Where do you drop most shots?

blue note · 14-10-2019 5:01pm #1

As the title says, what does are costing you most shots in your rounds? For me it used to be close between driving and putting. I find a couple of wayward drives can be incredibly costly - 3 off the tee, having to chip out from trees, etc. On a good day it might just be a shot. On a bad day out could be 5. And putting was annoying in a different way. Aside from the 3 (and sometimes 4) putts, I'd give myself a good few chances to pick up shots with 3-6 foot putts and make none of them. My best rounds were 80 3 times and i had about 35 putts in each of those. I'm pretty sure on people's best days they're usually closer to 30 putts!

But I managed to change where my biggest problems lie by moving clubs. I probably hit driver 3 times in a round now (down from 10). They're pretty much all going straight now too, so maybe I should start taking it out on other holes. But I'm in corballis and end up with heaps of half shots - 50 to 100 meters. I'm in prime position and should be confident of getting down in three, but I keep on catching them fat which is a dropped shot straight away, but probably the best bad outcome. Overhitting them out drifting them right or left will leave me in links rough near the green or a bunker. And in those cases I'll be glad to get the ball onto the green with my next at all. There have been times when I've been 80m from the green on the fairway and ended up scratching the hole.

And there's no getting away from those shots. For one, I want to be a better golfer and learn to play them. Secondly, two par threes are this long. I'd need to chip backwards to get to a preferred distance. And three, some of the par 4s are tiny. I'd need to execute the same shot to lay up areas of I wanted to leave myself 120m so I could hit a wedge in.

Anyway, enough about me. What's your achilles heel on the course? And what do you do to mitigate against it?

Rikand · 14-10-2019 10:20pm

Putting

Chipping at the moment.

As I'm playing less golf than I used to, I find myself most inconsistent with my chipping. I also don't play the right clubs or the right shots. Really struggling to find a go to shot that i can use for chipping to always get myself in and around 6-10 feet from the hole. Far too often I am 20 feet+ away and hoping to make a 2putt.

Sadly its just a natural situation of not making enough time for practice for myself. But I'm doing everything else very well. Brilliant off the tee, fairway shots are for the most part excellent. Have the odd loose one, but thats to be expected and if I was chipping well, then that would be immaterial. Putting is mostly good too. I'm nearly always giving myself a chance. But the chipping is just a massive let down lately.

no other way to fix it than by playing and practicing more. I just have too many other things on at the moment

dan_ep82 · 14-10-2019 11:12pm

Half shots 50-100m

165yds+ approach shots.

Struggling all season with strike apart from a few weeks. They're not OOB or anything but poor enough that I have to rely on my short game a lot. I'm lucky enough that I'm decent around the green and get up and down more often than not but if I want to go lower I need to sort it.

I can have days where other parts of my game are poor but the average bad shot since I had the shanks mid summer is definitely poor strike on irons

endacl · 14-10-2019 11:12pm

19th

DuckSlice · 15-10-2019 8:54am

Woods

Lately its my driving. Im not playing regularly enough to be consistent off the tee. the last 5 rounds ive played have been close to very good except for a couple of drives that end up OB.

could be down to bad course management too though.

blue note · 15-10-2019 9:01am

Bunker shots

Rikand wrote: »

Chipping at the moment.

As I'm playing less golf than I used to, I find myself most inconsistent with my chipping. I also don't play the right clubs or the right shots. Really struggling to find a go to shot that i can use for chipping to always get myself in and around 6-10 feet from the hole. Far too often I am 20 feet+ away and hoping to make a 2putt.

Sadly its just a natural situation of not making enough time for practice for myself. But I'm doing everything else very well. Brilliant off the tee, fairway shots are for the most part excellent. Have the odd loose one, but thats to be expected and if I was chipping well, then that would be immaterial. Putting is mostly good too. I'm nearly always giving myself a chance. But the chipping is just a massive let down lately.

no other way to fix it than by playing and practicing more. I just have too many other things on at the moment

What I see all the time in relation to chipping is lads trying to get loads of check on the ball. And for me, that's a much harder shot to execute than letting the ball run to the hole. If you don't get it right you can blade the ball through the green for one. And it's not easy to stop it right at the hole even if you do hit it right. A bump and run is much more reliable for me. Hard to get it too wrong and you should always be left with a good chance of a one putt.

Salthillprom · 15-10-2019 9:05am

Always putting for me.

bmay529 · 15-10-2019 9:40am

Putting is an interesting one as being the final shot on a hole we often beat ourselves up if we miss something "shortish" thinking we should get everything under "x" feet but even the pros don't do that. You can have an exceptional putting round in low 20's if you are missing greens and chipping well or a bad putting round if you are hitting greens a long way from hole and throw in a few 3 puts... that's the one for me that really hurts!! However that is what handicaps are for and we should not beat ourselves up too much if we miss a few puts

spacecoyote · 15-10-2019 9:46am

Putting

dan_ep82 wrote: »

165yds+ approach shots.

