Distance the modern player hits the ball - equipment/conditioning

[Brent Hutto]

Anthony,

I do not, deep down, believe there is anything about a golf course's design or tournament setup that is going to obviate the advantage a player with 130mph clubhead speed ability has over one who maxes out at 110mph. You just can't design out the benefits of clubhead speed, strength and technique.

So it is my suspicion that long-hitting elite players will dominate competition at the highest levels over shorter-hitting elite player. On average and in the long term, not necessarily in any one tournament.

But making the courses far longer with each passing decade has to be accentuating those advantages. Just because you can't truly "level the playing field" to give Zach Johnson the same chance at winning the grand slam as Rory McIlory or Bubba Watson it does not follow that you ought to go ahead and redouble the Rory/Bubba advantage by lengthening the courses another 500 yards.

An outside observer with no knowledge of the prior history of the game would look at today's televised golf-as-entertainment and conclude that it was designed from scratch to let the longest hitters show off their power and distance. At some point we've got to conclude that not only do "Chicks Dig The Long Ball" but in fact the entire world digs the long ball. Or at least the entire world acts as though that were the case.

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

As Mark Broadie showed in his book Every Sht Counts the single biggest conrtibution to winning and stkores gained on the PGA Tour is length.
Length is more importnat than any other single factor including Putting at the end of a tournament, so as Brent quite rightly says, there will not be any change in the future of the game, Johnny Long Ball has the advantage.

[BCrosby]

Brent/MWP are correct. It is worth fleshing out HOW length helps.

1. No one sinks putts longer than 10 feet on a regular basis.

2. No one hits approaches within 10 feet on a regular basis unless they are hitting lofted clubs.

3. Longer drivers hit approaches with lofted clubs more often than shorter drivers. 

4. Ergo, if you have limited practice time, spend more of it learning how to hit the ball farther. The rest of it is re-arranging deck chairs....

Bob



 

[Garland Bayley]

Garland,

Part of this USGA report (pg.9) says "Associated with the more aggressive launch conditions is an expected increase in overall distance. It is interesting to note that the distance increase due to optimization at the 125 mph (7.5 yards) is less than half the optimization increase at 90 mph (19 yards)."
So perhaps the equipment companies aren't making unrealistic claims.

Cached page - no auto download
http://tinyurl.com/pw8fdoy

This links to an auto download of the report
https://www.usga.org/workarea/linkit.aspx?linkidentifier=id&itemid=10682

The casual golfer is not a "mechanical" golfer. If they put the casual golfer in a mechanical golfer straight jacket, and repeat the same 90 mph swing every time that study many have some meaning to the casual 90 mph swinging golfer.

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

Bob,
Sad but true

[Jim_Kennedy]

Garland,

Part of this USGA report (pg.9) says "Associated with the more aggressive launch conditions is an expected increase in overall distance. It is interesting to note that the distance increase due to optimization at the 125 mph (7.5 yards) is less than half the optimization increase at 90 mph (19 yards)."
So perhaps the equipment companies aren't making unrealistic claims.

Cached page - no auto download
http://tinyurl.com/pw8fdoy

This links to an auto download of the report
https://www.usga.org/workarea/linkit.aspx?linkidentifier=id&itemid=10682

The casual golfer is not a "mechanical" golfer. If they put the casual golfer in a mechanical golfer straight jacket, and repeat the same 90 mph swing every time that study many have some meaning to the casual 90 mph swinging golfer.

Casual golfers have their straight jacket moments too, and the meaning/relevance of the study would become rather clear when, in one those moments, he/she finds the ball laying in the fairway some 19 yards farther away from the tee than expected.  

[Garland Bayley]

Garland,

Part of this USGA report (pg.9) says "Associated with the more aggressive launch conditions is an expected increase in overall distance. It is interesting to note that the distance increase due to optimization at the 125 mph (7.5 yards) is less than half the optimization increase at 90 mph (19 yards)."
So perhaps the equipment companies aren't making unrealistic claims.

