Golf.com article discusses statistical approach to the PGA

[dhc1]

This approach is well known to those who frequent this board but it's interesting to see that it's starting to get attention in the broad press. I was hoping to see Rich mentioned as I read it.

www.golf.com/tour-and-news/golf-performance-statistics-are-advancing-leaps-and-bounds?sct=obinsite

[Richie3Jack]

Another reader pointed this article out to me.

I like to think that my approach is more detailed than what Horton provides to Snedeker. One of the reasons why I got into this is I could not buy into the concept that players that are good in GIR % are all around good strikers of the ball. I knew guys that could hit a driver extremely well, but put an iron in their hand and they were thoroughly unimpressive. And vice versa.

It's the same thing with Scramble %. Does it mean the golfer is a great chipper/pitcher around the green. Or are they making those putts? Or are they good at leaving themselves in a good position to scramble?

In Snedeker's case, he was below average off the tee. He's not going to hit it longer, so he should focus on fairways. His iron play was quite good from the Birdie and Safe Zones last year. But, he struggled mightily from the Danger Zone and when he played well at the British Open...he was also playing well from the Danger Zone. I think the more clear and precise solution would be to tell him to keep working on accuracy with his driver and focus his practice on the Danger Zone. That will prevent him from having impossible up-and-downs and since he can stick shots from 75-175 yards, if he can just find the fairway he is going to rack up birdies on those holes.

I'm not familiar with Peter Sanders' work. But, I recall Zach Johnson talking about how he had a 'stats guy' doing work for him and that they found that hitting a 310 yard drive doesn't do you much better than hitting a 260 yard drive, so you might as well keep it in the fairway.

Sorry, but that is often patently false. Perhaps Zach misinterpreted Sanders' work or exaggerated what was said. But a 50 yard difference off the tee is more often than not HUGE when it comes to altering the expected score values.

I really like Mark Broadie's work. It's interesting in how much detail he can get into and I learned something from him with regards to bunkers and their influence on their score. To me, he has a better understanding of how a 'Moneyball' (aka SABRmetrics) approach works with how he constructed the Putts Gained metric. And it's no coincidence that our Driving metrics are extremely similar (we have 13 of the same players in both our top-19 players in Driving).

However, I think he buys too much into the 'everything longer than 100 yards is far more important.'

I had a lot of people ask me about that and the problem with that line of thinking is that it groups important metrics like Putts Gained with very unimportant metrics like shots from 30-100 yards. For me, I think a more accurate depiction is to show the level of importance of driving the ball versus putting versus long approaches, mid distance approaches, short approaches and Short Game.

As far as my personal experience, I just think that golfers...particularly ones that are lower handicaps, tend to develop philosophies and beliefs that they remain steadfast upon because 'it worked for me.'

A lot of what I run into is players who have those steadfast beliefs that I'm not going to get them to change anytime soon. The rest that they are undecided about and that's where my work tends to convince them. The question comes down to what exact beliefs are they not going to give up on. If they believe that Danger Zone play is unimportant and wedge play rules the day...we are going to butt heads.

The rest is pretty much commonplace. Like people who use anecdotal evidence to justify themselves. Or people who simply don't understand probabilities. I can get them to play the odds in their favor and if they execute poorly or get one bad break, they go right back to what they want to do.

Like golf instruction, it's really a people business.






3JACK

[ericpaul2]

Just re-read this article. I have to agree with you that Broadie's conclusion about the long game and its importance to amateurs is flawed. First, he's lumping a wide range of handicaps in there. There's a big difference between low, mid and high handicappers in terms of ability and potential for improvement.

While I would agree that they (I mean we) lose a lot of strokes to the long game (particularly the driver), I think the problem is that the return on available investment in terms of time, money, effort is not there. I think amateurs can make much better improvement a lot faster focusing on the short game (100 yards and in) where physical limitations don't come into play as much. Most amateurs I play with can't reliably get down in three from 100 yards in, yet they could quickly improve that without too much trouble. Plus, the driver problem (OB, penalties, impeded shots) could easily be remedied by pulling a Tiger (3 woods or irons off the tee).

Let's me honest, its pretty easy to get into the 80s by simply always getting on the green from 100y and in and never three putting. But instead we focus on driver and either never make progress or get double crossed by spoiling a good drive with a chunked pitch and a three putt.

I just keep going back the an 80 year old I play with who hits a maximum of 200 yards, but gets U/D more than 60% of the time and never three putts. He breaks his age regularly and is never above 85.

I'm also convinced that for amateurs, a better short game also reduces variability in scores from round to round, but that's simply anecdotal, no proof.

