The misperception of the short game.

[David Ober]

So here's another question (and maybe it's already been covered in this now 10-age thread):

What is the best way for a mid-capper to take strokes of his game?

I would say that, in most cases, it's to focus on learning new short game shots and mastery. Why? Because the motions are much smaller and simpler to learn and they require less power to perform well. People of all ages and skill levels should be able to learn the short game to an adequate standard much easier (I believe) than the long game.

I see so, so many mid-cappers that struggle with basic pitch shots that it's become a personal mission of mine to help people learn the basic pitch shot that you see every professional in the world hit on a regular basis. It's not a hard shot to learn -- once you have the technique -- but it's one I see butchered over and over and over.

What thinkest the GCA?

[Brent Hutto]

I think the 15-25 handicapper (that's me) should spend whatever time he's willing to practice working on avoiding shots that leave him worse off than he was before playing the shot.

So if he hits multiple tee shots per round into water, OB or lost ball penalties a priority has to be getting the ball in play.

If he blades wedges over the green more than once in a great while he needs to figure out how to hit those shots other than in the belly of the ball.

If he doesn't have those problems or if he is able to practice some and minimize them then I agree that expanding his short game repertoire is a good place to work. Modest increments of time invested will have incremental rewards in the short game.

For a double-digit handicapper to try and improve his approach shot skills from 150+ yards means a long-term swing improvement process that may or may not eventually work out. And in the mean time it may not show any incremental improvements. If his swing fundamentals are bad enough and ingrained enough, possibly even the opposite.

Identifying what makes the best players successful is a totally different question than how can a hack improve to the point of hacking a few strokes less badly. Sometimes you have to search where the light is brightest, so to speak.

[Jon Wiggett]

Jon,

The problem is that your "distance", "accuracy" and "scramble" numbers do not adequate represent what you're probably expecting them to mean.

And as you are rubbishing my opinion Brett please do tell me what you think I mean.

 The entire reason Broadie and others have developed their methodology is because poorly thought out counting and percentage stats like that are misleading.

Or you might argue that they did not give the results they wanted to have so they changed the methodology.

It's not just that they don't answer the question you might expect them to based on their names but they do answer those questions incorrectly.

At least the list you're giving lists strokes gained from putting. But the others are the functional equivalent of counting "total putts" or "putts per GIR".

I used SGfP because it seemed to me to be the most relevant. Just because you disagree with some categories is not bases for saying all are incorrect.

They do not take into account the distance and situation from which each shot was played nor the distance and situation resulting from each shot.

But then the bases for judging all scores i.e. PAR does not take these into account either so then you can only go on score as the basis ergo Kuchar.

 Therefore they conflate various mixtures of outcomes and then tally up the resulting mishmash.



And beyond that, your summary does not include any information specifically about the factor that we're trying to tell you is the most important factor at all: long approach shot success.

That is true. So where do Kuchar, Garcia and Watson feature on the GiR on long shots? Are you saying that Kuchar is significantly better at hitting the green from 220 yard than 120 yards because if he is not then your theory is in tatters.

Oh and Bubba Watson won both his Majors on a course where accuracy off the tee is less vital than length and also favours a left hander.

I do not disagree that the long game is important. Nor do I believe that the long game is not vital but it is usually a fall in standard of the short game that leads to the demise of most top players.

As a side issue to the DA issue. It is interesting that Seve became one of the most accurate drivers of the ball in the world towards the end of his playing career after being somewhat wild through most of his career. Despite this he was far more successful during his earlier career.

[Brent Hutto]

So-called "driving distance" does not actually measure how far a player hits the ball. It only measures two shots per round on holes specifically chosen to be so wide-open as to invite players to swing away with their driver.

So-called "driving accuracy" is useless because not every "fairway hit" has the same value relative to a "fairway missed".

Greens in regulation is next-to-useless because a green "missed" by a one foot is not as costly as a green "missed" by 40 yards.

Scrambling percentage has two problems. Not only the obvious problem of not every up-and-down being of equal difficulty (far from it, actually) but it also totally conflates putting skill and short game skill. So does bunker percentage by the way.

The problem is NOT that these give answers Broadie, et. al. do not like. The problem is they are numbers which don't actually quantify specific things that contribute to your score.

And "par" is no part of nothing, surely in this forum of all places you're not going to trot out that as a straw man.

