Yardage: why carry rather than net?

darthweasel

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For my own nefarious purposes was doing some reading on approach shots, studying up how to improve my game and I came across a frequent phenomenon where again and again, respected authority figures knowledgeable about golf insist amateurs are missing the boat by not knowing their carry distance.

I started thinking about it. I just got new clubs and reset my GPS recording, so I have between 2 (3h) and 22 (Driver) shots recorded. Most are in the low to mid teens. Certainly not enough shots to define where I will end up, but I can note trends.
D 253
3h 231
4h 220
5i 195
6i 186
7i 168
8i 153
9i 144
wedges, counter-intuitively, I only record my 3/4 swing as I avoid full wedge shots whenever possible as I prefer more control over them.

Anyhow, lets say I come up to a green with sand short left, water 20 yards right of the green and am 148 from center of green. As a mid to high capper, I have no business going at the flag so do not believe the flag position is relevant.

When I go to select a club, I am going to look at A) is there more trouble short or long, and B) is one of the clubs more reliable. For example, in this case, there is not a huge variance in dispersion between my 8i and 9i so I am not going to sweat that much. To me, the sand is really the main thing I am worried about so I am taking my 8i and going as I know, on average, my ball will end up 153 yards from where I am standing, sometimes short and sometimes long.*

Herein lies the strategic question; Why would I want to know the carry distance rather than the net? I guess to know if I clear the sand, but my shots tend to have very little roll anyway. It is not at all unusual to have the ball within a foot or two of where the mark is even with my 6i. I have made the "at least I got backspin" comment upon reaching my 6i ball so often it gets a groan even from me, it is just automatic.

But even more to the point, knowing carry is A) all but impossible to determine in general as we as amateurs do not have access to someone to mark where it started rolling and B) isn't the average distance you end up more important? If I am 150 out, what is more important: knowing which club flies 130, which one flies 140, which one flies 150 and which one flies 160...or which one ends up 130 yards out, which one ends up 140 yards out, etc?



TL/DR question: I feel like I am missing something. Why would it be better to know carry than net?




*recorded shots with the 8i are 168, 165, 168, 121, 144, 152, 165, 152. By contrast, with the 9i recorded shots are 157, 159, 131, 153, 142, 122, 144, 132, 148, 146, 144
 
The carry distance is the most important concern for all golfers. Amateurs and Pros. Because you would desire to be certain that your shot is going to carry the hazard, water, bunker or other obstacles between you and your target. And as you pointed out most well struck shots stop within a few paces of their divot.

So if you can't carry the hazard, trouble or obstacles, then your next best choice is to lag up. Again to a safe distance from danger. So unless you're playing a links course and planning on rolling your shot 50 to 100 yards unto the green, most golf is played in the air. Therefore your carrying distance will determine which club to choose.

Likewise when you go to a links course, you approach is King. You must know you total distance, carry plus any roll ti succeed. You will never hold a green in the air. The ball will just bounce off into one of the collection areas which provide extremely difficult opportunities for Par.


American Golf, is an Aerial Game and links golf is played on the ground. Both require different skills and different approaches and information about your game to successfully choose the proper club.

M2C.

Hopefully it helps.

Cheers

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Yardage: why carry rather than net?

Carry travels. Not everywhere will roll out the same, and there are plenty of factors that will change that number. Carry is king because you can then factor in conditions and shot type needed with carry. Knowing net is almost impossible round to round because wind, rain, slopes of the greens, etc, can all effect that number. If you are using something that averages net over time, it should come close over a vast number of rounds to your carry distance, as some rounds should be a little short (wet or windy conditions) and some will be a little longer (hot and or dry conditions). IMO net is only useful for a given round for the conditions in play. Overall it’s fairly meaningless course to course.

Understanding net (how the ball will finish) is very useful and you should have an idea. But carry is absolutely necessary to improve and play good golf.
 
Carry travels.


When I was first starting I was big on net distances. 290 on dried out runway fairways with an 8 degree launch angle? Got it.

Then I went to the southeast US to golf and the first drive stuck like Velcro. Immediately I learned the lessons that carry will always travel.
 
Carry travels. Not everywhere will roll out the same, and there are plenty of factors that will change that number. Carry is king because you can then factor in conditions and shot type needed with carry. Knowing net is almost impossible round to round because wind, rain, slopes of the greens, etc, can all effect that number. If you are using something that averages net over time, it should come close over a vast number of rounds to your carry distance, as some rounds should be a little short (wet or windy conditions) and some will be a little longer (hot and or dry conditions). IMO net is only useful for a given round for the conditions in play. Overall it’s fairly meaningless course to course.

Understanding net (how the ball will finish) is very useful and you should have an idea. But carry is absolutely necessary to improve and play good golf.

