So what does Broadie (strokes gained) say are...

[Barfolomew]

..... say are the clubs/shots that should be practiced the most based on the averages? Curious what they are for pros vs joes.

 

I know the system is designed to figure out what you alone are supposed to practice as we are all different but he must have averages for groups of different playing levels. It would be cool if he has ranked the different disciplines of golf based on those avgs like from 1 to 10.... tell me he has cause I gotta see that lol.

[xmanhockey7]

For pros 150-200.

[Barfolomew]

Thanks man!

 

Funny I've always called that the most important shot but I call it the "first shot at the flag" which is usually 130-200 depending on hole

[Z1ggy16]

My SG18 data seems to show my scores are heavily linked to the strokes gained/lost off the tee, and approach. If I don't stick my wedge sin super closer... it doesn't seem to matter. Similarly, I can have 1 or 2 3 putts, maybe have 32-33 total putts and still only lose a few strokes on putting, but literally as soon as you putt a ball OB/hazzard, you get killed.

[gentles]

If you've got the physical capability to hit it further then strokes gained will almost always point to that for average golfers. 25 yards with more accuracy will have such a massive difference on the average 18 handicap - you'll be able to hit or be near so many greens in reg that even if your short game stinks you will be able to score ok.

one step that always surprises me is the almost perfect correlation between driving distance and handicap. people like to glamorise the player with a low handicap the hits it short but the reality is that if you look at your club and the better golfers almost all of them will be relatively long off the tee

if you've maxed out how far you can have it with your physical limitations then absolutely mid to long irons are going to be the next place to look for the same reason as the long driving means you're closer to more greens in reg.

 

[Krt22]

you should probably snag a copy and give it a read :)

[BMC]

The THIRD shot on every hole is the most important for amateurs. Could be a pitch, chip, or putt.

[davep043]

As I understand Broadie, most players will get the largest improvement by improving full-swing shots. Generally, longer irons will be a big "separator" between poorer and better players, but full-swing improvement should improve shots from driver to full wedge. And every one of us is different, the emphasis should fall on the weakest part of the game.

[bluedot]

I'd urge you to read the book, but it is just critical to note that the biggest misunderstanding or misuse of Broadie's work is applying research to a case study. Broadie's work is research that looks at macro questions about golf at all levels, and then makes generalizations about large groups of players. What an individual player should do to improve his own game is an entirely different matter.

Whenever there is a thread where Broadie comes up, people will post about a guy they know who is an example that they believe is contrary to Broadie's research. For instance, everybody knows a great putter, and everybody knows a terrible putter, so when Broadie writes that putting is less important at ALL levels than proximity of approach, people trot out the the example of a guy they know who hits 12 greens per round, but can't putt a lick, or a guy they know who only hits it 175 off the tee, but gets up and down all day and shoots 75. None of which is pertinent to Broadie's research, much less "evidence".

Broadie can't tell you what to practice the most because Broadie doesn't have access to stats about your game, so he can't analyze you on the basis of strokes gained compared to other golfers of your general handicap level. If you want to know what it is that you should be working on and use Broadie's work to help you, then do this: Get a copy of the book, and use the sections about amateur golfers to figure out what a guy like you could typically be expected to do in various areas of the game. Then analyze your rounds as carefully as you can, and go from there. If you're like the great mass of golfers, then full swing work in order to improve your proximity of approach is probably going to be the single biggest answer to the question, but you might not be like the grereat mass of golfers. If your putting is so bad that people look away while you putt, then your answer is different.

In short, and at the risk of oversimplification, Broadie's research is descriptive, not prescriptive. The prescription for an individual golfer depends on that individual's game, and not Broadie's research, at least directly.

[dubbelbogey]

Sorta like the old refrain - "I know a guy who smoked 2 packs a day until he was 95".

[Krt22]

Well said! Interestingly enough, those who like to debate the book, are always those who have not yet read it. Really makes me scratch my head, why not just pick it up and read it, and then make your judgement? This is the second time the OP has started a topic on SGs, if he's really interested in the SG method, why not get it straight from the horses mouth?

[SNIPERBBB]

Or the retee?

[Krt22]

The 2nd tee ball is always better!

[SNIPERBBB]

Anything in golf to get better overall requires that you need to remember a few things, the theory of relativity and the law of diminishing returns and low hanging fruit.

[Barfolomew]

I have the book but the ex got my ability to read in the divorce......

 

I'm gonna read it lol but who's got any free time these days....

[mhudson111]

I saw somewhere the executive summary of the number of strokes gained differences between pros and high handicappers turns out to be on average ( in the following areas)

35% irons

28% driver

17% short game 

15% putting

5% bunker

so working on full swing (drivers/irons) would attempt to close 60% of the gap in performance on the course, while working on putting would only close the gap 15%. (I.e. - no one , pros and amateurs, makes putts outside 20%, but pros hit a lot of fairways and most greens while high handicappers don’t, racking up strokes).