Cached page - no auto download
http://tinyurl.com/pw8fdoy

This links to an auto download of the report
https://www.usga.org/workarea/linkit.aspx?linkidentifier=id&itemid=10682

The casual golfer is not a "mechanical" golfer. If they put the casual golfer in a mechanical golfer straight jacket, and repeat the same 90 mph swing every time that study many have some meaning to the casual 90 mph swinging golfer.

Casual golfers have their straight jacket moments too, and the meaning/relevance of the study would become rather clear when, in one those moments, he/she finds the ball laying in the fairway some 19 yards farther away from the tee than expected.  

Unfortunately I had one of those moments too. I had a driver that was perhaps at most a month old, and launched a drive that I have never been able to replicate, over the swale, through the dogleg into the woods. Caused me to go home and check the USGA for the legality of the driver, which I found to be legal, but the previous model had not been.

The final result of the long drive was I chipped out of the woods and then holed a 50 yard pitch for birdie. Two lifetime bests on that hole in one day.

[DMoriarty]

Good point David. I agree that I was too cavalier with my previous claim. If the effects of technological change are comparable for all tour players, then my statement would likely stand, but there must be some variability in these effects across players. If that's the case, we would probably expect that the new players benefit more from the changes and the retiring players benefit less (because of selection). If our goal is to estimate the average effect of technological changes for tour-level players, then the direction of bias is not obvious. The players who get little benefit are more likely to leave the sample, biasing that estimate downward. Players who get large benefits are more likely to enter the sample to begin with, biasing that estimate upward. In any case, we can't say with confidence how much distances would have increased since 1990 in the absence of technological changes.

Thanks Anthony, this is exactly what I was trying to say, but you fleshed it out.   And I strongly suspect that this is what has been happening.  

I also agree with Marc and others who have pointed out that golf architecture plays a role in increased distances. . . .

One thing to consider when looking at your statistics on distance gains is that despite the trend toward lengthening courses, the biggest hitters may still be bumping up against the length limits of the architecture, and they may be using  more 3 woods even on the measured driver holes. (I tried to look into this a bit a while back and it seemed to me that there has been a drop off of driver use among the long hitters but I don't have full access to the PGA stats so it is difficult to determine.)  If this is correct, then the Tour driving stats would understate the gains due to technology.  For example, it looks to me in 2013 Dustin Johnston only hit driver on about four of every seven "measured drive" holes where the Tour collects advanced launch stats.  If so, then in reality his actual driver distance may have been quite a lot longer than his measured driving distance, since three in seven of his "measured drives" may have been hit with a club other than driver.
_____________________________________________________

Jim and Garland,  

The "Optimum" driving distances cited by Jim are not the result of a mechanical test, but rather a computer simulation.  I don't think the report broke down these "optimum" launch conditions (other than noting that they extrapolated ball speed from swing speed, which is questionable in and of itself) so I am somewhat at a loss as to what we are supposed to take from this portion of the study.    It seems that the message they thought they were conveying is that there is plenty of room to optimize for the relatively slower swing speed golfer, but I wonder if the real message is that that with the new technology, the slower swing speed golfer is physically unable to produce "optimal" launch conditions.

[Garland Bayley]

Anthony,

I truly find your graphs hard to believe.
Your graph says that player physical capabilities were on a decline from 1990 to 1993, then miraculously were responsible for 20 yards of increase for the next 10 years, followed by them getting fat and lazy and having their physical capabilities decline again.

[Doug Siebert]

As you see from the black line, average driving distance on tour has increased by 27 yards since 1990. However, if we look at within-player increases in distance (estimated through a regression with player fixed effects), this increase is only about 13 yards. In other words, about half of the overall increase in distance has come from player replacement rather than the same players hitting the ball further due to technological advances.

