Calculating Yardages for Partial-Percentage Lies
One question I often get, both on the EA Forums and here, is how to accurately calculate yardages when hitting out of the deep rough. Partial lies of 90% and above are most likely not going to give you much trouble, but it’s the 80% lies and below that are liable to ruin your round. Luckily, there’s an easy solution for getting yourself out of the deep stuff. All we need is a little bit of simple algebra. Don’t worry, it’s not as scary as it sounds.
When the lie indicator says something like 80%, it’s telling you that at best, you’re only going to get 80% of the distance you would normally expect with a certain club under standard conditions. So in other words, we can apply the following formula to calculate the distance we’ll achieve when hitting a 100% shot with an 80% lie (assuming no other factors come into play):
total distance = max yardage • 0.80
In the formula above, total distance refers to the actual yardage we’ll achieve, and max yardage is the maximum distance we’ll get with a given club. To come up with 80% of our max yardage variable, we simply multiply by 0.80. Easy enough, right? The problem is that this formula won’t exactly help us out on the course, because we don’t need to just find out how far our shot will go when we hit it with 100% power. Instead, we want to pick the distance our shot should go, then figure out what yardage we should actually hit to achieve this distance with the 20% power loss applied. In other words, we have a number for our total distance variable, and we have the percentage of our lie, but we need to solve the formula for our max yardage variable.
So how do we do that? Easy! We simply divide each side of the equation by our percentage. This will isolate the max yardage variable on one side, and give us a simple calculation on the other side. Our new formula will now look like this:
total distance / 0.80 = max yardage
And that’s it! To figure out how far you need to hit your ball to achieve your target distance, simply divide total distance by the percentage of your lie. So let’s say you aim up your shot, and you figure out that you need to hit the ball 178 yards to land on the green. You missed the fairway, and so you’re now hitting from an 80% lie. If you plug in the numbers, your calculation should look like this:
178 / 0.80 = 222.5
This means you need to hit about a 223 yard shot to actually get your ball 178 yards to the target. Keep in mind, however, that there are other factors that will need to come into play here. Remember that hitting from up-slopes and down-slopes will affect your distance, because they are essentially adding and removing loft from your shot. Also keep in mind that if you don’t hit your shot dead straight, you are likely to lose distance from the draw/fade effects of your shot. Recovery stats will also play an important part, because they determine how well your character controls distance when hitting from the rough. Check out this video to see how I apply the formula to an in-game scenario:
So am I suggesting that you keep a calculator next to you while you play? Yes! At least at first. With 30 second shot timers online, you may not be quick enough lining up your shots to actually get a chance to start punching numbers into a calculator. My suggestion is to try calculating some shots in your offline rounds. Get to know about how much you need to add to your shots to get out of these deep lies. Or here’s another good idea: print out an Excel chart with pre-calculated distances for your clubs when facing various lies. Using this type of quick-reference sheet may also help you learn your partial-percentage distances by feel. Isn’t this cheating? No, I don’t think so. I think you’d be surprised to find out how much information PGA Tour pros carry along with them when playing a tournament. It all comes down to preparation and practice. The players who put the most work into both are going to be the ones who rise to the top.
Good luck out there, and keep practicing. Remember, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them in the comments section below or send me an email at: nochindeluxe@tigerwoodspgatour.com
Hi nochindeluxe tks for a great site its very helpful. I have a question. How do i go about purchasing clubs with my bonus points accrued?
It tells me to set up an online shop. I am not sure how to do this. ANy help would be appreciated.
MAny thanks
GP46
To purchase clubs you just need to visit the pro shop. You don’t need to get online at all to do that. Just go to the “My Career” menu, then the “My Golfer” menu, then to the pro shop.
Many thanks for your quick response. I love the site.
Works great when you’ve got lie percentages turned on.
To do some of the math in my head I’ll usually work with 10% chunks. Usually pretty easy to figure out 10% of a club then subtract that to get general distances. You can even take that 10% and figure out 1% of that fairly easily as well.
I don’t play loft though and usually try percentage shots so getting super exact with my percentages doesn’t come into play and I’m happy to get somewhat close out of rough. And, if you have lie percentages off and you’re far away or have other hazards in the way you’re likely better off just trying to get back to the fairway where you can make an accurate shot.
With the variable percentages and the other randomness factors included I might keep the percentages on in the TW11 version since they won’t help as much and one might still not want to risk landing in another terrible spot.
I have to be honest, Anthony, the rough in TW11 is BRUTAL. It’s tough to get out of, and the variable lie percentages only make it tougher. I found it much safer to just hit back to the fairway like you suggested.
Hi NCD
I noticed in you’re calculating hitting from the rough. When you add loft you do 1 click for each percent, but I thought you said use 1 click for each 3 percent like 79% would be 7 clicks. I tried your method from rough and it works great for longer irons and woods but not using wedges. How do I calculate with wedges.
