The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

The only good news is that I got the first official Pittsburgh round of golf in this week. Went to Scenic Valley and despite some pretty good ball striking for early in the season, shot 81 thanks to 6, yes count them 6, three putt greens. In San Diego, I must have had about 10 one putt greens to shoot 76 with a putter I am lucky to use once a year. The forcast for today was for sunny skies, 0% chance of precip. and temps in the mid 50’s. It snowed this morning and at 1pm it is 40 degrees with a pretty stiff wind. I wish we could come up with some good use for all those satellites that are floating around up there, because they are no use in predicting the weather. Needless to say, this was not a week where there was any progress made on the mind body connection.

Now I would like to discuss a subject that has been floating around on various webs and social pages about the stat, greens in regulation, or as it will be referred to from now on as GIR. There was a reasearch  project that ties GIR to scoring. The conclusion essentially was that a high % of GIR equated to lower scoring implying that the old adage about the short game being the most important part of golf to score low was false.  If you follow baseball you know that baseball stats have gone to the next level. The stats geeks cover every phase of the game and then some. Where pitches are thrown, the stadiums where games are played, where players are positioned, lefty, righty, and how things go on every ball strike count to name just a few. Now I admit I did not read any of the study but what I read about the study in support of it did not seem to cover the following points. As in many stats I think GIR is too broad of a stat. It’s like batting average and fielding ave in baseball. There needs to be a stat on how close to the pin the ball his on every shot. One player may hit the green, 40 feet from the pin and another may be 15 feet on the fringe. Who do you think has the better chance of making a birdie. Some courses have bigger greens than others. The smaller the greens, then this stat becomes more important. How many times are these GIRs accomplished with less than full shots on par 5’s and short par 4’s. So your short game got the GIR and most likely got you closer to the pin. I could go on and on but you get the point. It’s not that I don’t think GIR is an important stat, but to score you better have short game.

This August will mark  the fourth anniversary of the blog. I have played and rated 92 public golf courses in Western Pa. that are within 90 minutes of my house. The original plan was to do 90 but over the course of the last 3 years I have found enough to get to a hundred, and I hope to finish this year. However the blog will take a little different course this year. In previous years, in searching for the answer to this goofy game, I have done various things with various amounts of success. I have written about some of the unsuccessfull things I have done, in more of a summary form durng the off season. This year as we search for that mind body connection I will discuss what I am doing as it is happening. Now this may not be as scary as seeing inside the mind of a serial killer but it could be pretty fightening. This will be the last warning I will be giving. The weather forecast is improving this week and I hope to get in 3 to 4 1/2 rounds this week.  See you next Sunday.