[Jason Thurman]

So, Patrick Cantlay just finished the best putting performance for a single tournament since 2004, when Strokes Gained statistics were introduced. He picked up 14.577 strokes against the field on the greens.


The record for Strokes Gained driving in a single tournament belongs to Rory from the Wells Fargo a few years back, at around 10 strokes. And the record for approach play belongs to Woody Austin, who gained a little over 15 strokes in the 2007 St. Jude. (https://www.golfdigest.com/story/kevin-na-putter-fred-couples-wedge-rory-mcilroy-driver-the-best-single-tournament-pga-tour-performances)


I don't know what to think about these numbers, but they interest me as an architecture aficionado. A few scattered thoughts to spark some discussion:

• Yes Erik, I'm aware that approach play is most important in the aggregate, and that driving is more important than putting in the aggregate. But the "drive for show, putt for dough" mantra at least bears out somewhat in a single tournament performance. The data in the article above focuses on outlier performances specifically, but it's worth noting that a hot putter can create virtually the same level of outlier performance that hot approach play can, whereas the idea of someone gaining 15 strokes with a driver in a single tournament seems unlikely.
• Are there architectural factors that contribute to these outlier performances? Like, we like to think green contours can give an advantage to a great putter that helps negate a better ballstriker's advantage. But is that actually true? The greens last week, from what little I saw, were pretty tame. Could Patrick Cantlay have delivered a historically great putting performance on a course with really wild slopes? Would he have had a chance against Bryson The Bomber?
• Similar note - it aligns nicely for me that Rory, who I generally consider the best driver of the ball of the 460cc era, holds the record for best single performance in SG Driving. Is there anything about Quail Hollow's design that makes it more likely to reward a great driver with a record-setting advantage on a great week? Or is that just coincidental?

Does any of this mean anything?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Jason,


Surely, it means something.  Just what, well, that would be endlessly debated here, given how much pro and con supporters of golf stats we have here.


My first impression would be not to analyze the top performances in any category, since those are probably due more to extreme skill displayed that week.  I doubt any architecture would/should aim at negating the best performance in any category, i.e., the best guy that week should hit the most fw, make the most putts, be closest to the hole, etc.


And I recall what Larry Nelson said to me before our first joint design...."I want the greens heavily contoured.  I can't putt that well so I want better putters to suffer, too.) (from memory, may be off a bit)  I mentioned that once here, and there was, not surprisingly, debate about whether good putters benefit from harder to read greens, etc.  And of course, probably somewhere, putting is probably broken down somehow to those who read greens better vs those who have a pure stroke.


My next "hot take" about architecture is whether it is good to have a course that is most known for it's narrow fw corridors (favoring straight drivers) or open corridors (favoring longer hitters)*small greens (favoring accurate approaches) or heaily contoured greens (favoring putting, if you agree) or is it better for each course to have a mix of tee shots that are hard/narrow, favor different shots, and then a few downright easy to negate the advantage of a Rory, or at least let other players with lesser tee shot skill stay in the game longer?


*Yes, I know that on average, longer hitters are straighter than shorter ones statistically, but still feel that they throttle back a bit on narrow fw, and feel okay about really ripping it when they just can't miss (according to Faucette, no narrower than 68 yards of open turf)


In the end, I favor a variety of challenges, because let's face it, for 51-52 weeks per year, most courses should aim for distinguishing between different ams with varying game strengths to keep those club matches close.


Just MHO.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

• Yes Erik, I'm aware that approach play is most important in the aggregate, and that driving is more important than putting in the aggregate. But the "drive for show, putt for dough" mantra at least bears out somewhat in a single tournament performance. The data in the article above focuses on outlier performances specifically, but it's worth noting that a hot putter can create virtually the same level of outlier performance that hot approach play can, whereas the idea of someone gaining 15 strokes with a driver in a single tournament seems unlikely.

Putting is highly volatile. You can't "plan" for a "hot week" with the putter. You can raise your baseline, but some days you make a bunch of putts, and some days you don't.

On average, putting contributes about a third to a player's win. It's still lower than approach shot play, and driving and approach shots put you in position to have a "hot week" with the putter. Sometimes a guy who finishes in tenth had an equally good week with the putter. Or 20th. But nobody cares because they finished 10th or 20th.

