At what point does lack of distance matter?

Public Forum—Concepts in Advanced Ball Striking
41

The tour and the courses played, the gear, and what that allows a golf swing to look like both visually and dynamically have changed dramatically. The game is geared toward the Dustin Johnson, Bubba style of golf in the modern era. It’s clearly driven by the dollar, and not the game itself. I still think golf is golf. If you are truly a good golfer, you should be able to play well on a tight golf course, 6800 or less, which requires proper ball positioning for each hole using gear that is designed for this kind of golf.

In my mind, I really don’t know if these guys are good golfers… because they simply have not been tested properly.
I know they would do well in long driving competitions… but even there they may not win. There are some really long hitters in those comps now.

42

Bubba currently leads not only in driving distance but Greens-regulation as well. Now I am aware no single stat says anything since they all are related to an effect (his greens are be easier to hit because he is closer to them on 2nd shots, etc) but be has actually looked sharp in 2011 and I have seen some imagination from him at times and pulling it off. Bubba at Augusta in a few weeks could be a good value bet.

I actually like watching these kinds of players suffer at real courses though. Bubba withdrew at Riviera after a +12 in 1st round. But yep, the tour seems to be set up for distance most of time with wide fairways, etc. Even OB is moved back more and many times the audience stops ball from straying offline much anyway. Kind of boring to watch.

43

GIR is a poor stat to relate to actual ballstriking and scoring average. The obvious flaws are there. For instance, I played a round of golf a month ago with my dad on a Pete Dye course. On a par-3, he hit the GIR. I missed, but was just off the green. I had about 18 feet to the cup, he had 50. I actually had an easy up and down and made the chip. He 3-putted because not only was it from 50 feet, but it was an extremely tough slope to gauge. Unless you’re a terrible chipper, I think any golfer would’ve taken my position instead of my dad’s. And truth be told, my dad hit a mediocre shot for him. I flushed one at the flag that just happened to kick a tad left and went just off the green.

A bigger statistical correlation to scoring average on the PGA Tour is Proximity to The Cup from 175-225 yards (which I call the Danger Zone). Bubba ranks 46th out of 191 golfers right now, which is good. But I’d take more stock in that right now than his GIR. Plus, that GIR % will likely drop significantly as the year plays thru.

As for Augusta, it’s an awesome course and a spectable into itself. But it’s really become a bomb-n-gouge course. My feeling is that now at Augusta, if you can hit it extremely deep and are great from 175-225 yards, you’ll likely be in the hunt. All of the recent past winners, except Zach Johnson and Immelman, fit that profile. And Zach won when there was a record cold front and high winds, although he’s great from 175-225 yards as well. While I would never confuse Mickelson and Cabrera for great ballstrikers, they are typically excellent from 175-225 yards out. And they hit it deep. Same with Tiger and Vijay.

3JACK

44

Hi Richie, can you talk a little more about the “DangerZone”? It’s interesting stuff but I am not sure I 100% get it. Based on your analysis are you saying either:

A. that a players average proximity to the hole after shots taken from 175-225 yards has the strongest correlation with position on the money list over the course of a season vis a vis other stats?

Or

B. that the average number of shots taken from a starting point 175-225 yards from the hole has the strongest correlation with position on the money list over the course of a season vis a vis other stats?

Quite possibly its neither of these and I have misunderstood but as I say its an interesting area so if you can clarify a bit further that would be great.

Cheers, Arnie

45

Now hold the phone everyone…there can be no discussion about Danger Zone without setting the table first!

A good friend of mine used to play for Kenny and it stirred some memories…so take it away Ritchie and lift us off the deck.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8rZWw9HE7o[/youtube]

46

Arnie - let me try to explain ‘correlation’ first. One way to figure out correlation statistically is something called the 'correlation coefficient.’ This will be a number that will range from -1.0 to +1.0.

The closer to +1.0, the more of a direct correlation between two things. For instance, let’s say I own a store and I want to find the correlation between temperature outside and lemonade sold. If the correlation coefficient winds up being +0.9, that means it has a very strong, direct correlation. In other words, for the most part…the higher the temperature outdoors, the more lemonade will be sold. The lower the temperature, the less lemonade sold.

