The misperception of the short game.

[Brent Hutto]

Josh,

I'm no architect but it's hard for me to imagine much way for course designers to put this sort of info to use.

About the only insight that seems to me possibly applicable is that the difference between being in the fairway vs. rough vs. sand does to a certain degree depend on how far you are from the hole.

So maybe if you want to toughen a hole with rough you'd do that in certain places (distances) and if you want to toughen it with fairway bunkers that might be in different places. Or something like that.

[A.G._Crockett]

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

Bob,
One of the best items I ever read was an article in SI a number of years ago when research on Tour putting stats was just beginning in earnest. 

The most fascinating item was the estimation by individual pros of the overall percentages made on Tour from certain distances and then their own percentages made from those distances.  To a man, they guessed the overall percentage pretty accurately and guessed their own percentages pretty inaccurately.  They ALWAYS over overestimated the number of putts they made from each distance, and sometimes by a lot!

That spoke volumes to me about the mindset of great players vs. the rest of us.

[A.G._Crockett]

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


  

I think part of the putting message is to become a very good lag putter.  By far the best way for most of us to improve our putting is not, as you point out, to hope/believe/intend to make more long putts.  It is to three putt as infrequently as possible.

Didn't Harvey Penick point out that most pros that have remained "great" putters (a VERY subjective term!) for long periods of time were primarily lag putters who didn't rely on making lengthy comebackers?

[BCrosby]

"Didn't Harvey Penick point out that most pros that have remained "great" putters (a VERY subjective term!) for long periods of time were primarily lag putters who didn't rely on making lengthy comebackers?"
 
AG - Ole Harv is right to a point. Sure, minimizing three jacks helps your putting stats.

But being a good lag putter isn't enough if you want to go low - as in winning pro events. To go low on a regular basis you must hit approaches less than ten feet; to do that regularly you must hit lofted approaches; and to do that you must be long off the tee ...  

Boardie is right, I think, about the importance of distance. Pelz backed into a similar conclusion using a different methodology years ago. Though I suspect Pelz got there inadvertently, establishing the opposite of what he was trying to establish.  

Bob

[Tom_Doak]

Josh,

I'm no architect but it's hard for me to imagine much way for course designers to put this sort of info to use.

About the only insight that seems to me possibly applicable is that the difference between being in the fairway vs. rough vs. sand does to a certain degree depend on how far you are from the hole.

So maybe if you want to toughen a hole with rough you'd do that in certain places (distances) and if you want to toughen it with fairway bunkers that might be in different places. Or something like that.

When they first came out with all the methodology behind the Slope System, I was still working for Mr. Dye, and he had me spend part of a day talking to Dean Knuth to see if there was any information he had discovered that would be of use for designing golf courses.

The main piece of info I found interesting was this:

On approach shots, scratch players' misses to left and right are pretty much proportional to the distance of the approach ... so on short approaches they are not likely to miss left or right by much.  Higher handicappers are likely to miss right or left significantly from any length.

Meanwhile, scratch players will miss short or long within a narrow tolerance.  But, higher handicaps' distance control is significantly bigger from further away.

Pete took this to mean a wide, shallow green for short approaches would give the higher handicapper some help, without helping the scratch player, while on long approaches, making the green longer and narrower would help the higher handicapper compared to the pro.

I don't know if he kept following that logic on future courses, but I know we baked some of those ideas into the greens at PGA West.

[Brent Hutto]

My home course (27 holes) has six Par 5's in total. Four of the six and to a certain extent a fifth one as well have very wide greens that range from shallow to very shallow in depth. It does to a certain extent seem to work out that stronger/better players with a chance to reach in two struggle with the distance control on 200+ yard approaches while weaker player who are hitting short-iron or wedge third shots have less problem with the lack of depth but might miss left or right by 50 feet or more (possibly still on the greens).

[Jon Wiggett]

Michael,

in his last couple of full seasons on tour Seve's DA was one of the best but the rest of his game went downhill.

Brent,

it seems to me that Brodie's system is no better than traditional stats. It does not take into account the width of the fairway, slope of the fairway, was there any wind, uphill, downhill, thickness of the rough, firmness of the green, etc. It seems from your explanation it works on distance of the hole which is just a blunt.

Jon

[Brent Hutto]

The ShotLink data is not perfect.