All of these "traditional stats" are simply numbers that are trivial to compile and which are adequate to serve as hot-stove fodder among innumerate fans of particular players. They are conceptually divorced from scoring outcomes. The reason Broadie and the rest of us came up with the "Strokes Gained" approach is because to understand how the game is played you need stats that are 100% totally based on scoring.

Strokes Gained-Putting simply tallies up what proportion of ones score on a hole was contributed by each putt. The "traditional" alternative is to count a putt made from 40 feet and a putt made from two feet each as "one putt made" even though the two putts were more than one full stroke different in their effect on scoring. Same with counting a ball one foot into the fringe and a ball 60 yards from green in the bunker each as a "green missed" when again they differ but roughly one stroke in their effect on scoring.

You guys keep saying "Score is all that matters" and then you want to quote stats like "Driving Accuracy" that don't have one blessed thing to do with scoring. It bloody-minded in the extreme.

[Mike_Young]

Name Faldo, North or anyone that played the tour and they are all great short game players as well as long game etc....GREAT is not two or three people when you speak of golf.  At the least it is the 300 tour players in the world.  There may be differing degrees of greatness out there just as in any professional sport, be it baseball, football, soccer.  Don't be lulled into thinking there are one or two out there that a scratch player can handle...

[Jon Wiggett]

So-called "driving distance" does not actually measure how far a player hits the ball. It only measures two shots per round on holes specifically chosen to be so wide-open as to invite players to swing away with their driver.

So-called "driving accuracy" is useless because not every "fairway hit" has the same value relative to a "fairway missed".

Greens in regulation is next-to-useless because a green "missed" by a one foot is not as costly as a green "missed" by 40 yards.

Scrambling percentage has two problems. Not only the obvious problem of not every up-and-down being of equal difficulty (far from it, actually) but it also totally conflates putting skill and short game skill. So does bunker percentage by the way.

The problem is NOT that these give answers Broadie, et. al. do not like. The problem is they are numbers which don't actually quantify specific things that contribute to your score.

And "par" is no part of nothing, surely in this forum of all places you're not going to trot out that as a straw man.

All of these "traditional stats" are simply numbers that are trivial to compile and which are adequate to serve as hot-stove fodder among innumerate fans of particular players. They are conceptually divorced from scoring outcomes. The reason Broadie and the rest of us came up with the "Strokes Gained" approach is because to understand how the game is played you need stats that are 100% totally based on scoring.

Strokes Gained-Putting simply tallies up what proportion of ones score on a hole was contributed by each putt. The "traditional" alternative is to count a putt made from 40 feet and a putt made from two feet each as "one putt made" even though the two putts were more than one full stroke different in their effect on scoring. Same with counting a ball one foot into the fringe and a ball 60 yards from green in the bunker each as a "green missed" when again they differ but roughly one stroke in their effect on scoring.

You guys keep saying "Score is all that matters" and then you want to quote stats like "Driving Accuracy" that don't have one blessed thing to do with scoring. It bloody-minded in the extreme.

and how does Brodies system get rid of these problems?

[BCowan]

Plus it doesn't include data from the Majors.  Which is what is most important to me. 

[Josh Tarble]

Jon,
I'm sure Brent will do a much better job of explaining than I will but I will try.

Let's take a simple hole - 400 yard par 4.

Player hits FIR 290 yards, misses GIR, gets up and down for par.  What does that tell you?  Not much, other than that he was 100% scrambling and made a par.


With Broadie's Strokes Gained it would go like this (all numbers are made up - but close to accurate)

Player hits dead in the middle of the fairway:  that's  +0.2 strokes gained
Player misses green right:  that's -0.5 strokes gained
Player hits poor chip to 30 feet:  that's -0.3 strokes gained
Player makes 30 foot putt:  that's +0.8 strokes gained

The hole was playing to a 4.0 stroke average - even though the player parred, because of his missed green, he actually -0.2 strokes compared to the field.

So from this you can see his driving was better than the field, short iron and recovery game worse than average and his putt better than average.  But because it was an easy hole, he lost strokes to the field.  Now, one round isn't a big deal, but multiply that by 4 rounds and he's almost lost a whole stroke to the field just because of shoddy short iron and recovery play.

