We've launched the new forums! Read more here

Course Mgmt: shot evaluation criteria

wadesworld

wadesworld

Well-known member
Albatross 2024 Club
Joined
Aug 31, 2012
Messages
10,910
Reaction score
3,990
Location
Nashville, TN
Handicap
11
As I try to shave strokes from my game, I frequently run into the issue of whether I should have made a different decision. I'm interested in how you evaluate your decisions, both good and bad.

An interesting example came from a round this weekend. I was on a long par 4, the #1 handicap hole on the course and I hit a very solid drive. I had 175 left to the pin and there's a river which runs in front of the green. I had a slight sidehill lie with the ball slightly below my feet. This wasn't on a major hill, it was more like a little bump in fairway and the ball was only an inch or so below my feet and sitting OK. I thought "Ok, I can do this. If anything I'll just end up a bit right of the green" I picked a conservative target and plenty of club and immediately thinned the ball into the river. After a mediocre pitch from my drop left me some 45 feet from the pin, I hit a not-great first putt and missed the 4-footer I had left, carding a triple.

This is a situation where I thought I was making a good decision. I wasn't trying to hook it around a tree. I wasn't trying to fire at the pin - I had a conservative target. It never entered my mind it was a dangerous shot, and perhaps that's the problem.

In hindsight, I think perhaps what I should have said was "Look. This is the #1 handicap hole. I'm on an uneven lie, hitting over water with a long-iron. Let's chip it out to a flat lie, put a short club in our hand, and make a bogey." I think if I play that hole in the future, unless I have a 7-iron or less in my hand on a flat lie I might make myself a rule not to go for it unless I'm just swinging fantastic that day.

What are your thoughts on your decision making? Do you have shots you think you were making a good decision at the time but in retrospect you can see the flaw in your reasoning? Or do you stand by your decision and just chalk it up to a poor execution of a good plan? How do you reconcile the shots you could be giving up if you're being overly conservative?
 
I don’t think you made the wrong decision. Playing for bogey feels like a worse decision.

On a shot like that, I would look at was my miss is. I’d club up, as you did, but my focus would be on the contact. With the ball below your feet, the natural miss is a thin shot. I’d really focus on making sure I make solid contact with the ball which usually means trying to get steeper on the downswing
 
I definitely do have shots where, in retrospect, I realize I didn't make a good decision. I try to learn from them and understand why/how I fell short in my decision making, so I don't repeat the same mistakes. To just chalk them up to poor execution is to pass up a useful learning opportunity, because sometimes the poor execution is the result of what was a poor plan in the first place, despite how good it may have seemed at the time.
 
I don't think the decision making was the problem, I think you just made a bad swing at a bad time and it kinda snowballed on you.

The only time I think about holes being #1 handicap and any of that, is when I'm playing for money with someone. Every hole is the hardest hole if you don't put a good move on it haha
 
M Ward kind of alluded to it and he echoes what I have seen from a lot of the course management gurus.

Scott Fawcett (the decade guy) is one of the ones I would recommend...along with Lowest Score Wins, the two I am by far most familiar with> I think a lot of people on here would add ...Sherman? The Four Foundations of Golf?

And from what I have seen, all of them would agree...you made a good decision. It is something you will be successful with 80% of the time. As Fawcett says, (paraphrased) sometimes you just have to make the shot.

I managed not once but twice to rinse balls yesterday that the water should have never been in play...3/4 50 degree from 110 that is usually my sweet spot hit the water 20 yards in front of me, and later a 9i from 145 that again...I feel very confident in...I dry humped the swing, dumped it in the water 30 yards in front of me.

In both cases I believe I picked the correct club, line and shot...I just made awful swings. No course management will fix either of those...
 
I just think you missed one thing to think about on side hill lies. On shots below your feet you thought through club selection and curve but you didn't think of low point. On balls below my feet I stand closer to the ball than on a normal lie and on balls above my feet I stand further away than normal. Thin could just mean you didn't have the low point figured out.
 
Difficult shots bring in many factors that need to be figured out....

Confused Barbara Dunkelman GIF by Rooster Teeth


From 175 out with water in front, given a choice of a layup or going for it, I figure I'm probably going to dunk a shot either way so I might as well go big or go home. If I dunk the 175 yd shot I'd be less upset than if I laid up and dunked the 40 yd wedge shot. If I dunk the 175, I still have a shot at bogey. If I dunk the 40 yder, it's DB. This is the way I think. I'm probably my own worst enemy on the course, but I go by my statistics.
 
