Here are some excerpts from an article I found interesting in Golfweek that confirms what I learned many years ago but fail to apply to my mental game because of my philosphy, "YOLO".
“The message I give to the players I work with is that if you have to lay back 25, 30 or 35 yards to avoid the rough or trouble, you are not giving up any shots,” Sanders said. “You are gaining shots.”
...when golfers do not have water or a hazard guarding a green on a par 5, they are almost always better off going for the green instead of laying up. Players who go for the green in two shots on a par 5 and hit their third shot from within 50 yards of the hole hit the green with their third more often and their typical shot finishes closer to the hole too. “They cut their error percentage in half, and they cut their average putting distance in half,” Sanders said. “So my message is that if there is no obvious downside, go for the green every time.”
Surprisingly, Sanders said that most coaches who work with PGA Tour players see the hundreds of stats created in the ShotLink system as a giant, confusing mess. But even more surprising, four minutes into Sanders talk, he said, “If you know what strokes gained is, then you are in the vast minority. I start our all my initial meetings with Tour players and their coaches by giving examples, and it invariably leads to very spirited conversations about what these numbers really mean and how they relate to traditional statistics.” To ensure that you are in that wise minority, it is important to understand that stokes gained statistics are all based on the average number of shots it will take to get the ball in the hole from a given distance.
http://golfweek.com/2018/03/04/by-the-numbers-analytics-become-an-increasingly-important-part-of-golf/