I’d think it would depend on your driving. If you normally top out at 170-180, or if you take 4-8 (!) penalty strokes a round from driving (like some of the commenters on reddit, where I stole this from), driving is likely your play. I’m a big Broadie/Fawcett guy, and usually more distance is always better. Never take the driver away, etc…
But making everything inside 12 feet, when pros are 50/50 at 8 feet, is such a gigantic outlier, that I would think that putting would be better. Not because you’re making that many more birdies, but because the floor of your performance would be raised so much.
You’d basically never make double-bogey or 3-putt again, and almost never make bogey. Just get the ball near the green and hit a 24 foot diameter target. Your scrambling percentage would skyrocket. And I’d think the confidence would trickle down to the rest of your ballstriking.
If I were a member at a place I could do this, I’d really love to experimentally test both props. Take the ball to 300 yds from the tee, including doglegs, drop the ball and hole out as normal, vs. play normally, but everything inside 12 feet is a gimmie.
My suspicion is that if your ballstriking is such that you need the 300 yd drive, it’s not a sure thing that you’ll make even bogey from Position A.
I don’t drive 300, not even close. But I can keep the ball in-bounds, and out of hazards. (Fairway bunkers, OTOH…) 220-250, in the rough, is not going to be a bunch of strokes different for me than 300 in the fairway. Though it will be quite a bit better, no doubt about it.
I think a lot of the issue for the redditors, is that they think they’re a lot better putting from 5-8 feet than they actually are, and a lot of gimmies are taken in friendly play that would go differently if every hole needed to be holed out to advance.