The subjective component was derived from assessing my strengths and weaknesses as a player, and being as honest as possible. If you try it, this will vary by your skill level.  I realize I do not have the game of a scratch player, so I rated the various components of my game in relation to what an average 5-handicap might look like. If I could calculate strokes gained or lost for various categories, that would be great but you can’t so what I came up with was letter grades. My rank against the class: Driving: B, Irons: C-minus, Putting: B, Short Game: D, Mental game: A-minus.

Next the objective component was using data for scoring average, GIR, and putts per round. It’s well known that the most highly regarded statistic on the PGA Tour as an indicator of good play is GIR but we amateurs are not playing the PGA Tour so how relevant is GIR? Let’s see. I divided up my rounds into good ball striking days (10 or more GIR), poor ball striking days (less than 10 GIR), and good putting days (30 or less putts). What I found was there was a much higher correlation to good scoring from good ball striking than good putting. The data:

Category	Average GIR	Average Putts	Average Score
Good ball striking rounds	11.21	32.97	76.46
Poor ball striking rounds	6.78	31.62	81.34
Good putting rounds	7.27	28.97	78.32

The difference in good ball striking rounds and poor ball striking rounds is clear.  Essentially, with each additional green hit, I lowered my score by one shot.  However, notice that during the good ball striking rounds, I averaged four more putts per round than during good putting rounds.  This is because the more greens you hit, the farther you are from the hole and you will naturally take more putts, but my stroke average was nearly two shots lower per round than the good putting rounds! What does this mean? Back to our initial example: I would probably benefit from hitting the 140-yard club and playing more conservatively on my approach shots to allow me to HIT MORE GREENS. It also speaks volumes that my short game is very poor 😦 and needs to improve to get me closer to the hole when I do miss.

Conclusion: I’m convinced, the main part of this plan is better course management.  During rounds, I need to discipline myself to aim for the fat part of the greens and assume that there’s nothing wrong with settling for two-putt pars. The occasional birdie is fine but I can’t force it.  I also need to focus most if not all of my practice time to improving short game and putting.  In essence, don’t be a hero, just lower my stroke average using the law of averages and common sense. Given the data, what do you think of this approach? Silly? Too conservative? About right? Please let me know!

One Bourbon, One Shot, One Beer in 2013?

One GIR, one chip, and one less putt per round.  Is that the recipe for improvement in my golf game this year?  I must be suffering from cabin fever or the general malaise of winter, but this new mantra was starting to click in my brain to the tune to the old Thorogood rendition.

George Thorogood

After reviewing my performance stats for the past few years, it would seem that making just minor improvements in these key areas would allow me to shave two strokes off my scoring average, which would be huge.  But it’s been incredibly tough to make any measurable improvement and my propensity to plateau has got me concerned.  Two things seem constant:  I have a continual desire to make significant changes in different areas of my game and the work I put in hardly yields any downstream positive effects.  Does this happen to you as well?

Then I read the “3 – 8 – 13” theory in a recent golf publication and decided to put it to the test.  The assumption:  If you hit 3 greens, you should break 90.  Hit 8 and you’ll crack 80.  Hit 13 and you break 70.  Since I averaged 8.74 GIR last year and 78.85 strokes per round, I figured the correlation was close and set out to measure it.  I had 23 rounds with 8 or more GIR and broke 80 19 times; pretty darned accurate.  In the last three years, I hit or exceeded 13 GIRs 11 times and shot 70 once and broke it twice.  However, my worst score of those 11 rounds was 76, so that proved there is a huge correlation between GIR and score.  Funny how it keeps coming back to ball striking.  So what now?

From various lessons and film analysis, I know my ball striking inconsistency stems from a loss of spine angle on the downswing and a bit of an early release.  It’s hard to work on swing in the winter, so I’ve been focusing on eliminating bad habits in my backswing and putting myself in the best positions possible.  This work is possible with just a mirror and a club in your basement, and as I work the various positions, the guy looking back in the mirror seems to be in pretty good shape but what’s going to happen with that first live contact in a couple of weeks?  Also, in one of those sub 70 rounds, I noted my playing strategy was to shoot for the center of every green on any iron shot longer than a pitching wedge; interesting.  Perhaps some conservative course management would be in order as well.

Anyone with some good drills for maintaining spine angle, increasing lag on the downswing, and overall course management improvement tips, please send them along.  Thanks!

New equipment debut: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

Christmas came early this year as I put my new set of irons and wedges through a full game practice yesterday and battle tested with a round at Poolsville this morning.  Let’s look at the Good, Bad, and Ugly.

The Good:

Most noticeable change with the JPX 825 Pro irons and the H4 hybrid irons is the ability to attack the ball with confidence.  I was able to swing hard and not have to worry about hitting the big push.  I love hitting knock down shots into the wind and pulled off a beauty with the 6-iron from light rough on my third hole today.  Then I played an awesome 3/4 recovery swing from under a tree with the 3-hybrid from about 175 yards on #4.  These clubs hit the ball where you aim them and that is huge for me.

Big plus on the new 50, 54, and 58 degree Cleveland wedges especially around the green.  I hit the 54 and 58 from the practice bunker yesterday and both proved more than capable.  I’m looking forward to controlling distance out of the bunkers by having two go-to clubs.  Today I tried a lower running pitch with the 54 and got plenty of check on the ball.  Previously I would have played that shot with my old 56 and tried to carry it farther which is harder to judge because of the added air time.  Another plus is the crisp contact and straight direction chipping with the JPX 8-iron.  The low leading edge and classic look builds confidence and promotes crisp contact.  I’m absolutely giddy about building a new short shot repertoire with the Cleveland trio.

The bad:

Absolutely no complaints with any of the new equipment.  I will need to get used to the Cleveland 50 on full swings.  I reliably hit my old Cleveland 49 gap wedge 100 yards and the new 50 seemed a little hard to control trajectory and distance reliably.  Again, the sample size was limited to 15 swings on the range and one shot in play today so no worries other than the obvious lack of available practice time with winter fast approaching.

The ugly:

The dirty little secret about good scoring is that it’s set up by good driving and mine is a mess.  Over Thanksgiving and again yesterday, I spent time on the range trying to straighten out my driver and couldn’t.  I was all over the place today and finally pulled three wood on my last five tee shots to keep the ball in play.  The iron club fitting has opened my eyes about playing with properly fit equipment.  Everyone has got swing deficiencies but mine cannot be as bad as the results I was getting with the driver.  To capitalize on these new irons I need to be straighter off the tee and am going to get fit for a driver during the winter and make the purchase before the 2013 season starts.

Final verdict:

The jury is still out on full swing distances and yardage adjustments as one round in moderately cold weather is not enough time to make a judgement.  But playing any golf in December is a big plus 🙂