Up and Down
Tour players are magicians at getting up and down when they have missed the greens. Is this how they have saved one stroke per round spread over the last twenty years?
Unfortunately, the data leaves this question partially unanswered since records covering this area of scoring only go back one decade instead of two. But with the data available, the strokes saved do not appear to come from this aspect of play. It is my belief, that the USGA has US Open data and possibly similar data from other USGA sponsored events going back many years. This data is not readily available, but I suspect that it would show gradual improvement from the earliest available up until the early eighties when improvement probably accelerated as a result of Dave Pelz's work with putting and the short game. Most of what I would call the "Pelz effect" had already been factored in before the data reflected in the graph above was collected.