But accounting for distance, the single most important element, is better than not accounting for distance at all. And accounting for broad categories of fairway, rough, sand and being in the trees is better than not accounting for the situation in which the ball lies at all.

That's like claiming that since people still die in car accidents even with seat belts, shoulder straps, airbags and anti-lock brakes then all that safety equipment is useless.

You can never account for every single element that influenced the outcome of a golf shot. You can still account for enough of the elements that, on average, the resulting measures reflect reality. The traditional stats don't even make an attempt at doing that. The ShotLink data does it pretty well even if not perfectly.

Again, take the most obvious example off putting. Traditional stats treat a missed 2-foot putt and a missed 50-foot putt as exactly the same thing. Now you're quibbling that a 50-foot uphill putt and a 50-foot downhill putt are treated the same by ShotLink. OK, you got me. That's true. A perfect system would account for being uphill, the Stimp reading, the weather, the type of grass, the time of day, the wind, whether its raining. And if a system were created to do all of that you'd say "Yeah, but what about the grain direction?".

All of that other stuff combined doesn't have 1/10 as much influence on the difficulty of the putt as the fact it is 50 feet instead of 2 feet. So here you come claiming that since you don't know the green speed or slope you might as well count all putts alike? Why on earth would you want to make such a ridiculous claim?

[Jon Wiggett]

Brent,

it is only better because it suits you to think so.

I disagree totally that distance is the biggest single factor but rather a combination of lie, stance, ground conditions, wind all play as big a part as distance. That is why DA is more important than pure distance IMO.

I am afraid for me the claims being made by yourself amongst others is based on a system that only seems to differentiate to the standard stats through the system of distance. To suggest that a shot from a plugged lie in the rough from a severe ball below your feet stance is easier because it is played from 150 yards than a shot played from 200 yards which is also in the rough but sat up beautifully and has a level stance is very blunt. There are so many variables that it is almost impossible to judge what degree of difficulty any particular shot has compared to other shots.

I agree that the traditional stats are very blunt but also transparent. Giving any sort of difficulty value based on an equally blunt method is at best no better and more probably (IMO) gong to lead to a distortion of result. Depending on how you rate the difficulty of a particular situation will influence the end result and so lead to one part of the game appearing more or less important. If I alter the shot value, I alter the result.

I agree that the quality of the long game has a direct influence on the short game but the opposite is also true. A loss of short game quality puts more pressure on the longer shots and so leads to a worsening of the long game short term. I do not think we will agree totally on this but would suggest that tradition stats are less likely to be coerced as a system that uses shot value.

Jon

[Brent Hutto]

You know what? Forget about it. This stuff's just too weak-ass to even reply to.

[Thomas Dai]

When they first came out with all the methodology behind the Slope System, I was still working for Mr. Dye, and he had me spend part of a day talking to Dean Knuth to see if there was any information he had discovered that would be of use for designing golf courses.
The main piece of info I found interesting was this:
On approach shots, scratch players' misses to left and right are pretty much proportional to the distance of the approach ... so on short approaches they are not likely to miss left or right by much.  Higher handicappers are likely to miss right or left significantly from any length.
Meanwhile, scratch players will miss short or long within a narrow tolerance.  But, higher handicaps' distance control is significantly bigger from further away.
Pete took this to mean a wide, shallow green for short approaches would give the higher handicapper some help, without helping the scratch player, while on long approaches, making the green longer and narrower would help the higher handicapper compared to the pro.
I don't know if he kept following that logic on future courses, but I know we baked some of those ideas into the greens at PGA West.

This is a very apt point, and one that also goes along with Dave Pelz's various shortgame analysis. When it comes to the shortgame better players generally miss short/long whilst lessor players miss right/left as well.
atb

[Jon Wiggett]

You know what? Forget about it. This stuff's just too weak-ass to even reply to.

Brent,

it is not weak-ass as you put but just that you are not able to counter due to your poorly thought out position. When you first look at the 'ShotLink' system it looks like a an improvement but when you apply its own arguments to itself it appears to be the worse option.

Jon

[Brent Hutto]

Whatever you say, Jon.

[Josh Tarble]

Jon,
You're argument is silly.  The same concepts you are arguing the strokes-gained doesn't cover, is also not covered by traditional stats.

You say a plugged lie in a bunker is significantly different from a standard lie in a bunker...why is there only Sand Saves Percentage?

Your argument may as well be that no stats are better than having stats. 

