Five Feet to Glory – From Knee-Knocker to Sure Thing (Part 1)

Picture a hot, humid Indiana summer day.  Thunderstorms are undoubtedly in the late afternoon plans, so any work that a normal 11-year old boy would be responsible for needs to be done early in the day.  Many said normal 11-year old boys were doing just that – showing admirable qualities such as responsibility, accountability, and duty.  But THIS 11-year old boy?  I was in my bedroom furiously figuring out baseball statistics, rolling dice, and playing Strat-O-Matic Fantasy baseball.  I still remember that magical day when Mark Fidrych came off the injured list for my beloved Detroit Tigers and threw a no-hitter with 22 strikeouts on the last day of the season.  Hey – it’s MY fantasy team, not yours and I’ll cheat how I want.

It wasn’t entirely a worthless pursuit – as I can still tell you off the top of my head that someone is batting .286 when he goes 2 for 7 in a doubleheader, but it just made the thirst for statistics and analysis all that much stronger.  Flash forward to today, and I recently became aware that the PGA tracks all sorts of ridiculous statistics for their players and makes them available to the public.  I had always imagined that golf would be an easy target for stat geeks like me, but to see that they have actually taken this to the level they have is heartwarming.

So now it’s a hot, humid Virginia summer day.  Thunderstorms MAY be in the late afternoon plans and I’m certainly not 11 years old any longer.  But what am I doing?  I’m trying to figure out from these fantastic PGA statistics how I’m supposed to be practicing.  Should I be targeting a certain area to get the most practice bang for my practice buck?  What areas are NOT worth the effort to focus attention on?

This idea came to me during my last round that I played when I faced an 80-yard shot into the green.  This is by FAR my favorite distance to hit from and I stuck the shot about 4 feet from the pin.  The problem however was that was the ONLY time in the entire round that I faced this distance.  One shot the entire round from my favorite distance wasn’t doing me much good in the big scheme of things – so where did I need to concentrate my efforts to gain a few strokes per round?

The answer evolved as I perused the statistics of Jason Day – my favorite golfer to watch for several years now.  In a recent broadcast it was casually mentioned that he made 90% of his putts from 10 feet and in.  I was amazed – knowing how tough putts from that distance can be.  But this statistic is completely misleading.  The PGA has tracked Jason Day stats from 2015 for 59 rounds and it does indeed show that he hits 90% (90.29% to be exact) of his putts from inside 10 feet.  However, looking at the breakdown of these 728 putts tracked, he actually only hit 56.95% of his putts from 5-10 feet, ranking 103rd on the PGA TOUR.  However, Day hit an amazing 97.92% of his putts from inside 5 feet – good for 8th on the entire tour.

That’s pretty impressive from within 5 feet.  What’s even more astounding to me is that Day attempted only 151 5’ to 10’ putts – for an average of 2.56 attempts per round.  From inside 5’, he attempted 577 shots in those same 59 rounds for an average of 9.78 shots per round.  By the way, on approach shots from 30’ to 100’ Day attempted LESS than one per round – just like yours truly.  From this, I can obviously conclude that with just a few tweaks I am practically as good as Jason Day.  Again, this is MY fantasy, not yours.

Too many numbers and not enough meat?  Let me simplify things for you.  Which would you rather practice and master?  A shot that you’re going to hit at least 10 times a round that professionals (and VERY possibly you) make almost 98% of the time or a shot that you are going to hit 3 times a round and make at best about 60% of the time?  For me, it makes a lot more sense to master the 5’ and under putt so that you are comfortable every single time you face a putt from that distance.

Imagine the sudden lack of three putts that ruin a great approach shot.

Imagine the suddenly easy par putt to halve a hole that used to make your knees knock.

In the second installment of this series, I’ll give you a couple of intense practice techniques for this distance that I’ve picked up over the last couple of months.  In the final installment, I’ll give you my results that I’ve obtained focusing on these techniques.  The methods and analysis may not be completely scientific, but if I can pick up an easy two or three strokes a round, then that’s good enough for me.

Now back to getting the Tigers to the World Series this year…

Continue to Part 2 of this series >

Cover Photo by CJ Anderson on Flickr