How To Be A Great Golfer

I saw an article recently about how Bubba Watson had been working hard on his putting because he sees that all the great players are multidimensional and, in particular, putt well. There's no question that putting well is very, very useful for being a great player. But I think the multidimensionality is more the key. There are a bunch of different ways to break down the various skills involved in playing golf, but for this purpose I think I like the five-part division: power, accuracy, precision, recovery, and putting. The difference between accuracy and precision is that accuracy is about hitting fairways and precision is about hitting into the green. Recovery includes the short game and the art of playing from poor positions from tee to green, which is a slightly composite category but whatever. My hypothesis is that being a truly great player requires having no more than one of these five be a genuine weakness, and to be an all-time great player requires having no weakness so weak that it can overpower your game. A few examples will illustrate what I mean.

First, there is the case of Bobby Jones. His weaknesses were... well, okay, he didn't have any. He had top-class distance, was a phenomenal driver and great with the irons, and could pitch like an angel and putt like a fiend (that's a quote). I think that Bobby Jones is the only person in history to possess truly world-class elite-level talent in all five of these categories. The result, of course, is that he was probably the best actual player ever, winning thirteen majors out of twenty-one from 1923 through 1930 (a .619 winning percentage, which would even be good for a baseball player), and the Grand Slam in 1930. The only problem, of course, was that maintaining this highest level of play anyone has ever attained required such a spectacular level of concentration that it was, in a word, killing him, and he needed to get out.

Other all-time greats have had weaknesses, but were able to control and dominate their weaknesses rather than the other way around. Jack Nicklaus was a phenomenal driver, long and straight, who hit majestic iron shots and was a brilliant putter. But he was a mediocre chipper. That didn't ruin him, though (obviously), because his ball-striking was so good that he rarely had occasion to chip. In other words, the rest of his game took a lot of pressure off of his only weakness.

Ben Hogan illustrates that putting is not, in truth, utterly essential to being a Great Golfer. He could putt fine during his early career, but like Harry Vardon's bout with tuberculosis the car crash that nearly killed Hogan in 1949 did manage to destroy his putting touch. But of the next nine majors Hogan played after his near demise, he won six. Including a three-for-three season in 1953, missing the PGA only because it conflicted with the British Open (though he hadn't played it since 1948 anyway). How did he do this without any sort of putting touch? Well, simple: his ball-striking was so unbelievably spectacular, on a level no one else has ever approached, that it didn't just take pressure off of his short game, it seriously reduced the relevance of putting. Hogan could not make any putt outside of eight feet and still shoot a 67, by hitting every green and giving himself quite a few tap-ins.

Arnold Palmer is another case. He, like Nicklaus, was a slightly mediocre chipper, but that wasn't his primary weakness. Whereas Jack was straight and long, Arnie was just long. And wild. Very, very wild. But he didn't let this conquer him. Nothing can take pressure off of your driving game, because the tee shot decides how much pressure to put on the rest of your game. But what poor driving does is just to put so much pressure on your recovery skills. And Palmer excelled at recovery. He might hit it in the trees and Jack down the middle, but you'd get to the green and not be able to tell who was who.

Tiger Woods is a slightly different case. He has top-of-the-line distance, unparalleled iron play, a near-miraculous short game and recovery skills, and, usually, utterly dependable pressure putting. But, like Palmer, he's wild off the tee. But Tiger uses several strategies to keep his lack of accuracy from dominating him. He's no slouch at getting out from the craziest of situations himself, rivaling someone like Palmer. Unlike Palmer, he also, I think, uses considerable strategy playing from trouble: I've observed for a while that Tiger typically leads the tour in close approach shots from the fairway, and would be near the lead in hitting the green from the rough, but middle-of-the-pack in proximity from the rough. So he deliberately plays it safe when he's in trouble, refusing to compound his initial mistake. Finally, there is the spectacular display he put on at Royal Liverpool for the 2006 British Open, when (in a season when he finished 139th in accuracy) he led the field in fairways hit. Led it. He accomplished this by hitting one driver and about six three-woods off the tee all week, sticking mainly to his two-iron on the baked fairways of Hoylake. This is the final secret of how Tiger refuses to let his wildness beat him: he has the skill of clubbing down to a shorter, more accurate player's game by hitting three-wood or even less off the tee. He can be Fred Funk when he needs to.

All of this is occasioned, in part, by the feat that Phil Mickelson is pulling off this week. Specifically, he is last in the field in driving accuracy, one off the lead with one hole to play in the third round, and second in the field in greens hit in regulation. On the week he's hit about 30% of fairways, and 75% or more of the greens. Those numbers are just plain wrong. But it's not shocking; when Phil shot a 59 he did it hitting just 5 out of 14 fairways. There are some courses, of course, where you just can't do that, so it's not stunning that he missed the cut at Oakmont in '07. But the way Phil typically manages to defeat his weakness is the Palmer strategy: he just refuses to care if he's in the trees or the six-inch rough, he's just going to hit it to three feet regardless. It doesn't work as often as Tiger's mix of skills does, obviously, but it's pretty good nonetheless.