Would you give up distance for accuracy?

[EnderinAZ]

I can still hit the ball pretty far for being a lot closer to 70 than 60 reaching out to 270 yards on a good pop. The thing is when I play grip it and rip it that 270 yard shot can be 15 degrees off my target line. 

But if I cut it back a bit and play for a 220 to 240 yard drive I am pretty much right on my target.  At 240 yards for a drive even long par 5s are still in play for par. I am resigned to cutting back and playing smart. Playing smart and my name do not collide in the same sentence very often. But there it is. 

So would you do it? Give up 30 yards in driver distance to go from hitting six fairways a round to hitting 12 or more? 

[revkev]

Not a chance and we are the same age - I need every inch I can get. If I could average 270 which I’ve never been able to even when I was a very low, between 1 and 0 handicap I’d have considered giving up 10 yards to hit more fairways if I averaged 6 - I averaged 13 at around 250.  Just take less club and whenever you can use your distance - use it and forget about fairways. For the most part they are over rated 

Edited May 29 by revkev

[Philpug]

I have. Since I am not a big hitter .. I have to keep it in play. 

[Rob Person]

If I had any chance of being over 250 consistently, sure,  I would trade 10 or 15 yards for accuracy. 

[Michael.Sandoval33]

Right now, I have fairly consistent accuracy but I believe that I am not progressing in my game due to lack of distance. A factor I would have to consider if I traded accuracy for more distance would be playing the lie differently if not on the fairway. It's kind of a double edged sword at this time for me.

[Philpug]

10 minutes ago, Michael.Sandoval33 said:

Right now, I have fairly consistent accuracy but I believe that I am not progressing in my game due to lack of distance. A factor I would have to consider if I traded accuracy for more distance would be playing the lie differently if not on the fairway. It's kind of a double edged sword at this time for me.

I don't disagree, I think my lack of length with my woods is what is keeping me from shooting in the 70's. From 175 in with my irons, I am good, getting there is my downfall. 

[EnderinAZ]

2 hours ago, revkev said:

Not a chance and we are the same age - I need every inch I can get. If I could average 270 which I’ve never been able to even when I was a very low, between 1 and 0 handicap I’d have considered giving up 10 yards to hit more fairways if I averaged 6 - I averaged 13 at around 250.  Just take less club and whenever you can use your distance - use it and forget about fairways. For the most part they are over rated 

Yeah, okay. You just said what I play most of the time. On my course if I am off the fairway right and sitting at 250 yards distance, I am 80 yards to the pin on a couple of the holes but squarely in the trees and bump and running a shot in from there with my pitching wedge. 25 yards shorter and in the fairway I have a good lie and can take a full swing with my sand wedge for the middle of the green. 

Backing off feels fundamentally wrong.

Like looking at an SUV Maserati!  Fundamentally wrong.

 

 

[Northern Monkey]

I don’t think I’d be willing to give up 30 yards for accuracy. If it was 10-15 then yeh I probably would

[cnosil]

Simple answer no.    
 

FW hit is basically a meaningless number.   the closer you are to the hole the better chance you can get it in the hole in fewer strokes.   Driver dispersion patterns are wide and while hitting fairways is ideal, just give me a shot that I can advance toward the green.   

[revkev]

Thanks for the explanation - cnosil gave the stick answer - it’s almost always wisest to take the longest club that doesn’t risk a penalty of some sort (trees are penalties.)

So if you have holes  where you need to take less club to avoid a penalty I’d do that - however I would not eliminate the longest club in the bag just because I’m going to hit fairway wood or driving iron a few times. See your SUV Maserati reference - that was great.

[RetiredBoomer]

9 hours ago, revkev said:

Not a chance and we are the same age - I need every inch I can get. If I could average 270 which I’ve never been able to even when I was a very low, between 1 and 0 handicap I’d have considered giving up 10 yards to hit more fairways if I averaged 6 - I averaged 13 at around 250.  Just take less club and whenever you can use your distance - use it and forget about fairways. For the most part they are over rated 

I'm the opposite.
I wear out driving irons like other people wear out wedges.

I'll be bold going into greens but not tight landing areas.
I hate taking myself out of a hole on the first shot.

Of course, playing on a 1906 Donald Ross course that barely stretches beyond 6000 yards
doesn't penalize me too much for doing that.

[DaveP043]

45 minutes ago, revkev said:

Thanks for the explanation - cnosil gave the stick answer - it’s almost always wisest to take the longest club that doesn’t risk a penalty of some sort (trees are penalties.)