[Michael Felton]

Jon,
You're argument is silly.  The same concepts you are arguing the strokes-gained doesn't cover, is also not covered by traditional stats.

You say a plugged lie in a bunker is significantly different from a standard lie in a bunker...why is there only Sand Saves Percentage?

Your argument may as well be that no stats are better than having stats.  

Well said Josh. I'd say it's kind of like being asked to describe the earth and saying it's flat. When someone else says it's a sphere, you say "actually it's not a sphere, so we might as well call it flat".

Jon - the strokes gained system takes into account two of the largest determinants of difficulty. Namely distance and general area (i.e. rough, sand, fairway, recovery, green). Weather and lies and so on that are essentially random will fall out in the wash over time. Distance doesn't. That on its own makes it a significant step forwards from the traditional stats, because you're narrowing down the situation. That it doesn't reflect how windy it is is really a poor reason to throw it out on its head.

Even leaving that to one side, if we put every shot into a specific basket for every possible situation, you end up with a vast number of individual shot instances. So you get a situation where over a period of a year, you record all the instances of shots you played from 168 yards in the rough where the grass is lying against you and your feet are 2" above the ball and you have a 17mph wind blowing from 41 degrees into and from the right, you're playing 7 feet 6 inches uphill, the temperature is 73°F and you've got 12 yards of green to work with, with a bunker in between you and the flag. You will have a shot measured to this level of detail likely only once in the whole data set. Recording a result of such a shot is pointless, because it doesn't tell you anything other than how you perform under that precise situation. What would we do to make it workable? I would suggest that the best thing to do would be to group all of your shots into subgroups so that the data becomes usable. I think the most obvious groupings to use would be groups by distance and by type of lie. Something like fairway, rough, sand, recovery and green would seem pretty sensible. Then distance groups of maybe 0-20, 20-40, 40-60, 60-80, 80-100, 100-125, 125-150, 150-175, 175-200, 200-250, 250+. Which is exactly what Broadie's data is doing.

[Sean_A]

The biggest problem with stats is the inferences and conclusions people draw based on them  .  There isn't a lot in golf which is really measurable in the sense of science and to me that is what makes the game unique.  But, it makes people happy to quote stat after stat (especially concerning the very best players in the world) and then want to extrapolate these "findings" to cover the wider world of golf, well, who am I to stop em'?  Its a huge waste of time in terms of the big picture, but people get a kick out of it. 

Ciao

[Brent Hutto]

Sean,

It is what it is. If the question is what form Tiger Woods' dominance primarily takes, the answer is he dominates more by hitting long approach shots closer to the hole than almost anyone. He also does other stuff well but the biggest part of it is the long approaches and that's the answer to how he dominates.

Now if someone wanted to extrapolate that to a 5-handicapper trying to win the second flight of his club championship by going out and banging 3-irons for hours at the driving rnage...well, someone would be making a mistake. But that mistake does not change the plain truth of what scoring on the PGA Tour shows.

There's no interpretation or judgement call needed. The numbers are quite plainly there to be seen. As for how that might translate to other levels than the PGA Tour, that is mostly in the realm of speculation. I suppose that puts it right in the wheelhouse of this group.

That said, if someone does want to know what parts of their own game are costing them strokes then it's straightforward enough to gather that information. Not saying you should do it or that anyone is going to suddenly become a much better player because they realize it was their putting and not their chipping that's been holding them back. But the methodology is bog simple in concept and within the reach of anyone who wishes to pursue it.

As for the tired "waste of time" argument, coming from someone who has spent what maybe 2,000 or 3,000 hours on this forum over the years...pot, meet kettle. If examining the relative scoring importance of putting versus chipping versus wedges versus iron shots versus tee shots is a waste of time then surely debating the so-called "strategy" of some hole at St. Andrews or the relative merits of frilly versus stack sod bunkers is no less so.

Some people have a great urge to know who designed some hole at some NLE golf course. Others have a great urge to know whether it's better to be in the rough 120 yards from the green or in the fairway 150 yards from the green. Hard to see much moral or utilitarian superiority in either pursuit.

[Sean_A]

Brent

So much of golf is mental and can't be measured.  In terms of holding a game together or keeping a game going, some shots ARE more important than others because of the psychological impact.  I don't have much time for stats because by nature they are very general.  We all know all aspects of golf are important and we all should know that at any given time some aspects play a bigger role in how we feel about the current game in progress than others - its the nature of the game and the human psyche.  As I say, some folks are just built to stack stats and thats fine.

