Post by Richie3Jack on Dec 8, 2014 11:54:38 GMT -5
Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from Rich Hunt’s 2014 Pro Golf Synopsis, which can be purchased here for $10.
This past season, PGA Tour players made an average of 39.8 percent of their birdie putts from 5-to-15 feet while making 52.6 percent of their par-or-worse putts from the same distance. That means that Tour players make a higher percentage of par-or-worse putts than they make birdie putts from the same distance.
Why? To explain, I’ll start with the numbers.
Here’s a list of the 10 Tour players who saw the largest drop-off in their birdie make percentage from their par or worse make percentage
Only two players on the PGA Tour — Luke Donald and Kevin Streelman — made a higher percentage of their birdie putts than par-or-worse putts from 5-to-15 feet in the 2013-2014 season.
At first, I thought Tour players made more par-or-worse putts than birdie putts because they were more likely to have birdie putts that were downhill. Studies done by golf researchers show that in general players make a higher percentage of uphill putts from the same distance than downhill putts.
The other premonition I had was that on par-or-worse putts Tour players were more likely to have gotten a feel for that particular green. More often than not, Tour players are trying to make a birdie with either a putt on the green or a chip from just off the green. They get a better feel for the green on the putt or chip and then have a better understanding of how to make the next putt.
In February 2011, in the American Economic Review authors Devin Pope and Maurice Schweitzer examined this in the article titled Is Tiger Woods Loss Averse? Persistent Bias in the Face of Experience, Competition, and High Stakes.
Pope and Schweitzer’s premise is that Tour players are often suffering from loss aversion, as they make a lower percentage of birdie putts than par putts. The term loss aversion more or less means that the Tour golfers are more averse to losing strokes to the field by three-putting and missing their par saves versus gaining strokes by making birdie putts.
The article examines the misses of Tour players through ShotLink data. They tested to see if there was a bias by Tour players in the direction of their misses (left or right) and found none. What they did find, however, were three major points:
1. Tour players miss birdie putts short of the cup a higher percentage of the time than on par-or-worse putts.
2. Tour players miss more birdie putts early in events.
3. Tour players miss a higher percentage of birdie putts short of the cup earlier in events.
That’s how they came to their conclusion of loss aversion — Tour players are missing birdie putts short of the cup because they are afraid of hitting them too far past the cup and three-putting. And with par-or-worse putts, Tour players are missing them past the cup because they are averse to losing strokes and therefore willing to hit putts with a more aggressive speed to make sure the ball gets to the hole.
Read more at: www.golfwrx.com/247705/study-why-do-tour-players-make-more-par-putts-than-birdie-putts/#XspRbAlvvsvkL43S.99