Of course, these are averages on a large number of golfers, so individual statistics might not necessarily apply (e.g. - you are a great ball striker but 3 jack every green. That would probably turn out to have a huge SG lost in putting, so you need to work on putting). That’s why you should keep your own stats

[gentles]

I agree with a few other posters who say that it all depends on the individual, but I don't think it's a coincidence that there aren't any mid cap players out there who are objectively really good iron players.

That's because approach play has such a massive impact on scoring ability compared to any other facet of the game, other than maybe driving. Even if your short game is rubbish of you're around the green in reg youre still going to score OK. If youre missing the green all day from 150 out I don't care how tidy your pitching and putting is you're making pars and bogeys at best.

[OrangeGravy]

That's my recipe to my 12.5 hdcp and I'm inside 150 all day long. If it wasn't for being close to the green or on in 2 on the par 5's, you could add another 2-3 strokes to that.

[bluedot]

It turns out that the "secret" to a good short game is missing in places where you have a chance to get up and down. If you track your up and down percentage, it is likely to be best on the days when you hit the most greens, simply because you were hitting the ball better, so your misses were better. The difference between the day when you hit 12 greens vs. the day you hit only 6 greens isn't just the additional 6 greens; it's also the quality of misses on the others. Which gets back to proximity of approach...

But there is no way to emphasize enough the need to really analyze YOUR game to see where you are deficient. One of the things I like about the Arccos data is that it's based on Strokes Gained, but expressed in handicap numbers; it tells you that you drive it like a 9, but putt like a 2 and so on. I think most people would find that they putt better than they think, but are worse off the tee and on approach shots than they believe, which is exactly what Broadie's research shows. What you DO with that, however, is up to you.

The one thing about all of this that Broadie really can't account for is what could be lumped under the general heading of "course management". Worse players don't just make worse swings; they also typically make worse decisions, AND react worse to their mistakes. So whether you are talking about club selection, or recovery shots, or sucker pins, or short siding yourself, or whatever, deciding where you want to play the next shot from is what good players ALWAYS do and bad players often don't. I suspect that Broadie would be the first to tell you that his research analyzes what golfers did, not what they might (or should!) have done differently.

[Krt22]

Agreed. The other issue is when your ball striking isn't consistent enough to actually miss in the right places or have a consistent miss in general.

[DaveLeeNC]

This one is hard to nail down and varies golfer to golfer and on said golfer's circumstances (such as he/she getting professional help or going it alone).

In my experience you need to work on something that 'will yield to effort'. I had putting issues for years and ended up viewing putting practice as being similar to practicing coin flipping trying to get more 'heads'. It just did not yield to effort. I ultimately got the yips, changed my grip to address that, and now I find putting practice helpful. BTW, despite having lessons from several qualified instructors, none of them ever identified my grip as a putting issue.

I have certainly seen many full swings that needed improvement as a #1 issue. But more practice just 'on those swings' was (IMHO) unlikely to be helpful. You need to find something that will 'yield to the effort that you will be able to put in'.

dave

[Miker20890]

So my general understanding is that longer is usually better. My question is how much farther do you need to hit it if it ends up in the rough to equal laying back in the fairway off the tee? If that makes sense.

[bortass]

I think this will vary by golfer and course. For me, the rough isn’t that bad at my home course. It’s not penal unless you end up in an odd place, say a low spot that cause the grass to be longer than normal because the mowers goes right over it. I’m also short so every yard matters. I’ll take being in the rough some more for an extra 10 yards. The shorter the club for my second shot, the better.

 

if I hit my drives 250ish and was longer with my irons, I’d possibly not think 10 yards is a big deal.

[SNIPERBBB]

@Miker20890
That will greatly depend on how much you will have left to the hole. If driver puts you in the rough but you still have a wedge or short iron but your fairway club leaves a mid or long iron/wood then the trade-off likely isn't worthwhile.

[xmanhockey7]

Here's the thing...it depends on the non-uniformity of golf courses. Lets say the fairway is the exact same size whether you lay back or hit driver. The problem with laying back is you're not guaranteed to hit the fairway. Similarly if you hit driver you're not guaranteed to miss the fairway either. If you hit it less than 270 off the tee you should hit driver basically always unless there's water running through the fairway. Don't take on unnecessary risk once you have a wedge in hand. Based on tour average you need to be about 50 yards closer to the hole to make rough long make sense. Again, just because you hit either club doesn't guaranteed a good or bad result.

[Golfjack]

Driver, it is what it is unless you are going to hit it further, or you currently completely slice it off the planet. But you can really get more proficient in your iron play. When I was playing better, I was able to hit greens with irons above 130 yards. I've always been decent with wedges. Par 3's excepted, since teeing it up is so much easier. Then I went and screwed with my swing.

