Is it not a big deal Dustin Johnson hit 3w/6i on the 18th green at PB?

[Garland Bayley]

Garland,

I think the Iron Byron was not that far off of "optimal" for the time period in which it was created.   Whether it was 'optimal" or not, I think Thomas gave us a rough idea of the launch conditions being produced on Iron Byron (ball speed, launch angle, and spin) and I think that modern balls perform better under similar launch conditions. 

I also think your claim that the Strata became the number one ball on the PGATour is mistaken.  According to the Titleist propaganda ("Technology and Tradition"), by 2000 the use on tour of the solid core ball had grown to 27%, which is significant but well short of a majority. 

With enough different balls being used, you could have, for example, 10% and be the number one ball on tour. No majority claimed, nor implied.

[DMoriarty]

In theory, yes.  But in practice, I don't think so.  According to the Titleist site in 2000, 73% of of golfers were playing wound balls.  What balls brands do you suppose these were other than Titleists?  

This article claims there were more than 100 golfers playing Titleist on tour in 2000.

http://www.pgatour.com/news/2013/09/06/the-evolution-of-the-pro-v1.html

[Garland Bayley]

In theory, yes.  But in practice, I don't think so.  According to the Titleist site in 2000, 73% of of golfers were playing wound balls.  What balls brands do you suppose these were other than Titleists?  

This article claims there were more than 100 golfers playing Titleist on tour in 2000.

http://www.pgatour.com/news/2013/09/06/the-evolution-of-the-pro-v1.html

A 2013 article written about year 2000 without any references. Does he also write for Fox News?

Does anyone know how to make a search engine search for articles of a particular period?

[DMoriarty]

Garland, I don't know if I'd trust the article exactly as it seems to be written by a titleist P.R. firm, but I would be very, very surprised if Titleists weren't the most played ball on tour in 2000.   

As for searches, for google searches click on "search tools" then change "any time" to custom range.  Same goes for news searches.

[Bryan Izatt]

David,

Re your assertions about 3 wood and baby driver (whatever that is) use on the PGA Tour driving holes, I spent a little bit of time at the Valspar Championship this afternoon and thought I would try to see what players were hitting on these holes.

When I arrived late, the final group, Na and Garrigus was putting on the 4th.  I watched them tee off on the 5th, a 605 yard par 5.  After watching their second shots I asked the Shotlink operator if he knew what the driving holes were.  He didn't.  Walking up the hill to the 6th green, I ran in to Mark Russell sitting in a cart in the forest all by himself.  Guessing that he would know, I asked him.  He didn't know either but was good enough to radio in to someone who knew - turns out it was the 5th and 14th, both long par 5's; the 5th mostly into a very stiff wind and the 14th mostly down wind.

Mr. Russell did ask why I wanted to know.  I said I was involved in a debate about whether players mostly used drivers on the driving holes.  He said they try hard to find holes where driver will be used.

So on the 5th, I had a sample of 2 players.  Na used driver, while Garrigus used a 3 wood.  Garrigus was melting down at the time which may have affected his decision.  No idea how the rest of the field played it, but I'd guess driver given the length of the hole and it being in to the wind.

I watched 8 groups play through the 14th tee.  Fifteen out of sixteen used driver - Will Mackenzie being the exception.

So, I guess you could say that you are right that there is some small percentage use of 3 woods on the driving holes.  But I would observe that the distance variation brought on by weather and topography would likely far outweigh the minimal variation brought on by 3 woods.

Looking at the leaders, they were generally driving it 250 - 270 yards into the wind on the 5th, while all, except Mackenzie, were at 300 or over downwind on the 14th.

[DMoriarty]

Bryan,

Interesting. Thanks for making the effort.  

I wish I'd have known you were going to ask questions, I'd have had you ask a few questions about how they determine their which hole(s) the pga tour uses for their advanced launch info stats.  We may be able to tell something about the driver numbers (including driver usage) by focusing on advanced launch stats for club head speed, ball speed, and launch angle ("Samples")

I am not sure you have taken a close look at those Samples but they seem to be a subset (or possibly an entirely different set) from the "measured holes" driver statistics.   I've tried to figure it out what they mean and it looks like:
1) The data looks like it is for driver only.  (Otherwise the ball speeds and swing speeds seem too high.)
2) It looks like no more than one drive (or possibly one average of drives) per round is used.  (Over the history of these stats, no one has more drives hit than rounds played.)
3) In most cases there is less than one drive per round recorded.  For example, Bubba Watson played 76 rounds and had 52 reported advanced launch stats (club head speed, ball speed, launch angle.)  Dustin Johnson played 71 rounds and had 40 reported advanced launch stats.  Justin Bohn played 70 rounds and had 70 reported advanced launch stats, but he is a rarity.  

