DECADE by BirdieFire

[Ty_Webb]

12 minutes ago, bladehunter said:

Alright guys. Have a question.  
 

 

im 7-8 rounds in from start of using this setup for round tracking etc.    

 

is there a place in the app that will show my dispersion side to side and front to back with driver ?   As in does it track the driver shots and plot them all , or all for one round in a pattern anywhere ?  I hope that makes sense.  I’m wanting to see how wide the dispersion in total is. But I’m not sure if that’s possible from tee data or not ? 

 

I'm not sure - personally I'd love it if it would also show you shot by shot the distances, but it doesn't seem to do that. I think that one issue with person by person shot plots is that it wouldn't be clear what your target was. Scott could probably do it with what it should have been, but weather changes and the like will make it difficult.

 

When he gathers plots of driver dispersion from Shotlink, he knows what the weather was like that day and he also has every shot on one hole. So the plot is the plot. If you're trying to pull it together from lots of different holes, you'd have to superimpose each hole over itself. That would be a lot of work and I don't think you could automate it (reliably).

[bladehunter]

1 hour ago, Ty_Webb said:

 

I'm not sure - personally I'd love it if it would also show you shot by shot the distances, but it doesn't seem to do that. I think that one issue with person by person shot plots is that it wouldn't be clear what your target was. Scott could probably do it with what it should have been, but weather changes and the like will make it difficult.

 

When he gathers plots of driver dispersion from Shotlink, he knows what the weather was like that day and he also has every shot on one hole. So the plot is the plot. If you're trying to pull it together from lots of different holes, you'd have to superimpose each hole over itself. That would be a lot of work and I don't think you could automate it (reliably).

Yep. That’s what I kind of thought too.  Just thought I’d ask in case I was missing it.  I’m the type that can miss the most obvious thing on an app.  Or for instance carry a phone for 6 years and be shown new features the day I upgrade. 😂

[Deepy]

You can plot an overlay of multiple rounds of the same hole (course). This is pretty interesting if you have entered some rounds on the same course. Everything else doesn’t make sense as the app doesn’t know where you were aiming.

[Divot License]

I'm curious about something, may have been mentioned but I didn't see it. 

 

In all the decade examples they talk of a 65yard wide zone at 300 yards distance off the tee. If you hit the ball less than 300 yards, do you still use a 65 yards wide zone or does the zone decrease width in relationship to the distance hit?

[ThinkingPlus]

4 hours ago, Divot License said:

I'm curious about something, may have been mentioned but I didn't see it. 

 

In all the decade examples they talk of a 65yard wide zone at 300 yards distance off the tee. If you hit the ball less than 300 yards, do you still use a 65 yards wide zone or does the zone decrease width in relationship to the distance hit?

I am pretty sure it is an angular variance so the width scales with the distance you hit the ball.  Basically divide 65 by 300 and multiply by your driving distance to get your width variance.

[Deepy]

I tend to disagree with the angular variance. Most likely the answer is "yes, you should use the same 65y wide zone". Most amateurs that don't hit it 300 are probably not as good as the the top amateurs at controlling their clubface. The driving decision chart (found in one of the youtube-videos) doesn't mention the driving distance of a player - just their clubs (Driver, 3W, hybrid, iron).

 

If you have access to a launch monitor you can easily check this number for your game: Hit a bunch of drives (should be 25 at least, the more the better) and have a look at the directional dispersion. The trackman for example will display a standard deviation for this value. I dont know about other launch monitors. Take this standard deviation and multiply this value by four. This is the corridor you will hit approximately 95% of your shots.

There are other ways to find your value, but these 65y in deed seem to be a good universal value. My corridor was between 64 and 68 at 285y on different occasions.

 

 

Edited June 17, 2021 by Deepy

[Krt22]

35 minutes ago, Deepy said:

I tend to disagree with the angular variance. Most likely the answer is "yes, you should use the same 65y wide zone". Most amateurs that don't hit it 300 are probably not as good as the the top amateurs at controlling their clubface. The driving decision chart (found in one of the youtube-videos) doesn't mention the driving distance of a player - just their clubs (Driver, 3W, hybrid, iron).