So for the winner each week, driving is (typically) a bit less important than putting, but putting is still second (on average) to approach shot play. So the phrase is still misguided. 

(Not disagreeing, just adding some context. Putting is important to winning — it always will be because it's one of the four "skills" in golf — but the phrase is still bogus.)

• Are there architectural factors that contribute to these outlier performances? Like, we like to think green contours can give an advantage to a great putter that helps negate a better ballstriker's advantage. But is that actually true? The greens last week, from what little I saw, were pretty tame. Could Patrick Cantlay have delivered a historically great putting performance on a course with really wild slopes? Would he have had a chance against Bryson The Bomber?

Note too that SG:P is based on the performance of players at that particular course. We can get averages (i.e. 1.5 from 8'), but on some easier to putt courses that 1.5 mark might be at 8'6" and at some other tougher ones it's 7'6". So, SG:P like all other stats are relative to the players and the course that week.

Which muddies the water a bit when you are talking about what courses are going to lead to more "outlier" performances.

If a golf course has huge breaking putts, good putters will still generally fare well, because they control speed and line well or are good green readers (or all three), but will their separation increase or decrease, because even the good putters will not make as many. Will enough of the bad putters three-putt often enough to keep the separation at its traditional level or increase it?

• Similar note - it aligns nicely for me that Rory, who I generally consider the best driver of the ball of the 460cc era, holds the record for best single performance in SG Driving. Is there anything about Quail Hollow's design that makes it more likely to reward a great driver with a record-setting advantage on a great week? Or is that just coincidental?

If the rough is particularly penal (even if long, a ball in the rough can lose SG:OTT), and a long-hitting player hits a lot of fairways that week, he could get a bit more of a boost in driving.

[Tom_Doak]

The results by one player in a single 72-hole event are too small of a sample size to draw any meaningful conclusions.


There was a thread here the end of last year that had a link to a web site where someone had broken down all of the courses on the PGA Tour, and the average Strokes Gained by the field in each category for each course, which allowed for some comparisons about which courses were more likely to reward better driving, better putting, or better recovery play.


Memorial Park was an outlier in a couple of the categories, but with only a single year of stats, it was still hard to say anything definitively.  I will try to find it again after this year's event.

[Peter Pallotta]

It's true that, while you can raise the baseline, you can't really *plan for* or ensure a hot week with the putter. But I've often thought that this is also true of iron-approach play: with practice you can raise the baseline for your iron play, but with so many variables involved you can't really ensure that all of your 14 approach shots will finish up in the ideal spot on the green, ie the spot that yields the easiest/straightest/most makeable putt that given day, on that green, given that particular pin position.
In other words: a hot putting day may very well be related to just how often the approach shots *just happened* to come to rest at the perfect spots.
Peter
PS
Needless to say, a good putter and good iron player will have many more such hot days on the greens than an average putter & ball striker.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

In other words: a hot putting day may very well be related to just how often the approach shots *just happened* to come to rest at the perfect spots.

Also true.

[Ben Hollerbach]

In other words: a hot putting day may very well be related to just how often the approach shots *just happened* to come to rest at the perfect spots.

Also true.

A hot putting day in relationship to strokes gained?


Isn't the whole idea of strokes gained to neutralize what came before to analyze only the situation at hand? So you'd never compare a player on 14 who hit their approach to 20 feet to a player on 14 who hit their approach to 10 feet. Its comparing a player putting from 20 feet to all players putting from 20 feet.


Based upon what Mark Broadie says, the perfect spot is always closer to the hole. You'd be better off being 5' above the hole than 8' below the hole.

[Tom_Doak]

Based upon what Mark Broadie says, the perfect spot is always closer to the hole. You'd be better off being 5' above the hole than 8' below the hole.

Does *always* include Augusta?  Has he done the math on that?


The way the Tour sets up most courses, this is likely true, but *always* is always suspicious.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

A hot putting day in relationship to strokes gained?


Isn't the whole idea of strokes gained to neutralize what came before to analyze only the situation at hand? So you'd never compare a player on 14 who hit their approach to 20 feet to a player on 14 who hit their approach to 10 feet. Its comparing a player putting from 20 feet to all players putting from 20 feet.

