In Short, It’s Key to Successful Golf

From his home in Springville, Utah, Billy Casper is keeping a close eye on Tiger Woods. Even though Woods is in Medinah, Ill., for the PGA Championship, he’s still within arm’s reach of Casper, and not only because Woods has 50 victories on the PGA Tour and Casper is one ahead at 51.

“He’ll win 100 before he’s through,” said Casper, the 75-year-old Hall of Fame player born in San Diego.

Woods has made short work of what should be a long journey to the trophy presentation, where his prowess around the green -- his short game -- has paid off handsomely, and not only because he has won his last two times out, at the British Open and the Buick Open.

Woods’ short game is a long story. So far this year, he has four victories, including a major, and leads the PGA Tour again in scoring average, 68.99, and earnings, $5.1 million. He seems poised for another year of domination, where the distance between Woods and his peers has seldom appeared greater or his authority more pronounced.

Or is it? Woods’ scoring average is only .48 better than Luke Donald’s 69.47 in fifth place, but Woods averages $466,142 each tournament versus Donald’s $156,331. Brett Quigley’s 70.08 average is 1.09 higher than Woods, but he averages $66,445 a tournament.

Can one stroke a round make such a difference?

“It’s actually about a half a shot,” said Brian Mogg, a teaching pro in Orlando, Fla., who works with Charles Howell III, Joe Durant and Bart Bryant, among others. “Two or three shots over 72 holes, there’s a huge difference in the amount of money you win.”

The secret, of course, is getting the ball in the hole as quickly as possible, and the best way to accomplish that might be with a skillful short game.

“I don’t know why people don’t talk about it more,” Casper said. “Tiger, by the way, is by far the best with his short game. He hits shots other players don’t even think about.

“At the British Open, it was some of the finest play I’ve ever seen. His course management, his discipline, sticking with his plan. Phenomenal feat. Maybe the best ever. And what made it all click was his short game.”

Mogg said he once played with Seve Ballesteros in a tournament in Japan and was so impressed with Ballesteros’ short game that he thought no one could be any more magical. Then Mogg began studying Woods.

“If you want to rate Tiger’s long game, his short game and his mental game, his long game is in third place. His short game, it’s the best of all time. And Tiger’s mental game has surpassed when Michael Jordan was in basketball.

“Tiger’s short game is as good or better than anyone I’ve ever seen. He’s the complete package.”

If Woods is indeed at the head of the class with his short game -- short irons, wedges, chipping and putting -- then it would seem that he has sorted out the relationship between scoring and making money. As it turns out, the margin is thin.

Scoring averages have scarcely moved in recent years. So far this year, the average tour score is 71.09. In 1996, the year Woods turned pro, the average score was 71.19, or a difference of a 10th of a shot in 10 years. Tom Lehman led with an average score of 69.32.

Greg Norman had the lowest scoring average in 1990 with 69.10 and the average score by a PGA Tour pro that year was 71.18.

However, driving distance and money are two factors that have changed dramatically.

In 1990, Tom Purtzer led the PGA Tour with a 279.6-yard average and John Daly led in 1996 with an average of 288.8 yards, which was almost exactly the average for the PGA Tour in 2005 (288.9). This year, 15 players average at least 300 yards off the tee and Bubba Watson leads with an average of 319.3 yards. Woods is 10th at 304.1.

Norman topped the 1990 money list with $1.6 million, and in 1996 Lehman led with $1.78 million. Last year, Woods led with $10.6 million.

With PGA Tour tournament prize money increasing annually -- from $46 million in 1990 to about $257 million in 2006 -- the money list would naturally reflect such a rise. Likewise, the longer driving distances are explained by technological advancements and better-conditioned players. And while players hit the ball farther, the courses are longer, so those two factors cancel each other out.

It has been a long-standing axiom in pro golf that players drive for show and putt for dough, but it’s no understatement that the short game is the foundation for scoring ... and scoring equals victories, meaning money.

“They’re making the game so hard around the green now to protect par, if you’re not almost good or great at the short game, you’re not going to win,” said Dave Pelz, a short-game guru whose principal client is Phil Mickelson.

Pelz used Mickelson as an example. Before hooking up with Pelz for work on his short game, Mickelson was famously 0 for 46 in majors until he won the 2004 Masters, the 2005 PGA Championship and this year’s Masters.

“It’s not like I taught him new shots, but we just got fine-tuned and worked on repetition,” Pelz said. “His average in majors is now about 1.4 shots a round better than it was when he had no majors.”

The list of great short-game players is short, according to Pelz, who puts Mickelson at the top.

“Tiger’s right there too. Retief [Goosen] and Ernie [Els] are right with them. Vijay [Singh] doesn’t putt as well at times, but when he does, his short game is as good as anyone.

“That’s what is keeping Sergio [Garcia] out of the top spots. He can’t putt as well. And Mike Weir is one of the best wedge players in the world.”

If distance isn’t really a problem and the difficulty in course setup -- outside of the U.S. Open, with its narrow fairways and punishing rough -- is now actually around the greens, then that’s where you should find the best players, according to Pelz.

“If the so-called Big Five went out and played five weeks in a row on courses that existed when I came out in 1975, there would be two or three scores in the 50s every day,” Pelz said.

“That’s how far they hit it, how straight they hit it and how they get it up on and down around the green. They’d annihilate it.”

At the top level of the PGA Tour, the margin of error is small and the scoring averages reflect it, where one shot a round has proved to be a lot more important than it looks.

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Stroke of genius

How one stroke a round, or even less, can make a huge difference in money (*in millions):

*--* Player Score avg Rounds Money* Avg/event Tiger Woods 68.99 39 $5.1 $466,142 Luke Donald 69.47 50 $2.1 $156,331 Trevor Immelman 69.64 58 $3.0 $178,279 Ernie Els 70.02 45 $1.3 $115,697 Arron Oberholser 70.02 59 $1.9 $122,373 Brett Quigley 70.08 75 $1.5 $66,445 Jose Maria Olazabal 70.12 48 $1.9 $139,507 Zach Johnson 70.26 72 $2.1 $104,454

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Notes: Players selected at random. Woods leads the PGA Tour in scoring average and the others are all in the top 20. Statistics are through Saturday and do not include last week’s International tournament, which is played under the modified Stableford scoring system.

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Los Angeles Times