There is a phrase the Tour commentator uses, two or three times a Sunday telecast, that the average amateur has heard a thousand times and has never once made the standard of their own round. The phrase is pin high. The phrase is what the commentator says when a player has hit the ball the correct distance, give or take a yard, and missed the green left or right of the hole. The commentator says it with the same approving tone whether the ball finished six feet from the cup or thirty. The reason is that pin high, on the Tour, is the result. The line is the secondary detail. The number on the strokes-gained: approach card, for the shot that finishes the right distance from the green but the wrong side of the pin, is almost identical to the number for the shot that finishes the right line. The shot that finishes ten yards short or ten yards long is the shot that costs.
The amateur game does not work that way. The amateur game, on the same hundred-and-seventy-yard approach the Tour commentator was watching, is built around the line. The amateur picks a club, aims at the flag, and rolls through the swing thinking about left or right of the hole. The result of that thought process, on the strokes-gained accounting of the average amateur round, is that the ball finishes ten yards short of the green roughly half the time, ten yards left or right of the green about a quarter of the time, and pin high almost never. The pin-high miss, which is the cheapest miss on the course, is the miss the amateur game does not produce, because the amateur game is not trying to produce it.
Why short is the most expensive miss
The geometry of a golf hole is not symmetric front-to-back. The front of a green, on almost every course in the world, has a hazard guarding it. The hazard is a bunker, or a slope falling into a bunker, or a strip of rough sitting in front of the bunker, or, on the better-designed courses, a false front that gathers the short shot and returns it back down a slope toward the front edge of the bunker. The back of a green, on most courses, has none of that. The back of a green is rough, or a flat collar, or, in the worst case, a downslope to a chipping area. The strokes-gained number on a forty-foot chip from the back fringe is, in the average amateur’s round, almost a full shot better than the number on a thirty-yard bunker shot from the front sand.
The amateur, who knows none of this in numbers, knows it in feel. The amateur who has just left a ball in the bunker short of the eighteenth green walks up to the bunker shot with a specific kind of dread. The amateur who has missed the eighteenth long walks up to the chip with a kind of mild irritation that they will, give or take, get up and down in two. The dread is the more accurate of the two emotions. The bunker shot is the shot the amateur is going to cost themselves on. The chip from behind is the shot they will probably save.
The Tour, which counts everything, has known this for a decade. The Tour player on a short par-four with water short of the green is not trying to put the ball on the front edge. The Tour player is trying to put it pin high, which on a back pin means in the heart of the green, and on a front pin means just over the front bunker. The Tour player would rather miss long, in every part of the bag, because long is the side without the cost.
What the amateur is doing wrong, in one sentence
The amateur is taking the wrong club. The reason is simple. The amateur is hitting their seven-iron, on a good strike, one hundred and fifty-five yards. The amateur is hitting their seven-iron, on the average strike of an amateur round, one hundred and forty-eight yards. The amateur has, in their head, the number one hundred and fifty-five. The amateur, on the approach to a green that is one hundred and fifty-five yards away, takes the seven-iron. The seven-iron strike, on the day, comes off the eighteenth-groove of the club and finishes seven yards short of the front edge.
The Tour player, who knows what their seven-iron does on the bad strike as well as on the good one, is not on the same hundred-and-fifty-five-yard approach. The Tour player is on the approach the average amateur should have been on. The Tour player took the six-iron. The six-iron, on the average Tour strike, goes one hundred and seventy. The six-iron, on the bad strike, goes one hundred and fifty-five. The Tour player has chosen the club that produces a pin-high result on a swing that is not their best, and a long-and-on result on a swing that is. Both are acceptable. Both are pin high or longer. Neither is in the front bunker.
The drill: write the bad-strike number down
The drill, for the amateur who wants to take the right club on the next approach they hit, is the drill almost no amateur has ever done. The drill is to spend a range session with a notebook. The notebook has, at the top of one column, the words “good strike”, and at the top of a second column the words “bad strike”. The amateur hits ten balls with each iron in the bag, hits them at a target on the range mat, and writes down two numbers per club. The good-strike number is the yardage the amateur sees on the best three of the ten. The bad-strike number is the yardage on the worst three of the ten. The amateur, on the back of the notebook, transfers the two numbers into the yardage chart they will take to the course.
The yardage chart, on the course, is read as follows. The amateur, on a hundred-and-fifty-five-yard approach, finds the club whose bad-strike number is one hundred and fifty-five. They take that club. They make a normal swing. The ball, on a good strike, flies the green into the back fringe. The ball, on a bad strike, lands on the front of the green, six feet from where it would have on the good strike of the smaller club. Either result is pin high or longer. Either result is the result the Tour commentator is approving of when they say the phrase.
What changes in the round
The change the amateur will notice, on the first round after the bad-strike column has been added to the yardage chart, is not a change in their ball-striking. The ball-striking is the same. The change is that the misses, when the misses come, are coming from the back side of the green instead of the front. The bunker shot the amateur was reaching for twice a round has, more or less without their noticing, dropped out of the round. The chip from behind the green is the new shot the amateur has to play. The chip is the shot the amateur was going to save up-and-down on anyway. The card, at the end of the round, has two fewer doubles on it. The two fewer doubles are not because the amateur hit the ball better. The two fewer doubles are because the amateur took the larger club.
The standard, on the next approach, is the standard the commentator has been using on the player whose career the amateur watches on television. The standard is pin high. The standard is not a line. The standard is a distance. The distance, on the average amateur shot, has been the thing they have been getting wrong. The fix is one club longer. The number to look for, in the round that follows the range session with the notebook, is the number on the scorecard that has come down by two or three. The number has come down because the front bunker is no longer in play.