The opposite would be a number closer to -1.0. So if we wanted to see the correlation between temperature and hot soup sold and we got a number of -0.8, we would then say it has a strong indirect correlation. Meaning, the higher the temperature, the more likely less soup will be sold. And the lower the temperature, the more likely more soup will be sold.

The closer the number is to 0, it means it has no correlation.

We can use that correlation coefficient to do projections thru a formula called ‘linear regression.’ Some of us may have used this briefly in school, it’s y = mx + b

I looked at the stats from 2006-2010 and the stat with the strongest correlation of the bunch is Proximity to the Cup from 175-225 yards.

It’s a pretty strong correlation, about +0.6 to +0.65. In layman’s terms, it’s not super strong, but pretty solid. And of course, there are some other factors that if you combined it with performance from the Danger Zone, you would get a much stronger correlation.

IMO, it pretty goes like this

  1. Danger Zone performance
  2. Putting
  3. Tie between Driving and performance from around the green (30 yards and in)

And really…putting, driving and performance around the green are very neck and neck. But Danger Zone performance is well ahead of those three factors.

Money list doesn’t have anything to do with this. I’m basing it off of Adjusted Stroke average. I could be great from the Danger Zone, but if I’m a rookie and can’t get into the big tournaments, I can easily make less money than some average Danger Zone player who gets to play in all of the big money tournaments.

Think about if for a second. Let’s say I’m playing with 2 golf balls, having a casual round of golf by myself.

Let’s say I get up there on a par-4 and hit 2 drives to 110 yards. If I take a good swing with one and a mediocre swing with another, I’ll probably hit the GIR both times. I may have a better chance of making birdie with the good swing over the mediocre one. But, the best I can really do is make birdie. And it’s not likely I’ll do anything more than 3 putt.

However, if I go onto the next hole, a par-3 from 210 yards out and I take one good swing and one mediocre swing, the good swing will find the GIR, but the mediocre swing probably won’t and there’s a lot of danger tied into that. Plus, it’s tough to leave yourself with a manageable up and down from that distance than if you miss from 110 yards out.

It wasn’t until I discovered this (which was about 2-3 weeks ago) that rounds of golf and ‘scoring’ made more sense. I played one day where I wasn’t hitting the ball all that bad, but I was +4 after the first 12 holes. Normally I would chalk that up to some ambiguous ‘didn’t score well’ explanation. But now I understood what happened. I was performing poorly from the Danger Zone. At that point I was 0/4 in GIR from the Danger Zone.

I actually hit a 3-hybrid on #12 (long par-3) very well. But I missed the green, pin high to the right. But because it’s such a long hole (215 yards uphill), even with a well struck ball, all it took was to be a little off and I had almost an impossible up and down.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t scoring well. It was that when I had the shots the really counted (Danger Zone), I didn’t perform well enough there and that made it very hard for me to get up and down and save par. Even though I hit the ball fine on the holes where there were no Danger Zone shots (which helps keep the score down), when it came crunch time and having that Danger Zone shot, I didn’t perform well enough.

Anyway, what the bombers do is that they hit it so long that they avoid having to hit shots in the Danger Zone. Somebody like Bubba Watson averaged 14 shots per 4-round tourney in the Danger Zone. Somebody like Corey Pavin averaged 20 shots per 4-round tourney. Big advantage to Watson.

Still though, if Watson is awful from the Danger Zone, it’s still a huge problem because he’s going to lose a ton of strokes from there.

Mickelson is a great example of these statistics. He’s super long, but he’s actually a very poor putter statistically. However, he’s been excellent from the Danger Zone over the years and is excellent around the green. So basically he hits the ball long enough to hit it past the Danger Zone. If he’s in the Danger Zone, he’s one of the best on Tour from there which gives him a big advantage. If he misses the GIR, he’s great at hitting his pitch or chip or flop close to the pin. Basically, if Mickelson putts about the Tour average and the rest of his game stays the same as he usually plays…he’s got a great chance of winning the tournament.