Yes.

And he's saying that some 20-footers are easier than others. Or some 8' putts. So if you hit a bunch of putts from "good" or "easier" spots, as opposed to having a bunch of five-foot-breaking 25-footers from above/beside the hole… it's easier to make them, as SG:P cares almost exclusively about distance of the putt right now.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Based upon what Mark Broadie says, the perfect spot is always closer to the hole. You'd be better off being 5' above the hole than 8' below the hole.

Does *always* include Augusta?  Has he done the math on that?


The way the Tour sets up most courses, this is likely true, but *always* is always suspicious.

Including your use of always?

[Ben Hollerbach]

Based upon what Mark Broadie says, the perfect spot is always closer to the hole. You'd be better off being 5' above the hole than 8' below the hole.

Does *always* include Augusta?  Has he done the math on that?

I believe he put the caveat that it might not be true at places like Augusta and Oakmont, but he also does not get shotlink data from the Masters and US Open, so he's probably hedging his statements there.

The way the Tour sets up most courses, this is likely true, but *always* is always suspicious.

[Ben Hollerbach]

A hot putting day in relationship to strokes gained?


Isn't the whole idea of strokes gained to neutralize what came before to analyze only the situation at hand? So you'd never compare a player on 14 who hit their approach to 20 feet to a player on 14 who hit their approach to 10 feet. Its comparing a player putting from 20 feet to all players putting from 20 feet.

Yes.

And he's saying that some 20-footers are easier than others. Or some 8' putts. So if you hit a bunch of putts from "good" or "easier" spots, as opposed to having a bunch of five-foot-breaking 25-footers from above/beside the hole… it's easier to make them, as SG:P cares almost exclusively about distance of the putt right now.

how does he quantify that? I've not seen that the SG calculation takes into preferred location of a shot taken.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

how does he quantify that? I've not seen that the SG calculation takes into preferred location of a shot taken.

That's the point. SG:P doesn't factor location in.

So if you have a bunch of straight 25-footers all day because you hit your approach shots into "good" spots, that can lead to a good SG:P day for you, particularly relative to a guy who keeps hitting it to 25-feet with 5-foot-breaking downhill/sidehill putts.

You'd have the same SG:App, but likely better SG:P stats. Your iron play would be reflected in your putting. Over a season this evens out. Over a smaller sample size, it can shift the numbers.

[Tom_Doak]

Based upon what Mark Broadie says, the perfect spot is always closer to the hole. You'd be better off being 5' above the hole than 8' below the hole.

Does *always* include Augusta?  Has he done the math on that?


The way the Tour sets up most courses, this is likely true, but *always* is always suspicious.

Including your use of always?

Yes, and you just proved it, by questioning me!

[Ken Moum]

Let's not forget that Bryson was second in Strokes Gained Putting last week.


Cantlay gained 14.577, but BD gained 9.358, and the next best was Rahm at 6.886

[Jeff Schley]

how does he quantify that? I've not seen that the SG calculation takes into preferred location of a shot taken.

That's the point. SG:P doesn't factor location in.

So if you have a bunch of straight 25-footers all day because you hit your approach shots into "good" spots, that can lead to a good SG:P day for you, particularly relative to a guy who keeps hitting it to 25-feet with 5-foot-breaking downhill/sidehill putts.

You'd have the same SG:App, but likely better SG:P stats. Your iron play would be reflected in your putting. Over a season this evens out. Over a smaller sample size, it can shift the numbers.

Erik and why comparing one course to another SG:P is not apples to apples either. Take Pebble Beach stats for the vs. TOC. Also for course setup. The two easiest that will yield stats are Pebble Beach in the pro-am event they host to the same year they host the US Open. Two different set ups and I would believe different putting stats. Also Torrey Pines when they host the US Open vs. the Farmers event.  I guess you could also do TOC with The Open vs. Dunhill Links that year.

Taking it a step further the field. So the Pebble Beach pro-am doesn't draw many of the top players, but for the US Open obviously it does. Does the difficulty of the US Open setup negate the better field?
I appreciate the data, but without knowing the limitations and gaps one wouldn't know actually what they are measuring.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Erik and why comparing one course to another SG:P is not apples to apples either.

