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The Hardest Shot in Golf? Pelz Tells

The PGA TOUR Superstore World Amateur Handicap Championship is the Ellis Island of golf tournaments, a melting pot for the young and old, the skilled and the, well, not so skilled. Thousands of players migrate to the tournament every year, and one of the game's most renowned instructors is more than happy to catalog this disparate group's entry into competitive golf.

Renowned short game guru Dave Pelz is back for the 12th consecutive year, logging shots and accumulating data that will benefit golfers across the globe. A former NASA scientist, Pelz has spent 30 years attempting to take the guesswork out of golf instruction.

He charts shots and studies hard data, enabling him to draw scientific conclusions about what players of varying skill levels excel at and struggle with.

The World Am is Pelz's personal Calabash seafood buffet, allowing him to gorge on data that is impossible to collect elsewhere.

"It's the one place we can go every year where we get 100 golfers that are grouped really tight," he said of the World Am. "For the men in the 20 handicap group, the lowest handicap is 19, the highest is 21. We know we have bona fide amateurs in this skill group and that's what gives this data so much value."

The value of the World Amateur to Pelz's work has increased exponentially since he began working with the PGA TOUR Shotlink crew. The same group that tracks every PGA TOUR shot down to the fraction of an inch now joins Pelz at the World Am, making his job much more efficient.

"When I first started collecting data, I did one person at a time," Pelz said. "Now we get every ball in every group off every tee and every second shot and every third shot. We've got our staff and they can just go from one ball to the next. We know where these players are hitting shots and that's never been done before, never been tabulated. When I first started taking this data it was 30 some years ago, I could follow one group and if I was really good, I could get three people in a day."

This year Pelz has expanded his studies to include more women.

"It's the first time we've taken information exclusively from ladies events," he said. "We are going to put them in the data base and compare. We are dividing the ladies up the same way (we do the men) seeing where their strengths and where their weaknesses are. It's just a thrill to be here."

Pelz, who opined about the best putter in golf history (George Archer) and Phil Mickelson's rational behind playing the U.S. Open without a driver Tuesday night at the 19th Hole, also divulged what is, statistically speaking, golf's most difficult shot.

"From a percentage standpoint, the worst performance in golf is the 40-yard pitch shot," he said. "If you put a golfer 40 yards from the green, the percentage he will miss the pin by is the largest of any shot in golf. (Amateurs) hit 40-yard shots worse than they hit drives, worse than they hit sand shots. It was a dramatic realization for us ... Even the tour players, though they don't chunk them fat or skull them (like amateurs), they are still less accurate from 40 yards than they are from 100 or 200. It's across the board, the worst performing shot in golf."

You will never guess the first shot golfers learn when they enroll at the Pelz Golf Institute.