If there is a golf stat I’m uniquely qualified to speak to, it’s one I’ve made up called “I’m such an idiot”s (ISAIs).
I am good for about three or four of these every round, sometimes even more, and if you analyzed them closely, you’d notice a consistent element of avoidability. Because lSAIs are not just bad shots—I am also prolific at those—but a subset of bad shots that you would have executed better if you weren’t . . . what’s the right phrase . . . such an idiot.
Examples: the hasty lay-up that still leaves you with an even more challenging next shot. The 15-foot putt you gun six feet past. Punch-outs through one side of the fairway that leave you blocked out on the other side.
A big one is chipping. The latest episode in my colleague Luke Kerr-Dineen’s brilliant Game Plan series is about chipping strategies, and his main point underscores something that comes up frequently for golfers like me. Most of our trouble around the greens stems less from poor technique and more from poor decisions.
Luke dissects disaster shots—a wedge in your hand, but you don’t hit the green—which is straight out of the ISAI textbook. The problem isn’t really the shot’s degree of difficulty. It’s failing to square the shot’s degree of difficulty with the situation.
A classic example: You are just off the green, maybe in the fairway or even in some light rough, and you could easily putt or run something low to the flag. As Luke explains, this is almost always the right decision. But too often in those moments, we opt for something more complicated in an effort to knock it really close, and that’s usually the shot you’re kicking yourself over minutes later.
More Low Net 
Golf Digest Logo Every practice session ask yourself, am I looking to get ready or get better? 
Golf Digest Logo There’s an important part missing from your practice 
Golf Digest Logo The sneaky upside to playing your worst
As it happens, this ties neatly to another concept we’ve recently explored called “the paradox of choice”, in which a surplus of options causes unnecessary complications. In this context, the short game tends to be particularly fraught terrain.
Why? Because many greenside shots at least appear simple enough, and if we’ve had a modicum of success with one at some point, we’re more seduced into thinking we can pull it off with ease. But chips and pitches also come with a range of difficulty, even for tour pros, which is why Luke lays out a checklist of strategies that can steer you clear of trouble.
On balance, he says, low and slow is usually safer, but there are other factors to consider. The more you learn to separate the shots you can hit from the shots you should hit, the less likely you’ll end up feeling like an idiot.
Have a topic you want me to explore? Send me an email at [email protected] with your feedback.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
