Is this One Shot the Key to Lower Scores?

I never miss a green from 75 yards.

Only scrubs miss from inside 100.

Just last week I got paired with a junior golfer who asserted that he usually hits every green.

Seriously, kid?

Scroll various data-driven golf Twitter threads and you’ll inevitably find golfers proudly boasting about their green-hitting proficiency.

Golfers are filthy accurate from inside 100 yards, right?

On-course data from Shot Scope suggests an entirely different reality.

From 50 to 100 yards, 15-handicap golfers (Shot Scope’s benchmark for an ‘average’ golfer) hit just 49 percent of greens.

Breaking things out into a bit more detail …

From 75 to 100 yards, those same golfers hit just 45 percent of greens (and require an average of 3.57 strokes to finish the hole)

From 50 to 75 yards, average golfers hit just 54 percent of greens and take an average of 3.41 strokes to finish the hole.

For 10-handicap golfers, the numbers are only marginally better.

The average 10-handicap hits 56 percent of greens from 50 to 100 yards. The deeper dive shows us that from 75 to 100 yards, they succeed 53 percent of the time. The success rate is 60 percent from 50 to 75 yards.

Five-handicap golfers hit 65 percent of greens from 50 to 100 yards (we’re getting there). The success rate is 68 percent from 50 to 75 yards and 63 percent from 75 to 100.

As you can see from this data, golfers across all ability levels miss nearly as many greens as they hit from inside 100 yards. With that, it often takes at least another three strokes to finish the hole.

If you’re wondering, “greens hit” percentages for scratch golfers creep into 70s. That’s better but it further illustrates that the I never miss a green crowd is living in an alternate universe.

The truth is that few golfers are adept at hitting greens – even from reasonably close range. And, sorry, kid, nobody hits every green.

Why do we struggle so much? My best guess is that golfers, especially average golfers, struggle with partial wedge shots.

If there’s an upside, it’s that with futility comes opportunity.

The scariest shot in golf

There is something about a partial wedge shot that scares the hell out of an unhealthy percentage of golfers. I’d wager it accounts for more shanks than any other shot on the golf course. I suspect the reason for that is a classic chicken-and-egg situation. Did the fear cause the shank or did the shank cause the fear?

Regardless, that fear leads to an unhealthy avoidance. Fear of the partial wedge is why many golfers prefer to lay up to a full-shot distance rather than leave it as close to the green as possible and take their chances with less than a full whack.

Folks, the math doesn’t support that play. And while there is an exception to every rule, the odds are that most arguing the point aren’t that exception.

The fact is that data from Shot Scope suggests that lower scores invariably come from being closer to the hole.

Seems kind of obvious, right?

With that, it’s worth making the effort to master (or at least become reliably pretty good at) the partial wedge shot.

My moment of discovery

A couple of years ago, I was taking golf lessons every couple of weeks. After working on my iron game and general swing stuff for several consecutive sessions, we decided to mix it up a bit and work on the short game.

We fired up the Trackman Combine and started hitting wedges to a variety of targets inside 125 yards. As the lesson progressed, we made an interesting discovery. On half shots, I swung the four wedges in my bag the same speed – consistently and reliably to within fractions of a mile per hour.

And because my wedges are well-gapped, those half-wedge distances proved to be well-gapped, too. A half pitching wedge flew 95 yards. My gap wedge went 85, my sand wedge 75 and my lob wedge was good for roughly 60 yards.

Talk about easy math.

Oh, and if you’re wondering about the extra gap between the sand wedge and lob wedge, it’s because, at the time, my other wedges had four-degree gaps while I had six between the sand and lob.

Hitting more shots, I found I could work this partial swing thing a little deeper in the bag.

A half 9-iron produced a low-trajectory 105-yard shot. As I moved to my mid-irons and beyond, I could still comfortably hit the half shot but club speeds began to tick up with length so the gaps weren’t nearly as consistent.

Still, as a guy who spends a sub-optimal amount of time hitting under trees, it’s a nice shot to have.

The benefits of this little exercise were twofold.

First, in spending the better part of an hour working on partial wedge shots, I managed to eliminate the negative thoughts. There’s no penalty in the lesson bay and the process had made me extremely confident in my ability to execute what logically should be a pretty easy shot.

Golf is easier when you play without fear. I mean, if you can hit a full wedge shot, why not a half wedge?

Second, the work was translated to the golf course immediately. There’s always some adjustment to be made for environmental conditions, the lie, and the nuances of the hole you’re playing, but those initial beautifully gapped numbers provide a reliable baseline and that makes hitting greens on partial shots easier.

Do I hit every green from inside 100 yards?

Hell no, but I hit a lot more of them than I used to. It’s the reason why my handicap has remained stable despite a year of struggling off the tee.  

(Side note: It might be time to head back to the lesson bay to work on the driver.)

A few points for the road

This isn’t new

You may have realized that none of this is revolutionary thinking. I didn’t invent the idea of clocking your wedges. Dave Pelz has written extensively about it. There are a ton of videos on YouTube as well. Like this one 👇

I’m just here to share my experience along with some Shot Scope insights to show you how big the opportunity for improvement really is from something as simple as hitting partial wedge shots more reliably.

Feel versus real (Who cares?)

When tuning your personal clock, don’t sweat the difference between feel and real. I’m reasonably confident that my half-wedge feel goes a bit past nine o’clock (or above my belt) in the backswing. Who cares? What matters is that I have a reliable distance associated with that feel. Feel your feel, swing your swing, and be confident in the number.

Build your clock

Start with a half swing and build from there. Once you’re comfortable with a half swing, build up to ¾. Again, it doesn’t matter if it’s what Dave Pelz would call 11:00. Maybe it’s 10:30. Maybe it’s some arbitrary alignment with a random body part or piece of clothing. Again, correlating your feel to a distance is what’s important.

Incorporating that 3/4 into your arsenal will not only extend the range of your partial wedge shots but it will also give you another option for hitting to the distance in front of you.

For me, an 85-yard shot can be a half gap wedge, ¾ sand wedge or a full lob wedge. I almost never choose the last one (mistakes come easily with high-lofted wedges) but, depending on the situation, I’ll move between the gap and sand wedge with confidence.

When you’ve got that dialed in, experiment with gripping down for an added measure of precision.

Start closer, finish closer 

I see it all the time on the golf course. Guys would rather be 100 or even 125 yards out with a full swing than 75 yards out faced with having to dial it back a bit.

It doesn’t make sense and the data doesn’t support it.

With a little work (seriously, as far as golf swing stuff goes, this is pretty easy), any golfer can get comfortable, if not good, with less than a full wedge in their hands.

There’s no world in which I have a golf superpower. If I can do this, I’m sure you can, too.

Shot Scope is the Official On-Course Data Partner of MyGolfSpy.