Dustin Johnson just capped off an excellent tournament by holing out a nine iron from 171 yards to finish with a six shot victory. He’s going to be among the favorites heading to Shinnecock Hills this week.
I think many new golfers, and even some of the chops who’ve been playing golf a long time fail to realize that you don’t need to hit it 350 yards to be a scratch golfer.
Case in point. Years ago when I was a teenager, and already a pretty long hitter, I would seek to play in the PA Amateur. There were local, 18 hole qualifiers scattered around the state to get into the tournament if you weren’t exempt.
At least a couple times when I played in these qualifiers, and I think once or twice when I played in the biggest local individual tournament in the Harrisburg area, the Jake Gittlen Memorial, I would be paired with this old fella whose name I can’t remember.
Just about every time I played with him, he beat me like a drum and I was always left scratching my head as to how.
Because this gent couldn’t hit it more than about 220 off the tee, while I was consistently out there about 270 (remember, this was in the persimmon days).
On any par four of 400 yards are more, he was hitting furniture into the green.
However, he rarely missed a fairway and he was an absolute demon around the greens.
Ultimately, he would walk off the course with a 73 or 74, while I would be shooting 78, playing from the trees.
Back to DJ. In the last few years he’s taken his game to another level, and it’s all because he figured out that just being able to hit it 350 was not enough.
In 2016, he became one of the best from 100 yards and in. This has helped him to overcome a somewhat shaky putter.
This is why I can’t stress enough that you should spend a minimum of 50% of your practice time working on your short game.
A deadly short game will help you overcome a lot of shortcomings with the rest of your game.
With all that said, if you want to be about a +7 golfer like DJ, hitting it 350 doesn’t hurt!
