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How much of a perfectionist are you?

I'll take it. It maybe bugs me a little bit how I got there, but honestly I don't care in the long run. Golf is about minimizing your misses I figure, and if your misses are ending up in good spots then that means your equipment setup/swing have allowed you to have a chance when you're not on your game. Can't ask for more than that, I say.
 
mspmike113 said:
same thing?
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Not the same really. A good miss, to me, and I think to the OP, is a badly hit ball that produces a good and probably undeserved result. A good hit that misses is basically the opposite. A well struck ball that doesn't quite produce the intended or desired result.

So... I might mishit the ball and end up on the green... or I might hit the ball solid and straight and fall short of the green by a few feet.
 
We dislike good misses because they're not repeatable. Golf is a game aiming for consistency of outcome from an endless variety of circumstances. For example, the 30 yard pitch shot, let's say with a hill between the ball and the best part of the green to hit to. Consistency says we'd like to be able to take a wedge and hit a fairly high shot that lands softly and maybe rolls a bit, but holds easily to the green. And that we'd like to be able to make this happen from a fluffy lie, a flier lie, the ball sitting down, in short rough, in deep rough, etc. Ball maybe a bit above the feet, a bit below...you get the idea. We're still trying to get a similar shot shape from all these circumstances.

Now, let's say I hit it thin, where only the leading edge of my club strikes the ball, and hit a low screamer straight into that hill...but it careens off the hill and rolls to within 6". It's a great miss. It's a miss that probably saved me a stroke. But it's not repeatable. So instead of feeling good about setting myself up how I expected, I mumble something about better to be lucky than good and make my tap in. Why do I feel bad? Because I couldn't do it on purpose if I tried. I have profited from my own failure. It's against our inherent sense of meritocracy in golf, or sports in general.

Some of it is accepting that golf is a highly capricious game, where, at best, crazy good bounces even out with crazy bad bounces. The other part is taking a long view, that if crazy bounces even out, then talent and skill will remain the ultimate arbiters of success. Like a bad beat in poker, you want poorer players to believe that crazy good bounces outnumber crazy bad ones. It helps them put their money in the middle when they really, really shouldn't.
 
malemotives said:
Not the same really. A good miss, to me, and I think to the OP, is a badly hit ball that produces a good and probably undeserved result. A good hit that misses is basically the opposite. A well struck ball that doesn't quite produce the intended or desired result.

So... I might mishit the ball and end up on the green... or I might hit the ball solid and straight and fall short of the green by a few feet.
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My first post in this thread was not thought out very well, so I am going to revise it.

I think a good hit that misses short or long as in your example is an overclub or underclub. It's not a miss to me. And a good miss doesn't necessarily mean a badly hit ball that finishes in a good spot. It can, I suppose, but I think an actual good miss is where you aim somewhere but if it doesn't end up there, it still ends up in a good spot.

For example, you aim to one side of the fairway knowing if you don't hit it straight as you intend, you have left room to still be ok if it goes right or left of where you were aiming. That is a good miss. If your intent is to hit it down the left side but not too close to those trees creating the dogleg left, but you instead fade the ball and miss that spot and end up on the right side (even in the rough) but in a position where you sill have a decent second shot, then that is a good miss. On a shot to the green a good miss is if the pin is on one side but you aim to the center and it ends up on the side where the pin is.

A shot that is horrible but winds up good is a lucky shot, not a good miss. A shot that ends up short or long is not a miss at all in my book. You took the wrong club, that's what long and short mean.


So I don't think the OP actually means a good miss, I think he means a lucky shot since he mentioned putting an awful swing on the ball and it still wound up good.
 
My last eagle was a hosel-rocket 6-iron. I had no complaints.
 
Lots of good thoughts in here about this subject.

I have accepted that in golf sometimes I will just get plain lucky with where the ball ends up, whether that be good luck or bad luck.

I should of stated this in the first post but what got me thinking about this yesterday was a par 3 tee shot I hit low on the toe(where there are no grooves) but the ball stayed in the air and landed pin high on the right side of the green pin was left edge. The other was a wedge I hit low on the toe that stayed on the green some how. IMO neither shot warranted the result I got. There were a few more but these two stick out the most in my head.
 
Paladin said:
Now, let's say I hit it thin, where only the leading edge of my club strikes the ball, and hit a low screamer straight into that hill...but it careens off the hill and rolls to within 6". It's a great miss. It's a miss that probably saved me a stroke. But it's not repeatable. So instead of feeling good about setting myself up how I expected, I mumble something about better to be lucky than good and make my tap in. Why do I feel bad? Because I couldn't do it on purpose if I tried. I have profited from my own failure. It's against our inherent sense of meritocracy in golf, or sports in general.
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Very well said.
 
A good miss is way better than a bad miss. I'll take a good miss over a bad miss all day long. If I miss a green short, but not in the bunker and I have an uphill easy chip to get up and down...good miss. Not ideal, not birdie...but better than a miss where I dump it in the bunker and DON'T get up and down and make a bogey, bad miss....or shortside myself in a really bad spot.
Different ways to look at the same thing. Sure it's frustrating to hit ANY kind of bad shot or miss hit, but if your playing the numbers game, and being smart on the course, then your usually leaving yourself in a "good miss position", instead of in jail...IF you do miss.
 
I just look at it as a pay back by the golf gods. Golf karma if you will.

Its like payback for when you hit a perfect shot, in the middle of the face right on line and it catches a lump bump or hump and heads the wrong way and ends up under a bush.

You really need to read "Golf Is Not A Game Of Perfect".
 
