How Bomb & Gouge Broke Golf | The Game Plan | Golf Digest

Distance. It's one of the hottest topics of debate in the world of golf these days. How far is too far? Should you chase it? Does it actually matter? In this episode of The Game Plan, Golf Digest Senior Editor Luke Kerr-Dineen dives into the ever-popular strategy of Bomb & Gouge to discover whether or not those extra yards off the tee are actually worth the risk for pros and amateurs alike.

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[aaajjworm]

he's scary accurate AND outdrives everybody. His game around the greens is phenomenal too. He's not just a one trick pony. The man has skills to go with his muscles!

[jaywood]

Bryson has distance and accuracy. And if you watch his youtube, he is one of the best people in golf. he is advancing the game tremendously.

[lostalone]

I love that Bryson's approach to any problem is to try doing something differently to everyone else. That's incredibly beneficial for golf as a whole. Perhaps not everyone wants to play like Bryson every single shot, but being able to play like that, and discerningly play that style when the course favours it, that's great for your game. And practising a wider variety of shots and using different types and styles of club gets you better prepared to face unknown situations.

[Golfzilla]

The strategy of "bombing and gouging" all by itself has been around forever. You can go over 100 years ago and hear names like Ted Ray and how he utterly dominated others with his distance (but the rest of his game didn't always follow). The difference now is that modern technology has brought the bombing and gouging technique to a broader base of golfers. I can't believe that the majority of guys on tour today would be able to swing it as hard with a tinier sweet spot that ALSO penalizes you so dramatically when you miss it.

It's not a coincidence that Jack, Tiger, Sam Snead, Palmer, etc. dominated in their eras while others couldn't match them in the distance department. They obviously had powerful repeatable swings.

I would absolutely LOVE to see what the tour would look like if they brought back persimmon woods, and made them a traditional size. You'd still have some guys hitting it further than most of the others (and that would be your Tiger/ Jack types, and they would be superstars because of it), but probably half the field would be eliminated because they couldn't keep a ball on the planet. And likely others would be elevated due to their precision, even though they're a little short in the tee ball department.

[baseballehs]

I’ll give the speaker credit in actually acknowledging strokes gained approach, many golf publications will push speed but fail to mention the great importance of approach play which separates the higher level players.

[dtlocke]

Summary: trading a few shots in the rough for more distance is a good deal (this is the decision the pros face). But trading a few shots out of play for more distance, is a bad deal (this is the decision recreational golfers face).

[evandh]

I think it’s misleading to use the phrase “less accurate” when comparing longer/shorter hitters. Sure, longer hitters miss more fairways. But that’s not because they’re “less accurate” (indeed, their launch conditions and dispersion are just as tight as, if not tighter than, shorter hitters’). It’s because their ball simply runs out of room and/or travels farther on an off line.

[jimiverson]

The illustration also shows what happened at Winged Foot - course setup strongly favored bombing. When a fairway is uniformly narrow, which they were at Winged Foot, there is no advantage to not whaling away. The shorter shot is about as likely to end up in the rough. Once in the rough, the player who can use a more lofted club has a serious advantage, especially with "US Open" rough.. Setting up with wider fairways that get progressively narrower closer to the green would even up some of the advantage of distance.

[AB-nvbz]

Bryson is one of the most consistent golfers out there. Face to path dictates curve. Same face to path but with more speed make the ball curve more

[widdershinss]

Maybe something else to think about too is how (professional) golf courses have become more and more maintained over the years. Hazards have become better managed. Bunkers are kept to pretty tight regulations now and even the rough grass still has to be cut to an exacting length. Twenty or thirty years ago, this wasn't as prevalent and you were penalized a lot more if you didn't make the fairway.

Another thing is that golf club and ball technology have advanced so much even in the past 10 years. For example clubs have gotten so much more forgiving; even if you make bad contact, the ball is still going to go a significant distance down the fairway. Then even in the event the ball lands in some rough terrain, there is a plethora of hybrid golf clubs and wedges you can use to get yourself out of a jam.

With all this, players don't need to be as pin-point accurate off the tee box and can really focus on getting the ball as close to the hole as possible.

[jimralston]

Bryson is in my top 3 picks for Pinehurst. He's gonna have such an advantage shooting shorter irons onto those crazy greens.

[Trizzer]

In Disc golf, it is very similar. Everybody who wins has crazy distance. Putting is huge, but one of the 10 bombers will have a good putting day. Therefore, only people with power can win except in crazy circumstances where people putt unreasonably well

[jackblog-km]

I’m not the biggest fan of Bryson but I certainly appreciate him trying new things in a world where folks are fairly risk averse.

[adambitner]

I’ve always been a longer hitter, and as such I’ve always been confident with a driver in hand. Since I had pretty good distance I’d hit it more often because it was fun, and I became pretty good at a driver in a hand. Now as a golfer I notice I almost always score better when I’m hitting my driver on tee shots. I’ve always found (for me at least) is that although my errant tee shots with a driver go farther off line, whenever I try to ply it safe and take a 4 iron instead, I have errant shots more often, just because I’m more confident with a driver in hand.

[tilled]

Amazing video, the narration, the story telling, just outstanding. Chills.

[Brewskie]

Correct me if I'm wrong, I often am. I haven't watched the whole video but I'm already thinking about the the usga and them relentlessly wanting to attack distance. Roll back the ball distance, move tees back, lower moi limit, etc. This may be a stupid question, but wouldn't a better solution be to just let the rough grow even longer to more effectively penalize players that are there more often? It seems to me that this would be pretty effective. Thoughts?

[atfinthehouse]

Bryson just has found a way to enjoy the game. Even if he is not at his best for every round and every tournament.

[PalladinPoker]

It's not fair to point out certain legends like Nicklaus and Hogan as examples of distance > accuracy.

Nicklaus had top 3 fairways hit pretty much every year he competed, even breaking your mythical 80% if I remember correctly.

[oiiawah]

Where this breaks down is for amateurs and casual golfers. The reason pros bomb and gouge is because they are elite out of the sand, elite at chipping and flopping, and elite at lag putting and making the putts they should make. For amateurs, being in rough, or hitting out of bad lies can cause terrible contact that leads to hosel shanks, toe shots, and outright mis-hits that almost certainly lead to double bogeys. Even on a par-5, hitting a 2nd shot into a Bunker that's 80 yards away is often a 1-stroke penalty whereas for a pro, they can still hit that shot with spin and get it on the green. I'm off 8CHP and I'd much rather a 100 yard shot into a green (spicy 3/4 swing with a 54 degree) versus being in that fairway bunker and 20 yards closer

While yes, it is often preferable to be 130 in the rough, versus 155 in the fairway, if that "rough" also comes with the occasional bunker, hazard, or rough so bad that the only play is to just hack out of it, I'll take the fairway.

[johannesgutenberg]

Im of the mind that just crushing the ball as far as humanly possible, accuracy be damned, should be punished more by course conditions/setup.