 

If you have access to a launch monitor you can easily check this number for your game: Hit a bunch of drives (should be 25 at least, the more the better) and have a look at the directional dispersion. The trackman for example will display a standard deviation for this value. I dont know about other launch monitors. Take this standard deviation and multiply this value by four. This is the corridor you will hit approximately 95% of your shots.

There are other ways to find your value, but these 65y in deed seem to be a good universal value. My corridor was between 64 and 68 at 285y on different occasions.

 

 

I've been consuming all the free decade stuff for some time now, finally purchased the full version, I shall read up on this.

[xmanhockey7]

For a large majority of people…yes. Still use 65y for mapping. If you hit it less than 270 though you should still hit driver basically everywhere you don’t have water crossing the fairway you’ll hit into. Some really good short hitters (female college players or Colt knost) they can look at it with a little tighter dispersion. 

[Krt22]

Fawcett talks a lot about Bryson in his material, is it just me, or does Bryson make a lot of non-decade like course management mistakes as of late. How many times has he tried to nuke the shorter club and short sided himself?  In yesterdays 1st round he was 2nd in SG off the tee, 2nd in distance...126th in SG approach (and 143rd in SG short game). 

Edited June 18, 2021 by Krt22

[BigManSlim]

29 minutes ago, Krt22 said:

Fawcett talks a lot about Bryson in his material, is it just me, or does Bryson make a lot of non-decade like course management mistakes as of late. How many times has he tried to nuke the shorter club and short sided himself?  In yesterdays 1st round he was 2nd in SG off the tee, 2nd in distance...126th in SG approach (and 143rd in SG short game). 

I know Scott is tight with Como who Bryson works with. I tend to agree that Bryson does seem to make some odd decisions. And he definitely seems to get hot and emotional when not playing well.  But I would say that we are not necessarily privvy to all his shots or his targets, etc.

[Krt22]

6 minutes ago, BigManSlim said:

I know Scott is tight with Como who Bryson works with. I tend to agree that Bryson does seem to make some odd decisions. And he definitely seems to get hot and emotional when not playing well.  But I would say that we are not necessarily privvy to all his shots or his targets, etc.

When he dumps a short iron/wedge short right into a bunker with a front pin, what else do we really need to know? 

[BigManSlim]

1 hour ago, Krt22 said:

When he dumps a short iron/wedge short right into a bunker with a front pin, what else do we really need to know? 

Like I said I tend to agree but following a math based approach does not in and of itself remove poor shots from ones shot distribution. Entirely possible he missed his target by a larger margin

[xmanhockey7]

I mean Bryson is hitting a lot of wedges. From 80y base number is 4. He definitely needs to improve his wedge game, but with a wedge in hand he’s going to go at or close to a lot of pins. 

[Krt22]

1 minute ago, xmanhockey7 said:

I mean Bryson is hitting a lot of wedges. From 80y base number is 4. He definitely needs to improve his wedge game, but with a wedge in hand he’s going to go at or close to a lot of pins. 

True, but sometimes his wedge in hand distance is 140y+/-.  Maybe the "I have a wedge in hand, I can aim at the pin" mentality isn't so great if you are still 120-160 out. Perhaps both a technique and target selection error.

[xmanhockey7]

2 hours ago, Krt22 said:

True, but sometimes his wedge in hand distance is 140y+/-.  Maybe the "I have a wedge in hand, I can aim at the pin" mentality isn't so great if you are still 120-160 out. Perhaps both a technique and target selection error.

Agreed. The decade numbers still apply. I was more referring to him being inside 120 or even inside 100. 

[RCGA]

Apart from the tee cone and tee-shot decision tree, what am I gaining by using Decade vs say, GolfMetrics or some free stokes gained app (TM My Round Pro).

 

Let's assume I play 1 course so a yardage book is of minimal value. 

[xmanhockey7]

6 hours ago, RCGA said:

Apart from the tee cone and tee-shot decision tree, what am I gaining by using Decade vs say, GolfMetrics or some free stokes gained app (TM My Round Pro).

 

Let's assume I play 1 course so a yardage book is of minimal value. 

NOTHING! 
 

