In the January ’12 issue of Golf magazine, there’s a poll on page 35 that asks, “Which part of your game will you work on the most for 2012?” Answers: 20.5%, driving. 24.3%, irons. 37.9% short game. and 17.4%, putting.

55.3% will work on their short games. Uh-huh, and I’m Jack Nicklaus.

If you’re a golfer, I defy you—no, I Mitt Romney $10,000 bet you—to go to any driving range in America and find the golfers that are a.) working on their short games (100 yards and in) and b.) spending more time on the putting green than they do whacking away at balls on the range.

Try it. Walk up and down the range. What do you see? Golfers pounding the driver. Hitting irons. Hitting the driver. Then hitting an iron or two. Then the driver. Then the driver some more. Then, just for good measure, hitting the 3 wood or hybrid—maybe—then back to the driver. Finally, finishing with–you guessed it—the driver. And it’s not just the duffers and weekend hacks doing it. The golfers with good swings are just as relentlessly, obsessively and in defiance of the stats working on a club that comes out of the bag at most 14 times during the round—that’s 19% of the time for a scratch golfer, and 17% for a 10 handicapper. Yet 75% of that bucket of balls goes to hitting the driver. The driver is a penis. They can’t get enough of swinging it around, I guess.

Most golfers know that 50-60% of the game occurs inside 100 yards. With that in mind, and in order to look smart, those surveyed gave the right answer. But will they follow through? Put it this way, I don’t expect to see population explosion on my local putting and chipping green in 2012 proving me wrong—especially when the 2012 drivers get released in January.

Then there was the 54.7% who said they improved their handicaps last year. Don’t get me started on that one.