TheBeardedFatGuy
Birdie Member
I have a few friends that i play with regularly and, unless I'm having a particularly bad day and one of them a particularly good one, I usually win. That's not bragging, most of you would kill me on the course, badly, I'm sure. I say it because it's relevant to this post. After months of this happening we started analyzing why I was always winning and realized it was the accuracy of the upshots. Most of the discussions I've seen have been about debating drives vs putting as the most important part of the game, but the upshot has seemed to make the most difference for us. Obviously if your drive is good enough it becomes your upshot, but we're not there yet. While the guy I play the most often has a drive comparable to mine, maybe even a bit more accurate, and his putting is comparable to mine, on the upshots we differ in accuracy. Where I can usually get within 20' of the basket on any upshot under 200', he is often outside 50' after his upshot, which means I'm making a lot more of my first putts than he is. Even if my drive goes disastrously wrong, like smacking a tree or whatever, my recovery upshot often puts me back in the lead on the hole. I'd like to know how much importance other players place on the upshot in their game. Do you think it's critical, or do you prefer to think in terms of drive, then whatever's left is a putt of varying distance?