Rory McIlroy has had his share of hard-to-accept outcomes during major championships.
Freshest among those disappointments are the two short misses on 16 and 18 during last month’s U.S. Open at Pinehurst, handing the championship to Bryson DeChambeau.
Other painful memories: Imploding on the back nine at both the 2010 Masters and the Open Championship at St Andrews in 2022 where he didn’t have a single one-putt during either final round.
Scott Fawcett, a former touring professional who now is a golf entrepreneur, believes his DECADE Course Management System—already with more than 8,200 active members—could have prevented one or perhaps all three of those disasters.
“Without knowing him, never having met him or had a conversation with him—and I’d have to talk with Rory about his process—there are a couple of obvious places for me to start with him.
“I’d tell him to stop trying to work driver both ways and that he needs better speed drills for his putting because his pace isn’t great all the time and he tends to get a little line-locked. Yeah, I’d work with Rory from a totally different angle based on DECADE and the data.”
What is DECADE?
It’s a course management tool with a kind of hybrid recipe.
The two key ingredients are shot-distribution patterns along with PGA Tour scoring statistics (based on ShotLink data). DECADE stirs those together along with a slice of expectation management and a dash of strategic psychology.
Combining these data sets, Fawcett created a method of when to aim for the center of a green if a pin is closely protected by a deep bunker or water. Effectively, the system is intended to eliminate the mistakes we all make on the golf course.
“DECADE” stands for
D – Distance
E – Expectation
C – Correct Target
A – Analyse
D – Discipline
E – Execute
“Those really are the only six steps to actually choosing a target and playing efficient, disciplined golf,” Fawcett said.
How does DECADE work?
Video training walks you through the primary building blocks (you can also take advantage of live monthly Q&A sessions) of managing your game by optimizing your strategy. After entering five scores, the app’s algorithm analyses a golfer’s statistical profile and compares it with thousands of rounds in DECADE’s database.
“The way the app works is, we give you these red Xs and green checkmarks where you’re over- or under-performing against your scoring average peer group so then you can hone in on where your deficiencies are in order to get to the next three shots’ better scoring average,” Fawcett said.
Effectively, DECADE is about smarter choices. It’s about minimizing risk and placing more emphasis on the score you make for each hole and how to get there.
In summary, this system teaches you to think more clearly.
Who is Scott Fawcett?
A former NCAA Division I golfer at Texas A&M, Fawcett turned professional in the late 1990s, playing the Web.com and Hooters tours. His high-water mark came in 1999 when he teed it up in the U.S. Open at Pinehurst.
But pro golf didn’t work out the way he wanted.
Frustrated by his lack of progress, Fawcett, who holds three degrees in mathematics, pivoted to the professional poker circuit in 2003 and 2004.
“After I left the pro game, I started seeing golf more as a poker game and as a math game which helped me with my ridiculous expectations that I had to begin with but once the Tour released the Strokes Gained putting data in 2010, it immediately confirmed for me that ‘drive for show, putt for dough’ just wasn’t true.
“After they started releasing more and more of the data, it became obvious that many of those old clichés and ideas I had about golf just were not correct.”
Having regained his amateur status in 2013, Fawcett embarked on a new goal: to win the U.S. Mid Amateur title and play in the Masters. Using PGA Tour stats and shot-distribution patterns to form those early pillars of an on-course strategy and management system, he was confident about dreaming big.
“I felt like I still had five or six good years left in me to win it and play at Augusta.”
“Every Shot Counts”
Right about that time, Mark Broadie’s groundbreaking book, “Every Shot Counts”, was published.
At the forefront of assisting the PGA Tour with its Strokes Gained putting data, the Columbia Business School professor’s analytics proved an intriguing new platform for golfers’ decision making.
For Fawcett, the book confirmed many of his beliefs and theories about golf strategy and that shot patterns and expectations could be quantified in a mathematical formula.
“Everything I did is based on his work but I wouldn’t say his book inspired the idea because I was already working on it before the book came out,” said Fawcett, who keeps six laminated pages of Every Shot Counts on his desk for easy reference.
“When Strokes Gained putting came out, I tried to apply a little bit of that data to my ideas. Once they released the entire Strokes Gained catalog in 2013, I realized I could quantify the size of shot patterns from any given distance.”
Armed with the foundational platform of DECADE, Fawcett was ready to apply it the following season and make a run at a U.S. Mid Am title.
The tipping point
Unfortunately, an injury put him on the shelf just one week before the 2014 Texas Amateur.
Frustrated but undeterred, he tested DECADE anyway by caddying for a talented young junior from this home club with whom he’d played a lot of golf. His name? Will Zalatoris. Putting his trust in Fawcett and DECADE worked out pretty well. The kid won.
“That was the light bulb moment—caddying for Will and him winning the Texas Amateur,” Fawcett says with a smile.
For Zalatoris, the win proved a harbinger of things to come. Using DECADE that summer, he won the Texas Amateur, U.S. Junior and the highly regarded TransMiss Championship, going from 3,300 to third on the World Amateur Golf Rankings.
“Funny, but if I had tried to apply this myself, I think I would have tossed it in the trash can at the turn in the first round,” Fawcett recalls. “I’d have probably thought this is silly. I can play more aggressive than this.
“But caddying for Will, removing that emotion and being tied only to the outcome, I was playing him like a video game. It just made it so crystal-clear how important proper strategy is along with the patience and discipline to apply it.”
What the hell do I do with this??
Fawcett had zero intentions of ever turning DECADE into a consumer product.
“Never crossed my mind,” he said.