Brian Gay is another example. He’s actually very good from the Danger Zone. Hits the ball very accurately off the tee, but is the shortest hitter on the PGA Tour. He excels at short, tight courses because the course is shorter, he isn’t hitting a bunch more shots from the Danger Zone than a bomber would hitting them. And the bomber can’t deal with the tight, tree lined fairways, so they have to ease back or they get penalized harshly for missing the fairway.

Of course, there are exceptions. Steve Stricker was #2 in Adjusted Scoring Average in 2009, but was pretty average from the Danger Zone and was slightly above average in putting that season. However, he was pretty much awesome in ever other category. He hit it close from everywhere, from 10 yards away to 150-175 yards away.

But again, statistics is usually about probability, not certainty.

3JACK

47

Hi Richie - you are probably aware of this research into the PGA stats, pretty much backs up your assertion about the 175-225yd zone i think, if not you’ll find it interesting

columbia.edu/~mnb2/broadie/A … 110208.pdf

48

Thanks for those posts 3JACK, it’s interesting stuff…

49

Thanks, I’ll hav eto read the paper when I get time. I got this idea from reading articles from Slate.com on what they call ‘MoneyGolf.’ The term ‘MoneyGolf’ came from the book called ‘Moneyball.’ It is about how Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane uses statistics instead of common baseball theory to create teams and find the best players for the amount of money he has. The A’s notoriously have done well despite having one of the lowest payrolls in baseball. And for non-US members, even though baseball is technically a ‘team sport’, its’ very individualistic in nature and if your team can spend more money on payroll…typically you will win more games. But Beane’s Oakland squads spend much less money and are still very successful.

For instance, typical baseball wisdom says you want the leadoff hitter to be a guy who is fast and can get on base. That way he can steal bases, etc. ‘Moneyball’ says you’re better off finding a leadoff who can get on base, steals are nice but not really important. Furthermore, it would use ‘on base percentage’ instead of ‘batting average.’ So a leadoff hitter A may have a .300 batting average and leadoff hitter B may have a .250 batting average. But you may be much better off with leader off batter B because his on base percentage is .400 whereas leadoff batter A’s on base percentage is .320. Basically, leadoff hitter A gets more hits, but leadoff batter B gets on base more because he takes more walks. And since we want the leadoff hitter to get on base, we really don’t care how they do it (either hits or by getting a lot of walks).

With pitchers the stat old time baseball coaches like to use is ERA and win-loss record. Moneyball looks at Walks + Hits Allowed per Innings Pitched (aka WHIP). It also can factor in things like the ballpark the player plays at. Hitting at Fenway is a lot easier than hitting at Turner Field.

That’s what much of that research paper is about. It deals with what’s called ‘Shots Gained.’ Meaning they can figure what the average golfer in the field would do from each spot on the course. Let’s say you step up to #18 at Pebble Beach and it’s playing to a 5.1 stroke average that day. So if you birdie it, you’re up +1.1 strokes gained. If you par, you’re up +0.1 strokes gaiend. If you bogey, you’re down -0.9 strokes gained.

But, let’s say you hit your tee shot in the right rough. They can figure out that the field would average 4.7 strokes from there on in. So if you make par from that drive, you would be up +0.7 strokes gained, birdie would be +1.7 strokes gained. Bogey would be down -0.3 strokes gained.

What’s funny and sad is I’ve brought this to the attention of some swing instructors already and they’ve rejected it! They stil lthink the game, particularly for really good players, is about ‘hitting your wedges close’ and ‘to get really good you have to be a world class putter.’ It’s not that those things don’t help, but they are far less important than doing well from the Danger Zone. And I think the reason why golfers get lessons is uaully to improve their total ballstriking…particularly the driver and longer irons. So I think these findings really only promote the work of a swing instructor. Otherwise, we would think Dave Pelz is the most important instructor ever.

I know Lag encourages students to practice a lot with 1-irons, 2-irons or 3-irons if they can because it will help them improve their swing mechanics. I agree, but the ancillary benefit is that it will actually help a golfer ‘score’ better.