Struggling all season with strike apart from a few weeks. They're not OOB or anything but poor enough that I have to rely on my short game a lot. I'm lucky enough that I'm decent around the green and get up and down more often than not but if I want to go lower I need to sort it.

I can have days where other parts of my game are poor but the average bad shot since I had the shanks mid summer is definitely poor strike on irons

Do you maybe have unrealistic expectations from that distance Dan. Stats I could find were a couple of years old, but PGA tour average from 150-175yrds is around about 28ft, or 9yrds(ish). None of us are at PGA Tour Average ability from that distance, so lets say that you give yourself a wider range, I'll go with GameGolf range, which is 45ft, or 15yds.

Do you know how often are you hitting the green from that distance? I'm a 10 handicap & get the ball within 15yds 43% of the time according to GameGolf, and I think of myself as a decent mid-iron player.

Could your problem be that you're pin-hunting from distance? If you give yourself a 15yrd circle around the pin, and you have a pin that's tight to front/ sides of the green, then chances are that you're missing a pile of greens. Maybe you need to give yourself a bigger margin for error, take on centre-back of the middle of the green. You'll leave a few longer putts, but you'll also likely hit a lot more greens from that distance. Even if you've a good short game, you probably get down in 2 more often from on the green than from off it.

Anyway, enough of me waffling about Dan's issues

For me its short game. I'm pretty steady off the tee, decent with a hybrid, iron, full wedge in hand, and a solid putter. Biggest issue without a doubt is getting it close enough to get up&down. Biggest issue is being short with chips, I'm not really duffing them, its mainly a pace/judgement issue. Had a chat with one of the lads on here about it, and the way I see myself is, give me a difficult chip, and I'll probably execute it pretty well, but a straight-forward one & I don't take advantage. I'm thinking its a lack of concentration & commitment to the stroke when I have a straight-forward shot to execute.

Have been putting a bit more time into it, where I can, as well as playing shots with different clubs, rather than sticking with a single club and seeing a bit of a statistical improvement in recent times, but I'm very streaky with it.

slave1 · 15-10-2019 10:41am

From knee height:pac:

Putting, always putting, I'm in and around 30putts a round, if I score badly it might be easy for me to think of the bad tee shot or approach but ultimately it comes down to the putting stats.
You can recover from a bad tee shot or approach but a missed putted from makeable range is impossible to get back

Scott Tenorman · 15-10-2019 10:49am

Half shots 50-100m

Irons!

Very inconsistent with direction to say the least!

Happy with my driving
Chipping was bad at the start of the year (blading) but happy with that now
Putting is the best it has ever been TBH, switch to a fat grip has transformed my distance control

RoadRunner · 15-10-2019 1:50pm

Putting. Lack of confidence in distance control from longer range. Used to reach my ball on the green on occasion and secretly wish it was further away, not on the green so that I could chip it.

mike12 · 15-10-2019 2:55pm

Interesting thread, very hard to say exactly where we loose shots.
If we hit a poor drive it puts pressure on the longer irons, we then miss the green in a poor spot and blame the chipping, end up with a 10 foot putt miss that and it's the putters fault.

I think we often have too high expectations, if you can drive the ball 300 yards then u should be hitting a lot of greens if u can only hit it 200 then your chance of hitting greens is much reduced.

Driving distance and accuracy really differs so much from course to course some accuracy will be the winner some distance is required.

GIR is the biggest difference between handicap levels so often the best question is why we miss so many GIR.
For me if I drive poorly it drops off so driving costs me the most shots.
A chip out of the trees is the same as a missed 2 foot putt.

Mantis Toboggan · 15-10-2019 7:24pm

Woods

For me it's off the tee regardless of the club. I'd say I'd only hit the driver 7 times in a round and I'm pretty decent with it.

Problem is we have narrow fairways of 20 metres. Beyond that it's straight into trees and more often than not you're chipping out. So on every tee box you've a 20 metre wide target and if you don't hit it you're most likely looking at bogey. It can be a real killer.

dan_ep82 · 15-10-2019 8:02pm

Half shots 50-100m

spacecoyote wrote: »

Do you maybe have unrealistic expectations from that distance Dan. Stats I could find were a couple of years old, but PGA tour average from 150-175yrds is around about 28ft, or 9yrds(ish). None of us are at PGA Tour Average ability from that distance, so lets say that you give yourself a wider range, I'll go with GameGolf range, which is 45ft, or 15yds.

Do you know how often are you hitting the green from that distance? I'm a 10 handicap & get the ball within 15yds 43% of the time according to GameGolf, and I think of myself as a decent mid-iron player.

