Augusta National: The bomber's paradise

[Phil McDade]

Of those who played well this year at the Masters, including the two playoff participants, their most common trait was length off the tee.

The two best golfers of the week -- Oosthuizen and Watson -- were 2nd and 4th in total driving distance for the tournament. Three others with top-10 finishes -- Westwood (T3), Harrington and Rose (both T8) -- are were among the 10 longest drivers of the ball during the four days of the tournament. The man with the lowest round in the tournament -- Van Pelt with a 64 on Sunday -- was 6th in driving distance.

Of the other golfers who finished in the top 10, all were among or near the top half longest players in the field. A total of 62 players made the cut; the other top 10 finishers and their rank in driving distance were: Mickelson (T3, 26th), Hanson (T3, 31st), Kuchar (T3, 34th), Poulter (7, 37th), Scott (T8, 33rd). In essence, if you weren't among the top 60 percent of players in distance off the tee this year, you didn't seriously contend.

There has been a lot of discussion on this board in recent years praising the USGA's approach to setting up the US Open, in that course set-ups have seen options introduced for how to play particular holes, and that the traditional notion of protecting par at all cost at the US Open has been set aside to allow golfers more opportunity for recoveries, and attacking the course more boldly. In short, a desire to eliminate the traditional one-dimensional course set-up (narrow fairways and high rough chief among those) associated with the championship.

Is the Masters now the most one-dimensional major we have? Is length off the tee the primary attribute a golfer must have to contend there? Does Augusta National -- in the main -- prevent the short and even moderate-length hitter off the tee from contending?

[Kalen Braley]

Phil,

Interesting stats...

But how do the stats for GIR, Putting, and Sand saves match up for the week as well?  Aren't the leaders naturally going to be doing well in every category, hence that is why they are at the top of the leaderboard?

P.S.  I haven't checked the stats yet for the Masters this year, but this has been the case when I've checked individual stats on a per week/tournament basis.  So I could be wrong here...not that it happens very often! 

[Brent Hutto]

You've sort of made the case for the uniqueness of The Masters relative to the other majors. Even as the USGA is backing off their long time mindset of "protecting par" by severely punishing even slightly offline tee shots they are just making a slight move toward where Augusta has been all along. There's really a sort of uni-dimensional continuum where the course design and setup can allow or disallow some portion of natural advantage that power offers a golfer.

To the extent that a US Open course does not elevate accuracy (or to be exact, the avoidance of even small errors of shot direction from the tee which is a subset of "accuracy") as the ultimate criterion of championship golf, then the US Open course must allow distance/power to become more important. To the extent that Augusta has never placed a particular premium on avoidance of slightly offline tee shots at all cost, the Augusta allows distance/power to be very important.

Hard to see how you can do much mix-and-matching, it just looks like a straight tradeoff to me. Or very close to it. As I understand it, the traditional challenge posed by a USGA Open setup was "If you can't drive the ball very, very, very straight on virtually every hole for four days it won't matter if you're a long hitter, short hitter or somewhere in between". The customary challenge at Augusta is to position yourself for the most advantageous second shot whether you do it by superior driving distance, superior accuracy or some combination of the two. When Augusta allows distance and accuracy as two possible ways of meeting the test, one can not be surprised that very long hitting players show up frequently in the "success" category.

Distance is an advantage in golf, generally speaking. Always has been since overcoming distance is the fundamental element of the game. If there's some setting (say a typical US Open 30 years ago) when you can not discern the advantage offered by superior power and distance it must be because some other very large factor is swamping the universal advantage of distance and obscuring evidence of that advantage. It's a near universal truism of golf that the easiest way to make a course or a hole more difficult is to add length. Move the tee back 50 yards and it is harder in absolute terms. The lengthening may make it only trivially harder for a powerful player and make it brutally difficult for the shorter hitter (in relative terms) but longer is harder because the distance to be covered between tee and hole is the thing around which all else about the game revolves.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Phil,

In truth, its always been that way at ANGC.  Ask any competitor. The narrower fw were supposed to tone that down a little, so I wonder if we should compare some stats from previous years.  Maybe we would find that you had to be in the top 33% in driving distance to win in years past.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Jeff,

They did a study years ago and found that long in the rough was better than shorter in the fairway.

ANGC's rough isn't the same rough found on weekly PGA Tour stops, US Opens and PGA's so I think you're right that length remains the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

And, even when they're off line, they seem, with their incredible strength and skill to hit over, around or under the trouble to get on the green..

Watching this year's Masters seemed to substantiate that, especially on the # 17 and # 10 on the final day.

[jeffwarne]

I thought the changes took away the roars and made it pay to lay up a la Johnson and Weir?
So now the roars are back but it's something  else?

Or it could be that the guy playing the best is ripping it and catching the slopes properly.

Or we could go obama and have half the field give back 35% of their yardage and the other half give back none, then tax all players that still hit wedges  by pulling their ball back 10 feet.
All in the interest of fairness ;    

Long hiiters have an edge at ANGC, NGLA,Shinny,and every other course.
That's why you practice.