By no means is anyone saying any statistic is the measure of a great player, but it helps to have accurate, in-depth numbers to help figure out what a player is strongest at.  There are still unmeasurables like heart and grit and pressure, but those are things you can't work on at the range.

[Brent Hutto]

Jon,

It's because no shot is score on a "hit/miss" dichotomy and no numbers other than "strokes gained" are summed or averaged. The book is called "Every Shot Counts" and indeed every shot, from the driver off a Par 4 tee to the 2-foot "gimme" putt, are tallied up on the same scale. And that scale is denominated in "strokes" which sum up to the actual score the player achieved on each hole and for the entire round.

Everything is comparable (it's all in "strokes") and every fractional component is accounted for and charged against the shot that was responsible. That's why I said it's as much an accounting system as a statistical model.

For example, a player hit a 260 yard tee shot on a 340 yard Par 4. It either ends up in the fairway, in the rough or in a bunker.

Traditional counting stats:
It would count as a value of "260" if you were averaging tee-shot distances
It would count as "hit" if it ends up in the fairway and "miss" otherwise

Strokes Gained:
If in the fairway the player gained +0.12 strokes
If in the rough the player gained -0.10 stroke (lost 1/10 of a stroke)
If in a bunker the player gained -0.38 (lost over 1/3 of a stroke)




Now take the same 260 yard tee shot on a 580 yard Par 5.

Traditional counting stats (counts exactly as on the short Par 4):
It would count as a value of "260" if you were averaging tee-shot distances
It would count as "hit" if it ends up in the fairway and "miss" otherwise

Strokes Gained:
If in the fairway the player gained -0.05 strokes (slight loss)
If in the rough the player gained -0.16 stroke (lost 1/6 of a stroke)
If in a bunker the player gained -0.33 (lost 1/3 of a stroke)


These are small fractions of a stroke but over a tournament or over a season they really do add up to meaningful outcomes. And you can see that a "fairway missed" has an actual scoring implication that varies depending on where the ball ended up (rough, bunker or even in the woods or with a penalty stroke) and also on the situation. Missing the fairway is more costly at some distances than others.

You apply this to every shot taken in a round, add up all the "Strokes Gained" values you get exactly the score that the player shot on a plus/minus scale that compares not to Par but to the average score that Tour pros would shoot on a course with the same set of lengths for each of the 18 holes. So a score of 71 might be "one under par" but more meaningfully (when comparing to other Tour pros) it might be something like 0.68 strokes worse than Tour pro average scoring. It can be further adjusted for actual scoring of the field on the day in question but that's just a fine-tuning matter.

The key is you don't get numbers like "50% of fairways hit, 67% of greens hit, 1-under par" and then do a bunch of ranking and guesswork to see whether each of those numbers might have more or less effect on scoring. You find out that he gained 2 strokes over the Tour average on his approach shots, lost 1 stroke over Tour average on his tee shots and broke even on a short game and putting. Or whatever the exact results might add up to for that round.

[JESII]

I'm having a hard time getting my hands around the idea that because the long game numbers are bigger it automatically means they're more important. I admittedly don't have a clear grasp on the model, but wouldn't the simple fact that there are more strokes left to play (when measuring say 200 yard shots) increase the spread between best and worst, or average more than the putting stats?

[Brent Hutto]

Let me also add that all this Strokes Gained stuff is an approximation. There is still plenty of complexity and variability being averaged out. The system treats uphill and downhill 20-footers the same. It treats being in "US Open rough" the same as being in the "second cut" at Augusta or in the wispy stuff during a dry year at an Open venue. It treats being plugged in a bunker the same as having a perfect lie.

Only distance from the hole and broad categories (tee, fairway, rough, sand, obstructed, penalty) of situations are coded into the system because that's what's in the ShotLink data. So the system glosses over lots of interesting questions. But at least it is sufficient to answer the basic questions like "Just how many strokes better is Tiger Wood than a typical Tour player at 225-yard approach shots" that are left totally unanswerable by the "traditional stats".

[BCowan]

Let me also add that all this Strokes Gained stuff is an approximation. There is still plenty of complexity and variability being averaged out. The system treats uphill and downhill 20-footers the same. It treats being in "US Open rough" the same as being in the "second cut" at Augusta or in the wispy stuff during a dry year at an Open venue. It treats being plugged in a bunker the same as having a perfect lie.