+1 to all of this. I factor all my choices on what the carry is.
 
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TL/DR question: I feel like I am missing something. Why would it be better to know carry than net?

For golf carry yardage (rather than total yardage) is used because bounce and roll is unpredictable.
 
It's one problem with Arccos and such gadgets. Arccos will happily tell me my 4-iron distance is 177 yards. Well, yeah. On a firm course when the ball stops rolling it will on average end up 177 yards from where I hit it.

Do I hit 4-iron when I have a 175-yard carry over a bunker? Heck, no. How about 165? No way. My carry distance with that 4-iron is somewhere in the low-160's at best.

OTOH when Arccos says I hit my 9-iron 123 yards that's pretty much correct.
 
You answered your own question. If "even" your 6I ends up feet away from your ball mark, of course you want to know which club carries 150 yds. and use that.
 
so how can one determine carry as an amateur? We all know range balls don't carry the same as regulation balls and even if they did I am not running out on a range with a tape measure...when I hit a ball, I am doing well to see the general line it took and approx. area, but knowing where it landed if it got roll is a non-starter without having an observer down there. Seems an important thing to know that most of us have no way of determining with accuracy. Having seen people's estimates for their driving distance...I am not good with a guess.

Genuinely confused as to how I can determine it without a team of volunteers...
 
About 2-3 years after I started playing golf I went to some "golf clinics" (really more like group lessons but it involved both lectures and playing on the course as a group with the pro). This was back when a few people were just starting to use laser rangefinders.

The way the pro said he taught good players (HS and college golfers) to learn their distances was the old-school notebook method. Every time they hit what they thought was a solid iron shot that flew exactly like they wanted it to, they should either use a laser or pace off from sprinklers or whatever it took to determine how far the ball had flown. Look for ball marks on the green to the get the landing spot, if not just use their best judgement as to where the ball landed.

So they might mark down exact carry distances for half a dozen shots per round, along with notations about the temperature or wind or uphill/downhill. The idea was to slowly over time build up knowledge of real-world carry distances for each club under various conditions.

I think a lot of the Touring pros you see on TV do something similar. Their caddie (or the player) made notes in their yardage book about what club they used from a certain spot and how the shot turned out, where it landed, anything else they might want to know when they're in that spot again.

Of course all this is adds up to a fantastic amount of effort. Not sure a weekend duffer like me would ever have the patience to keep that kind of notes, much less review them later to commit it all to memory. But I've played practice rounds a couple times with one of the better players in my club (when he's getting ready for a tournament) and he takes all kinds of cryptic little notes. He'll note that things like "5-iron, aim at oak tree, 10-yard cut from 168" after he hits a shot that ends up close to the hole. I asked him how he uses the notes and he said he goes over them the night before a round and tries to visualize each shot that he hit in the practice round.

Me? I don't care enough about my game to put in that kind of effort. But it's cool that some people do.
 
so how can one determine carry as an amateur? We all know range balls don't carry the same as regulation balls and even if they did I am not running out on a range with a tape measure...when I hit a ball, I am doing well to see the general line it took and approx. area, but knowing where it landed if it got roll is a non-starter without having an observer down there. Seems an important thing to know that most of us have no way of determining with accuracy. Having seen people's estimates for their driving distance...I am not good with a guess.

Genuinely confused as to how I can determine it without a team of volunteers...

If you get a lesson where you can get your distances mapped then you can get carry distances instead of overall. Then on course you have to adjust for wind, temperature and everything else.
Mostly it's just experience that i know how far i should carry it
 
carry is way more reliable. Conditions changes, and you can't expect consistency from a roll standpoint (unless you're weird like me, hit everything into the stratosphere, and carry is net lol).
 
so how can one determine carry as an amateur? We all know range balls don't carry the same as regulation balls and even if they did I am not running out on a range with a tape measure...when I hit a ball, I am doing well to see the general line it took and approx. area, but knowing where it landed if it got roll is a non-starter without having an observer down there. Seems an important thing to know that most of us have no way of determining with accuracy. Having seen people's estimates for their driving distance...I am not good with a guess.

Genuinely confused as to how I can determine it without a team of volunteers...

Helps if you have courses you play frequently with a few benign shots and good targets (i.e. a flat par 3 around 150 yards, or a par 4 with a fairway bunker you can measure and see your drive land relative to that). From there you can build based on experience.

My course has a relatively flat hole with a fairway bunker at 270 yards. I aim at the bunker and can see my shot land 10-15 yards short and stick (if wet, or bounce in if dry), so I know I'm getting 255-260 yards of carry. On par 3s I can measure from my pitch mark.
 