Seriously it’s up to you. I like going back to watch content, seeing some new content, and doing the combines added. Plus I do play more than 1 golf course so the yardage books are nice. 

[RCGA]

What’s the new content? Just hole analysis? 

 

Sorry, I’m still trying to figure out what Decade “does” for $400/yr, even after watching every single one of Scott’s videos on YouTube. 

Seems like reading Lowest Score Wins and tracking strokes gained gets me 99.9% of the way. 

 

[Deepy]

23 hours ago, RCGA said:

Apart from the tee cone and tee-shot decision tree, what am I gaining by using Decade vs say, GolfMetrics or some free stokes gained app (TM My Round Pro).

 

Let's assume I play 1 course so a yardage book is of minimal value. 

The tee shot decision tree tells your which club to hit and where to aim from the tee (Par 4 and par 5). First of all, with the subscription you get the full DECADE system, which tells you the right club and target for all other shots, especially for approach shots.

It includes more statistics than any other app I am aware of and it compares you to your corresponding peer group so you can immediately see where you need to improve.

I have attached a report where I compared my game from March-May 2021 to 2019 so you can see which categories are included.

You get a lot of video content (10hours+ not counting the "scotts desk" area which adds hours of recorded live webinars) about many aspects of the game, this includes putting (especially distance control), approach game, mental aspects, driving, how to read your statistics.Comparative-Analysis.pdf

17 hours ago, xmanhockey7 said:

NOTHING! 
 

Seriously it’s up to you. I like going back to watch content, seeing some new content, and doing the combines added. Plus I do play more than 1 golf course so the yardage books are nice. 

I wouldn't call the things mentioned above "nothing". However I prefer the self made yardage books via Google Earth and image overlay since this includes my dispersion pattern at different yardages and most fairways here are so tight, you need to take semi rough, rough and hard rough into account which is better seen on real images.

15 hours ago, RCGA said:

What’s the new content? Just hole analysis? 

 

Sorry, I’m still trying to figure out what Decade “does” for $400/yr, even after watching every single one of Scott’s videos on YouTube. 

Seems like reading Lowest Score Wins and tracking strokes gained gets me 99.9% of the way. 

 

I'm not sure what you mean by new content. I paid 200$ once for the initial subsciption of 6 months and aftwards 20$ per month. I freeze my account for four months during winter season, so I'm paying 160$ per year right now for the ELITE subscription.

Edited July 5, 2021 by Deepy
corrected spelling errors

[bladehunter]

23 hours ago, RCGA said:

Apart from the tee cone and tee-shot decision tree, what am I gaining by using Decade vs say, GolfMetrics or some free stokes gained app (TM My Round Pro).

 

Let's assume I play 1 course so a yardage book is of minimal value. 

I can’t speak to the Golfmetrics etc.  but I love it.  ( decade ) and not due to the philosophy or even the videos.  I love the layout of the app. Snd how it plots shot by shot on your actual course.  I’m very visual and the actual plotting each  shot on the hole visual helps me.  
 

 

that and the ability to print accurate yardage books for any tournament course I play. It’s worth the $ to me just for that.  I can’t always drive 3 hours one way for a practice round.  This eliminates the real need.  The videos and ideas ( which I parse out useful thoughts for myself ) are just side bonuses. 
 

the stats are just insane though. Way more info than any I’ve seen like a “ mental “ grading shot per shot.  Birdie steaks , one putt streaks , par streaks , % for anything you can name.  All with no more input from me than plotting the shots on the course map hole by hole.  

Edited July 5, 2021 by bladehunter

[bladehunter]

3 hours ago, Deepy said:

The tee shot descision tree tells your which club to hit and where to aim from the tee (Par 4 and par 5). First of all, with the subscription you get the full DECADE system, which tells you the right club and target for all other shots, especially for approach shots.

It includes more statistics than any other app I am aware of and it compares you to your corresponding peer group so you can immediately see where you need to improve.

I have attached a report where I compared my game from March to May 2021 to 2019 so you can see which categories are included.