Only distance from the hole and broad categories (tee, fairway, rough, sand, obstructed, penalty) of situations are coded into the system because that's what's in the ShotLink data. So the system glosses over lots of interesting questions. But at least it is sufficient to answer the basic questions like "Just how many strokes better is Tiger Wood than a typical Tour player at 225-yard approach shots" that are left totally unanswerable by the "traditional stats".

Great Post

[Michael Felton]

So here's another question (and maybe it's already been covered in this now 10-age thread):

What is the best way for a mid-capper to take strokes of his game?

I would say that, in most cases, it's to focus on learning new short game shots and mastery. Why? Because the motions are much smaller and simpler to learn and they require less power to perform well. People of all ages and skill levels should be able to learn the short game to an adequate standard much easier (I believe) than the long game.

I see so, so many mid-cappers that struggle with basic pitch shots that it's become a personal mission of mine to help people learn the basic pitch shot that you see every professional in the world hit on a regular basis. It's not a hard shot to learn -- once you have the technique -- but it's one I see butchered over and over and over.

What thinkest the GCA?

I would think putting. I do think that Broadie is correct in that long game has the biggest impact on scoring, but one thing that is missed by the stats is the state of mind of the player. My thinking is this. If you get good enough that you feel confident of holing a putt from 6 feet, then that takes the pressure off your short game, because you only have to hit a reasonable chip and you're getting up and down. If you do that, it takes the pressure off your approach play, because you only have to get it around the green to make par and if you hit a good shot you have a good chance at birdie. Long story short I think that being a good putter facilitates having a good long game.

The other thing about putting is you can practise that anywhere. On the carpet at home or even in the office potentially. Hard to practise your long game without going to a range, which may or may not be practical. There are also no real physical limitations to putting. Most of us will never get to experience carrying a bunker that's 300 yards away. All of us can hole a 40 foot putt. And all of us can learn to hole 6 foot putts with regularity.

Jon - when did Seve become a straight driver? I didn't really start following golf until after Seve was past his best and I never remember him being a straight driver. I do remember him playing a singles match against Tom Lehman in the early 90s and he couldn't hit it within 50 yards of the fairway, but he was getting it up and down from everywhere. Lehman was laughing about it it was so incredible. Lehman of course went on to win his match because an all world short game can only do so much in the face of a 10 handicap long game...

Also, why do you use Strokes Gained Putting and not Putts Per Round? If you are going to use Strokes Gained Putting, why wouldn't you use Strokes Gained Driving? Or Strokes Gained Long Game? That's what Broadie uses for all of them.

The reason that what Broadie uses is "right" is because he took 8 years worth of data of every shot hit by every player on the PGA Tour. From that he compiled the average number of strokes it takes to complete the hole from every distance in every situation. You can find a table of that at the end of his paper. He then uses that to compare each player's shots with the norm. Every time you hit the ball, you add a shot (if you're me, you may add more than one) and in return (hopefully) your expected number of shots to complete the hole goes down. If it goes down by more than the one stroke that you took, then you gained something on the field. If it goes down by less than the one stroke that you took, then you lost something on the field.

Let's put it this way. Suppose you have a 460 yard par four. Two people are playing. The pin is on the back left corner of the green in an awkward spot about 4 yards from the edge of the green. Player 1, let's call him Bubba, hits his drive 340 yards into the semi rough on the right edge of the fairway, leaving himself 120 yards in. Player 2, let's call him Corey, hits a bit of a pop up that finishes up 240 yards away in the fairway. Player 2, from 220 yards hits a 3 wood that dribbles onto the front edge of the green around 90 feet from the hole. Player 1, from 120 yards hits it to the fringe around 13 feet from the hole, with a straight uphill look at the hole. Player 2 hits his first putt 8 feet by the hole. Player 1 putts up to a foot and taps in. Player 2 holes his 8 footer for a 4.

Here, both players made par. Player 1 missed the fairway and green and Player 2 hit the fairway and the green. Player 2 two putted and Player 1 one putted and got a scrambled par in the process. So it looks like Player 2 has the better long game and Player 1 has the better short game. If, instead we look at it from a strokes gained perspective, we have the following:

460 off the tee is 4.17 shots
220 from the fairway is 3.32 shots
120 from the rough is 3.08 shots
90 feet from the green is 2.379 shots
13 feet from the fringe is let's say 1.90 shots
1 foot from the green is 1.001 shots

So Player 1 gains 0.09 shots with his drive, 0.18 shots with his second shot, loses 0.101 shots with his short game and gains 0.001 shots with his putt. Player 2 loses 0.15 shots with his drive, loses 0.059 shots with his second shot and gains 0.379 shots with his putting. So this would indicate that actually Player 1 has the better long game and Player 2 the better short game.