It's not, you're correct. But… it's the best tool we have, and it's pretty good. Week to week, or for the year.

Also, for example (not that it comes up much here), but SG:ATG is additive. Someone who misses two greens a round has only two chances to "gain strokes" (or lose them) around the green by chipping the ball close, while someone who misses eight can chip or putt quite close a few times and gain more strokes on the field. I'd love to see a SG:ATGPA (per attempt)… but the numbers would start to get pretty small. (Lies and slopes and things around the green can play a role too — this stuff definitely tends to even out, but players who fire at holes a bit more often sometimes shoreside themselves statistically more often and have a harder time hitting it closer to the hole from shorter distances. And a surprising number of PGA Tour players are short to front pins, which are pretty easy to get close to on the resulting chip.)

[Tom_Doak]

Also, for example (not that it comes up much here), but SG:ATG is additive. Someone who misses two greens a round has only two chances to "gain strokes" (or lose them) around the green by chipping the ball close, while someone who misses eight can chip or putt quite close a few times and gain more strokes on the field.

Thanks for noting this.  I had noticed that the strokes gained around the greens is vastly smaller most weeks than other factors, but it makes sense, because pros hit a lot of greens in regulation.  So the abnormally high SG:ATG at Memorial Park is partly that the recovery shots around the greens are hard, but also partly that guys miss more greens there because of the short grass at the sides.

[Ben Hollerbach]

In other words: a hot putting day may very well be related to just how often the approach shots *just happened* to come to rest at the perfect spots.

Also true.

A hot putting day in relationship to strokes gained?


Isn't the whole idea of strokes gained to neutralize what came before to analyze only the situation at hand? So you'd never compare a player on 14 who hit their approach to 20 feet to a player on 14 who hit their approach to 10 feet. Its comparing a player putting from 20 feet to all players putting from 20 feet.


Based upon what Mark Broadie says, the perfect spot is always closer to the hole. You'd be better off being 5' above the hole than 8' below the hole.

Yes.

And he's saying that some 20-footers are easier than others. Or some 8' putts. So if you hit a bunch of putts from "good" or "easier" spots, as opposed to having a bunch of five-foot-breaking 25-footers from above/beside the hole… it's easier to make them, as SG:P cares almost exclusively about distance of the putt right now.

If Strokes Gained does not have the ability to measure anything other than distance to hole and location category (fairway, green, rough, etc) it does not much matter if some putts are easier than others, as it is an unmeasurable characteristic. So the quality of a player’s putting performance, as measured by strokes gained, is completely independent from a player’s approach placement.


It would be at best anecdotal that a hot putting round is related to approach shot location, but it would not be measurable. Strokes Gained can tell us quite a bit, but it is still limited. It is poor to suggest otherwise when the limitations are clearly defined.

how does he quantify that? I've not seen that the SG calculation takes into preferred location of a shot taken.

That's the point. SG:P doesn't factor location in.

So if you have a bunch of straight 25-footers all day because you hit your approach shots into "good" spots, that can lead to a good SG:P day for you, particularly relative to a guy who keeps hitting it to 25-feet with 5-foot-breaking downhill/sidehill putts.

You'd have the same SG:App, but likely better SG:P stats. Your iron play would be reflected in your putting. Over a season this evens out. Over a smaller sample size, it can shift the numbers.

In SG:App one player's iron play is not reflected in that one player's putting. It would be reflected in all players putting. You can try to connect the dots, but it's not an inherently known measure. This would be especially true for a player who has an imbalance of skill in these two areas.


For your 25' example, the only way you measure a players individual performance on one day is in relationship to the field for that one day and then in relationship to their performance vs. the field for all rounds preceding it. Even then that still does tell you if they hit approach shots to favorable locations or something was different in their putting that week (change of technique/putter, favorable grass, etc...) Through SG, you simply don't have enough information to do anything other than guess.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Thanks for noting this.  I had noticed that the strokes gained around the greens is vastly smaller most weeks than other factors, but it makes sense, because pros hit a lot of greens in regulation.  So the abnormally high SG:ATG at Memorial Park is partly that the recovery shots around the greens are hard, but also partly that guys miss more greens there because of the short grass at the sides.