[teeace]

Aug 16, 2013 11:18:44 GMT -5 ericpaul2 said:

Just re-read this article. I have to agree with you that Broadie's conclusion about the long game and its importance to amateurs is flawed. First, he's lumping a wide range of handicaps in there. There's a big difference between low, mid and high handicappers in terms of ability and potential for improvement.

.

But what really is improvement?

I have seen many young 15-25y old who has get their scores worse when they improve.

For me the score has been only important after players are playing around par. Going down from 95 to 85 by leaving driver to the bag is not improving, whatever score says

[Richie3Jack]

A better short game does not significantly improve the variability of the scores because the golfer has to get the ball to the 'short game and putting range' first. So, if they want to alter the variability they need to improve their long game. Put it this way....if a PGA Tour player shoots 82 in a round of golf you can bet that it wasn't bad putting that did them in. It was ballstriking and they probably took penalty strokes...most likely off the tee. Conversely...if a Tour player shoots 62, they did it with great ballstriking. So that should give you an idea of why ballstriking affects variability, regardless if you are Jason Dufner or a 25 handicap.

The other part of this is what type of shot the golfer is left with.

Let's say we have a 20 handicap golfer who has a 180 yard approach shot into the green. Let's say they chunk that shot about 15 yards and now they are still left with a 165 yard shot which is still fairly difficult.

Compare that to that golfer who chili dips a 100 yard shot. It sucks that happened, but the golfer is only left with a 85 yard shot.

As far as the rest of the stuff, that's more swing theory than statistical theory. When we look at the actual numbers, the driver and long approach shots matter much more in improving a golfer's score. Whether or not the golfer has the *ability* and the *time, effort and patience* to improve their game is another.

My opinion is that too many amateurs and their instructors focus too much on the shorter irons. I think some of the mechanics of hitting a shorter iron are needed to learn how to hit the longer clubs. But, I have often seen instructors give lessons to players and never go over the driver. And I think there is an epidemic in golf when it comes to bad driver fitting.

That's where we see golfers using 3-woods off the tee. The loft of the 3-wood is more likely to fit their slower club head speed and the shaft is shorter and heavier so they can be more consistent. Even though I fully believe that if they were fitted properly with the driver, they would hit the driver more accurately than a 3-wood off the tee.







3JACK

[Richie3Jack]

Here’s another example of Zach Johnson’s fallacy that ‘distance is not going to help you that much’ and ‘310 yards versus 260 yards is not a big deal’ (I’m paraphrasing).

Let’s say we have Zach who can hit about 70% of his fairways with his driver when he’s striking it pretty well. And let’s say he has the capability to hit a drive 260 yards or 310 yards.

Now we will say that we are on a par-4 where a 260 yard drive will put Zach about 160 yards to the hole. And a 310 yard driver will put Zach to 110 yards to the hole.

So, if Zach hits that 260 yard drive and finds the fairway 70% of the time, the Tour average proximity to the cup on the approach shot would be 32.3 feet.

But, if he were able to hit that 310 yard driver on the hole, the Tour averages dictate that he could find the fairway 0% of the time and still average 30.3 feet to the cup on the following approach shot.

In fact, let’s say he drops to 55% of fairways hit off that 310 yard drive; his forecasted average proximity to the cup would be 24.6 feet. Believe me, that may only be about a 8 foot difference, but that is HUGE.

The only problems with hitting a 310 yard drive is if the ball ends up in a hazard, forces a ‘rescue shot’ or ends up in a fairway bunker. But, if the worst result is going in the rough being able to hit a driver 310 yards vs. 260 yards is a massive change.




3JACK

[ericpaul2]

Teeace, your example is extreme, but if in fact a high handicapper can improve by 10 strokes by leaving the driver in the car, then I see absolutely no reason they shouldn't do that, unless they are more interested in having a swing that's subjectively "better" than others and don't care about the score. The Pros rarely hit driver for every available tee shot, so why would a player, who is exponentially worse, hit drivers more often, or even as often. Ultimately, we're playing the game of golf, in which the only true way to measure performance is the score. I'm talking about high handicappers here, many of whom have little interest or time to practice as much as it would really take or to take the appropriate number of lessons to actually improve the full swing.

