Statistics

[Jason Topp]

Interesting statistics from the tour regarding the four participants  in the Grand Slam Competition (Woods, Singh, Mickelson and Campbell).  It also shows the tour average for comparison purposes:

http://www.pgatour.com/story/9057401

Tiger's advantage over the other three:

Driving distance - 15 yards
short iron play
"going for the green" - I assume it means successful attempts

Little or no advantage compared to Singh and Mickelson in:

putting
greens in regulation
scrambling

While all four are generally better than tour average for all statistics, they are all below the tour average for driving accuracy.

More support for flogging.  Drivers, short irons and reaching par fives in two is the recipe for success.

[Jim Nugent]

Jason, I interpret those stats a bit differently.  Tiger had a very big advantage on putts from 5 to 10 feet.  He made 62%.  The other two made 57.3%.  He also did better on putts from 10 to 15 feet.  That is important because Tiger put the ball in that range a lot more than the others did.  

Also, the article says that Tiger was the only player on tour in 2005 who did not miss a single putt under 3 feet.  VJ would love to hold that stat -- he probably would have won at least one and maybe several more events.  

Overall, the picture that emerged for me was that Tiger:

*  Drove the ball significantly longer;
*  Got his resulting shorter-iron shots (100 to 150 yards) much closer to the pins;
*  And made a much higher percentage of those shorter putts he had for birdies on those holes.

More approach shots from closer in, that end closer to the pin, and he makes more of those putts as well.  

On the GIR distances, I wonder how they count par 5's that Tiger and the others hit in 2.  Is the GIR distance counted after the 2nd shot, or after the first putt?  If the putt, that really shorten Tiger's average distance from the pins: on his eagles it makes it 0.  Or do they count GIR distance at all on par 5's?

[Ken Bramlett]

I suppose Tiger's abilities with the putter also explain over and over why his wayward drives aren't nearly as "wayward" as some others.

I continue to be fascinated by the improvements in his driving distance.  At a conference earlier in the year Hank Haney was asked how much of the improvements were related to technology and how much to training regimen and so forth.

Haney wasn't very precise in response, but gave some credit to both.  Specifically, he said Tiger gained nine yards off the tee by doing nothing other than switching to the new Nike golf ball.  Then, you add the new driver and the enhanced conditioning and you know the rest.

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Don't you need to compare these giants of the game with those who made $x-million on the tour yet did nothing outstanding?  I don't mean that earning $x-million isn't meritorious, but to be a stand-out such as Tiger surely demands outstanding skills which may not be reflected in the year-end tables.

[BCrosby]

Fascinating.

If you begin with the Pelz claim that no one (not Tiger, not no one) sinks putts over 20 feet on a regular basis, the key to scoring should be hitting approaches inside that circle.

Tiger won the Grand Slam by a big margin. Which means, if the Pelz claim really holds water, Tiger must have hit more approaches inside that circle than the other players. (Again, because only from inside that circle do you have a statistical chance of making a many birdie putts.)

Well sure as horses eat corn, that's just what Tiger did.

Tiger blew away they other three players in proximity to the hole (a) from 100 - 125 yards and (b) from 125 - 150 yards. (Only Mickelson came close and then only in the (b) range. But then Phil did finish second and well ahead of Campbell and Singh. Which is further confirmation of the Pelz thesis about makeable putt ranges.)

Combine that stat with the distance stats and the result is that Tiger's extra length gave him more of exactly the kinds of short approaches that he was much better at anyway. (Put differently, even if he drove the ball the same distance as the others, he wins on his superior short approach play alone.)  

That package of length and skill at short appoaches is absolutely lethal. Just brutal. If those stats say what I think they say, Tiger should win by huge margins over the next best players in the world. Which, as it turned out at the Grand Slam, he did.

The correct (and counter-intuitive) lesson from Pelz's yeoman research is not to work on your putting. You should work on your driving distance so you can get more 125 yard approaches. Those are the only kinds of approaches that even world class players can hit regularly inside 20 feet.

Bob