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Is driving or putting harder? The math...

neanderthaleggs

neanderthaleggs

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Our targets are the fairway and the hole, respectively. Considering this, I wanted to figure how wide of a fairway would equate to the hole. I used a 7 foot putt--which the pros make 56% of the time--as my starting point for this exercise. The reason is that--at the time of writing--the median driver for accuracy on the PGA is Ben Martin at 58.44%. So I was looking for something average-y. I could also work that from a 50/50 putt distance, which is 7'10". Anyway, the hole width is 5% of the distance at 7 feet. For a 293 yard drive (PGA average), this equates to a fairway that is 14.65 yards wide! Obviously, the pros wouldn't hit a 15 yard wide fairway 56-58% of the time with their driver. The average fairway width is actually around 30 yards on the courses the PGA holds its tournaments on. It's also in the back of my mind that a drive on the very edge of the fairway is still in the fairway, while a putt on the very edge will often lip out. Also coloring the data is the existence of the first cut, and the fact that a stroke has not been lost by being in the rough, whereas missing a putt means exactly that (at least). Honestly, I'm not sure what it all means and would like to know what you think. As I see it though, 58.44% of the time, Ben Martin hits a fairway that would equate to an 8.5" hole on a 7 foot putt :LOL: :unsure:
 
Depends on the individual, and the courses and environments they play in …

For instance

Playing at sea level is , significantly different than playing at elevation …

Playing in wind equally so ..

Also, some may excel in either of your noted categories and or be less deft in other parts of the game .
Louis_Posture said:
I believe amateur players above a 5 handicap are equally bad at driving and putting. But a mishit drive is obvious and a mishit putt is not.
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A putt is more influenced by the interaction of the turf and topography of green… rather than a drive which is more influenced by the strike as it is airborne ? ( but equally concede that the strike may shape a ball if that’s the characteristic of the stroke )
 
29.25 is pga tour putts / round

I float around , 32 ish and lower , with lowest of 28
That said , I play , differing courses regularly and also in morning when moisture can affect ball .

Driving , I don’t try over power it , hit straight , characteristically , ( lots of training self over few years to eradicate the Boeing ball lol .

What’s harder ,? As per Op …

12 -14 Drives avg / round versus 32 putts avg …. Putting as it’s higher % shots and greater % of , missing hole .
 
That all makes my head hurt but in simpler terms I hit 30 yard fairways at a higher % than I make 7 footers.
 
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Hitsnmisses said:
A putt is more influenced by the interaction of the turf and topography of green… rather than a drive which is more influenced by the strike as it is airborne ?
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To be consistently good, both a putt and a tee shot require effective swing technique and solid-square ball contact. But, everybody recognizes a sliced tee shot while few people are aware of a mishit putt.
 
Louis_Posture said:
To be consistently good, both a putt and a tee shot require effective swing technique and solid-square ball contact. But, everybody recognizes a sliced tee shot while few people are aware of a mishit putt.
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Yes , sometimes the simple stuff , is the hardest to execute . Yet we complicate it all
 
I am too old and small to be good at driving the ball for distance but I am great at reading greens and putting.
My first season I'd sink ten foot putts for par. Last year, my 3rd short New England season, I'd sink similar putts for birdies on short Par 3s.
I spent a lot of time growing roses for exhibition, so in previous years my golf season didn't start until mid-June.

I was great at putting when I was a little kid.
 
Putting is more difficult. Because of that difficulty the spread between the best and worst putters at a given handicap level is far narrower than the best and worst drivers.
 
At 7' if you mishit a putt by 4 degrees it will be .163" off line. You make it easily.
At 295 yards if you mishit your drive by the same 4* you are 20.65 yards off line. Well into the rough at best. If you find it.
 
I found it more helpful to drive the ball accurately than to try to swing harder at the ball.
I practiced with foam balls and worked on narrowing my dispersion first.
I did a test with foot spray yesterday and found I was hitting the center of the club face! :)
Hit a dozen balls with a dispersion of +/- 4*
Distances are significantly farther than they were a week ago.
I'm finding that I have enough flexibility to use a long back swing.
 
Putting is so easy a 5-year-old can do it. Quick, somebody bring me a 5-year-old...

[Apologies to Groucho Marx]
 
1860VS said:
At 7' if you mishit a putt by 4 degrees it will be .163" off line. You make it easily.
At 295 yards if you mishit your drive by the same 4* you are 20.65 yards off line. Well into the rough at best. If you find it.
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you should redo your calculations. Open or closed 4* will miss the edge of the cup by about 4 inches. 1* of error hits the edge on a 10' putt.
 
The putting stroke is easier to learn to use than the driver swing. With that I think driving is harder.

Learning to swing the driver correctly takes longer for a huge majority of amature golfers.

However, once the driver swing becomes efficient, the golfer will save more strokes off the tee, than they will putting.
 
I have seen (and been) high handicappers able to put the ball in play off the tee. If they learn to play their miss they can be effective. I also see those same high handicappers man handle putters so that there is a less than 0% chance that they can make any type of putts reliably. They could have everything read perfectly but have hands of a civil war surgeon and manipulate the face of a putter in unspeakable ways. When they become feel players they leave everything short.
 
All I know is I've never taken a penalty stroke as a result of a putt. :LOL:
 
BigMac said:
All I know is I've never taken a penalty stroke as a result of a putt. :LOL:
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what's the phrase..."hold my beer"? I have actually seen it done. Downhill putt got rolling a bit fast and ended in the water. Not frequent...but certainly memorable!
 
Golf, is hardest.
 
WLG1952 said:
However, once the driver swing becomes efficient, the golfer will save more strokes off the tee, than they will putting.
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I've seen hundreds of players shoot a low score because they made lots of putts. I've never seen a player shoot a low score because he drove the ball great.
These days the heads and shafts are so good this has made consistently hitting long-straight drives very common. For example any city or county or State amateur is filled with guys who hit it great off the tee all day long.
 
Louis_Posture said:
I've seen hundreds of players shoot a low score because they made lots of putts. I've never seen a player shoot a low score because he drove the ball great.
These days the heads and shafts are so good this has made consistently hitting long-straight drives very common. For example any city or county or State amateur is filled with guys who hit it great off the tee all day long.
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I've seen hundreds of players not have a chance to score low ever because they lose so many strokes off the tee either from penalty strokes or not being able to advance the ball.
 
There's a lower ceiling on putting than for driving. Hacks might putt it 40 times a round, scratch players might putt it 30, but there's not a golfer on earth who's consistently going lower than high 20s. Skidding a ball across a sloped grass mound is just too much of a random process to go lower than that.

With driver, the setup is the same every time and there are fewer random processes. It becomes much more dependent on the skillset of the human golfer. It's harder to smash a straight drive than it is to sink a 6 foot putt, but there are more rewards and more room score-wise to separate golfers who have the speed and technique to do it.

That separation is tough to achieve with putting. A 280 yard driver will pick up a ton of strokes over guys hitting it say 220 over a course of a round. How many extra putts do you have to drain vs the bomber to make that ground up? And can you keep draining those putts every week, because the bomber's distance advantage is going to be very consistent.
 
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TWright971 said:
I've seen hundreds of players not have a chance to score low ever because they lose so many strokes off the tee either from penalty strokes or not being able to advance the ball.
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If you are referring to beginner skill level players, I consider that to be a separate subject. For example, driving ranges and par-3 courses are the appropriate places to learn the swing technique needed to consistently strike reasonably solid, straight shots.
 
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