Thanks to Pat Echelbarger for the following. The “I hit my Drive 270 Yards” section really lends credence to the “Tee it Forward” initiative championed by Barney Adams that I discussed in my post on March 28, 2012.

The Wall Street Journal’s John Paul Newport offers an interesting read in a recent Sunday column titled “Golf’s Biggest Delusions: Nine Things People Say About the Game That Aren’t True—and One That Is”. Armed with recent data results from PGA Tour ShotLink and Pelz Golf Institute joint studies, Dave Pelz helps him clear up two of those misconceptions. Newport writes:

“I hit my drives 270 yards.”
Hah! Maybe once, with the wind behind you, on a rock-hard fairway, when the ball bounced off a cart path and a squirrel advanced it an extra 10 yards. On no subject are golfers, especially male golfers, more deluded than on the distance they hit their drives, with the possible exception of their attractiveness to beverage-cart personnel. Here are the brutal facts, accumulated by Dave Pelz over several years of monitoring thousands of players at amateur tournaments. He used the same ShotLink equipment used by the PGA Tour to determine that, in 2011, the world’s best players averaged 291 yards off the tee. Male amateurs who play to a 30 handicap average drives of 166 yards; 20-handicappers average 183 yards; 10-handicappers average 214 yards; scratch amateurs average 235 yards. So dream on.

The biggest difference between Tour pros and amateurs is how far the pros hit.
Despite the pros’ prodigious length, their most compelling advantage compared with amateurs is their prowess in getting up and down from 30 yards. The pros manage to do so 46% of the time, while 10-handicap amateurs succeed only 11% and 30-handicappers less than 3%. “The short, partial-swing wedge is the high-handicap amateur’s worst shot,” Pelz said. Part of the problem is a poor feel for distance due to lack of practice. Even worse is hitting the ball fat or thin. Given the delicacy of the half swing, a fat hit might advance the ball only a few feet while a scull could shoot the ball 30 yards over the green. Even once they reach the green, amateurs could face their second-worst shot: long lag putting.

Other “delusions” Newport tackles in the article, which can be found here, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203918304577241550813907764.html, include “In Scotland, golfers never take longer than three hours to play a round”, “Ben Hogan’s ‘secret’ went to the grave with him” and “A 10-handicapper should shoot 10 over par.”