[JESII]

Phil,

How do you compare these one week stats to the season to date numbers which do not show the guys you highlighted as being among the very longest on Tour? Other than Watson and Mickelson, none of the others are known as exceptionally long hitters. I would say they are known as pretty balanced players, which certainly includes long driving relative to the rest of us but ball control and course management seem to be key characteristics of Oosthuizen, Westwood, Rose, Poulter, Kuchar, Harrington and Adam Scott these days. What do you think?

[Ulrich Mayring]

The course is so narrow that you're gonna be in the trees anyway. Better to be long in the trees than short in the trees.

Ulrich

[Adam Lawrence]

I assume the fact that it was wet, and thus playing longer, this year favoured the big hitters. With Trevor Immelman and Zach Johnson as recent champions it's hard to define a trend

[Bill_McBride]

I thought the changes took away the roars and made it pay to lay up a la Johnson and Weir?
So now the roars are back but it's something  else?

Or it could be that the guy playing the best is ripping it and catching the slopes properly.

Or we could go obama and have half the field give back 35% of their yardage and the other half give back none, then tax all players that still hit wedges  by pulling their ball back 10 feet.
All in the interest of fairness ;    

Long hiiters have an edge at ANGC, NGLA,Shinny,and every other course.
That's why you practice.

You have been hanging out with those Yankee Republicans too long.

Bill McBride
Newnan, Georgia

[Kalen Braley]

I guess no one took the bait to look up the stats, so I did:

All data is based on the top 10 finishers in each category


Sand Saves:  
3 out of the top 10 finishers in this category also finished in the top 10 on the leader board.
5 out of 10 guys in this group finished in the top 20 and the median finish for this group was 21st place.
Overall though, this data was all over the place, so it looks like there is little correlation.


Putting:
4 out of the top 10 finishers in this category also finished in the top 10 on the leader board.
6 out of the top 10 finishers in this category finished in the top 20 on the leader board, and the median finish for the group was 15th place.
Only 4 players in this group finished worse than 25 on the leader board.
Of the top 7 finishers on the leader board on Sunday, 4 of these guys also finished in the top 5 in the putt category.
Overall, seems to be some fairly decent correlation, probably at least as good for what Phil pointed out in the Driving group.


GIR:
6 out of the top 10 finishers in this category also finished in the top 10 on the leader board.
8 out of the top 10 finishers in this category finished in the top 20 on the leaderboard, and the median finish for the group was 8th place.  That is astounding.
Only 2 players in this group finished worse than 20th on the leader board.
Of the top 10 finishers on the leader board on Sunday, 7 of these guys also finished in the top 12 in the GIR category.
Overall, this seems to be the strongest correlation to finish on Sunday, much moreso than driving.




  

[jeffwarne]

The course is so narrow that you're gonna be in the trees anyway. Better to be long in the trees than short in the trees.

Ulrich

Ulrich,
 If you think Augusta's narrow, you haven't been there.
You could fit two fairways in most of their fairways.
Sure they can limb up a few trees, but there's more recovery than at ANY other major (try recovering from gorse)

18 is a chute,and is a bit awkward out to about 240 yards off the tee or so (I'd say they could lose a few bushes/ivy in that area-some of which they at least mark as hazard now), but it's not nearly as narrow as it looks on TV

[Carl Nichols]

I guess no one took the bait to look up the stats, so I did:

All data is based on the top 10 finishers in each category


Sand Saves:  
3 out of the top 10 finishers in this category also finished in the top 10 on the leader board.
5 out of 10 guys in this group finished in the top 20 and the median finish for this group was 21st place.
Overall though, this data was all over the place, so it looks like there is little correlation.


Putting:
4 out of the top 10 finishers in this category also finished in the top 10 on the leader board.
6 out of the top 10 finishers in this category finished in the top 20 on the leader board, and the median finish for the group was 15th place.
Only 4 players in this group finished worse than 25 on the leader board.
Of the top 7 finishers on the leader board on Sunday, 4 of these guys also finished in the top 5 in the putt category.
Overall, seems to be some fairly decent correlation, probably at least as good for what Phil pointed out in the Driving group.


GIR:
6 out of the top 10 finishers in this category also finished in the top 10 on the leader board.
8 out of the top 10 finishers in this category finished in the top 20 on the leaderboard, and the median finish for the group was 8th place.  That is astounding.
Only 2 players in this group finished worse than 20th on the leader board.
Of the top 10 finishers on the leader board on Sunday, 7 of these guys also finished in the top 12 in the GIR category.
Overall, this seems to be the strongest correlation to finish on Sunday, much moreso than driving.




  

Kalen-
How did they measure putting?  Total putts?  Putts/GIR?  Feet of putts made?

[Kalen Braley]

Avg Putts per hole over the course of the tournie.  It doesn't say if it was putts for GIR or not.

Phil M. 1st - 1.49
Poulter 2nd - 1.51
P. Hason 3rd - 1.53
....


http://www.masters.com/en_US/scores/stats/putts.html