I’ve had a poll running in the sidebar for a while asking what part of your golf game you spend the most time practicing. As of this writing, there are 75 responses that break down as:

• Short Irons - 32%
• Mid Irons - 17%
• Putting - 16%
• Pitching - 12%
• No Practice - 7%
• Long Irons - 5%
• Driving - 5%
• Chipping - 4%
• Trouble Shots - 1%
• Sand Play - 0%

I find the results to be interesting.

There are many possible ways to explain why certain aspects of golf are given more or less practice time. You can make a case that putting should get the most practice time because statistically it’s the most used club in the bag. You could make a case for short irons, pitching, and chipping because getting close enough to the pin to ensure a one-putt is quite desirable.

What surprises me is that anyone spends most of their time practicing drivers or long irons/hybrids. I’d even put mid-irons in that category.

Let’s step back and look at the purpose of practice. There are tons of theories about how to spend practice time. My personal belief is that one statement sums it all up: spend the most practice time on the things that will lower your scores the most. Seems simple, but there are obviously people that may not realize how important certain aspects of golf are. For casual players, practice time can come at a premium, so it makes little sense to spend time practicing anything that will not provide the maximum return on time investment.

Take, for example, the driver. I can’t imagine a situation where a player’s driving is so wretched that it should get the most practice time.

Don’t get me wrong - if it’s going bad, I can understand devoting a session to the driver, or even a few sessions. Remember though, I was asking in general, not for specific cases (in fairness, the poll didn’t really specify that).

If you spend most of your practice time on the driver in general, then the better plan is probably to just leave it in your bag. Long irons are in the same category. If your short game is solid and you slop it around off the tee, you can still score well. On the flip side, if your short game stinks but your driving is great, I promise you, your scoring will be bad.

Without a doubt, short game (finesse wedges, pitching, chipping) and putting should dominate your practice time. But among those categories, which is more important? As I said at the top, I think an argument could be made for either one. However, I’d make the case that while these things should top your practice time, putting is less critical than wedge play.

I’ve discussed Dave Pelz’s Putting and Short Game Bibles at length before, so you may be familiar with the two key concepts: the Golden Eight Feet, and PEI. The idea behind the Golden Eight Feet is that as players are left with putts of more than 6-8 feet, the odds of making them decreases sharply, regardless of skill level. That’s right: you’re not making many 20 footers, but most tour pros aren’t either.

Percent Error Index (PEI) basically is a measurement that Pelz devised to measure the accuracy of finesse wedge shots. Briefly, if you miss a 100 yard shot by seven yards, then you PEI for that shot is 7%. The object of short game practice is to get that PEI as low as possible.

In essence, you work on wedge play for the single purpose of getting shots within the Golden Eight Feet. Outside of that and you’re probably two-putting or worse.

If you’re reasonably adept at making short putts and lag put reasonably well without a ton of three-putts, then the work you put in on the practice green will start to show diminishing returns. But become precise with the wedges, and you’re guaranteed more birdie and par chances and when things are going bad, more par and bogey save opportunities.

That’s why my own response to the poll was “Short Irons”. It seems like a lot of you feel the same way. Statistically speaking, a good number of you disagree. I’d love to hear your ideas about allotting golf practice time.

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