No balls, no birds.
 
I'll echo the chorus here. You made a good decision and a bad swing. That's just golf.

If you laid it up, you'd be forcing yourself to hit 2 solid shots in a row just to make a bogey. It is easier to hit say a good 9 iron shot than a good long iron shot, but I bet the percentages for "flushed long iron" and "flushed short iron" x "good wedge shot" come out pretty close.

The latter guarantees you'll take an extra stroke, but doesn't necessarily safeguard you from a blowup either. You would really hate life if you stubbed the layup chip.

So I don't see the safe strategy here as being that much safer, and I wouldn't see a 1 inch sidehill as being risky enough to justify an extra layup stroke. Unless you really felt crappy about the lie for some reason, I'd just attack the water.
 
Last edited:
wadesworld said:
In hindsight, I think perhaps what I should have said was "Look. This is the #1 handicap hole. I'm on an uneven lie, hitting over water with a long-iron. Let's chip it out to a flat lie, put a short club in our hand, and make a bogey." I think if I play that hole in the future, unless I have a 7-iron or less in my hand on a flat lie I might make myself a rule not to go for it unless I'm just swinging fantastic that day.
Click to expand...
The problem with this train of thought is thinking that you can "just make a bogey" with a short club in your hand. If you can thin a long iron into the river, I'm sure you're capable of thinning a short iron into the river as well. Whether or not you made a good decision or not ultimately comes down to how often you can execute the shots in question, but based on what you wrote I think going for it was a good decision and you just hit a bad shot.
 
I see absolutely nothing wrong with the decision to go for the green there. Sometimes we all just make a bad swing.
 
Look at it different way. If you followed your same strategy and hit just an average shot, would you even be questioning yourself. I'm guessing no, and you would feel great about your course management paying off.
 
I evaluate pretty simply. Was the plan sound? That’s it. Disregard execution… kinda. Was the plan sound? That’s all there is to my evaluation of a decision.

If past performance said it was a risky choice, that’s the only time I let execution play into my evaluation. I mean if I can’t hit the shot but once or twice out of 10 and I still try, that’s on my decision making because I can’t execute the plan. But if I can hit the shot regularly and I just didn’t this time, that’s just execution. That’s just golf.
 
I’d challenge the best caddie in the world to make better decisions than I make. I have no delusions about my ability, but my course management and decision-making I believe are solid.

I will make bad choices and usually know it beforehand (sometimes referred to as an “anyway shot”). But the difference between a smart decision and dumb one is not always determined by the result.
 
I like to decide what the smartest play would be then choose to go for the miracle shot anyway. Then yes, second guess that when it doesn't work out. Working on this but hard mentality to break.
 
Because my golfing skills are somewhat questionable, I have to excel at course management. In the example you cite, I would have laid up. I work hard on my short game, so I would be thinking getting up and down for par, or a bogey at worst. For me the question is, what is the probability that I can pull off this shot? The only time I might play a shot like that is in certain match play situations.

On a side note, Billy Casper won the 1960 US Open at Winged Foot. He laid up all four days on the par 3 third, and made par all four days.
 
There's a saying in business to act/dress for the job you want, not the job you have.

If you want to get better at golf, you have to be able to practice hitting the shots that better players hit. You have to be able to go for a conservative target from 175 if you want to get into mid single digits for example. So might as well start now. So you made the right choice and just hit a poor shot, it happens.....laying up in situations like that is not going to help you improve.
 
If that is a shot that you have, it's very reasonable. No one can predict when you have a bad shot.

Did you have that 175 in your bag? If so, and you have confidence in it go for it. I have gotten par on the #1 handicap and bogey on the #18 handicap hole - it's all relate to what your shots are doing on that hole.
 
Do you hit a lot of sidehill lies? I play on a hilly course and see them every round I play.
I don't think I have a particular shot unless I practice it enough so I automatically know how to set up for it.

I can draw up and make shots I've never attempted before with reasonably good success.
I suppose that comes with practice as well. I had to do a lot of stuff like that at work before I retired. My boss expected me to figure it out.
 
Daluteh said:
If that is a shot that you have, it's very reasonable. No one can predict when you have a bad shot.