Which of the two methods do you think more accurately reflects the way that they played the hole?

[Brent Hutto]

Jim,

Every shot taken has its result compared to the average result of Tour players from that situation and distance. So if a player's round (or his season) turns out to be 3.7 strokes better than Tour average, an excellent round, we can break down that 3.7 strokes of excellent scoring into components that add up to 3.7 strokes.

Tiger Woods might have a +3.7 strokes round that looks like this:
Tee shots (Par 4 and Par 5 holes) +0.6 strokes
Approach shots (plus Par 3 tee shots) +1.9 strokes
Short game +1.4 strokes
Putting -0.2 strokes

While Steve Stricker might shoot the same score of +3.7 strokes but it looks like this:
Tee shots (Par 4 and Par 5 holes) +0.1 strokes
Approach shots (plus Par 3 tee shots) -0.7 strokes
Short game +1.8 strokes
Putting +2.5 strokes

Same score but Tiger did it with iron shots while Stricker did it around the greens. Now let's take a different scenario. Let's say Tiger had that same +3.7 day but Steve Stricker was under the Tour average at -0.3 Strokes Gained for the round. So overall Tiger outplayed Stricker by 4 strokes.

Steve Stricker (alternate scenario)
Tee shots (Par 4 and Par 5 holes) -0.1 strokes
Approach shots (plus Par 3 tee shots) -1.4 strokes
Short game +1.4 strokes
Putting -0.2 strokes

Comparing Tiger to Stricker in this scenario we see that Tiger was 3.5 strokes better than Stricker on approach shots and an additional 0.5 strokes on tee shots. So we might conclude that his advantage over Stricker was 87% due to approach shots and 13% due to tee shots (and a wash on short game and putting).

It works the same for "Tiger against the field" over a whole season. If he averages 4 strokes better than the Tour average for the season and we notice that approach shots are 3.5 of the 4 strokes then literally his advantage is much larger on approach shots than other parts of the game.

The final step is to look at it for all players, the entire season. That's a slightly more complicated bit of arithmetic but indeed it does work out that when we compare "players who score much better than Tour average" to "players who score much worse than Tour average" the difference in the good/bad scoring players putting or the difference in their tee shots or the difference in their short game is smaller than the difference between good/bad scoring players in the long approach shots. Since it's all denominated in "strokes" then a difference of "6 strokes" can be interpreted as twice as large as a difference of "3 strokes". And twice as large means twice as important since every stroke counts the same.

[JESII]

I guess what I'm asking, Brent, is why should putting performance count toward a long game statistic?

Unless I'm misunderstanding (entirely possible, likely even), put me at 200 yards in the fairway and if I take 4 to get down I'm going to be well behind the average score but the model doesn't account for me three-putting from 12 feet or burying the ball in a bunker 50 feet from the hole.

[jeffwarne]

As a side issue to the DA issue. It is interesting that Seve became one of the most accurate drivers of the ball in the world towards the end of his playing career after being somewhat wild through most of his career. Despite this he was far more successful during his earlier career.

When was this exactly?
I loved following Seve-one of my all time favorites, but which part of "the end of his career" his career are we referencing?
because at the end he couldn't drive it on the planet

[Michael Felton]

I guess what I'm asking, Brent, is why should putting performance count toward a long game statistic?

Unless I'm misunderstanding (entirely possible, likely even), put me at 200 yards in the fairway and if I take 4 to get down I'm going to be well behind the average score but the model doesn't account for me three-putting from 12 feet or burying the ball in a bunker 50 feet from the hole.

But that's exactly what it does. 200 yards in the fairway should take you 3.19 shots. 12 feet from the hole should take you 1.705 shots. 50 feet from a bunker should take you about 2.50 shots. So in case 1 where you hit it to 12 feet, you gain 0.485 shots with your long game and lose 1.295 shots with your putting. In case 2 where you hit it in the bunker, you lose 0.31 shots with your approach shot and then lose 0.50 shots between your bunker play and your putting depending on where you put the bunker shot.