It seems possible that these Samples might give us a window into how often individual golfers used driver on the holes trackman used to measure these Samples. (And presumably, trackman was measuring on the hole(s) where they thought driver was most likely to be hit.)  The hypothesis is that we can tell the percentage they hit driver on the trackman hole(s) by comparing the number of rounds to the number of advanced launch stat samples.  For example, in my examples I mentioned above,  Watson would be at 68%, Johnson at 56%, and Bohn at 100%.   Meaning that Bohn always hit driver on the trackman hole, Watson did about 2/3 of the time, and Johnson did a little over half the time.  

To begin to test the hypothesis, I looked at Phil Mickelson's numbers.  I chose Phil because it was widely reported that last year Phil had given up on driver last year, and had instead gone to frequently hitting was hitting his magic 3 wood (or 2 wood.)  So if this is true, and if the hypothesis is correct, then we should see a big drop off in the percentage of Phil's samples for last year.   Here are Phil's percentages going 6 years back.

2008  70%
2009  79%
2010  88%
2011  80%
2012  70%
2013  33%

So Mickelson's percentage (samples/rounds) went way down in 2013.   Not enough to prove the hypothesis, but perhaps enough to explore it further.   (His driving distance for the measured holes dropped, too.)

I looked at two years, 2011 (a long drive year) and 2013 (a relatively shorter drive year.)  In both years the percentage was about 80% (samples/rounds).  So if my hypothesis about the stats is correct, the driver usage on the trackman hole(s) is about the same for both years.  

But I also looked at the top 10 drivers in each year, to see if driver usage had changed among the longest hitters.   In 2011 the percentage was again about 80%.  In 2013, the percentage was 69%.  So if the hypothesis was correct, then the longest drivers were using driver about 11% less in 2013 than in 2011.   If so, then that may explain why the average distances were down last year.  

[Pat Burke]

I've had an interesting couple of months, that will hopefully relate to this thread, at least from my
game's perspective.
I quit playing in 2001, completely got away from playing.  Stayed in the game, teaching, running events, and
helping run a non-profit.  I've been mostly teaching for the past 7 years, playing less than 20 rounds a year, usually aroun 12 rounds.
I went to two Champions Tour schools and made it to finals with no success.  Apparently, no practice is not the recipe for success!

This year, I decided to try and make a more serious run at Champions q school.  I raised a little money, went to Euro Senior qualifying and missed at finals, while playing terribly.  I've unsuccessfully tried some monday qualifiers.  The biggest problem I'm having is my iron play.  After struggling in Atlanta last week, and convincing myself that I either sucked, or my clubs did, I did some testing with a talented local clubfitter.
The end result:
1) I used a 1990 set of Cleveland Classic irons as a benchmark.  Love these clubs, but illegal (grooves)
    They have the same shafts, and are 1 degree weaker than the Callaway Apex and Addams irons I was using.

The Clevelands were about 12 yards shorter than the Callaway and 10 yards shorter than the Adams
The scatter pattern on my distance control was more than 50% better with the Clevelands.
The spin rates on the Clevelands were about 400-500 RPM more than the new clubs

I tested 5 different irons.  3 from Miura, 1 from TM, and the new Titleist MB
We started with the same shafts as the Clevelands.  Spin rates on the Miuras were close to the old Clevelands, but the
ball was going about 10 yards further.  The Titleist spun 3-400rpm more than the Miura, also 10 yards longer than the Clevelands.

The last part, was the recommendation of the new KBS C-Taper lite shaft.  I picked up another 3-400 RPM, finally getting into an
optimum number.  I also launched the ball 2 degrees higher, and hit it another 5 yards further.

So, through an amazing fitting with a very talented guy, I basically picked up 14 yards carry, with more spin, and a tighter dispersion.
All with the same ball, and a 1 degree stronger loft through the set.

I am not tweaking my yardages like a lot of Tour Guys, and at 52 yo and a fat 5'5" I would imagine their optimization gains are staggering

[Garland Bayley]

I have been rereading The Spirit of St. Andrews. This MacKenzie character thinks the ball should be rolled back and limited. And that was a long time ago. His prevalent, straight-forward reason -- he wants to play more golf and walk less. Genius.

[John Percival]

On a skew from the distance topic, but still about Dustin...
...notice that since the 'storm' about the GD cover (and his fiance), he's not sniffed a cut.
Cause and effect?