You get a lot of video content (10hours+ not counting the "scotts desk" area which adds hours of recorded live webinars) abput many aspects of the game, this includes putting (especially distance control), approach game, mental aspects, driving, how to read your statistics.Comparative-Analysis.pdf

I wouldn't call the things mentioned above "nothing". However I prefer the self made yardage books via Google Earth and image overlay since this includes my dispersion pattern at different yardages and most fairways here are so right, you need to take semi rough, rough and hard rough into account which is better seen on real images.

I'm not sure what you mean by new content. I paid 200$ once for the initial subsciption of 6 months and aftwards 20$ per month. I freeze my account for four months during winter season, so I'm paying 160$ per year right now for the ELITE subscription.

See. I haven’t even figured out how to use the first paragraph you mentioned.  Lol.  I have to dive deeper it seems. 

[Benoit61]

Does anyone know where to find videos or explanations for the drills under the practice section ? 
 

edit: nevermind I got the answer … drill section is getting revamped 

Edited July 21, 2021 by Benoit61
Found the answer

[hoselpalooza]

6 hours ago, Benoit61 said:

Does anyone know where to find videos or explanations for the drills under the practice section ?

Is this what you’re looking for? There are explanations there. I didn’t see videos but I didn’t look very hard 🙂
 

 

Edited July 21, 2021 by hoselpalooza

[Benoit61]

Yes thank you I missed the drill library at the top right somehow 

[UCBananaboy]

On 6/18/2021 at 11:12 AM, Krt22 said:

Fawcett talks a lot about Bryson in his material, is it just me, or does Bryson make a lot of non-decade like course management mistakes as of late. How many times has he tried to nuke the shorter club and short sided himself?  In yesterdays 1st round he was 2nd in SG off the tee, 2nd in distance...126th in SG approach (and 143rd in SG short game). 

IMO Bryson epitomizes the DECADE system in the sense that he's accepted / recognized that 80y in the rough > 130y in the fairway (or whatever the break-even point is). I think conventional wisdom is that fairway is better than rough and narrow courses like Winged Foot will neutralize the bombers. We saw first-hand how that worked. 

 

The short-sided stuff just seems like variance to me.

On 6/17/2021 at 5:03 AM, Divot License said:

I'm curious about something, may have been mentioned but I didn't see it. 

 

In all the decade examples they talk of a 65yard wide zone at 300 yards distance off the tee. If you hit the ball less than 300 yards, do you still use a 65 yards wide zone or does the zone decrease width in relationship to the distance hit?

Dispersion patterns vary for everyone. Ideally you get on a launch monitor and understand your own dispersion pattern and map courses accordingly.

[Krt22]

1 hour ago, UCBananaboy said:

IMO Bryson epitomizes the DECADE system in the sense that he's accepted / recognized that 80y in the rough > 130y in the fairway (or whatever the break-even point is). I think conventional wisdom is that fairway is better than rough and narrow courses like Winged Foot will neutralize the bombers. We saw first-hand how that worked. 

 

The short-sided stuff just seems like variance to me.

Dispersion patterns vary for everyone. Ideally you get on a launch monitor and understand your own dispersion pattern and map courses accordingly.

If you have wedge in hand and end of short sided, it's more than just variance IMHO, it's about shot selection and target. Decade is essentially be as aggressive as you can off the tee and conservative as you can with your approach, such that even a shot towards the bounds of your dispersion pattern still end up on or near the green.

[Deepy]

26 minutes ago, Krt22 said:

Decade is essentially be as aggressive as you can off the tee and conservative as you can with your approach, such that even a shot towards the bounds of your dispersion pattern still end up on or near the green.

Decade is not about being agressive or defensive, its about optimization. However this equates to using your 2 standard deviation dispersion from the tee (you will hit 95% into this area) with respect to hazards but using less for approach shots (since not even close to 95% will land on the green). So one could argue that you are super defensive off the tee and super agressive into greens 🙂

 

What I'm trying to say: You will miss greens with decade and if you do so you are most likely short sided in that situatio because all the other shots will end up on the green.

