re: Telling a begginer to “start from the hole and work back” is bad advice

My daughter is a 13 year old junior golfer who first swung a club 8 months ago. Most natural out of the box swing without any instruction that many really good golfers have told me they have ever seen. She is kind of smaller for her age at 5’ 1” and 98lbs. She had a natural 430 swing path and hits drives 190 to 210 consistently straight as an arrow or with a slight draw. She quickly got pretty good at her mid irons and from the red tees was always in position to get up and down and often GIR. However, she started on a Junior Tour 9 hole Intermediate Division back in March and quickly learned how critical the short game is for actually competing. She is now spending about 80% of her practice time with either a PW, GW, or SW and putting. She has turned those mid 50 nine hole scores into mid to high 40s over the last month. Shot a 42 (best yet)on the front nine at our home course yesterday. She is beating a lot of girls who have been playing since they were 6-8 years old. She is confident that her drive is sufficient enough to always put her in position to score. She doesn’t try to be the longest drive, just in play enough to attack the green with an 8 iron at most on par 4s. I feel she is on track , if she stays focused on the short game, to be low 80s and maybe high 70s sometimes within a year. Her wedge game is improving rapidly. Girl loves golf.

Side note: she got to be a standard bearer for the Champions Tour event two weeks ago at TPC Sugarloaf and it was a great experience for her. Walked with Billy Mayfair, Duffy Waldorf, and Cam Beckman day 1. Jay Haas, Steve Flesch, and Glen Day the second day. And Jay Haas , Mark Hensby, and Chris Dimarco day 3. Very cool for her to watch the older guys and how they behave.

Even better, she is going to be one of the Standard bearers at the Tour Championship at East Lake the 1st week of September. That will be an unforgettable experience.