[Jason Topp]

I'm sure this will generate some discussion.  Full article is here:

http://www.golfobserver.com/features/geoff/geoff_fairway_width.html

I deleted the text per Dan's post below.  Please take a look at the article.

[Brad Swanson]

With no intention of threadjacking, I must comment that Moneyball is a fun read (now that baseball season is upon us again).

Cheers,
Brad Swanson

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

Some value, but unless you know how far offline as a group they are the stats are somewhat worthless..the 3/4 inch rough for instance was not just of the fairway but some 8/10 yards offline and beyond that was spectator rough...ie very little rough.
I still believe it takes a combination of not necessarily narrow fairways..I think 30/35 is fair..but severe rough in excess of 25 yards offline and firmer greens.
These stats for Riviera are deemed worthless because of all the rain making the greens like puddings anything would hold on them..that same 3/4 inch rough and firm greens and you have another story.
To use that event as a pro or con for narrow fairways is a joke.

[A.G._Crockett]

With all due respect to Geoff S., whose work I enjoy greatly, it seems to me that there are two problems with this data:

1. the use of the par 5's, which correlates hitting/missing the fairway with score but ignores the second shot.  The data shows a 1% chance of eagle if the fairway was missed.  In other words, it ain't gonna happen.  I don't find it surprising, though, that tour pros can recover from a tee shot into the rough with a well-played second shot and still make par or birdie; that's why they are pros!  But the data DOES show a penalty for missing the fairway; i.e., essentially NO chance for eagle!  Under these assumptions, "flogging" a drive on a par 5 because it is the only way to get home in two is hardly a new or technology-driven strategy, and wouldn't change with wider fairways, IMHO.

2. The data on the par 4's ignores the amazing short games of the tour guys.  If they hit it in the rough off the tee, inside the 160 mark, my guess (and it is ONLY that) is that they are able to miss their second shot in a place where they can get up and down almost invariably, rather than that they just still hit the green in regulation.  I have watched this at tour events; at the PGA at Atlanta Athletic Club several years ago, I watched every group come through #1.  Every player who missed in the rough off the tee aimed their second shot at the left front bunker, and most got up and down from there.  

[Geoff_Shackelford]

Michael Wharton-Palmer,

Having actually been out on the greens this year I can say they weren't "puddings" despite the rain, and also kept their speed in the 11 range. Rather remarkable how well they drained and played.

Also, in my article I point out the issue of the spectator rough areas beyond the immediate rough is part of the silliness of narrowing, and something the players have noted in their flogging approach. I don't think that those areas impact the stats, in fact, I think it reinforces the whole notion of premium on accuracy as overrated. I guess you had deemed it worthless before reaching that part?
Geoff

[Mark_Fine]

For a second there at the end, I thought Geoff was advocating planting more trees!  He does state that their removal has added to the flogging mentality.  Oh boy!  

[Jason Topp]

Geoff - Assuming your statistics are accurate, wouldn't 8000 yard courses better reward accuracy?  See http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forums2/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=17023

[Geoff_Shackelford]

Mark - The removal of trees and thinning has opened up the gates on some holes (especially at Riviera, like #5, #15), but as you know I'd never advocate planting trees or letting them get overgrown (Inverness) to "restore a premium on accuracy."

The point of the article is to suggest that the narrowing of courses is not having the desired effect that its advocates suggested it would, and it appears to now be having a reverse effect. Yes, there are many variables you can look at and question and ponder, but the larger question of narrowing is the main issue and one that players have just decided to work around in my view (and in their own publicly stated views).

A.G. - The second shot on #1 at Riviera is bascially to the green for 98% of the field. As for #11 your point is correct, but my interest is the purported impact that narrowing tee shot corridors has on scoring.

Jason - With today's ball, yes, 8000 and wide would work, and that's why the ball needs to be throttled back. Why build new courses when the current ones would work for the Tour players with a simple change in equipment?
Geoff

[Jason Mandel]

brad,

moneyball opened my eyes to the way i look at baseball.  absolutely fascinating read.

jason

[JohnV]

While I enjoyed the article, I would have to agree that Riviera this year might not be the best example, although it certainly does bring home how far they fly the ball because they weren't getting any roll.

One problem with checking par 5s is that you really need to know where the second shot ended up.  Particularly for those guys who missed the fairway off the tee.  If they were able to hack it up inside 100 yards and in the fairway, they aren't much worse off than the guys who hit the fairway adn didn't reach the green.

What the stats show me is that hitting the fairway does give a player an advantage over hitting it in the rough.  Hitting the fairway on the par 5s gave a player a 50% better chance of making a 3 or a 4.  Hitting the fairways on the par 4s gave the player a 33% better chance of making a 3 or a 4.  Seems like hitting the fairway pays off to me.  Par doesn't matter on the par 5s in particular, separating yourself from the other players does and 3s do that better than anything and hitting the fairway seems to do that for you.

One of the things that people who setup courses look at is the separation of scores on a hole.  Since I haven't felt the urge to give the PGA Tour any money I don't have shotlink, but it would be interesting to see the spread on those holes.