Yes, SG:ATG tends to be small because of two things:

• Pros don't have many chances (they do have chances on drivable par fours and reachable par fives, too).
• This category is the toughest to separate yourself on a per-stroke basis, too. Putting would be more difficult, except it has finality: the ball goes in the hole much more often than when "around the green."

But yeah, you're right about Memorial. The guys chipping across greens three times in a row also helped to inflate the "average."   

If Strokes Gained does not have the ability to measure anything other than distance to hole and location category (fairway, green, rough, etc) it does not much matter if some putts are easier than others, as it is an unmeasurable characteristic. So the quality of a player’s putting performance, as measured by strokes gained, is completely independent from a player’s approach placement.

We may be talking past each other or something. Approach shots can affect your ability to gain strokes putting.

Imagine two wedge players hit a bunch of shots from 100 yards. They both hit 72 shots, and each of the 72 shots ends up at the same distance: A's first shot goes to 15'11", B's first shot goes to 15'11". Their second shots go to 12'4". Their third to 17'1". Whatever.

But A's ball ends up with more uphill putts, while B tends to leave downhill or sidehill putts.

If they are equally good putters, but A is a better wedge player because he's actually trying to leave himself in better positions to putt from (without sacrificing proximity), then the SG will "say" that A is a better putter, because he had easier putts. SG:P only cares about the distance, but he still had "easier" putts so he putted them in fewer strokes, after wedging to the same distances.

That's what the OP was saying: a good approach shot player could see a "boost" to his putting stats because of where he places the ball on the greens. It's similar to what Brandel was saying about fade players leaving themselves more uphill, right-to-left breaking putts (it turns out there's no evidence to support that faders come up short-right on the PGA Tour more often than other players in a statistically significant way).

In SG:App one player's iron play is not reflected in that one player's putting.

Except that it can be, per the above.

Now, over the course of a season, it generally isn't. But over a round? Even over four? It's possible.

Through SG, you simply don't have enough information to do anything other than guess.

We're not saying it's measured. At least I don't think the OP was. He was just saying sometimes part of a "good day putting" is attributable to "a good day of approach shots" leaving yourself with "more makable" putts. (Words in quotes for emphasis, not because I'm quoting anyone.)

[Ben Hollerbach]

Erik,


Nothing that you said is true.


Under the confines of Strokes Gained it simply cannot be verified. You need another data set to corroborate what SG is telling you. Now that secondary data set could be observational, but that inherently has a level of bias that would be unacceptable in the evaluation model.


In your example, how are the putting abilities of these two players measured? If you're using SG:P you can't connect their previous history to their current conditions. For all you know, because "A is a better wedge player" A always has more uphill putts and B always has more downhill sidehill putts. If that is the case, then under this current scenario A & B's putting will still match.


Your observation would then tell you that B is actually the better putter because in your eyes he's making putts that are more "difficult".


Your example is flawed because you can't verify the assumptions required to illustrate it.


OP specifically asked what we can learn from these moments of SG success, and the answer is under the confines of SG, very little. SG is intended to define performance of a player in relationship to other players, since SG calculations include so little in regards to the actual golf course architecture it alone cannot relate performance to conditions.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Nothing that you said is true.

A friend said "He said nothing you said is true, then proceeded to agree with you that B is actually the better putter if they have the same SG:P metrics... I don't think he actually read anything you wrote, because he was apparently too busy calling you wrong while agreeing with you."

Again: A player who, because he leaves his approach shots in better places to putt from, could see a better SG:P performance than a player who hit his approach shots to the same distances and putts just as well but, owing to the fact that he had more difficult putts, would show a worse SG:P performance.

It can and does happen over small sample sizes. It tends to even out over the course of a season, even over the course of a tournament. I've talked with and verified this with many people, beyond just the common sense of it all.

Just as SG:ATG can punish people who short-side themselves too often and reward those who leave themselves in "easier" positions.

In your example, how are the putting abilities of these two players measured?

Nobody's trying to "prove" anything here, only to say that it's possible.

You could put Ben Crenshaw 20' from a hole with the most difficult 20' putt on every green, and a lesser putter with the easiest 20' putt on every green, and the "worse" putter could "putt better" per SG:P over 10 holes, 100 holes, 1000 holes.