[JESII]

Michael, in case 1, where did your 0.485 come from?

[Brent Hutto]

Michael, in case 1, where did your 0.485 come from?

200 yards in the fairway should take you 3.19 shots. 12 feet from the hole should take you 1.705 shots.

3.190 - 1.705 = 1.485

It means with that one shot played, you gained 1.485 strokes of progress toward the hole. That's a net of .485 strokes (you accomplished 1.485 worth of progress with 1.000 strokes played).

[JESII]

Got it, thanks guys.

[Phil McDade]

Phil,

How do you explain Andy North ?

Patrick: Have you ever met Andy North??? (I've been waiting to use that line on Mucci for....forever. )

Andy is a big, tall, strong guy -- and was never really long in his prime. His forte was very good iron play and the ability to put the ball in play, and not get in a ton of trouble. And a solid putter. Not an all-world talent (3 PGA Tour wins total), but a game in many ways ideally suited for US Open set-ups of the 1970s and 80s (he went +1 at Cherry Hills to win in '77, and was the only player to shoot par at Oakland Hills in '85.) Both courses played at around 7,000 yards (Oakland Hills was @ 6,950 yds, Cherry Hills @ 7,050 yards so effectively under 7,000 yards at altitude).

Take a look at multiple US Open winners, particularly from the 1960s onward, and they often have one thing in common -- they are almost always really strong. Nicklaus, Trevino, Els, Tiger, Casper, Irwin (a college football player), Strange -- none of them slight. Smaller players who have won U.S. Opens -- notably Kite and Pavin -- did so in years when the course set-up was lightening fast.

[BCrosby]

Brent/Michael -

Broadie is clearly on to something. Thanks for your explcations. I agree with his/your conclusions about distance.

I came to a similar conclusion a couple of years ago based, ironically, on Pelz's research. For me it is a simpler and more intuitive way to get to the same place. It goes like this (again, based on Pelz):

1. Good players can sink a reasonable percentage of 10 foot putts;

2. No one (pros or otherwise) sinks a reasonable percentage of putts over 20 feet;

3. The frequency of approach shots within 10 feet is a function of the length of the approach shot;

4. Longer drivers leave themselves with shorter approach shots:

5. Ergo, don't spend your practise time on putting; spend it on learing to hit your drives farther.

Q.E.D.

(All with the caveat that if learning to hit longer drives is not feasible, practise your putting by default. You'll save more pars, but you won't post many more birdies.)

Bob



 

  

[Brent Hutto]

Bob,

And without seeing the breakdowns in the ShotLink data, my suspicion is the reason long approach shots are a "high leverage" part of the Tour game is because your 10-foot-ish radius is a really, really, really demanding criterion.

A lot of guys on Tour can hit a fair number of shots <10 feet from the hole from, say, 120 yards. So it's hard to be much better than average at getting it that close from the shorter approach shot distances.

But for most people, getting a 225 yard shot <10 feet from the hole is quite rare. So if a Tiger type player can accomplish that 10% of the time from 225 (just making up a for instance number) then that 10% might be 2x to 3x as often as a typical Tour player. Making two to three times as many birdies from 225 is huge.

Or that's my idea about it anyway. One day maybe I'll find time to look into the numbers and see if it back my idea up. That's the cool thing about this ShotLink type data. It's worth exploring that kind of idea because you can make a direct linkage. Not like dredging up a bunch of detailed "stats" that you kinda, sorta hope are somehow correlated with the thing you want to know.

[BCrosby]

Brent -

The key fact in Pelz's research (which is bad news for a guy selling short game lessons) is that nobody - and I mean nobody - sinks putts over 20 feet with any regularity.

Only when you get inside 10 to 8 feet do you see good putters making putts on a regular basis.

So yes, 10 feet is the critical range and yes, it is hard to hit it that close, and yes, you can only do that with any frequency if you are hitting a lofted club.

Bob

[Josh Bills]

I have found this thread very informative and will likely get the book and read it.  I do wonder if any of this data ever finds it way into the Architect's hands and has any meaningful impact on how they design or layout a course?   Has any of this data played a role in set up on the PGA Tour in the past 10 years?  Or is it just a way to hlep the players improve their games.  Just curious.

Josh