Connor Stirling Peterson argues that scrambling success depends less on varied short-game skills and more on where your approach shot lands. The key is precise distance control: knowing exactly how far to carry the ball and how much it will roll on different green speeds. Master one repeatable shot with consistent spin rather than varying shapes.
All right, let's talk about around the greens. I think this is one of the most overrated areas because a lot of the time people think that this has to do with scrambling and getting up and down more often, and it really doesn't. This is going to come out in your compound errors number in your statistics, and the primary goal once you've missed the green is just quite simply to get that next shot on the green. The reason for that is a lot of whether or not you're going to get up and down has to do with where you left your approach shot, which is why the video you just watched is so crucial to, to really understand. So if I hit it on the fringe and I have a 20-foot putt, well, if I two-putt that, it kind of feels like a two-putt. It doesn't feel like I got that up and down, versus if I hit a flop shot out of the rough over a bunker, there's almost no shot that I'm going to be able to get that shot up and down. And so for the most part, being able to get up and down more often has to do with where you left that shot. The overall quality of your short game is really based on how consistently are you able to get the ball on the green after you've missed the green in regulation. And so what we want to be able to do specifically is we want to be able to carry the ball specific distances. So if we have a flag that is 15 yards away from us and we know that if we carry the ball 10 yards it rolls out another 5, then we know exactly what shot we're going to hit. You know, we're going to carry the ball 10 yards and we're going to have roll out that last little, that last 5 yards, right? Let's say we end up on a different green surface where the ball stops really, really quickly. Well, then we know, hey, we need to carry the ball 15 yards instead of 10 like we normally would because the surface has changed. On the flip side, let's say the greens are really firm. We know that if we carry the ball 5 yards, it's going to roll out 10 yards. Okay, then the same exact situation, we know we just need to carry the ball 5 yards and roll out 10. Now, if you're in a position where the flag is closer to you, let's say you're 10 yards away and you know that you're on firm green, so you can carry the ball 5 yards, know it's going to roll out 10. Well, you know that just fundamentally you can't get to that pin, you can't get that ball up and down very reliably based on your short game, and you're going to be just— whether or not you get that up and down is essentially going to be luck based on your putting. And so when you're looking at that situation, just know, hey, I left myself in a bad spot And if I do make bogey, that's why I missed it in the wrong spot. Hopefully that makes sense. Um, but long story short, around the greens, the main skill we want to develop is carrying the ball a specific distance and hitting the same shot over and over and over again. So we have consistent spin. We don't want to be hitting the ball really high and then really low because then we have to know how all those shots play out in all these different circumstances. Versus if we're really good at one shot shape and, and one general trajectory and spin, We know it really well and we can use it effectively.