If you ever get the chance to keep track of your round, pay close attention to the days when you don’t feel like you struck it that well, but you ‘scored well.’ Chances are that what happened is you did well in the Danger Zone and probably didn’t hit it that well out of it. And you probably made a few putts, but nothing really crazy. It’s just that when you were in the position to lose strokes (Danger Zone), you didn’t.

It still doesn’t answer what the golfer needs to do with their swing in order to get better and to actually hit it well from the Danger Zone. But, it helps the golfer understand where to better direct their efforts.

3JACK

50

Moneygolf looks good I’ll enjoy reading that & hopefully learn some useful stuff - thanks

here’s one that we all kind of ‘knew’ from the first page…here’s the link img.slate.com/media/1/123125/226 … eygolf.pdf

Two professors at the Wharton school, for example, looked at 1.6 million tour putts and concluded that professional golfers are risk-averse. They examined putts for par and putts for birdie from the same distances and discovered that pros make the birdie putts less often. They suggest that pros leave these birdie putts short out of fear of making bogey, and then calculate that this bogey terror—and the resultant failure to approach birdie putts in the same way as par putts—costs the average tour player about one stroke per tournament.

51

Richie, many thanks for the detailed explanation, I understand a lot better now. Really interesting stuff which certainly goes against my and I suspect a lot of others preconceptions. And Tim thanks for the link to the supplementary paper. Ironically it kind of reminds me a little of the concept behind Pelz’s 8 foot rule i.e. players don’t make that many more putts from 10 feet than from 20 feet but they start to make a lot more within 8 feet. So now we have another measurement or boundary where the consequences for performance on a certain shot are magnified or exponential. I wonder if you applied the same rules for different categories of golfer the “danger zone” would be closer to the green. (i.e) a high handicap golfer isn’t going to be hitting many greens from 175 - 225 yards even on a good day. So for that golfer perhaps the danger zone becomes 125-150 yards where they have a realistic expectation and chance of hitting the green?

Cheers, Arnie

52

IMO it works completly different for the medicore amateur golfer - aka 95 % of the golfing population - for them, almost everywhere is a “danger zone”. Think about how often a tour pro mishits any kind of shot really bad then think of the amateur - he is capable of duffing it from ANYWHERE. Sandtraps - roughs - fairway (flat or hilly) …, putting green.

Also it is highly individual - whilst tourplayers skills are fairly rounded, the amateur has leaks in different areas of his game. So i would say just simply adjusting the danger zone for length for an amateur wont work.

53

No doubt this is true but if it is all about probabilities I would guess that there will likely be a stronger correlation at certain yardage ranges with stroke average for different categories of golfer,

54

There’s a lot of scenarios and details to the statistical talk. One thing I’ve heard is that instructors have said ‘well, the chances of making a putt from 8 feet are pretty decent, but then they drop off dramatically from 15 feet, then 20 feet, etc. So wedge game has to be important because those are the shots you’re likely to get close to have a chance to make a putt.’

But, there’s a problem with that thinking. First, you still have a good chance of missing an 8-footer. Probably around 45% at the Tour level. Furthermore, let’s say you do make the putt. In reality…big deal. A bunch of guys will likely make par if their approach shot has a wedge into the green and some will make some birdies as well. Where the Danger Zone is important is if you miss, you are very likely to make bogey and now you could make double, triple, quad, etc. The number you can make is technically limitless. However, you can only shoot a score so low.

I watched some of Bay Hill today with Woodland, Dustin Johnson and Tiger playing together. On #18, Tiger and Woodland laid up, Dustin busted out a driver. Tiger and Woodland found themselves in the Danger Zone with Woodland in the fairway, Tiger in the rough. Dustin bombed the driver and found the fairway. Tiger basically had no shot at hitting the GIR. So birdie for him was out of the question and par would be tough to come by. Woodland had a shot at the GIR, but it was a tough one even though he was in the fairway. He actually got lucky as he wound up short, hit a rock and stayed in. One inch another way and he’s in the drink and making double or maybe triple. That’s the danger of the Danger Zone.