[Krt22]

2 minutes ago, Deepy said:

Decade is not about being agressive or defensive, its about optimization. However this equates to using your 2 standard deviation dispersion from the tee (you will hit 95% into this area) with respect to hazards but using less for approach shots (since not even close to 95% will land on the green). So one could argue that you are super defensive off the tee and super agressive into greens 🙂

 

What I'm trying to say: You will miss greens with decade and if you do so you are most likely short sided in that situatio because all the other shots will end up on the green.

I am a Decade member, you are welcome to have your own interpretation of it, but that really doesn't align with what Fawcett advocates. In fact he sort of goes on rants when announcers say his players hit an aggressive shot into the green, because that is almost never the case. Its the other way around, a good outcome via missing a conservative target. You are right it's about optimization, but the key to that optimization is advancing the ball as much as possible off the tee (ie most call that aggressive) and then avoiding bogey by being conservative with your approach shots (ie never firing at pins and trying to go after birdies). He goes into detail on a mid length par 3 with water in play vs a par 3 with a front pin with no trouble. Tour players tend to score better on avg on the holes with water in play because they are less likely to get overly aggressive and short side themselves. 

 

If you hit a decent shot and still short side yourself with a wedge, that is not a good outcome and likely means you were being too aggressive with your target (or don't know your distances/dispersion patterns), both not things you would associate with someone using the decade approach. In the scenario I was talking about, bryson did it 2-3 times in a single round, not exactly outliers at that point. He was essentially trying to force birdies, which is not at all what Decade is about. Missing the green is one thing, missing the green with a wedge is another and largely one of his cardinal sins (bogey from 150 and in).

[gentles]

6 hours ago, Krt22 said:

I am a Decade member, you are welcome to have your own interpretation of it, but that really doesn't align with what Fawcett advocates. In fact he sort of goes on rants when announcers say his players hit an aggressive shot into the green, because that is almost never the case. Its the other way around, a good outcome via missing a conservative target. You are right it's about optimization, but the key to that optimization is advancing the ball as much as possible off the tee (ie most call that aggressive) and then avoiding bogey by being conservative with your approach shots (ie never firing at pins and trying to go after birdies). He goes into detail on a mid length par 3 with water in play vs a par 3 with a front pin with no trouble. Tour players tend to score better on avg on the holes with water in play because they are less likely to get overly aggressive and short side themselves. 

 

If you hit a decent shot and still short side yourself with a wedge, that is not a good outcome and likely means you were being too aggressive with your target (or don't know your distances/dispersion patterns), both not things you would associate with someone using the decade approach. In the scenario I was talking about, bryson did it 2-3 times in a single round, not exactly outliers at that point. He was essentially trying to force birdies, which is not at all what Decade is about. Missing the green is one thing, missing the green with a wedge is another and largely one of his cardinal sins (bogey from 150 and in).

 

Agree with this - the post above is the opposite of how I describe DECADE to friends...usually I just give the following as the 80/20 version of the system

• Hit driver whenever hazard isn't in play. You aren't guaranteed to hit the fairway with a shorter club, but you are guaranteed to be further away for your next shot
• Hit to the fat part of the green and avoid short siding yourself, especially with longer clubs. Half way between flag and fat side edge is a good rule of thumb
• Understand putting make rates and use that to decide on short game strategy - take a risk if you can hit it tap in, but don't take a big risk to leave a 15' vs a 30' putt for example. 
• Anything outside of 6' just focus on speed, the hole will get in the way if your speed is good

 

 

[bladehunter]

The beauty of it is that individuals can get their own idea of improvement from it in my opinion.  
 

just like the idea that you hit driver anywhere there isn’t a hazard in play.  Well. If I followed that I wouldn’t ever hit driver on my home course.  I counted and theres OB , sand or a red hazard clearly in play for drivers dispersion cone on 13 holes.   I hit driver anyway.  Which is why I have so many 130-65 yard approaches.  And Also why a light was shined on how aggressive ive been from those yardages.  And how simply moving aim to the fat part of the green seemed to drastically cut bogeys out.  
 

before anyone says. Yes I know that he’d likely tell me I’m taking good risks with driver. I didn’t mean to insinuate that decade would tell me not to hit driver. My point was that the posters above have drawn that conclusion according to their posts. .  And that’s exactly how I think it should be.  Great info , that you use to make decisions with.