Golfing tip; The Short Game Wins

Dave Pelz is the worlds leading short game and putting coach. His academy’s are attended by thousands of people each year, and the pro’s go to him to work on their putting and short game. Dave spent 3 years on the golf course following the pro’s and correlating players shot capability and their results. His stats. show that a player’s short game accuracy, more than their long game or putting accuracy, is the clearest determinant of winning scores.

Measuring accuracy versus results

Dave spent those 3 years measuring a players PEI, a formula he created that measures the accuracy of a shot. To describe PEI simply, if a player aims for the pin from a 100 metres and lands the ball 12 metres from the hole, then his PEI is 12%. The lower a PEI, the more accurate the player is in executing their planned stroke. The compilation of results over time showed up some interesting results.

With pro’s longer games, there was little variance in their PEI, with the better long hitters at around 5% PEI, and the poorer long hitters around 9%. With putting, the variances were similar, ranging from 5 – 10 %. However, the short game proved to have the greatest variance, with players PEI’s ranging from 12 – 25%. (Dave defines the short game to be any shot played from between 100m and the edge of the green)

He then correlated the ranking of players PEI’s for these 3 parts of the game to the results of the pro’s on Sunday afternoon. No statistical significance showed up between a players long game ability and their results throughout a year. Perhaps surprisingly, the same lack of correlation showed up for a players putting.

Short game accuracy wins games

However, the statistics showed that the better a players Short game accuracy (low PEI) the higher the player ranked in results over a year. This is because accuracy within 100 metres enables a player to put the ball within achievable putting distance, thereby improving He concludes that if players want to get their score down, this part of the game is where they should be spending more time practising.

In his excellent coaching manual, "The Short Game Bible", he provides a step by step breakdown of how to develop a consistent Short game swing. For more info, or to order his book go to www.davepelz.com

by
David Pointon
DaPo Consulting

--- David Pointon is a keen golfer who, like so many others, aspires to have more time and better scores on the golf course. He is always open to any offers of a game, or a good golf story to relay to friends.