Could your problem be that you're pin-hunting from distance? If you give yourself a 15yrd circle around the pin, and you have a pin that's tight to front/ sides of the green, then chances are that you're missing a pile of greens. Maybe you need to give yourself a bigger margin for error, take on centre-back of the middle of the green. You'll leave a few longer putts, but you'll also likely hit a lot more greens from that distance. Even if you've a good short game, you probably get down in 2 more often from on the green than from off it.

Anyway, enough of me waffling about Dan's issues

For me its short game. I'm pretty steady off the tee, decent with a hybrid, iron, full wedge in hand, and a solid putter. Biggest issue without a doubt is getting it close enough to get up&down. Biggest issue is being short with chips, I'm not really duffing them, its mainly a pace/judgement issue. Had a chat with one of the lads on here about it, and the way I see myself is, give me a difficult chip, and I'll probably execute it pretty well, but a straight-forward one & I don't take advantage. I'm thinking its a lack of concentration & commitment to the stroke when I have a straight-forward shot to execute.

Have been putting a bit more time into it, where I can, as well as playing shots with different clubs, rather than sticking with a single club and seeing a bit of a statistical improvement in recent times, but I'm very streaky with it.

It's not so much that I'm leaving myself huge putt's but that I'm not sure what's coming out of the shot. I lost a club distance at the end of last year through poor loft delivery, regained it then got the shanks, and then lost it again. It's a big difference for me hitting a hard 7/normal 6i than a hard 5i and hoping its enough.

I can hit three shots with the same club and be pin high,way short and long. Generally if I'm consistently hitting one of those on the day I adjust but I have days where I hit all three with a few pulls thrown in.

I just need more work on them to hit the shots I see. On my low days where I'm scoring well I'm hitting these shots or my short game is sharp and it's saving me, usually its the short game and if it falters so does the score. My lowest rounds have been when my irons have been at their best.

slave1 · 15-10-2019 8:44pm

If you're really interested OP get a tagging device so you will know for sure.
I'm a 14 handicap and the image below is my last round compared to a 15 handicap so I can see it was the short approaches 100yds and in where I dropped shots Saturday

[URL=https:///]

[/URL] upload

Dublin Spur · 16-10-2019 8:26am

Chipping

bunkers for sure
but i think that has more to do with the poor quality of the bunkers
deep pot bunkers with shallow gritty sand is a bad combination

slave1 · 16-10-2019 9:14am

There is a USPGA spec for bunkers, fairway bunkers should be shallow sand and greenside deep to allow for predictability and consistency.
I agree though, nothing worse than landing in a greenside bunker and playing a good shot only to find a thin layer of sand and your ball gone flying as a result

Hoboo · 16-10-2019 9:19am

slave1 wrote: »

There is a USPGA spec for bunkers, fairway bunkers should be shallow sand and greenside deep to allow for predictability and consistency.
I agree though, nothing worse than landing in a greenside bunker and playing a good shot only to find a thin layer of sand and your ball gone flying as a result

USPGA spec and then there's Irish spec. They're like a box of chocolates.

Russman · 16-10-2019 10:14am

Really interesting question and debate. TBH I'm not sure the answer can be clearly defined.

I had a look through my (fairly rudimentary) stats from around a decade ago when I was playing well, always off 3/4 handicap, versus recent years where I've been faffing around off 7/8 (even 9 for a couple of weeks), and its not very conclusive.

My stroke average has gone from 74.1 to 80.1 (par of the course has gone up by 1 in that time).
I'm hitting more or less the same amount of fairways at around 50%, but I'm only hitting around 6 greens on average now, versus 9/10 back in the day.
My putting is similar at 30.4 Vs 30.2 putts per round and my P/GIR is 1.976 Vs 1.876 so not a massive change.
Having thought about it more, the best I can come up with is that my bad shots now are much worse. I find myself chipping out sideways maybe 5 or 6 times in a round, which really kills your score, whereas previously a bad drive was usually still playable.

I suspect that for most of us, its the quality (or not) of your bad shots, regardless of what type of shot they are. If I had to pick a shot I'd say off the tee is where we lose out most. Its so easy to find yourself out of a hole or playing catch up after the drive. I agree with the poster earlier talking about hitting a poor drive, ok second up near the green, average chip to 10 feet, missing the putt and blaming his putting - when it was the poor drive that cost him in reality. You can't hole everything or get it up and down all the time.