A good miss is one that doesn't cost me an extra stroke...I'm happy to have a shot still "work out" even if it wasn't exactly what I planned.
Miss hitting a planned draw to a left front pin from the left side of the fairway with a "power fade" hitting the right side of the green by 25 feet and two putting for a par is a good miss hit.
Catching my 8 Iron a bit fat (but straight) and missing the green by 20 yards short isn't a "good miss" in my book, it's just a miss.
 
I'm with malemotives (I think). A bad shot that ends up well (a skulled iron that runs up on the green on a par 3) doesn't bother me as much as a good shot that finds trouble. Playing a new course, smashing a drive down the middle of the fairway on a dogleg left only to drive up and see that not only is it a dogleg, but the fairways slopes severely down and to the right with waste high fescue just off the fairway. That perfect shot you thought you hit from the tee is now lost. These types of bad breaks seem to take me a few holes to recover from.
 
The only time good misses are bad are when you're playing with a group and you growl after contact only to see the ball travel about the same distance and find the fairway, even if it's not exactly what you were looking for.
 
This happened yesterday during my round and it is why I don't complain about mis-hits that end up being good. Short Par 4 that I decided to hit an iron off the tee to get myself in a good position. Came up a little early and hit it thin - but right down the middle, leaving myself about a 120-125 to the hole. I looked at my playing partners (both THPers) laughed and said, "GolfinFF might not like that shot, but I will take it". :)

3 holes later on a Par 3, my tee shot was just off the green. I hit a perfect chip that landed just on the edge of the green, rolled past the cup (almost when in), seemingly started picking up speed, caught a slope and ran off the green. I was shocked that it didn't hold because myself and my playing partners all thought I couldn't have hit the chip any better. Just goes to show that things all even out in the end.
 
golfinFF said:
Why is it that good misses are so frustrating and even more so than normal miss that ends up bad?

For me it's the approach shot or Par3 tee shot low and out on the toe ball that still reaches the green and holds, the ball that finds the center of the fairway but was the exact opposite shot shape that you were looking for. These shots drive me absolutely crazy, I feel like I was rewarded for putting an awful swing on the ball.

Your thoughts?
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How many good shots do you hit in a round of golf? I mean designed in your minds eye and produced through your swing.

It's about managing your misses not good ones. If you get away with a miss, it was meant to be because it doesn't happen often
 
O'Carroll said:
I'm with malemotives (I think). A bad shot that ends up well (a skulled iron that runs up on the green on a par 3) doesn't bother me as much as a good shot that finds trouble. Playing a new course, smashing a drive down the middle of the fairway on a dogleg left only to drive up and see that not only is it a dogleg, but the fairways slopes severely down and to the right with waste high fescue just off the fairway. That perfect shot you thought you hit from the tee is now lost. These types of bad breaks seem to take me a few holes to recover from.
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Please explain a good shot that finds trouble.
 
Another thing I have come to realize is that I will only have about 4-5 "perfect" hits. And by perfect I mean perfect. The rest of the shots are just managing the mishits (be it oh so slight or a total shank). My bad shots have started to be a whole lot less bad, which is good.
 
Tadashi70 said:
How many good shots do you hit in a round of golf? I mean designed in your minds eye and produced through your swing.

It's about managing your misses not good ones. If you get away with a miss, it was meant to be because it doesn't happen often
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Not enough by my handicap :banghead: but on a serious note I'm Ok with a shot that comes up short of a front pin that I tried to hunt from 9i+ distance or hitting the green on a well struck ball. I think I hit more shots with irons that do what I wanted them to more often than not especially now that my swing is coming along with the lessons. My consistency and ball striking has greatly improved as this season and my lessons progressed.


I tried to manage/play my miss with irons and now those misses have changed and I am adapting to them.

The bold is what I am learning through this thread and I appreciate all the feed back from everyone.
 
Tadashi70 said:
Please explain a good shot that finds trouble.
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  • You crush a drive (or some other shot) that you should never have reached that pond, but somehow, you did. Either you hit it perfect for once, or it hit the cart path that goes across the fairway.
  • You hit the pin and it bounces off into the sand trap (or water, or any of a number of places)
  • You hit a nice high shot that hits a bird and drops the ball and the bird straight into the sand trap.


I've done the first, I rarely hit pins and I made up the third because I felt I needed three things.
 
One of the all-time greats (Hogan? Jones?) said that they only hit something like 4 solid shots per round as they intended, the game is about knowing your predominate miss and allowing for it. Sometimes it may you look like a hero and sometimes it is a pure zero but we as hackers are not good enough to stress over any missed shot no matter the results.

One of my favorite things to say on the course is that my game got much better when my misses began to go straight. Just relax and enjoy those 3 or 4 pure shots and try to score on those missed ones, it is all about having fun, not being perfect.
 
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I don't mind catching long distance shots thin if I get a long way in roll and end up on the fairway. If anything, I think that if it brings me within range of an approach shot, it was a successful shot, despite not being well executed. A long thin is better than a hook or a slice IMO.

I also don't mind pure flukes, like horrible shots that end up on the green, or a shot that is rifling OOB, only to hit a tree trunk and end up in bounds. It's all good for me, and payback for the unlucky shots I suffer from.
 
Miller Time said:
The only time good misses are bad are when you're playing with a group and you growl after contact only to see the ball travel about the same distance and find the fairway, even if it's not exactly what you were looking for.
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I've done it before when I've had a really bad feedback off a tee shot on a Par 3 and have lost sight of the ball, only to look at the green and see the ball land near the pin. Can't explain that one.
 
I'll be completely honest here. I have never thinned a shot to within 10 feet of the hole and thought to myself, "DANGIT, I wish it woulda just flew the green"!!!
 
I don't get upset at a good miss more than a bad miss. In fact, I am a lot less upset.
I figure that's just the odds evening out a little with bad bounces/breaks.
 
Can't complain about a good miss, I've had birdies from grass cutters that end up a couple of feet from the hole!


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