[North Butte]

You can run various counterfactual thought experiments using Broadie's charts and numbers to explore scenarios like "lay up versus go for it" or "tee off with iron versus driver". But in most such thought experiments you will find the conclusion depends almost entirely on what numbers you make up for relative probabilities.

Take a narrow fairway on a long Par 4. Maybe the hole is 400 yards with a 25-yard wide fairway (rough line to rough line) through a 45-yard-wide corridor (tree line to tree line). You are choosing between driver (250 yard average) and driving iron (220 yard average). If you want to know which club yields lowest scores on average, you have to either play the hole both ways many, many times (maybe 40-50?) or else you make up/guess numbers for several parameters:

Percentage of driver shots in fairway

Percentage of driver shots in rough

Percentage of driver shots into trees

Percentage of iron shots in fairway

Percentage of iron shots in rough

Percentage of iron shots into trees

If you think the iron will be in the fairway 90% of the time and the driver will be in the trees 50% of the time, well you won't even need to bother to look up Strokes Gained numbers! But for realistic guesses of those percentages, you'll find that the most reasonable guesses tend to fall right around the area where small changes swing it from "driver is the smart shot" to "iron is the smart" shot. And that's before you even get into the fact that driver and iron have variance in their distances and that the variance in distance correlates with hitting or missing the fairway, etc.

My point being, don't try to push the Strokes Gained numbers too far into the weeds. They are best used as general metrics by which to compare large chunks of data, not to magically tell you things it's impossible to know.

[bladehunter]

True. But. Could be like me. You read any ancient text and then discuss with others their interpretation. Why ? Because it’s not a point A to B topic. Sort of like blue dots comment that it’s descriptive not prescriptive. And that probably is true. But. It doesn’t stop his disciples from prescribing cures based on his “ descriptions “. I don’t know why I keep clicking on his threads. For some reason it interests me , but I never find that thing that I think is promised inside. I guess that’s my own fault. Lol. Seems like there’s a secret here to find. But everytime I just find the “ captain obvious “ monicker coming out of my mouth. That’s probably the OPs situation too. He’s looking for what all the hoopla is about. And keeps finding that it’s just a thing that comforts numbers guys. But doesn’t really show you anything you don’t already know about your game.

 

please nobody respond to that as if I’m wanting to argue. I’m not going to. I just thought I’d explain the opinion that I have that probably lines up with several who just don’t see what the fuss is about. It’s not an indictment of the ideas. Just me saying that some of us expected a light bulb moment and it’s just not there.

[davep043]

"But doesn’t really show you anything you don’t already know about your game."

I think the most important thing to take away from Broadie's work is that its important to actually understand your own game. There are so many old adages, like "Drive for show, putt for dough", that aren't always accurate, its important to know your own game. If you have good statistics for yourself, you can compare against broad averages for your general skill level, and actually see where your strong and weak skills are. Then you can make a choice to work on your weaknesses.

The other take-away is that closer to the green is almost always better for most players. But THAT is very generalized, and has to be evaluated for every single situation, every different hole, for every single player. That one might actually be the "aha moment", because it does fly in the face of old conventional wisdom.

[Hawkeye77]

Agree with above, it's been on and on about for years on here and I won't get nutty about it.

Not sure why the thread was revived with the somewhat simplistic question - and I agree, just get the book and read it. Pretty short and easy read. Then do a little research beyond the book and you'll understand, if you are willing to accept them, many of the limitations of the book in terms of collection of amateur data, etc. Then draw your conclusions and see how it fits your needs.

To me, it was an interesting way to reveal some commonalities and make some comparisons about information regarding tour pros. I enjoyed reading the information, but didn't take too much from it other than "that's an interesting way to explain that". And for what it is, he managed to turn it into something that sold beyond the book, good for him.

No real prescriptions for success, practice, etc. for us ordinary folks, but a nice way to organize and interpret pro golf data. There must be something to it because his metrics seem to track with performance each week - but whether it's strokes gained or some other idea of how to look at it, the best putter the week of a tournament generally wins or is at the top and pros with better long games differentiate themselves more from other pros than pros with better short games (but that doesn't mean the short game isn't important, lol, just means it's harder to be great for even the top pros with the long game, not really a head scratcher). I think most would agree they pretty much knew that, he just came up with a way to baseline it.

The idea most ams are going to get a lot better by running out and working on their game from 190 yards is not sensible (and not saying he says that, but others seem to have that sort of narrow take on it), and simply going for par 5s vs. laying as "the" preferred strategy may or may not make sense for an individual wanting to score better.

Still think for us average folks, be better ballstrikers and work like heck from 100 or so in on everything and your scoring will improve.

Just my $.01, and nothing more.