Dustin had that wedge in his hand and I’m sure everybody was thinking ‘oh, he should make birdie here.’ But what that driver did…because it found the fairway, was it took double bogey out of the equation (unless he hit one of the worst shots of his career) and really, bogey was out of the equation. He pretty much had par in the bag and a slight chance of making birdie, despite only having a wedge in. And he made par. Tiger made bogey, and IIRC Woodland made par (but got lucky).

What I’ve found is that from the same distance, Tour pros are about 30% more accurate from the fairway than they are the rough these days. I imagine in the days of Hogan and company, that difference was much, much greater because the rough was longer and tougher to get out of. Putting is a bit overrated unless you’re really really good or you are really really bad. Nick Price was the #1 player in the world for 42 weeks in a row and was known as a poor putter. Hogan dominated after the car crash and he had the yips. It’s not that good putting wouldn’t help a golfer, but at that level if you’re great int he Danger Zone and just average at everything else, you’re going to have a hell of a year.

3JACK

55

Tim I think you are spot on here…

I know I have felt this in my own game at times… particularly if I hit a good iron shot that takes a bad kick over a green and I chip one 20 feet past coming down the hill. If I have played the hole well, sometimes I just simply refuse to make bogey and will roll the putt in against any statistical odds. If my birdie putt was from the same spot, I might be more OK with a miss, because I feel all I need to do is just hit a good putt, and I know that if I keep hitting the ball in there like this, I will bag a few. I have no doubt that there is a certain “will” that exists in the game to make things happen contrary to any sort of logic or statistical probability.

But at the same time… it is no easy feat to keep at that level of inner commitment throughout 4 hours on a golf course.
(you guys aren’t taking more than 4 hours to tour the links are you?)

56

That was the key finding of the paper by the look of it, the average tour winner benefits by 9 shots of luck - that is huge, irrelevent to how they/we can approach it (except to help us develp a more sanguine approach perhaps), but huge nonetheless -basically you can play your best golf & someone else can just get lucky on you end of story…

Two business-school professors, Robert A. Connolly and Richard J. Rendleman Jr., have done the most work on luck vs. skill in golf. Connolly and Rendleman collected data (PDF) from all stroke-play PGA events between 1998 and 2001, then used something called a “smoothing spline” model to tease out which portions of a player’s score could be attributed to skill and which to luck.

“Luck” can arrive in many fashions. A tournament may be held at a course with a setup that favors a particular player. (Connolly and Rendleman found that this “player-course” effect was present but modest.) Next, a player might get lucky with the weather. That happened this year at the British Open at St. Andrew’s when the winds became wicked on Friday afternoon, seeming to ruin the chances of golfers with late tee times. It turns out that getting caught in a “bad rotation” on the course does have a real impact. In some tournaments, this effect came out to just half a stroke, but in competitions that were marred by extreme weather, the rain and wind cost unlucky golfers as many as five strokes.

Then there is the luck that we think of as luck: the approach shot that hits a rock (dang!) and ricochets onto the green or the ball that gets knocked into the hole by another player’s shot (yes!). Or, more commonly, the forgiving bounce in the fairway, the putt that takes a victory lap and falls in—and the bad lie in the fairway, the shot that skips off the cart path into the water, etc.

This kind of luck cannot be directly measured. What Connolly and Rendleman do is model what a player is expected to shoot, accounting for their recent play, the course, and the weather. They then declare any deviation from that expected score attributable to “luck.”

How big a deal is luck on the golf course? On average, tournament winners are the beneficiaries of 9.6 strokes of good luck. Tiger Woods’ superior putting, you’ll recall, gives him a three-stroke advantage per tournament. Good luck is potentially three times more important. When Connolly and Rendleman looked at the tournament results, they found that (with extremely few exceptions) the top 20 finishers benefitted from some degree of luck. They played better than predicted. So, in order for a golfer to win, he has to both play well and get lucky.