If you did want to start to "prove" this, you can take guys and pair them against themselves: look any guy's putts from a certain range that are sidehill/downhill putts and compare those to the putts of the same distance within 30° of straight uphill (ShotLink data has elevation differences and other details currently not exposed in a wide scale) and see the disparity, too.

OP specifically asked what we can learn from these moments of SG success

I'm not taking about the OP of the entire topic, but this line of thought: about how Cantlay could have struck the ball well enough to leave himself easier putts. And my response has always been that it's possible that his SG:P stats are inflated for one event because of his SG:App.

In other words, this post:

In other words: a hot putting day may very well be related to just how often the approach shots *just happened* to come to rest at the perfect spots.

To which I replied only "Also true." Because it is.

[Ben Hollerbach]

A friend said "He said nothing you said is true, then proceeded to agree with you that B is actually the better putter if they have the same SG:P metrics... I don't think he actually read anything you wrote, because he was apparently too busy calling you wrong while agreeing with you."

You and your friend might want to re-read what I wrote.

You chose not to define what made them equally good putters and I asked for clarification. I then tried to follow your logic, illustrating that statistically it was impossible to come to that conclusion without observational data, what your eyes tell you is true vs. what is defendable. Which is the backbone of Strokes Gained, dispelling what we see vs. what the data explains.

I'm not taking about the OP of the entire topic, but this line of thought: about how Cantlay could have struck the ball well enough to leave himself easier putts. And my response has always been that it's possible that his SG:P stats are inflated for one event because of his SG:App.

In other words: a hot putting day may very well be related to just how often the approach shots *just happened* to come to rest at the perfect spots.

To which I replied only "Also true." Because it is.

Peter's statement implies the perfect spot being a favorable putt, but under the confines of Strokes Gained, a hot putting round would require a less than stellar approach day to give the player enough potential advantage to capitalize on it. You hinted at this notion in your comment in bold, but based on the previous line it appears you were thinking of the potential in reverse.


Cantlay could not have had a record setting week putting unless he was hitting is approach shots to locations in which it was statistically improbably a player would make the putt with high frequency. If he was hitting it close, the potential advantage would have been too small to set such a record.


The same can be said for players who hit a lot of greens after drives that miss the fairway. the SG:App boost they would get from hitting a green from the rough would be much higher than just simply hitting the green from the fairway, even if the fairway ball left a shorter first putt than the rough ball.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

You chose not to define what made them equally good putters and I asked for clarification. I then tried to follow your logic, illustrating that statistically it was impossible to come to that conclusion without observational data, what your eyes tell you is true vs. what is defendable. Which is the backbone of Strokes Gained, dispelling what we see vs. what the data explains.

The same thing said two different ways: A player can actually have a "better" day putting while ending up in the same SG:P or a player can have the "same" day putting but end up with a "better" SG:P number depending on the true "difficulty" of the putts he faces, because in SG:P the only measure of "difficulty" is the distance of the putt.

So again, someone who leaves himself "easier" putts of the same distance could putt "the same" but end up with better SG:P numbers (or putt slightly "worse" and end up with the same SG:P values).

This is just like a player who leaves himself easier short game shots getting the same SG:ATG as a player who has a better short game but who leaves himself in tougher spots. If they're all from the same distances, SG:ATG has no real capacity to determine that one shot is tougher because the lie is nasty in the "rough" and the player is short-sided, while the other has a straightforward shot from a relatively good lie in the "rough."

Strokes Gained stuff isn't perfect. It's not comprehensive. It measures difficulty ONLY by distance and lie, currently. These are some of the examples of why.

Peter's statement implies the perfect spot being a favorable putt, but under the confines of Strokes Gained, a hot putting round would require a less than stellar approach day to give the player enough potential advantage to capitalize on it.

That's not true. The two are not generally linked like that at all, given how often Tour players two-putt from a pretty wide range of distances. Mark Broadie did the correlation once for me on some of these things and I've got that chart somewhere, but the positive or negative correlation between SG:App and SG:P was basically nothing.

