What makes Riviera so unique?

[Jim Nugent]

Karlen,


Mark Broadie revolutionized golf statistics with his "strokes gained" concept. His work showed that Tiger distinguished himself from the field with shots from the 200-250 yard range; no one was better at them than him in his heyday. Now where does the modern Tour Pro hit those shots? Why as second shots into par 5's or into par 5's converted to par long par 4's. The more opportunity he had to display this skill the more he dominated. Riviera just doesn't test that portion of your game, except for at #11.

What about #1 and #4? 

Wish I had that article I referred to in my post above.  It pretty well removed any question about why Tiger didn't dominate at Riviera. 

Mike Bodo: look at how many fairways the winners hit at Riviera.  You'll see it's often under 50%.   

[Pete Lavallee]

Jim,

#1 is a 7 iron for almost everybody; not testing the 200-250 yard shot. I will give you #4 is in that range, but let a Tour Pro tee it up and the stats are skewed.

[Kalen Braley]

Pete,


I thought about this a bit more last night and I think you have a good point.  Whether a 510 yard hole is a par 4 or par 5, 90% of the time its probably not going to change the mindset of the pro player with their next shot selection..


And like Jack, Tiger seemed to be much better than the average pro with his long irons....

[John Kavanaugh]

#4 is a par three. Hitting irons off a peg is not the same game. #2 is a big boy par 4 playing longer than #1.

[Bill Shamleffer]

It's hard to ignore the fact that Nicklaus never won there either. The champions of the "LA Open" is a potpourri of major winners displaying various skill sets. I chalk it up to the simple fact that Hollywood has a mystical control over whose star shines and where. Or they once did, that is.


LA Open champions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Open

Interesting catch per Nicklaus.  But he was runner-up to Hal Sutton at 1983 PGA Championship at Riveria.

[Kalen Braley]

So I did a little number crunching, all based on numbers straight from the PGATour.com Stat section.


Specifically I looked at the premise of Tiger being a par 5 slayer and compared that to how he stacked up to others across each hole type 3, 4, and 5.


Here is the per hole data  from 1997 (first full year on tour) to 2015.


Par 3s -  15 Over Par, 3.0034 career average. 13,152 total strokes
Par 4s -  131 Under Par, 3.9890 career average. 47,717 total strokes
Par 5s -  1848 Under Par, 4.4871 career average. 16,167 total strokes


So it looks like Pete's numbers are pretty correct here. I then compared his rank for each hole type and that's where things didnt seem as clear.


Par 3s Scoring Average - Years in top 10 on tour - 10, Years #1 on tour - 4, Years outside the top 50 - 3
Par 4s Scoring Average - Years in top 10 on tour - 11, Years #1 on tour - 6, Years outside the top 50 - 5
Par 5s scoring Average - Years in top 10 on tour - 15, Years #1 on tour - 11, Years outsde the top 50 - 2


After looking at the data, while Tiger is clearly a Par 5 slayer, so are lots of guys on tour.  But Tiger also clearly excelled at performing well across all hole types, even if he did best relative to everyone else on the par 5s.  So even though he's over par for his career on par 3s...so is everyone else.


As for Riv, while I still think this is a plausible explanation, it seems to only be one part of the story....

[Alex Miller]

Saying Tiger can't play off Kikuyu when he grew up in So Cal is ridiculous! Every public course here has it. Torrey has it so I think that disputes that theory nicely.

Also every public course in So Cal has Poa Annua greens, just like Torrey so obviously that isn't the reason either!

Agree on the Poa Annua, disagree on the Kikuyu. Riv's kikuyu for both the fairways and rough is a bit different than Torrey. It's a purer yet more wirey surface and can definitely make controlling shots tougher as it's a little tougher to predict how the ball reacts there. Although Torrey has kikuyu I would say it does not feature itself in the same way that Riviera (and a couple other courses) does.




Although Riv is anything but narrow, the point about Eucalyptus trees is a good one too. In general they block out more options for recovery than other trees, I think because of how their branches sprout up like Oaks. The typical aerial recovery is taken away and the ground recovery which would normally rely on bouncing the ball is plagued by kikuyu. Missing the fairway hurts a ton there.

[Greg Chambers]

When Tiger struggles, it's because he can't make putts.  He's not comfortable on the greens at Riv, they confound him.  I think it's as simple as that.  When a course is in your head, it's in your head...trying to figure that out using stats is a fool's errand.

[Michael Wolf]

A couple of thoughts on several of the postings above:


- I'd be very careful comparing Tiger, or any other top 10 player's stats, to a typical Tour players averages over the course of a year. The top top guys, who play the Majors, the WGC'S, Players, Memorial but skip events like Palm Springs, etc, could have the events they play/don't play have a dramatic effect on putting performance, GIR etc. Along those same lines, just randomly not playing one tournament with horrible weather, like Torrey last year, can have a major effect on your stats for the year if you are only making 22-25 starts.


- For me, this is what's most remarkable about Tiger's no cut streak, or Jack's performance in the majors for two straight decades.  They both had to have multiple instances where they were on the wrong side of the weather, they were sick, etc but fought their way through it. Riviera just happens to be a place where Tiger came up a putt or two short a couple of times.


- Finally, from my limited experience of working with Tour players, the majority understand after the fact why they played well in any particular event, but I have noticed almost zero correlation between where my guys think their games should do well vs where they actually have good results. I'd argue from my observations that there are so many more factors that go into good play - energy level, nutrition, playing partner, pace of play, personal issues etc etc etc, that, outside of the true top 10 world class players, you'd have a very hard time predicting how a player will do on an average week, even after listening to how that player tells you how HE thinks he will do. I'm in a fantasy golf league, and the Pro's in the league, who are allowed to pick themselves, are always near the bottom, with the caddys, wives and others "in the know" not much better.


In summary, I just think the more ways we are able to slice up and measure the outcomes of play , the more we risk drawing too strong a conclusion on what's created those outcomes. Especially on a game played on a bumpy playing surface spread out over hundreds of acres, and with a schedule that takes them all over the world and onto every type of course design. Just lots and lots and lots of variables, without enough repetitions to build reliable analysis on a detailed level.


My two cents.

[Kalen Braley]

Michael,


That's why we look at 19 seasons of data over dozens of different courses in varying weather conditions, thousands of rounds, and tens of thousands of strokes instead of just anecdotal personal observations.


I think there are some valuable pieces of information that can be extracted, even if they don't tell the whole story.

[Michael Wolf]

Kalen,


Agree completely with your methods, i'm just highly skeptical of the leap people want to then make with them to answer a question like "why hasn't xxx won at xxx", especially when the player in question has multiple high finishes.


Great data to explain a successful season or career, but trying to explain what went wrong or right over a handful of rounds would also need a psychologist, nutritionist, and a fortune teller.


Michael