Helps if you have courses you play frequently with a few benign shots and good targets (i.e. a flat par 3 around 150 yards, or a par 4 with a fairway bunker you can measure and see your drive land relative to that). From there you can build based on experience.

My course has a relatively flat hole with a fairway bunker at 270 yards. I aim at the bunker and can see my shot land 10-15 yards short and stick (if wet, or bounce in if dry), so I know I'm getting 255-260 yards of carry. On par 3s I can measure from my pitch mark.

Good points. It's also *much* easier if you're a member of a club and play 100+ times a year on the same course. In fact, if you play a couple times a week for year after year on the same 18 holes it's almost impossible not to know you iron and wedge distances. Because you end up hitting slight variations of the same shots over and over.

I've played quite a bit at a nearby small-town country club course. Some of the guys there have been members for 20, 30, 40 years and don't even carry a laser rangefinder. After thousands of rounds, there's literally no spot on the course they can't just remember "It's a 6-iron from here when the flag's on the front".
 
carry is way more reliable. Conditions changes, and you can't expect consistency from a roll standpoint (unless you're weird like me, hit everything into the stratosphere, and carry is net lol).

my instructor was trying to lower my ball flight. I do tend to get very little roll out. On a completely unrelated note...wind adds 20 strokes to my game.
 
my instructor was trying to lower my ball flight. I do tend to get very little roll out. On a completely unrelated note...wind adds 20 strokes to my game.
So you need to know your typical carry. The club that insures you can clear any trouble between your current ball position and your target. And you need to know your maximum rollout, or total distance. This is the club that 100 percent absolutely will never reach the Hazard, OB or disaster that you might find if you hit it flush. Again 100 sure you avoid the trouble long.

If trouble in front. Water, traps etc. Guarantee to clear it. If trouble long, severe drop offs and deep bunkers pick the club that keeps your ball between your current spot and trouble.

Trouble short and long, pick the best club that splits the difference or simply lay up, and chip it close for a par or at the very worse bogey.

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So you need to know your typical carry. The club that insures you can clear any trouble between your current ball position and your target. And you need to know your maximum rollout, or total distance. This is the club that 100 percent absolutely will never reach the Hazard, OB or disaster that you might find if you hit it flush. Again 100 sure you avoid the trouble long.

This is why knowing both are very important. Some of the most regrettable shots I've ever hit were nuked attempts to lay up safe.
 
This is why knowing both are very important. Some of the most regrettable shots I've ever hit were nuked attempts to lay up safe.
Unlike television. Our golf balls don't one hop and stop.

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I find knowing my carry distances aids best with covering hazards but it's also very important for me when assessing club choice to a front pin with a false front to the green.

Back pin, also. I don't often go for a back flag, usually prefer middle of green and take what I get.

But if there's a slight breeze into me that may increase spin some, I just may go at it. In that instance when trying to calculate yardage wrt the wind, I need to trust my assumed carry yardage.
 
Carry distances so I can avoid the bunkers, hazards around a green.

Net distances will vary depending upon course conditions. If it's very dry and firm and I'm laying up to a hazard that I can't clear I might want to club down.

I always go for the center of the green now unless I'm playing a bump and run from up close. I am learning to recognize sucker pin placements.
 
Irons should be more or less the same number. When I have a lake off the tee that takes 250 to carry and I know I hit my driver 265 net it leaves me no clue what to do. Carry is constant after you adjust for weather.
 
I hit the ball relatively low and generally right to left so both are really important.

If I have 165-170 into a pin with no hazards in front I hit 7 iron and don’t worry about carry. Just trust that a solid shot will hit and roll out around that number.

If I have to carry a hazard in front of the green I need to take a 6 iron and choose what to live with......either my normal ball flight that might run off the back of the green or try to get my hands through the ball a little quicker (and left) and hope for a higher fade. Unless long is completely dead I still generally live with the former.


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I would always want to know my carry distance to ensure I have enough club to clear a hazard

With driver and fairways I would like to have my usual distances for both carry and roll based on my home club so that I have an idea of what I could expect to see, and adjust my expectations based on the conditions I am playing in
That may sometimes result in a shot going further or shorter than I expect but as long as I don't misjudge the conditions too much I would hope to still be in play
 
In terms of figuring out distances, there are fewer variables that affect carry, so it’s going to be more consistent in the “real world” vs. a monitor. Also, if you optimize total distance vs carry you’ll potentially have trouble hitting greens that have trouble in front and staying on.
 
First of all, I'd consider carry as the net distance and carry + roll as gross (total) distance.

That being said, carry is king. If I know my carry, I can plan my attack. Not saying it's gonna pan out as planned every time, but at least i know going into it that i stand a good chance of success.

This would likely change if i lived in the UK or some other location where links golf is more prevalent. I thank God every day that's not the case though.

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