There are a lot of variables that have to be factored into the equation and each tne you change one of those variables, it changes the answer.
How long is the long game? Or conversely, how short is the long game? And how accurate? It he just a little off target, or does he spend his entire round stomping around the outback? How imaginative is he at getting out of a jam?
Then the other way... how good is the short game? Or how bad?
Then factor in the type of course hie plays.
And oh yeah.... is this player playing the tees that he should be playing to match his game???
Being in a Men's club with up to 250 players, I've seen every type, and I'll take the average long game with solid short game every time. Of course, I don't really know what "average" means to this guy either. I'm talking 200-220 yard drives that are usually in play, although half may be in the rough. If that player is playing from the correct tees, and has a good hand around the green, he should be a solid 10-12 handicap, if not better.
On the other side, I've also seen the bombers, and most of them, while they out drive me by 20 to 50 yards (and a few of them by a lot more than that), more than half of them also score worse than I do. In the tournament last weekend, I had a bomber in the group in front of me and another one behind me. Both spent much of the day playing provisional balls off the tee, searching for their balls in or hacking them out of the native rough, and pitching out from under and behind trees. It's going to take a miracle of a short game to recover from that. Neither was even remotely in contention in the tournament.
I'm an average driver... I hit my driver about 240 or so on average, and most of the time I keep it in play somewhere. My approach game is sometimes frightening, but I keep my handicap in the 11-12 with my short game. And if my short game could be better, I'd take that over more length, unless the added length came paired with increased accuracy, and in my experience that is a rare commodity.
Let's face it, good golfers have the whole package, and the higher the handicap, the more that your game lacks in some (or all) of those areas. The best thing that you can do if you seriously want to improve is to track your game, find out where your shortcomings really lie, then do what is necessary to improve in those areas.