Did you have that 175 in your bag? If so, and you have confidence in it go for it. I have gotten par on the #1 handicap and bogey on the #18 handicap hole - it's all relate to what your shots are doing on that hole.
Click to expand...

I think I did have the shot in my bag. I guess the key question would be "how often do I have that shot?" and "is there anything I can do to mitigate the risk in case of a mishit?"

The fact it was the #1 handicap hole is not what gives me pause on my decision. It's more "I've got a long iron, on an uneven lie, with a lot of water in front." I've essentially got 3 things working against me. Can I pull it off? Sure, and it's not some crazy ask. But should I? If my chances are 70%, is that worth the risk? If it's lower than that certainly I'd say no, but if you're in the 70-80% range, it becomes more difficult.

To the point of others, there's no guarantee I'm making bogey if I chip it short, especially since the river was wide and it would have been a 100-yard 3rd shot. Quite possible I miss the green with the third, chip on and 2-putt for a double. Of course I could also hit a great wedge shot and roll a great putt and make a par.

I'm still a bit undecided on what was the right decision. I think perhaps with the multiple factors working against, chipping it short and trying to get two of the three factors in my favor (shorter club, more flat lie) in my favor may have been the right decision. I actually have a playing lesson with my coach today, so I'm going to discuss it with him.
 
I agree with your idea of after a round taking time to evaluate some of your results. I do the same. I suspect I tend to be somewhat conservative, especially in tournaments. I avoid the big numbers as much as possible. As you do, I try to evaluate the success percentage on tougher shots. We generally have the shot, we just need to consider how often we will succeed.
 
Depending on handicap, there is always going to be a percentage of failed execution on the easiest of shots - a punch-out for example. That one out of ten times it occurs doesn’t mean we should have chosen the high risk shot
- though we tell ourselves we might as well have tried to thread the needle.
The same is true when we take the riskier shot and it doesn’t work out. If we’ve considered and weighed the possibility of the bad outcome, we learn from it or decide it’s a part of the game worth putting work towards.

In other words, I can’t go around the course taking half swings with a wedge and expect to 1) score lower and 2) improve.
Golf is about measured risk/reward with the complete understanding that failing to execute above our skill level is a big part of that.
 
JonMA1 said:
Depending on handicap, there is always going to be a percentage of failed execution on the easiest of shots - a punch-out for example. That one out of ten times it occurs doesn’t mean we should have chosen the high risk shot
- though we tell ourselves we might as well have tried to thread the needle.
The same is true when we take the riskier shot and it doesn’t work out. If we’ve considered and weighed the possibility of the bad outcome, we learn from it or decide it’s a part of the game worth putting work towards.

In other words, I can’t go around the course taking half swings with a wedge and expect to 1) score lower and 2) improve.
Golf is about measured risk/reward with the complete understanding that failing to execute above our skill level is a big part of that.
Click to expand...


I don't watch a lot of golf (read "none") so have no clue when or where this happened, but on my youtube algorithm it just brought up a "never forget when x did this" (I think it was Rory McIlroy but not 100% SURE)

And from 20 or 30 yards in front of a pond he dumps it into the water. Like, that ball had zero chance of being a good shot at any location on the course.

Which is reassuring that even guys who receive lots of compensation, have copious time and opportunity to practice any shot they want, coaching on demand, etc...still sometimes hit the same shot we do.

less often, to be sure...but it happens.
 
My #1 course management focus, no matter where I play, is to always play away from trouble spots, and/or hazards.

I look at what's in front of me. Then decide if I need to lay up, fly the ball over it, or go around the problem. That's the only three options I give myself. Once I decide, then that's my correct decision. Even if I hit a thin, or fat shots, it was still the right decision. I just didn't pull the shot off that I decided on. It happens

My #2management focus is to never try a shot I haven't practiced. This is why I practice every shot I can think of. The 4 uneven lies readily comes to mind. I even practice hitting shots out of divots. My thought is I can hit the easy shots, so practicing the tougher ball lies is a tad bit more important.

My #3 management focus is to see #1, and #2.

Now do I always play this way, with so much focus? Not really. Only if the final score is of some importance. . These days I'm happy just hitting the ball, finding it, and hitting it again. No pressure.
 
Last edited:
So I talked to my coach today about this situation. His feedback was he didn't think I made the wrong decision. He did say that when the ball is below his feet, he tends to take 2 clubs more as the extra length helps him reach the ball and even a mishit is more likely to cover the trouble.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top