Thanks for all your help
Jerry
1 click equals 1% of power reduction. If you need more info on this see this article: http://tigerwoodspgatour.com/?p=606
The system should work the same with wedges. How are you coming up wrong with wedges?
Your right I don’t know what I was doing before. I just tried again I had 94 yards to pin loft was 72% LB wedge. I divided 94 by 72 = 131 at 86% I did 14 clicks and was inside 10 foot. I tried a couple more and they worked but it seemed like the loft didn’t go all the way with 30 clicks. I will keep working with it because I had a par 5 about 188 to pin from rough and put it 4 foot to pin. in two. I think you said sand traps work the same is that correct?
Thanks again for your help
Jerry
Yep, it should work the same for sand as well. About the 30 clicks thing, wedges have 35 clicks of loft available, but mid irons only have 28 I believe. So if you are taking a longer mid-range shot with an iron, the most you’ll be able to loft down to is 78%.
Great stuff NCD!
I will be on 2010 for along time….
A clarification on “yardage”….. when I am approaching the green, If an elevation is 15ft, that = 5yds. Should I be looking at 15 clicks, or 5 clicks?
For some reason reason I want to relate it to yards, rather than feet. 6 ft of up or down is 2 yards, so 6 clicks or 2? Am I looking into this too much?
Thanks for the dedication and work.
You’re right, that is a little confusing. If I was facing 15ft of uphill/downhill elevation on my approach, I would adjust +/-10 yards to my shot, because remember I only adjust for a MAX of 10ft of elevation change, regardless of how much it actually is. Then to adjust for that 10 feet, I would add or subtract 10 yards from my shot. Then once you have your target percentage, you’re just adding clicks of loft to subtract distance from your 100% shot. So if the shot I needed was 86%, I would tap in 14 clicks of loft to achieve that percentage with a 100% shot.
BTY – A great site. I’ve learned more from here then anywhere else. Great of you, NoChinDeluxe, to share your knowledge. Many wouldn’t.
Am I reading your above comment correctly?
For every 1 ft of elevation change, you adjust 1 yard, up to a max of 10 yards? So if you have say, 1 ft rise, you add 1 yard to your distance?
I’ve been trying to do it (I think) like the previous poster. For every 3 ft of elevation change, I would +/- 1 yard.
You’ve got it right. For every 1 foot of elevation change, adjust 1 yard of distance. So if it’s up 1 foot, add 1 yard of distance. If you haven’t watched my video on this stuff, you should check it out as it will explain the exact way that I do it. Here’s the link if you haven’t been there:
http://tigerwoodspgatour.com/?p=549
Hi NCD, long time reader of your great site first time poster.
One thing I would like to say/ask is that before using your calculations, my method was a very rough mental calculation and then a conservative guestamate, and then even after doing the correct NCD calculations I have found that every so often I get a “flyer” as IRL.
Has anyone else encountered this phenomenon and if so has this been built into the game to add more spice?
One factor that leads to this type of thing is down-sloped lies. So say you’re on the fairway and you’ve got something like a PW to the green. You may actually be unaware that the ball is on a down-slope and is actually slightly lower than your right foot. In the game, this can cause your shot to be seriously de-lofted, resulting in a longer, lower shot.
Another factor that does this is the computer assistance on your shot. With low wedges, sometimes the computer wants to overshoot the pin for you, and have it backspin to the hole. Well it doesn’t always realize that you’re aiming too close to the rough to pull that off, and so instead of backspinning, it just flies it into the rough.
I really don’t have advice to avoid this kind of thing. Luckily it doesn’t happen enough to really throw off your game. Like I’ve always said, my shot system is definitely not perfect, and there are some things you just have to play by feel. I make no guarantees and will not give refunds!
Yes, I had watched the video but being a TW noob it has much more meaning now, after playing more, then when I first seen it.
I have another dumb question. I’ve been playing with your system since my last post. I’ve done the calculations to the Nth degree. To the point where I measure the width of the aiming circle so I can calculate left/right wind adjustments. With all this, I generally drive the ball past where I figure it will land (provided I hit 100%).
(Here comes the dumb question). When you look at your profile and the player has a 110% power, do you have to reduce your shots by 10% to deal with this? I thought it was accounted for in the range of each club? I’ve just started messing with the 10% reduction and I seem to be landing them better?
No, you shouldn’t have to account for that. The 110% power should be adjusted for you and represented with the aiming circle. It may have to do with how you have your driver tuned, or it may just be the conditions of your shot. If you are playing fairways any faster than average, this will obviously cause your shot to roll further. Any type of downhill or tailwind shot will also abviously cause this. Another factor would be hitting a down-slope when your ball lands. If your ball carries to a down-sloped part of the green, it’s going to bounce off and roll further. I talk about this effect in this article: http://tigerwoodspgatour.com/?p=297
how does one get an over 100% on their swing?
You can’t in TW10. The max is 100%.