I reread a kindle book on my phone on the airplane a couple days ago.  I’d purchased it a couple years ago, and remember it was dry and not very interesting, but probably better than the airplane magazine.  The name happens to be The Little Book of Breaking 80 by Shane Jones.  I started skimming through and it emphasized practicing short game, referencing Dave Pelz, and standard stuff.  Like several authors on golf method, he was consistently shooting low 80’s by the age of 15.  He was NOT a lifelong hacker struggling to break through.

I did find one idea I don’t remember seeing, or it didn’t sink in that I think is important.  He talks about “The target for any shot should expand, contract and shift based upon the distance from the hole…”   Jones goes on to bring up a lot of statistics of pro golfers, and that your expectations should not be to play statistically better than a full time pro golfer, which makes sense.

Putting those two ideas together, there are only two purposes for any golf shot.  One purpose is to get into position for the next shot.  For instance, a good lag putt puts you within a couple feet of the hole to ensure the next shot is successful.  A good drive gives you a good chance to shoot to or near the green on your next shot.  The second purpose is to hole the shot, and statistically that’s within 3 or 4 feet of the hole: short putts.  Sure, a lag putt might drop, or you’ll hole the occasional pitch, but statistically speaking, you’ll mostly be finishing a hole less than 4 feet from the hole.

Let’s take a look at my round Thursday, back 9 at Torrey Pines using the 80BREAKR app and see what went wrong and if I failed mostly at the first purpose or second purpose.

The full 56 degree and hybrid shots in the “bad” column above were silly not watching the ball issues.  But look at the cost of the other three.  A poor lag on the 10th left me a tricky 5 footer that was missed, and the bad chip and pitch led to two putts by not being close enough to the hole.  You can see that improved pitching and chipping would take out the three short game shots on holes 14, 15, and 18 here:

Clean up the “looking up” on 2 full swings, and practice positioning shots for lag putts, chips, and pitches would remove 5 shots from this round, and get me the 39 I’m looking for.