But Zalatoris’s win at the Texas Amateur got him thinking about it.
“I said to myself, man, the kid never won a golf tournament before except a couple high-school events. He’d never won anything. At that point, he’s like 3,300 in the world or something. After he won the U.S. Junior, I thought, ‘OK, I’ve got something here but what the hell do I do with it?’”
A couple of NCAA coaches gave him an idea: teach his DECADE theories in a seminar. Fawcett created one and presented it indoors at Southern Methodist University, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M and Wake Forest. NCAA rules prohibited from teaching his course outside since he’d have been considered a third paid coach.
“I didn’t think indoors was the best place to do this. I only did it because the NCAA forced me to. But as I was doing it in each of those places, I was like, ‘Wow, this is 100 percent the way to teach course management.’ Why? Because you remove the emotion of having to hit the shot and being tied to the outcome. We’re just talking situations without emotion.”
DeChambeau jumps on the DECADE bandwagon
Bryson DeChambeau’s course management strategy as a young player was pretty rudimentary: aim at every single flag on the golf course. If it’s his week, he’ll win. If it isn’t, he won’t.
Talking him off that ledge was the first order of business when Fawcett introduced DeChambeau to DECADE. The second was preparing for push back if the talented young amateur challenged his course management philosophy.
“We started by showing him the reality of shot patterns. I was like, ‘OK, dude, grab your 9-iron, go hit 30 shots and look at the shot pattern.’ It’s shocking even at the PGA Tour level how big the shot pattern actually is. Once you’ve done that you’d have to be really hard-headed to not fully commit.”
DeChambeau committed and the payoff was immediate.
Applying DECADE to every single shot, he won the 2015 NCAA individual title and the U.S. Amateur.
“Pretty amazing how consistently you can take really talented young players and get them thinking better and how quickly they stop wasting shots,” said Fawcett with a smile.
Forced to create an app
A few weeks later, a surprised Fawcett received a communication from the NCAA. His DECADE seminar had been deemed “an unfair competitive advantage” and was banned from NCAA schools.
“To be perfectly honest, I kind of said ‘thank God’ for that because I really didn’t want to do it anymore. It got to a point where I was going to be doing the seminar four times a week for college programs all over the country and I quickly realized I didn’t want to do that. That ban was the reason I created the app.”
Who is DECADE for?
Fawcett will tell you it’s definitely for someone like him.
“I was the damn poster boy for it. I only played two years of
college golf because of injury but I’m a pretty big dude, I hit the ball pretty far and I definitely didn’t have the yips in putting. With me, it was two things: I didn’t realize how important speed control was on the green and, honestly, I just never really learned to play the game.”
According to Fawcett, strategy and effective course management are often the last things to develop in the human brain. That’s why Tour players usually peak in their early 30s.
But that’s changing.
“With DECADE and data, I can teach a kid to think like Tiger Woods strategically in four hours. That’s why NCAA coaches are all over it. Yeah, young players might not technically have the brain power to figure it out on their own but the DECADE script is so simple to learn it’s ridiculous.
“You can start choosing great targets and kids today have a greater physical skill set than previous generations. They’re able to think like a 35-year-old. That’s why you see Scheffler, Morikawa and all of these kids doing well that either had the DECADE app in college or, at a minimum, are familiar with the program.”
Scheffler is an interesting case study.
Fawcett never directly interacted with the current world No. 1 on DECADE but did spend a lot of time with his caddie, Ted Scott.
“I firmly believe Ted came in and completely cleaned up how Scottie thinks about target selection, discipline and everything else. You can see it in the data, too. Scheffler didn’t magically get a shot and a half better overnight with his skills. That was entirely his thinking.”
Can DECADE help mere mortals?
As the program gained more followers, recreational players started contacting him about wanting to improve their course management skills.
That was the genesis for DECADE Foundations.
“I got an email from a guy named Ted Dolan who said in his note: I’m a new Foundations member and a 30 handicap. I played in a tournament this weekend and shot 85 to win my flight. Just wanted to thank you and the program for all the help. Pretty cool. I’m getting emails like that every single day from 10-30 handicap people who are using Foundations.”
One of the key principles it teaches more casual golfers is “expectation management.” Fawcett admits he once referred to that in his younger days as nothing more than “psychology mumbo-jumbo.”
Not anymore.
“Here’s what people need to better understand. An eight-foot putt is a 50/50 proposition. Out on Tour, the make rate on four-foot putts is 88 percent. That’s high but, hey, they don’t make them all. The big thing is if it’s learned and applied correctly, expectation management allows you to remain in the present. If you’re getting mad about something that’s already happened, you’re living in the past or if you’re thinking about the hard hole coming up or an easy par-5, that’s living in the future.
“The only thing that really matters is the next shot. Doesn’t matter where you stand in a tournament or where you stand relative to par. None of that is relevant for the next shot. That’s one big thing the club golfer can get out of this.”
Wrapping up DECADE
One final question: Was there more to the name?
“You know I was lucky as shit the acronym worked,” Fawcett said, “because at the end of the day, playing golf without a strategic plan is like playing darts with a blindfold on. You know the direction you’re throwing but you’re just hoping you get lucky and get a good score.
“It was right after Will (Zalatoris) won the Texas Amateur. He sends me a text that said, ‘I’ll never know how to repay you. You’ve given me 25 years of experience in five days.’ That’s where I got the name from: Drop your learning curve by a decade.”
To find out more about DECADE and Scott Fawcett go to decade.golfThis article was written in partnership with DECADE.
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