I agree with this.  However, the OP seemed to be talking about swinging at absolute max effort, as compared with something less.  For most of us, absolute max effort comes with a really big increase in dispersion, disproportionate to any advantage gained by the additional distance.  30 yards might mean 0.1 or 0.2 strokes gained when the ball is in play, but if that comes with full strokes lost for penalties or sideways chip-outs on even a very small number of holes, the max effort swing may not be worth it.

[cnosil]

5 minutes ago, DaveP043 said:

However, the OP seemed to be talking about swinging at absolute max effort, as compared with something less. 

I think it depends in the person.  When I scale back on a tee shot for more “control” my dispersion tends to get wider and less consistent.  If I need less distance I take less club.  

[DaveP043]

Just now, cnosil said:

I think it depends in the person.  When I scale back on a tee shot for more “control” my dispersion tends to get wider and less consistent.  If I need less distance I take less club.  

Yeah, there's a "right" level of effort for each person.  The OP suggested that his scaled back swing will double the number of fairways, from 6 at max effort to 12 at the lower effort.  I don't think that fairways are the telling factor, but cutting fairways in half indicates to me a very significantly wider dispersion at max effort.  Didn't I read stats that, on average, going from driver to 3-wood typically only means 1 or 2 more fairways?  This is MUCH wider than that.  And of course this will depend on the golf course, the wider dispersion may not be a huge problem on some courses, but could be multiple penalty shots on another course.

[NM01]

No. I don’t care about a fairway in regulation stat. I am ok with being in the rough 20-40 yard further up than to be in the fairway or rough from further back.

i also don’t play grip it and rip golf but rather swing fast within myself so it may be closer to 90% than 100% effort

[Wheelieb]

There's a reason I'm not necessarily worried about where my ball lands with my drive.  The main reason is it's closer to the green than any other club. the only way to get better is playing the shots we don't ever practice. That includes hitting out of the rough, or punching out from trees. We aren't professionals, but we sure can pretend we are when we hit those great recovery shots.

[Rob Person]

The course I play regularly has ALOT of fairway traps, And I mean brutal if you aren't careful!

I agree with the play your clubs distances that has been mentioned,  but where I am not a long hitter,  for me the accuracy over distance would be suited better for ME. But only if we are talking 10-15 yards maximum. 

If I was a long hitter, then my perception might change and I would go with the distance over accuracy,  dependant on course layout.

[Philpug]

So much depends on where you are playing, is the course like a bowling lane and it it goes off target, you are dead in the forest or it is open  and you can hit your green from 3 fairways over? 

[DaveP043]

1 minute ago, Philpug said:

So much depends on where you are playing, is the course like a bowling lane and it it goes off target, you are dead in the forest or it is open  and you can hit your green from 3 fairways over? 

To me it also depends on the size of the misses.  The OP goes from hitting 12 fairways at 240 to only 6 at 270.  That seems like a really major loss of accuracy, so I expect some of those 12 nn-fairway balls are much further off target than with his 240-yard efforts.  Does that mean one or two more balls into a Penalty Area, or OB, or trees, or high fescue.   Additional yardage gains a player tenths of a stroke each time.  Balls in a PA lose full strokes, balls OB lose essentially two full strokes.  That's the trade-off the OP has to evaluate, what does he gain with distance, what does he lose with decreased accuracy.

[EnderinAZ]

Interesting answers.  I only club down on the holes where the fairway turns and a good long drive goes through the fairway and into the water.  There are two holes like that and it just does not make sense to use my driver.  Other than that I change my backswing some and only put out 60 to 70 percent in swing speed to keep the ball in the middle. Don't get me wrong I would much rather take a 9 iron second shot than a 6 of 7 iron as a second shot on a par 4. 

A 72 yard downhill side hill pitch shot from deep Bermuda, not so much. 

[DaveP043]

12 hours ago, EnderinAZ said:

The thing is when I play grip it and rip it that 270 yard shot can be 15 degrees off my target line. 

This makes the answer clear to me.  15* offline means 72 yards at 270 out.  Maybe that's an exaggeration, but I know very few courses where the playing corridors are 140 yards wide.  Depending on the frequency of these huge misses, that level of inaccuracy is completely unacceptable to me.  If you have to dial back the level of effort to keep most of the balls in play, that's what you have to do.  