As an old pro once said "two things that don't last long in this life are dogs that chase cars and pros that putt for pars"

trigger26 · 16-10-2019 10:20am

I started recording stats on an excel sheet after every full round and its starting to pay off big time now, first I noticed my FIR was very low and that leads to poor GIR. Worked on my driving and that helped me hit more greens.
My up and downs was next big blocker so worked on my chipping a good but this year, now onto the putting next year!

moycullen14 · 16-10-2019 10:49am

I suppose if you were to do a quantitative analysis, you could start with defining the 'cost' of every shot and type of shot.

So a drive where you have to hack out sideways to where you should have been in one, would cost 2 shots. A missed 18inch putt would be 2, a 30 foot putt going in would be zero, holing out from 80 yds is -2 and so on.

There may be about 20 types of shot (drive, long putt, greenside chip, bunker, etc). If you tracked it over time each type of shot would have a frequency, average (you would hope it would be 1!) and standard deviation (=0, natch)

I guess this is how they do the shots gained/lost on the PGA tour.

Qualitatively, I find that when my driving is bad (and boy it can be bad) my scoring goes completely to pot. I lose a huge number of shots.

A good-scoring round is always consistent with a good short game (no three puts, > 60% up and down, etc).

slave1 · 16-10-2019 12:56pm

Russman wrote: »

Really interesting question and debate. TBH I'm not sure the answer can be clearly defined.

I had a look through my (fairly rudimentary) stats from around a decade ago when I was playing well, always off 3/4 handicap, versus recent years where I've been faffing around off 7/8 (even 9 for a couple of weeks), and its not very conclusive.

My stroke average has gone from 74.1 to 80.1 (par of the course has gone up by 1 in that time).
I'm hitting more or less the same amount of fairways at around 50%, but I'm only hitting around 6 greens on average now, versus 9/10 back in the day.
My putting is similar at 30.4 Vs 30.2 putts per round and my P/GIR is 1.976 Vs 1.876 so not a massive change.
Having thought about it more, the best I can come up with is that my bad shots now are much worse. I find myself chipping out sideways maybe 5 or 6 times in a round, which really kills your score, whereas previously a bad drive was usually still playable.

I suspect that for most of us, its the quality (or not) of your bad shots, regardless of what type of shot they are. If I had to pick a shot I'd say off the tee is where we lose out most. Its so easy to find yourself out of a hole or playing catch up after the drive. I agree with the poster earlier talking about hitting a poor drive, ok second up near the green, average chip to 10 feet, missing the putt and blaming his putting - when it was the poor drive that cost him in reality. You can't hole everything or get it up and down all the time.

As an old pro once said "two things that don't last long in this life are dogs that chase cars and pros that putt for pars"

Good point, suppose another way of looking at it is who you are, I know plenty of low handicap golfers that would take my bad tee shot and get me onto the green, so is it my bad tee shot or my bad recovery that cost me a shot?
Think of the courses where Tiger has dominated and won multiple times and he will tell you it's not because of his good shots that he wins there, it because he knows where to miss and can recover from.

spacecoyote · 16-10-2019 12:59pm

Putting

I guess this is where tracking tools comes in handy

Benchmarking myself against a 10 handicap (have been in the range 9-12 all year)

I'm losing the most off the tee with short game in second, both costing me around a shot per round, based on all of my 18 hole rounds played this year that I had GameGolf with me

martinkop · 16-10-2019 1:28pm

Woods

Good video along these lines done by golfsidekick on you tube.

Had a pro and a 20 handicap play side by side; first 9 use pro drives & amateur closes out; second 9 had amateur drive/2nd shot if outside 100y and pro play shots inside 100y.
The short game came out as the big difference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6JN98m8tio

Deporhostia · 16-10-2019 1:59pm

Woods

slave1 wrote: »

If you're really interested OP get a tagging device so you will know for sure.
I'm a 14 handicap and the image below is my last round compared to a 15 handicap so I can see it was the short approaches 100yds and in where I dropped shots Saturday

[URL=https:///][/URL] upload

What tagging device did you use for this? Looks like something I would enjoy and benefit from.

mike12 · 16-10-2019 2:35pm

trigger26 wrote: »

I started recording stats on an excel sheet after every full round and its starting to pay off big time now, first I noticed my FIR was very low and that leads to poor GIR. Worked on my driving and that helped me hit more greens.
My up and downs was next big blocker so worked on my chipping a good but this year, now onto the putting next year!

This is a good example has your chipping improved much or are u now chipping from easier spots because your driving is better and your second shots are closer to the green.
Miss the green 2 yards and have a simple bump and run our chipping stats would be good not move that out to 10 yards and have to come over a bunker and we are all hoping to get down in 3.
It's often the improvement or the long game getting worse that effects chipping the most.

slave1 · 17-10-2019 9:05am

Deporhostia wrote: »

What tagging device did you use for this? Looks like something I would enjoy and benefit from.

GameGolf

Where do you drop most shots?

What costs you the most shots in a round? 57 votes

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