Richie, I think your statistics have a very good handle on the Pro game and it isn't too much to extrapolate to a low handicappers game, but I think the problem lies in extrapolating to a high handicappers game. I agree wholeheartedly that the closer the subsequent shot the better, and I think all levels should buy into the idea that laying up to a specific distance is not good strategy, but for a lot of high handicappers, the choice is not "hit a driver 230 or a 3 wood 200", it's "hit the driver OB/Water/Trees 50%+ of the time or hit a hybrid/3wood safely 80-90% of the time, although shorter". The reasons are probably a lot more varied for the high handicapper too, whether its woefully poorly fit driver, physical limitations, no/bad instruction, no practicing, etc. The "fix" to driver issues like this is probably quite a few lessons and a lot of practice time.

By the same token, those flubbed shots you mentioned also occur for many high handicappers in the short game...bladed pitches and sand shots, fat chips, fat pitches/sand shots, etc. Most of that can be relatively easily solved with technique, which as opposed to the full swing, is relatively easy to teach and learn. 2 to 4 short game lessons, and most high handicappers would be on the right track to reduce or eliminate the wasted shots from 30 yards in.

Don't get me wrong...I'm NOT saying that getting a high handicapper to improve their driving and/or ball striking significantly wouldn't drastically improve their game, and to a greater extent than just working on short game, but I'm talking about the fastest, easiest path to lower scores is probably through the short game and using course management that accounts for their ball striking ability (or lack thereof). Again, this is for 18 handicappers and above, which is a very significant portion of the golfing population. I'd even say that for 10 handicappers and above, they should seriously consider evaluating their short game and course management to make sure that's not holding them back.

As for the Zach Johnson thing...I'm 90% sure there's some rationalization going on there. If he could actually get to 310 y drives, I'm betting his attitude might be a bit different.

That article also mentions the Steve Levitt/Pat Goss book project. Since I have participated as a subject, I know that they are actually collecting Shotlink style data on low, mid, and high handicappers to try to determine just that kind of information. It will be interesting to see the results when the book comes out.

[teeace]

Aug 19, 2013 9:12:40 GMT -5 ericpaul2 said:

Teeace, your example is extreme, but if in fact a high handicapper can improve by 10 strokes by leaving the driver in the car, then I see absolutely no reason they shouldn't do that, unless they are more interested in having a swing that's subjectively "better" than others and don't care about the score. The Pros rarely hit driver for every available tee shot, so why would a player, who is exponentially worse, hit drivers more often, or even as often. Ultimately, we're playing the game of golf, in which the only true way to measure performance is the score. I'm talking about high handicappers here, many of whom have little interest or time to practice as much as it would really take or to take the appropriate number of lessons to actually improve the full swing.

.

My point is that people give too much attention to the score if it's done that way. That's not improvement from game view, that's to just get best numbers out from the course with bad golf.

The real improvement happens when they are able to keep that driver on fairway and hit it longer. Not by reaching par 4's in three and good short game.

[Richie3Jack]

I have conducted research on amateurs using a fairly sustainable statistical approach with the help of students at a local university that one of the Marketing professors at the university allowed me to use. We have conducted this research at 2 club championships that had different flights and a member-guest tournament. Unfortunately, we did not have a ShotLink laser, but with the use of Bushnell Range finders and some simple deductions we were able to get an idea of how far their drive went, how long the approach shot was and the proximity to the cup.

Obviously, there is some guesswork and the sample size is small. But we conducted this on 3 different holes (par-3, par-4 and par-5) on 3 different courses. I feel that we have developed a pretty accurate ballpark as to what goes on with amateurs.

I agree with you that the quickest way to improve for a high handicapper is to putt and chip better. The problem is that the improvement is not as much as you think, all things being equal. From the data we've collected so far, I estimate that a 20 handicapper can turn into about an 18 handicapper if they greatly improve their putting AND their short game with everything else being equal.

I have not quite researched this, yet....but I believe what happens with people that work diligently and improve their short game and drop quite a few strokes is that their ballstriking improves as well.

They have improved their short game and putting thru practice which is probably something they didn't do before. Furthermore, by working on their wedges, they may ingrain better mechanics that can carry over to the other clubs. They could probably do better by focusing their practice on the full swing and the longer clubs a bit more, but the practice they are getting in with the shorter clubs is helping their swing mechanics in the end.







3JACK

[ericpaul2]

I think you'll be very interested in the Levitt/Goss book then. At multiple events, they're using "trackers" (interns) to literal record each shot and it's subsequent result. I believe they now have over 250 full rounds collected that way, though I'm not privy to all the details. The accuracy is not down to the foot like laser recorded data, but I think good enough to draw some parallel conclusions.

I'd also agree regarding short game practice having parallels with the long game. I know I've experienced similar results.

[teeace]

How about Tour Championship and Stenson?

I think 2 drives for first 2 rounds now