Golf Club Atlas
GolfClubAtlas.com => Golf Course Architecture Discussion Group => Topic started by: Kalen Braley on January 24, 2017, 12:30:15 PM
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Tiger just admitted its his kyprotonite over the years, despite enjoying playing there otherwise. ""I've always loved playing Riv," Woods said. "I just never played it well."
Any unique things in the design, maintenance , or otherwise to explain why this course would neuter the previously unspayed one who succeeded on so many different types of other courses?
http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/golf/tiger-woods-is-ready-for-the-next-chapter-as-latest-comeback-unfolds-starting-this-week/ar-AAma8vF (http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/golf/tiger-woods-is-ready-for-the-next-chapter-as-latest-comeback-unfolds-starting-this-week/ar-AAma8vF)
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Poaey bumpy greens he can't make every single 10 footer on
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Poaey bumpy greens he can't make every single 10 footer on
But he had lots of success at Pebble including a record setting Open performance, which arguably has the worst Poa greens of any course on tour.
He also did extremely well at Torrey, even before they redid those poa infested greens.
I don't think bumpy greens is the reason...
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Angles and precision. Doesn't work so great for a bomb and gouger.
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Angles and precision. Doesn't work so great for a bomb and gouger.
I'll go with this suggestion. It's a very tight course with a lot of sycamore and eucalyptus trees that get in the way. The grasses also frustrate most players. I've played it five times and love it but it can be frustrating.
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The kikuyu grass?
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Poaey bumpy greens he can't make every single 10 footer on
That's a good start, I think. He may have had more trouble reading those greens than most, too. The way the course sits down in the canyon, it's hard to notice the subtle fall toward the far end.
All the trees out there are certainly a factor -- less ability to make a brilliant recovery from a wayward drive.
And don't forget, the kikuyu fairways and roughs are just a different surface than anywhere else the pros play. For someone whose iron play and recovery play was as precise as Tiger, perhaps the different surface affected him in ways we wouldn't readily understand. I don't remember any of his flop-shot heroics coming at Riv.
Tiger was always head and shoulders above others when it came to plotting his way around the course and avoiding the things that must be avoided -- if there's something about Riviera he couldn't figure out, I don't know what it would be. But if it IS the grass around the greens that gave him fits, there's not much way to plan your way around that, anyway.
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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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Open)
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Tiger just admitted its his kyprotonite over the years, despite enjoying playing there otherwise. ""I've always loved playing Riv," Woods said. "I just never played it well."
That is actually a very refreshing quote coming from a tour pro. 99.9% of the time, when they suggest that they like a particular course it means they play it well, it fits their "eye", it is "fair", and/or it is presented in immaculate condition.
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I'm thinking that it's not so much what Tiger can't do there as much as what many other golfers can do. He says he has never played it particularly well; I think he has played it well, it's just that he hasn't won (which is really the only metric for him). Same as with JN - it's not that Tiger at Riviera isn't still a better golfer than anyone else, it's that he's not exponentially better (as he was, say, at Firestone or Bay Hill). Riviera is simply a higher-quality golf course, and a higher quality course opens the door to different types/styles of golfer.
Peter
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Poaey bumpy greens he can't make every single 10 footer on
But he had lots of success at Pebble including a record setting Open performance, which arguably has the worst Poa greens of any course on tour.
He also did extremely well at Torrey, even before they redid those poa infested greens.
I don't think bumpy greens is the reason...
true
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If Tiger plays this year he will win. There has never been a year since Tiger became an adult where it would benefit the powers that be like it would this year. What a wonderful distraction, without disrupting anyone else's forgone conclusion, this would be.
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A quick check reveals 9 starts, w 2 2nds, a 3rd, a 5th, a couple T13s, a couple T20s and a WD (2006). I remember at least one of those 2nds was to Billy Mayfair in a playoff at a different venue, but overall not a bad Riviera resume, just not Tigeresque. Certainly not nearly enough of a sample size to make a definitive pronouncement, I suspect he was just trying to be humble.
Too bad Buick sponsored Torrey for all those years instead of Riviera... :)
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Interesting responses all.
Given that he's also played several tighter venues well, like Firestone, several U.S. Opens, etc i suspect its not the tightness either..
Seems like the grass is the likely culprit. The few times I've played on Kikuyu it certainly threw me for a loop. Perhaps the combination of greenside rough that doesn't release, and the quick greens make recovery a lot more tricky there.
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The kikuyu grass?
That and the course being tight is what I was thinking. Hard to predict how the ball will come out of the kikuyu grass from the rough and around the greens and with the way he used to miss fairways it was tough course for him to score low on.
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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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Open)
I'm scratching my head as to how Bubba has won there two of the past three years given the tightness of the course and his inconsistency off the tee. I would think those factors would keep him from scoring as well as he does on a more wide open course such as Augusta, but perhaps there is something about the course that suits his eye?
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Where exactly is the tightness for a guy who works the ball both ways?
As far as Jack and Tiger goes...when your heart is in April your mind wonders in February.
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IMO
If riviera was in the same kind of condition back in early 2000's as it is now,
Tiger probably would have played more often/had more success.
In no way excusing anything, but Riviera was pretty ordinary at best conditions wise in the 90's and early 00s
Should be able to play anything, but just my thought fwiw!
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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!
I think the reason is quite easy to figure out. Tiger spent a career slaying the par 5's. Look at his lifetime stats; around even par on par 3's and par 4's but several thousand under par on par 5's. Now everyone reaches #1 at Riviera with an iron so it really is just another long par 4. Hardly anyone reaches # 17, even Tiger, so that only leaves #11 for him to have an edge on the field. Just not a big enough advantage and therefore no domination! Tiger needs 4 reachable par 5's top dominate; Torrey is the perfect example of that.
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An article in one of the golf magazines years ago asked this very question. Their analysis found a simple answer: Tiger's putting sucked at Riviera. Don't recall the exact stats, but while his ball striking was fine, he completely fell apart on the greens.
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Pete,
I think the Par 5 theory is an interesting one, but it doesn't square with all of his success in the majors where many par 5s are converted to par 4s....and he still dominated everyone.
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Proof is in the pudding. I guarantee if you compare Tiger's % fairways hit, GIR's and putts per round at Riviera they are below or above (in the case of putts per round) his historical average.
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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!
I think the reason is quite easy to figure out. Tiger spent a career slaying the par 5's. Look at his lifetime stats; around even par on par 3's and par 4's but several thousand under par on par 5's. Now everyone reaches #1 at Riviera with an iron so it really is just another long par 4. Hardly anyone reaches # 17, even Tiger, so that only leaves #11 for him to have an edge on the field. Just not a big enough advantage and therefore no domination! Tiger needs 4 reachable par 5's top dominate; Torrey is the perfect example of that.
H Pete,
The theory makes sense, but he did plenty of winning at Warwick Hills (MI) which they played as a par 70 .
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Oops, disregard my previous post. When I looked I found that Warwick Hills did play to a par 72. Ready, fire, aim!
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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.
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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%.
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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.
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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....
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#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.
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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 (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.
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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....
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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