I think I said this the other day in another thread, but my favorite setup would be the old Augusta National setup with a wide fairway out to the tree lines and firm greens that make hitting the correct part of the fairway important.

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

Geoff,
Not at all..perhaps puddings was a bit of a stretch, but they were certainly nor frim enough if the intent is to make accuracy matter again...that really was my point.
I was not critisising your research at all, quite the opposite..I think if someone on the tour was as inventive, we would see things done that would make accuracy matter again.
I may be wrong, but I figure you as one who would like to see that matter...and it takes studies like yours to wake people up.
You appear to think I was bashing you, when I am actually on your side..at least I think I am.

Clearly the stats you quote support that accuracy is of little significance, it would have been good to see the same study done at Mirasol...IF...they had had 3/4 inches of similar rough.

[JESII]

The point of the article is to suggest that the narrowing of courses is not having the desired effect that its advocates suggested it would, and it appears to now be having a reverse effect. Yes, there are many variables you can look at and question and ponder, but the larger question of narrowing is the main issue and one that players have just decided to work around in my view (and in their own publicly stated views).

Geoff,

Could increasing defenses at the green help the situation?
[/color]

Jason - With today's ball, yes, 8000 and wide would work, and that's why the ball needs to be throttled back. Why build new courses when the current ones would work for the Tour players with a simple change in equipment?
Geoff

How can you term 'throttling back the ball' simple? How would you go about it?[/color]

[Mark_Fine]

Geoff,
I know where you are coming from but as you know, on many of the older and shorter classic courses, there is often limited room to extend tees.  It's here where the tree removal disucssion unfortunately gets dicey.  I've heard the argument many times (you have as well) where members are saying, "You can't take out those trees.  If you do, people will just be blasting drivers down there and who cares if you're in the rough or not.  You'll only have a wedge or short iron in."  
Mark

[Phelps Morris]

Geoff,

Interesting aticle, but I think your analysis is flawed...

For example, using the data from the 12th below, the argument you're making is as follows...If I miss the fairway, I would have only a 7% chance of making a birdie... However, if I hit the fairway, my odds of a birdie increases to 20%...

Your conclusion states..."Why fret about the rough when your birdie chances are only increased by 13 percent, especially when a shorter approach distance, regardless of lie, keeps you in the ball game"

Mathematically speaking, the chance of a birdie actually increases not 13% but 286% (20%/7%) if you hit the fairway...

Looking at it from the other side of the coin, If I miss the fairway, my chance of making a biridie is decreased by 65% (1- (7%/20%))  

Make Sense?









 

[Doug Siebert]

The data on the par 4s were really enlightening, especially the 160 yard thing.  My follow-up to that would be to suggest that square grooves are partially responsible for there not being as much difference between in the fairway and in the rough from that distance as there might otherwise be.  Yes, the pros have some stellar short games and are smart enough to leave their misses where they can get up and down nearly every time, but the less control they were to have coming out the rough, the less ability to pinpoint their misses they'd have.

[Doug Siebert]

Phelps,

Yes, you are correct that if there's a 7% birdie chance from the rough and 20% from the fairway the birdie chances are nearly 3x in favor of being in the fairway.  But if nearly all the birdies are made from inside 160 or 170 regardless of fairway or rough, and you need a driver to get to that spot, doesn't it make sense to hit driver if even being in position A in the fairway from 190 after your 3w means you have fairly long odds for making a birdie anyway?

[JESII]

By the way, what is the point of this concern with Tour fairway width?

Is it to force the best players in the world to shoot higher scores? Why ?

Is it to force the best players in the world to hit better, more challenging shots? Fine, that makes sense, but they are already hitting shots that we cannot.

The notion that it will help the game to have wider fairways so that the top Tour players decide to actually hit their drivers in them is a bit beyond me, please explain.

[Kyle Harris]

Isn't this confusing statistics for probability?

The more correct statement would be, "Tour pros made birdie from the fairway almost three times as much from the rough."

This is analysis of raw data that already happened, not an analysis of variables set up the determine what COULD happen.

Maybe Brent or someone a bit more versed in statistics and probability can more completely make my point, but I think it is a huge fallacy to confuse the two.

[Dan King]

I would obviously rather you go to GolfObserver to read the article rather than read the cut & paste job Jason did at the beginning of this thread :-).

Hits are a good thing, besides the tables and pics look much better over there.

Click here for Geoff's Moneyball article on GolfObserver

Dan King

It consists in putting little balls into little holes with instruments ill adapted to the purpose.
 --Horace Hutchinson (asked to describe the game of golf [He said this 50 years prior to when Churchill got credit for it])

[A.G._Crockett]

O.K., Dan King is right; this comes across somewhat differently if you go to the link in the first post and read the whole article.  (I'm embarrassed that I didn't do that in the first place)

I take Geoff S.'s point to be that the narrow fairways force the top players to just kill it, often into the rough, in order to recapture their skill advantage, by playing shots from the rough from close enough to still make birdie/par. Badly restated by me, but narrow fairways are actually counterproductive in countering distance gains.

