Yes, I do. People grossly exaggerate how far they hit the ball all the time. And, they also are very bad at estimating distances. I found out how bad I was at this last year when I signed up for Decade and started keeping my stats in the app. When I would guess how far I was from the hole, I was usually way off and my estimate was always too close.
I’m sure you are good at hitting wedges but you are almost certainly not one of the best in the world.
That’s a really great way of identifying great shots and setting expectations accordingly. I’ve never thought of using percentages as a way to determine how good a shot really is. But it makes sense. With your example, hitting it withing 5% of your distance to the target is fantastic! Anything inside 10% of your target is very solid.
Add that in with knowing which side of your target your dispersion skews to and now you’re really in a position to set expectations and make good decisions. @ScottFawcettDECADE @LouStagner recent discussions on their podcast highlighted that. Everyone has a dispersion based off their target and a center of their dispersion. Those two are NOT the same and taking the time to figure out the variance is critical to make good target decisions.
I think knowing dispersion is a huge place to guide improvement, and understanding where you are good and mediocre is a key piece to the puzzle…
I think we’ve tread the ground well over expectations… so then the question becomes: HOW do we improve our dispersion… in our limited time practicing, what positive actions can we take so we are in a position to shoot better scores.
Obviously, nothing is a given, and everyone has different abilities (and different ways of learning) but one of the things I really want to get better at is targeted improvement.
I’ve said this 1000x times, but the horse is dead, so I’ll keep beating it. I was a terrible putter. No confidence, no control, and really no idea how to fix either of those things… From August-December, I spent what time I could on the practice green, rolling putts and trying to get better… My contact and stroke improved, but I didn’t have tangible goals or any way to practice them.
My AHA moment was at SeeMore with Cody. He walked me through some drills, talked about tempo and had a training aid that has been a huge help. All of the sudden, I’m not dreading getting onto the green. My expectations have changed because I know the numbers for success (I don’t expect to make 8 footers, but I want to have a tap in) but I fundamentally changed the way I practiced putting and it has significantly improved my game.
Something I had never done before, but now spend at least a few minutes on when I step foot on the green is simply rolling putts and focusing on my tempo. I just try to hit 3-5 balls the same distance. I try not to aim or adjust my putting stroke, I just try to hit a similar tempo for multiple putts… I THINK it has helped me a ton… I know I was putting better this week, and I had confidence in my tempo and my only bad putts were mental mistakes.
I’m sure there are similar AHA moments out there for me in other aspects of the game… I’m never going to be perfect, and my mental game is probably one of my biggest areas to improve… I’m just curious as to what has actually driven success for guys who have chased improvement and managed to catch it.
Mute is a wonderful tool.
Yeah, too many times I get mad / disappointed with a shot and it turns into a train wreck and a trail of tears. Letting that missed short putt go or driving it into the trees and just chipping it out is easier said than done.
Besides being stronger and more skilled, it seems like another super power of PGA players is being patient and confident enough to grind it out even if they aren’t swinging well and to keep themselves in the game.
I think the mental game is something I’ve overlooked for awhile and something I want to get better at… Max Homa talked about it on his podcast and basically said “I only have control of the shot in front of me, why would it matter what happened before?” and he’s 100% right, but that’s a very difficult head space to be in.
Even if you can let go of the frustration, for me there is the desire to “make up” for the lost shot, which usually ends up costing me more… Not to bring everything back to Chasing Scratch, but it’s funny, Eli was having a banner round and was 1 under through 17… He hit a drive that dribbled through the fairway and was left with a sidehill lie out of the rough, and he tried to force it to the green… when they reflect on it the next week, he still thinks he should have taken the aggressive line… I 100% identify with his thought process, but I think if you take a step back, it fails inspection.
His ball is in the rough and above his feet. What’s the most consistent way to get the ball into the hole from there? Take the safe shot of punching it forward where a miss doesn’t punish you. Hit it to the center of the green. 2 putt for bogey… but we want to be heroes. We want to be rewarded for a good drive…
Honestly, my best rounds are probably my most boring rounds… My best round is a 74, and I don’t remember much of it… I remember missing it right on 17 when I was even and pushing, only to end up with bogey… and then pushing for birdie on 18, a hole that I never birdie… and making a dumb bogey (I don’t remember the details, it was 2004!)…
As Max Homa’s wife says: Forgive quickly.