Ciao

[Jon Wiggett]

Jon,
You're argument is silly.  The same concepts you are arguing the strokes-gained doesn't cover, is also not covered by traditional stats.

You say a plugged lie in a bunker is significantly different from a standard lie in a bunker...why is there only Sand Saves Percentage?

Your argument may as well be that no stats are better than having stats. 

Josh,

that is because you are misinterpreting what I am saying. Brent and others are arguing that their preferred system is better where as I am not. Brent was the one who claimed that distance was the most important factor which is quite obviously not true. There are so many factors that effect the difficulty of a shot that it is not practically possible to design a system that will reliably rate it. Then there is the question of difficult for who.

That Tiger Woods was so much better at long distance approaches might be because he has a natural talent for playing them and if so he finds them easier. If they are easier for him then the rating for long approach shots for Woods should be lower not higher. However, any rating system needs to based on all players and if you look across the board you will find that every player has strengths and weaknesses in their game.

A problem with a system that rates the players through a predetermined shot difficulty rather than the shot difficulty being as a result of the out come of actual shots played is that change the rating change the result. In strokeplay the winning golfer is the one who shoots the lowest score and so the purest way of deciding the best player is average score though even this is flawed.


Jon

[Michael Felton]

Then there is the question of difficult for who.

That Tiger Woods was so much better at long distance approaches might be because he has a natural talent for playing them and if so he finds them easier. If they are easier for him then the rating for long approach shots for Woods should be lower not higher. However, any rating system needs to based on all players and if you look across the board you will find that every player has strengths and weaknesses in their game.

Are you saying that because Tiger Woods is better at long game shots than everyone else, he should have a lower long game rating because it must be easier for him?

You are correct to say that every player has strengths and weaknesses in their game. Broadie's stats help us to determine what each player's strengths and weaknesses are. That's the whole point.

[Josh Tarble]

This thread is basically Moneyball in 12 pages of rambling arguments.  I just didn't realize how much Brent looked like Brad Pitt 

Jon,
I get what you're saying.  There are going to be flaws in every system.  When you're talking about measuring human beings, there will be flaws and inconsistencies and things numbers aren't able to account for.  The mental game, general mistakes, bad lies, etc., etc., etc.  But that's what sample size is for, it hopefully reduces some of the errors by law of averages. 

You can argue that distance isn't the number one fact in difficulty all you want, but the fact remains a 3 iron will always be more difficult to hit than a PW.   I know in my playing career, I've had more lies that are the same than different.


Sean,
Stats are important to the people that want stats to be important.  Just like everything else.

[Jon Wiggett]

Are you saying that because Tiger Woods is better at long game shots than everyone else, he should have a lower long game rating because it must be easier for him?

It depends what you are trying to rate.

You are correct to say that every player has strengths and weaknesses in their game. Broadie's stats help us to determine what each player's strengths and weaknesses are. That's the whole point.

I do not dispute that Brodie's stats help determine each players strengths and weaknesses but I do not think they do it any better than standard stats and the use of distance as a factor without lie, climate, etc. risks skewing the results.

As a rule I agree with the 3 iron to PW analogy but I hit my 3 iron 200 yards which is maybe a 7 iron for Woods ergo it is club selection not distance that is key, no? And that is my beef with the Brodie system. There are so many variables that it does not consider. Distance is not the major factor though there are none that are more important there are many that are as important but Brodie does not use them as they are very difficult to quantify. By using just one factor it does not give a true reflection and as I have already said will lead to skewing the outcome IMO.

Jon

[Michael Felton]

Jon,

Here is an example that I posted a page or two ago that I don't think I ever got an answer on.

"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?"

Thoughts?

[Jon Wiggett]

Michael,

I understand what you re getting at but in the end the only true reflection of how they played the hole is they both shot 4. Using Brent's analogy then Corey is the better player as he hit the green from distance where as Bubba missed from closer. What if Corey's first putt was a long 100' putt with a large swing that was not possible to stop closer than 8'? But that is the problem isn't it, too little info to draw a conclusion as to who played the hole better. By drawing attention to the extra factors it also shows up the greatest flaw. In such matters maybe the 'KISS' principal is the best method

Jon

[Brent Hutto]

Nevermind.