[Preeway]

I’ll use my ShotScope data to provide my $.02 (that’s usually all it’s worth according to SWMBO). My fairways hit with my driver currently sits at 41%. My score to par from the fairway is even. My scores from left rough is +.1 and from the right rough it’s +.4. However, if you separate my “good misses” on both sides my stats are -.1 from both left and right. So, in short, I am likely to average par from 10 yards left to 10 yards right of the fairway. When I miss the fairway by more than 10 yards my average score is +0.5 to par. For myself, I wouldn’t sacrifice 30 yards for a few fairways unless it’s the only way to keep me out of trouble. In which case, I’m going to go get fitted for a new shaft to see if that helps my dispersion before I succumb to shorter hits off the tee. 

[Preeway]

I should also add, my fairways hit combined with good misses puts me at 65% balls in good position. I’ll take that everyday with a driver. 

[NM01]

2 hours ago, Rob Person said:

The course I play regularly has ALOT of fairway traps, And I mean brutal if you aren't careful!

I agree with the play your clubs distances that has been mentioned,  but where I am not a long hitter,  for me the accuracy over distance would be suited better for ME. But only if we are talking 10-15 yards maximum. 

If I was a long hitter, then my perception might change and I would go with the distance over accuracy,  dependant on course layout.

The strokes gained principle of closer to the hole applies to all golfers whether big hitter or short knocker and the shorter one is the more disadvantaged they are so giving up even more distance to find accuracy makes the game even harder.

The fairway traps and dispersion pattern are part of decade which uses strokes gained. So one does have to decide what risk they want to take on but choosing accuracy over distance makes golf harder.

 

[DaveP043]

6 minutes ago, RickyBobby_PR said:

The fairway traps and dispersion pattern are part of decade which uses strokes gained

Another good source for SG-based decision making is Lowest Score Wins, which uses a nice "graphical" method of evaluation.  I'm an engineer by training, so I do well with those types of explanations.

[Erin B]

This is a good question. For me it depends on the yardage lost. If I can stay at 250 and hit the fairway every time then I’m down to dance. If I can blast one 290 and be able to chip or pitch out of the rough to the green then I’m in it to win it. If I’m in jail with trees then no way Jose! 

[chisag]

... Like everything in this crazy game it is both complicated and very easy at the same time.   As others have said where you play makes a difference. You can't hit a wedge after a big but errant drive from the water, the trees or deep rough if you can't find the ball because it is so thick. But light rough or like here in the desert, virtually no rough the longer the drive the better. 

... But the truth is, and here is were it is so simple, we all have an ideal max length for our swing speed, technique and ability. We all have a swing that produces the longest and accurate tee shot, so swinging slower or faster isn't ideal. Some can crank that speed up and still hit reasonable shots but perhaps not as accurate, still worth the risk on a long hole without a penalty like water, woods, deep bunkers etc. 

... So what we are really taking about is finding the max comfortable distance that still keeps the ball in play. We should endeavor to have our cake and eat it too, we all want accurate distance. Finding out with that is for you is the tough part and why we practice and always try to get better. Addressing EnderinAZ, I would think somewhere in the middle of all out 270 and conservative 220-240 lies his perfect distance/accuraccy equation and somewhere around 255 might be the answer. But only the golfer knows when they are trying too hard, over swinging or just producing their most controllable max driver swing. 

Edited May 30 by chisag

[TJ Hall]

I would say yes I would give up the distance after my last round, did not hit the driver well at all!

If I did give up distance, would probably turn right back around and look how to get it back.

While I track fairways hit, I also look at/evaluate if it was a good tee shot…basically did I leave myself with a decent chance of getting to the green.  Not an exact measure, but it helps define the stats a little bit for me…could hit 0 fairways and still have good looks in.

[No3PuttLaLa]

I would absolutely sacrifice distance for accuracy. 
 

Driving a ball 300+ off the tee doesn’t do any good if I can’t control my approach shots into the green for par and birdie. In fact, I often have 100 into the green and still end up bogey or double. Control and Accuracy are a must for me to lower my scores. 

[NM01]

1 hour ago, No3PuttLaLa said:

I would absolutely sacrifice distance for accuracy. 
 

Driving a ball 300+ off the tee doesn’t do any good if I can’t control my approach shots into the green for par and birdie. In fact, I often have 100 into the green and still end up bogey or double. Control and Accuracy are a must for me to lower my scores. 

The stats say the game doesn’t get easier further away from the hole. Proxmiity to the hole goes up, made putt percentage goes down, gir goes down. The longer the club gets the harder it is to hit