The “luckiest” performance recorded in the paper was turned in by Mark Calcavecchia at the 2001 Phoenix Open: 21.59 strokes. If you revisit that victory, it makes sense. At the time, Calcavecchia had turned 40 and was in a deep slump. That week, against a strong field that included Tiger Woods, Calc equaled the tour record for birdies, with 32, and tied another tour record by finishing 28 strokes under par.

57

I’m no statistician but reading that on the luck element again, i think this part of their analysis looks pretty suspect actually. The premise of their definition of luck is questionable, unless one says that how you wake up & feel in the morning is luck - guess it could be argued that way (be different if they were all hitters eh Lag :slight_smile: more consistency !). That’s why you get the 66/1 about picking them i guess :slight_smile:

This kind of luck cannot be directly measured. What Connolly and Rendleman do is model what a player is expected to shoot, accounting for their recent play, the course, and the weather. They then declare any deviation from that expected score attributable to “luck.”

58

I agree, Tim on the analysis of luck. In the Slate article they point to a tournament that Mickelson was in (IIRC, I haven’t read it in awhile) and how he lost a tournament due to ‘bad luck.’ But they termed ‘bad luck’ as Mickelson playing much better than he usually does and some other pro who won the tournament, playing well, well above where he usually plays. I kinda understand the premise…the golfer playing well, well above their usual self may happen 1 in 10,000 rounds of golf. But still, I have a hard time labeling something as luck when a golfer’s actual skill is behind it.

Where I think ‘luck’ can come into play is particularly in the Danger Zone. Like that day I played where I was +4 thru 12. The 12th hole is an uphill 215 yard par-3. I hit a 3-hybrid and hit it well. The green is pretty small. I wind up pin high and just missed to the right of the green, but virtually had no shot at getting up and down, unless I could drain a 30 foot putt. I would’ve been better off hitting a mediocre tee shot that either missed left or even missed into the front bunker.

One thing I’ve found is that from 175-200 yards out from the fairway, the pros are about the same in accuracy as being 125-150 yards in the rough. I’m actually going to see what the GIR %'s are from those two places. While GIR is an overrated stat, I’m thinking that the shots from 125-150 yards from the rough, may go as accurate as far as prox to cup, but their GIR percentage may be signficantly higher. Meaning that the advantage of hitting it further and into the rough is that odds may be that you may take double bogey or more out of play. But, I’ll have to check it out.

3JACK

59

One thing that is certain is that in any field of 144 pro players, one, if not even a couple of guys are going to be having the best week of their life. Whether it be skill, luck or a combination of the two… a couple guys are going to be having things go their way.

The thing that makes a guy like Tiger so great is that he doesn’t need to be having his best week to be better than the guys who are having their best week to win.

I thought about this when playing in Australia. If I was having a really good week, and Greg Norman was having a really bad week, we might get paired together on Sunday. We almost did one week, as he was playing one group behind me. If he plays good, no amount of luck on my part is going to get me near him.

No doubt luck is a huge element in golf, but only in the short term. It appears more visible on any given shot, less visible over a round and plays a much less part over a season or a career.

I see skill in golf as similar to playing roulette in Vegas. Assuming you always play either black or red… the better you get the more of your chosen color will consume the numbers. Let’s assume black is your favorable color. If the “00” and the “0” are the really bad luck slots on the wheel, well those are always going to be there for everyone… but the better your skill level is… it would be like more and more of the numbers get painted black. If there are 18 red and 18 black… for an 18 handicapper, assume each time you lower your handicap, you change the odds from 17 red and 19 black and so on… so that when you get down to scratch, an 18 handicap will NEVER beat you, because you would have 36 black slots and he would have to rely upon you hitting the green every time. Not going to happen. So while luck does exist and play a part, each player has their own wheel set up. If I have 20 black slots on my wheel and 16 red ones, I might need a little luck to beat a guy who has 22 black ones and 14 red ones. I might win a round here and there, but I will need a lot of luck to win an event over 4 rounds, and it will be impossible for me to beat that player over the course of a season or career.

The old saying, the better you get, the luckier you get is really just increasing your probability by having more black slots on your wheel than you did before.

60

That’s a great analogy…roulette.

Didn’t Gary Player say “the most I practice, the luckier I get” ?