[Ty_Webb]

Interesting article. I'd say that the issue is there are two ways (really a whole spectrum I know, but bear with me) to be a "decent" player. You can either have a good long game and a mediocre short game or a poor long game and a good short game. Depending on the relative strengths of these, that will determine how good you are. For the person who's got a good long game and a bad short game, practising their short game will help their scores more than practising their long game. And vice versa.

I think the big problem that people have is that they practise their strengths, not their weaknesses. They do this in general because it's more fun to do something you're good at. It just won't make you a whole lot better.

I think one other flaw with his investigation is he's looking at averages, so the two people I talked about above end up being treated the same.

I did find the average first putt length thing to be very interesting. And thinking about it, not that surprising. If you're just catching greens or missing them, then sometimes you're 40 feet away and sometimes you're chipping when hopefully you might be around 6' or less away (after the chip), while the guy who hits every green might generally be around 20' away on average.