That’s the sort of mental thing I’m working on… it’s not stuff I can practice on the range… It will probably have a better impact on my score than anything else, though.
Why do you disparage Decade when you obviously don’t know anything about it?
The system didn’t exist when any of those guys were winning but I’m pretty sure all of them intuitively used the principals in the system (Tiger for sure as Scott has shown). All great players do what Scott teaches.
I’m not sure anyone will ever win 60 time on tour again. Only five guys have ever done it so it’s a pretty tall standard you are applying.
Scott Fawcett, the guy behind DECADE, did a ton of studying as to how Tiger Woods approached the game and based a lot of his ideas around those findings. So while Tiger isn’t a DECADE user, his strategy is very close to what DECADE recommends. Last I checked, he’s had an okay career on tour.
Also, dismissing the system because nobody’s won 60 times on tour using it is laughable. DECADE users have scored many wins on tour including the most recent winners on both the PGA and LPGA tour (Bryson Dechambeau & Austin Ernst).
I’m a big fan of DECADE and it has helped my game immensely. One thing about that dispersion value I think gets overlooked however. I’m a plus handicap and my dispersion off the tee falls right in that 65 yards and irons follow accordingly. But, I am working on my swing because I noticed more of my shots are on the outer edge of that pattern than the pros. So my pattern does not show as many balls hit near the middle quadrant as it should. This is a key. Those ones that are 30-35 yards left or 30-35 yards right should be “occasional” occurrences, maybe 20-30% of the time but for me it was more like 50%. So I’m working to tighten up the majority of my swings while knowing that a handful will still escape.
That makes sense. When looking at any dataset like that, you also need to look at the standard deviation (eg how spread across the median). I did wonder with decade if they ignore that element because it gets complicated.
A simple example: a player 2/3 of the time hits a long iron in a nice small cluster but of the remaining 1/3 they tend to go much farther left, and 1/20 times they go extremely left. I think the decade system does a decent approximation of this but it still feels like there may be some nuance that could be missing.
Yeah, I’m definitely interested in the DECADE stuff, but curious as to how in depth it can get for each individual player… I think it’s a huge leap forward in helping develop strategy, but there is still plenty of nuance left for use to adjust to…
@rlane2k has a very good point on improving dispersion patterns, even if you aren’t narrowing overall dispersion. I think that’s a great way to look at things… Hitting 100 balls at a target and having 10 as outliers vs having 20 as outliers might not change your targeting but it will definitely improve your results.
I think that might be what I focus on with driver and irons this season… improving my patterns… I know what I need to do on putting, and I’m in the middle of a technique shift with chipping, so I’m committed on that front!
My goals:
Driver and irons: Tighten the median of my dispersion.
Pitching: Get my wedge distances down and identify my dispersion patterns
Chipping: Just get confident and consistent with the Sieckmann method… it’s gone well thus far, but needs more time on the course
Putting: Keep working on distance control, and identify my big misses and start grinding them away. Thus far, I’m REALLY happy with my putting progress, as I’m 2 months in…
Hopefully I’m back to swinging full by April and I can start to grind progress… both mentally and on the scorecard… I do think strategy and mental prep will play huge roles in any improvement, but I also think they will tie in to confidence in my shots… Looking forward to golf in 2021 (assuming my back holds up)
Here’s a question let’s say 5i. My data after thousands of shots with my 5i that I have collected for 40 years tells me currently i’m 72 with it. How do you know when you’re going to hit the dud, the pull, the wipe, the dreaded topper or chunk? My normal flight is high with a 5 fade… Normal 75* day so compression shouldn’t be an issue, minimal breeze, I’m 75 middle 60f/90b it’s a 5i, I know it’s a 5i, I’m not going to hit anything else but that 5i. If I short it I’m front, I fly it I’m back fringe…so I take it left edge of green and let it rip. I could pull it / I could wipe it. What’s your dispersion telling me…I could mess it up?