If you define a "hot putting round" as gaining 3.6 shots per round putting (given that 14.57 from Patrick at the BMW over four rounds was the all-time record), then that could be as simple as holing seven putts from 8'2" feet and being exactly average for the other 11 holes on which you have putts. Or make a few 20' putts and putt "average" the rest of the time and you can get to 3.6 pretty easily.

Cantlay could not have had a record setting week putting unless he was hitting is approach shots to locations in which it was statistically improbably a player would make the putt with high frequency.

That's not necessarily true. Patrick was SG:App positive for the week at the BMW (in a field of 70 of ostensibly the best players).

Assume two players both get to 4 SG:P for the day. A does so by holing four 33' putts. B does so by holing 8 8' putts. They're both average on the remaining putts.

• A has a 0.000625% chance of that happening, since a 33' putt is holed about 5% of the time.
• B has a 0.390625% chance of that happening, since an 8' putt is holed about 50% of the time.

Cantlay had 5.3 SG:P in the second round at the BMW after being +2.82 SG:App. Putts were from these distances as a result of these shots:

• 1 putt from 23'2" (96 yards fairway)
• 2 putts from 16'8" (69'4" rough)
• 1 putt from 2'3" (55'6" bunker)
• 2 putts from 56'2" (264 yards fairway)
• 1 putt from 11'2" (48 yards unknown)
• 2 putts from 24'7" (212 yards tee)
• 1 putt from 6'4" (112 yards bunker)
• 2 putts from 36'1" (180 yards intermediate)
• 1 putt from 7'6" (174 yards fairway)
• 2 putts from 72'8" (167 yards bunker)
• 1 putt from 4'5" (113 yards fairway)
• 1 putt from 6'11" (110 yards fairway)
• 1 putt from 17'6" (220 yards tee)
• 1 putt from 11'7" (155 yards fairway)
• 1 putt from 12" (20'4" fairway)
• 1 putt from 13'8" (45' intermediate)
• 2 putts from 20'10" (65'7" bunker)
• 1 putt from 10" (28'9" intermediate)

That's not a "less than stellar" ballstriking round (+2.82) and it was his second highest SG:P for the week at +5.31. In fact, in the second and third rounds, his SG:P was 5.31 and -0.21. His SG:App was a nearly identical +2.82 and +2.8 in those rounds.
Now, I generally dislike small sample sizes like this, so I'm not giving these a lot of weight myself, except to say that you're the one making blanket statements about how high SG:P rounds "require less than stellar approach days" and so on, and that's clearly not the case.

And some days, you can leave yourself easier putts of the same distance as someone else who has harder putts.

The same can be said for players who hit a lot of greens after drives that miss the fairway.

Though you're correct about that part*, SG:P doesn't have to follow a "bad" ball-striking round, given the finality of putting: a ball goes in the hole. That's why SG:P is so volatile: whether your putt that would roll 1" past the hole or 8' past the hole if the hole wasn't there goes in, you get the same strokes gained, while the same is not true of an approach shot (given how infrequently they're holed).

* One of the players with whom we've consulted with had some crazy high single-hole SG:App gains because he'd hit a drive into "other" areas (not fairway, not rough…) but sometimes would get lucky with a clear shot to the green from a decent lie, and so when he hit that to 20' on the green when the math had the field averaging "3.4 when 175 out from 'other'" or whatever… he'd gain ~1.5 shots with just one shot.

And you're correct about that part because you have different lies at play. In SG, putts only count as putts when they're hit from the same lie: the putting green. So putting is entirely about distance. At least with SG:App we have the originating lie (rough, "unknown/other", bunker, etc.) to provide some more information about the difficulty of the shot. Putting has no such thing, hence: it's "easier" to make a straight 8' uphill putt than a sidehill 2' breaking 8' putt.

[Jason Thurman]

So Erik, you're basically saying that a player who thinks positioning beyond mere proximity might actually be able to ballstrike his way to a better SG putting number by consistently setting up putts from advantageous positions, even if they're not necessarily short putts. Correct?


That's an interesting thought. And maybe could help explain why Bryson's putting statistic was also very good last week, even though he was clearly not putting as well as Cantlay. Architecturally, could that be rooted in playing a course with a lot of relatively flat putts for balls placed on the correct section of a green?

[Tags:]

Tags:

[Tags:]

Tags:

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()