[Bryan Izatt]

There's an old saying "lies, damn lies, and statistics".  It might apply here, in trying to use statistics to prove a hypothesis.

One of Geoff's hypotheses is that narrowing fairways does not significantly affect scoring - "Statistically, they won't be seriously hurt by missing a few fairways".  

Using data from one field over four holes over two rounds over 4 days really can't lead to a statistically significant conclusion of this sort. Bill James has an enormous database built over years to support his analyses.  The equivalent would be to use Shotlink over all PGA Tour events for several years.

To use the data to prove or disprove the thesis would require amongst other things some measure of the roughness of the rough where shots were hit from.  If the rough is short, or you get a good lie by chance then surely the rough will not seriously hurt a player missing the fairway.  In statistical analysis you need to control as many variables as you can to find statistically significant relationships between dependent and independent variables.

To Geoff's hypothesis, as others have pointed out the numbers indicate that the probability of birdie went up 3 times if you were in the fairway.  Looking at the average scores, being in the rough raised the average score around 0.33 strokes.  In other words, if you miss three fairways a round you're likely to be one stroke higher than somebody who doesn't.  I would guess that this is in line with a player who hits three green-side bunkers a round.  Their score might also be a stroke higher than a player that doesn't.

Presumably hitting pot bunkers that force you out sideways might be about a stroke per occurence.  Lateral hazards the same. OB about 2 strokes.  All these hazards and the rough, for that matter, are in some way or other designed to penalize bad shots. Narrowing fairways seems to be in the same range as other "hazards".

The counter thesis seems to be that tour fairways should be left wider at say 35 yards on average.  What effect would that have.  The long hitters are not going to stop flogging the ball.  Perhaps more short and medium hitters will hit the fairway and therefore have more chance of making birdie.  But then there seems to be a correlation of the length of second shots to birdie chances.  So, would the long hitters just have more chance of birdies because they're closer? Or, would widening the fairways help compress the field in scoring?

[Jason Topp]

While this may not be a sufficient sample size to create a definitive analysis, it strikes me that the theory is right on.  In my experience the impact of playing from the rough changes dramatically the farther one is trying to hit it.  This view is corroborated by the apparent sea change in strategy currently empoyed by the top players.  Recall a few years ago when Tiger was trying to catch Fred Funk on driving accuracy numbers?

I also think some limited tournament examples support the theory that when the shot into the green is long, rough becomes a penalty.  The PGA at Hazeltine was in some ways ideal in terms of having both  long hitters (Woods, Beem) and short accurate players (Leonard and Funk) in the hunt for the title.  The course was approximately 7400 yards (although some holes were shortened in early rounds).  You had a similar mix at Whistling Straits last year, which I believe was a long course.  

I think you need to either go back to wound balls or lengthen the courses.  While the wound ball would be a cheaper solution, I doubt it will ever happen.  People have been complaining about ball improvements since Old Tom Morris left St. Andrews.

[johnk]

For the distance/width issue: Don't touch the ball.  Just ban graphite shafts on tour.

From a statistical point of view, a good experiment supporting or disproving Geoff's argument could involve a survey of player's attitudes and a comparison of those results with the actual number of fairways hit.

In other words, first ask the players if what their strategy is, then measure the results to see if they were honest.

[Kelly Blake Moran]

I get the impression Geoff and others have been told by pros that their strategy is to hit it long to shorten the approach. Despite all of the statistical interpretations as John said if one were to focus on what the players are actually doing on each tee shot opportunity then this may confirm a shift in the game, which may or may not be a result of technology, but it may at least confirm that the long hitters are unleashing from the tees to shorten the approach.  If the fairways get very narrow why hit a fairway wood or long iron and risk bouncing into rough when you can do the same thing but be 40 yards father down the hole.

 Depending upon the course, if the topography is clothed in rough this could take away some interesting bounces and could take bunkers or other hazards out of play, therefore more rough actually benefits the long hitter.  For instance, from what I can gather from Klein's book on Desert Forest thesometimes dramatic slopes in the fairways kick shots into the desert.  Narrow the fairways and clothe more of them in rough then you might actually make the course play easier.  Same is true at TOC.  Growing 6" rough and narrowing the fairways might make the course easier if you go at it with the strategy of long drive short approach.  I think the slopes in the fairways and through the greens clothed in fairway is a much more exciting approach as compared to adding length.  If you go through the whole land purchase, design, permitting process you realize how unrealistic and sophomoric is the approach to just make new courses longer.  As architects you just can't wait or even count on any sort of resolution to the equipment issue, and you must allow this to push you to explore other creative opportunities for challenging the good player.  And realize that many course just are not appropriate for pros, they just don't belong on them, and that is not whom you design for 99.99999% of the time.  Even the real good club pros just don't  have the game of the touring pros for the most part.  I have followed club pros I know that qualify for tour events and they are no where close to the leaders, and often times miss the cut.  

[Tommy_Naccarato]

John K.,
I'm going to give you some advice from my mentor, The Great Don Vito Corleone:

Never let anyone outside the family know what you're thinking.

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