See now I have that PRGR I will take to my warm-up routine and that’s going to be an excellent tool with the way I warm up…I might not be hitting DR 8i on the first hole because my swing might not be firing yet so instead of shorting an 8i for real, I could trust myself to hit the 7i…normal circumstance prevailing. Everyday is different, for amateurs like us, you could be 10yds short in the morning and now I know to take 1 more club, but by the 9th hole I could be relaxed enough to hit my standard distances…
So I just did some math because of my standard routines with being a range rat for 40 years, I have a data set on my 50 and 46…I have hit those on the range at least 720,000 times over 360K each? I really must be crazy…Don’t tell my wife. I guess I shouldn’t call my data set Decades…it should be called Generations…LOL
That’s just it. You don’t know. So decade tells us to aim so the center of our shot pattern is in good shape but also the outer edges are trying to avoid bad hazards and lost balls. A common misuse of decade is to apply it to an individual shot rather than all possible outcomes. Of course I’d rather hit it by the stick every time, but I don’t know when I’ll pull it to the short side or shove it into the front right bunker. So I aim in a manner that the majority of my pattern is on the green, or away from a hazard off the tee.
It is so hard to aim away from the flag and watch as a perfectly struck ball goes 30’ right of the stick. But that is playing the variances to make you better in all situations, not just a cherry picked example.
TY, See old school guys like me…we have notebooks with distances. This is how I was taught and I was taught with a shot scope so distances were tracked. I would go to the range with lets say my 5 iron 2x during the week. I would hit 200 balls give or take each session. After I loosened up maybe just 1/2 swings 20 or so balls. I would begin my work. using a 3 iron, I don’t use alignment stix, I would pick a target green on the range. I would hit 20 balls 85%. I would throw out the 5 to 7 mishits, I would count the thirteen that I hit well, that would give me my standard distances. Right now its 72, it used to be 83. I would record the 13 and then 2 days later do the same thing record add 'em up and that was the distance. Then I would focus on flight another 20 balls on flight. My 4, 5, 6, 7, are a 5 fade. I can manipulate 8, 46, 50 any way I want…But each club has been charted and each year…now I go to Trackman (at least last year I did) for yardages, but I keep them in a book…NOw I have PRGR and I will use that, but now I’m getting SF. so now I can track that in my notebook. Then the rest of my practice sessions were things like forcing a draw, lowering ball flight etc…alot of repetition but with one club…now it’s alot less on standard shot path, I know what that is, more on distance and ball strike and manipulation. Sometimes I might bring 2 clubs to the range I was taught focused range work especially for amateurs is better than being all over the place…2 big boy buckets is very limited balls and 5 shots with this one club and 8 shots with another one etc is just too scattered an approach when trying to build a repertoire! When Seve learned had and hit a 3i, along with a 3i mixed in with his…3i…oh yea for me putter That putter is like an American Express card —Don’t leave home without it!— at least 2 full clocks on the practice green everytime which is about 80 putts
The key takeaway is that it’s a shotgun, not a sniper rifle and to plan accordingly. Also, leave more putts short.
Anyone know how to mute a specific user… 
No problem brother I get your message. Don’t be a wimp just say something… I’m out. One can tell when they are not welcome. Hope you all have a nice summer. I thought this could be a fun place for an open discussion, and it is, as long as one doesn’t disagree or have something different to share with the certain few.
Not a full decade user but i am noting the center of the green yardage (with garmin watch) on each approach and then carry distance
I had a decent idea of carry distances w flush strike, but did not realize how fat/thin/toe/heel could take of a full 10 yards… not big mishits, just a bit out of center
I also didn’t realize how badly the wind beat down shots that weren’t absolutely flush. I would bet that 80% of my shots into the wind were coming up short before i started tracking and saw how off i was
I used to always miss short hitting in to the wind too. I just assumed if hitting downwind added 10% it would take off 10% hitting in to it. It was a big revelation when I found out that wind will take off more distance than it can add.
