"The importance of the long game versus the short game is surprising to many people"
If you had any doubt that 2014 will be the year of stats in golf--as Jaime Diaz asserts--then David Barrett's cover story in Golf World may change your mind.
There is plenty to cover in the story, but since first hearing about the research, I've been most fascinated by Mark Broadie's assertion that putting is overrated and ball striking underrated.
Players can sometimes win with mediocre or even substandard putting, but much more rarely with mediocre play from tee to green -- in 2012 and 2013 combined, 10 players won while ranking worse than 25th in strokes gained/putting but only two did so ranking worse than 25th from tee to green.
Another conclusion Broadie draws from the data is that driving distance is a greater factor than driving accuracy to scoring. That's the reason long hitters like Bubba Watson populate the top of the strokes gained/driving standings, though accuracy is important enough to hurt a very wild driver like distance-leader Luke List. A 20-yard advantage in driving distance leads to a fractional advantage on every stroke, and over the long run that adds up. Strokes gained/driving also reflects the advantage gained by being able to go for the green on reachable holes more often, an edge that isn't reflected in traditional stats like greens in regulation.
Most intriguing is how much of the outside-the-box thinking has been fueled in part by people like Broadie, but credit the PGA Tour and ShotLink guru Steve Evans for encouraging academics to go all Moneyball on the numbers.
Ultimately, the biggest takeaway may be that we are in for some fascinating analysis in the years go come.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014 at 12:25 AM
Reader Comments (59)
Back to the numbers. All the highest ranking players in the world can be found in the stat Proximity to Hole from 175-225. I just found that out but I think its interesting. I've always contended (for the sake of bar argument) that long iron technology is what did in tigers reign as the most dominant ever. There just weren't that many guys that could hit a high 3 iron compared to today with hybrids. I'm talkin out of the wrong end tho.
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"5 wins in same season."
If the hypothesis of the article is correct...by definition the two phrases above would be mutually exclusive, no?
Ball striking is what sets pros apart from other pros. Chipping and putting is what separates pros from amateurs.
@DTF of course they are but the headline "Tiger Woods hits driver acceptably" doesn't compare to "Tiger can't hit driber to save his life"! With that being said Woods did win a couple of times in 2013 with lights out putting and average long game, Doral being one lf them
Liam, completely agree with that.
Consider this statement: "Tiger has the driver yips".
Which of your two quotes above is that statement most analogous with?
The pros are playing a golf course 1000 yards longer than most ams, It's a combination of the two. Nicklaus and Woods have one thing in common - when they won, they putted lights out. Comparing the average am to a Tour pro is not even doable.
Alex H - spot on.
Low scores do.
Don't matter how you get there.
The earlier comment about hybrids is spot on. When Yang hit final dagger at 18 in '09 he did it with a hybrid and all the announcers mentioned how tough that shot would have been with a long iron. I think Tiger's driver problems would be helped by a ball with less side spin.
Plenty of analysis to go around -- Mark Broadie's work is excellent but statistical acumen is widely distributed in society -- would build fan interest considerably.
This is what interests me about the stats. How do the two groups compare in the opposing category?
How do the Top 20 ball strikers fair in the putting ranks? Vice versa...How do the Top 20 putters fair in the ball striking categories?
It has to be more than simply...'the best player in the world is the best ball striker so work on your ball striking...'
I'm not sure if the analysis that you want to do (or seen done) would fit the TOUR's criteria but it couldn't hurt to ask.
The difference between the best and the worst putters a on tour matters, but even the worst of them is 10 putts better than teaverage 3 putting am.
Chipping is the missing link, because the ball striking of the lesser player puts him on the edge, in the sand, etc. To get the chipping and pitching to where a one putt is easy will lower the score of the am far more than pounding mid and long irons for the am, given ther is only so much time for practice, and even a good round may only have 10-12 GIR, To one putt those missed greens makes an 85 a 70's round.
That said, the shot into the green is the most crucial. If pros still miss the green using an 8-iron, how much more us mere humans needing a 5-iron?
That said, the shot into the green is the most crucial. If pros still miss the green using an 8-iron, how much more us mere humans needing a 5-iron?
I thought the wind equalizer comment I made would cover events like Kapalua. Remember, the shorter player can still win but he has less margin of error with respect to his game than the bomber- If you look at the guys who have won the most since the pro v era started it favors length over accuracy off the tee more than the balata era. There is almost no place for a player like Corey Pavin or Mark Brooks today.
I disagree with the GIRs are king as an absolute statement, since you can be just off the green and in a better position sometimes than with a GIR. But the point is to get around the green in regulation, so that you haven't gone wildly off line, and brought in chip outs and penalties into play. The reason putting gets guys on tour is because that level where you can think about the tour is full of guys where those kinds of mistakes are pretty much eliminated. An OB shot is a shock, not a once-a-round thing. The short game is what separates those guys.
BUt frankly for high handicappers, getting around the green in 2 instead of 4 or 5 will bring their scores down much quicker than focusing as much on their short game as is implied by some.
But I haven't been able to get that number out of Shotlink. Approaches inside 100 is apparently not it because they separate "Around the Green" from approaches. Nevertheless there are a lot of top players in the < 100 yards list. http://www.pgatour.com/stats/stat.02329.html#2013
Proximity from around the green seems less indicative of success.
But if there's a reason that < 100 isn't as important as is once was is the relatively small number of attempts. Look again at http://www.pgatour.com/stats/stat.02329.html#2013. These guys are hitting less about one shot a round that's inside 100 yards. That CANNOT have a big effect on scoring.
OTOH the around the green attempts http://www.pgatour.com/stats/stat.374.html#2013 are MUCH more common. Something like five times a round.
BUT.... only five players averaged more than 8 feet in 2013 and only one was under 6 feet. Based on Pelz's stats, that's probably not enough difference to be significant.
But as for my amateur playing partners, getting inside 8 feet at all is a challenge, never mind averaging that. I am a 12 hdcp., but most of the good players I play with (indexes under ~2) say my chipping is 10+ strokes better than my long game. As a result I average under 30 putts.
The guys in my regular group routinely throw away 5-10 shots a round by failing to get their first chip on the green, or leaving themselves a really long first putt. One of them, a 15, has so few up-and-downs that he keeps a stat for how many times he gets down in three from inside 100 yards.
K
Oh, and by the way: Nicklaus never putted "lights out" in his first 17 professional major wins. He always holed putts under pressure, though, and THAT, dear friends, is what separates the men from the boys.
Drop me an e-mail at cpete77@gmail.com if you want to discuss this further.
One possible issue with just letting the data into the wild is to look at how others have monetized all the Fantasy Football data.
While I can't think of where that would lead (fantasy golf league doesn't have the same ring) I also am nowhere near the level of the commissioner.
@MattS, regarding this quote:
"One possible issue with just letting the data into the wild is to look at how others have monetized all the Fantasy Football data."
You could well be right. If that is the mentality then it would be nice if the Tour listened to economists / game theory experts, who in response to arguments like that would say things like:
1) Right now you are earning ZERO dollars;
2) The NFL is doing so well financially BECAUSE of things like fantasy football. (And MLB because of things like Rotisserie and Pitch F/X.) These are known as "complementary services" -- their addition increases the value of your offering. (As opposed to "competitive services," whose presence decreases the value of your offering.
3) You are looking at grabbing the largest slice of the pie and not "giving away" other slices -- what you SHOULD be doing is focusing on making the size of the pie itself bigger. That's where the big money is.