The Bridgestone Invitational is perfect proof that your drive is crucial for good scoring.  A lot of golf experts, websites, and magazines promote the idea that the short shots are the most important and site how many short shots comprise your golf game.  I’m not saying you can miss 3 foot putts, or take 3 shots to get out of a green-side bunker, or swing and miss and expect to score well.

This will cost you only 1 stroke, a bad drive can cost a lot more.

What I’m saying is that you simply can’t break 80 if your tee shots are unplayable more than once or twice in one round.

Day hooked his drive yesterday on the long par 5 16th.  We’ve been there: a punch out shot that goes past the fairway into more trouble.  Then a risky decision from 200 yards away into a pond.  You might argue that it was the bad punch shot, or poor decision to go for the green instead of accepting a bogey, but he would not have had that punch out nor the resulting decision to go for the green were it not for that drive.

Johnson missed the fairway into the rough under trees on the 18th, and proceeded to clip a branch and make bogey.

My contention is that breaking 80 requires decent drives.  Fairway would be great, but a playable 2nd is vital.  If it’s difficult for two of the top three golfers in the world playing from behind and under trees, how likely is it for us amateurs to make par with a really poor drive.  It’s hard enough to play consistent golf and get a par when you have a shot at the green.