For the within-player gains, you'll also notice that the biggest gains came between 2000 and 2001 (a 6 yard jump) and 2002 and 2003 (a 7 yard jump). As I said before, this coincides with changes in ball technology. This suggests that going from wound balls to modern tour balls accounts for about 13 yards -- most of the within-player gains since 1990. Since 2003, PGA tour players have, on average, not gotten longer (although the average distance has still climbed due to player replacement).

We also see gradual within-player gains in the mid 90's which could be attributable to titanium drivers. However, these gains are not as significant as the apparent benefits of the new ball.

While the potential impact of titanium drivers and the modern ball are detectable and significant, they are still smaller than the replacement effect. New players are longer than the old players they replace, and we probably would have seen distances increase by 14 yards or so since 1990 even with no technological advances.

Did you also account for the fact that the same players are a year older each year and are on average going to be weaker than they were the year before?  The effect might not matter aging from 24 to 25, but it would from 34 to 35 and even more from 44 to 45.

[Garland Bayley]

Then you reject the equipment companies' claims that they can increase the driving distance 20 yards with a couple of sessions of optimization?
The player doesn't gain physical ability across those sessions, he gains better equipment optimization.

GJ, I don't know if you're being serious, but I have seen little evidence that the equipment companies can increase driving distance by 20 yards with a few optimization sessions. Maybe I could believe this for high handicappers who were really playing the wrong equipment but certainly not for a tour player (the kinds of players in my analysis and the primary subject of this thread).
...

December 2003, State of the Game program on the Golf Channel.

"The biggest reason for distance increases in the last two or three years, not the last ten, starts with the Tour player finding out how to maximize launch conditions" Taylor Made CEO Mark King

He continues, "Higher launch, less spin, speed is the same, the ball goes 20 yards farther". ... "That isn't the face [of the club], that isn't the length of the shaft. That isn't how strong the guy is."

Frank Thomas book Just Hit It points out that high handicappers do not benefit from the distance gains, because they don't find the sweet spot very often. He does conclude that high MOI is beneficial to the high handicapper, but at one point in the book he admits that benefit is marginal.

[Anthony Fowler]

One thing to consider when looking at your statistics on distance gains is that despite the trend toward lengthening courses, the biggest hitters may still be bumping up against the length limits of the architecture, and they may be using  more 3 woods even on the measured driver holes. (I tried to look into this a bit a while back and it seemed to me that there has been a drop off of driver use among the long hitters but I don't have full access to the PGA stats so it is difficult to determine.)  If this is correct, then the Tour driving stats would understate the gains due to technology.  For example, it looks to me in 2013 Dustin Johnston only hit driver on about four of every seven "measured drive" holes where the Tour collects advanced launch stats.  If so, then in reality his actual driver distance may have been quite a lot longer than his measured driving distance, since three in seven of his "measured drives" may have been hit with a club other than driver. 

That's a good point, but the interpretation is a little more complicated. If more and more players are hitting three woods off the tee on the "measured drive" holes, this would cause both the overall distance gains and the within-player gains to decrease. It might lead us to understate the effects of technology (especially if we think that 3 wood technology lags behind driver technology), or it might lead us to understate the differences between new players and retiring players.

I truly find your graphs hard to believe. Your graph says that player physical capabilities were on a decline from 1990 to 1993, then miraculously were responsible for 20 yards of increase for the next 10 years, followed by them getting fat and lazy and having their physical capabilities decline again.

I see what you mean, but the declines are pretty small (a few yards). That could be attributed to changes in the courses, setup, conditions, or player strategy (more players hitting 3 woods off the tee as David points out). I wouldn't want to overanalyze any small change on the graph, but the general finding is that the within-player gains in distance are not nearly as great as the overall gains. That suggests to me that player replacement accounts for about half of the distance increases, while technological changes can, at most, account for half.

Did you also account for the fact that the same players are a year older each year and are on average going to be weaker than they were the year before?  The effect might not matter aging from 24 to 25, but it would from 34 to 35 and even more from 44 to 45.

Yes. In generating these estimates, I have controlled for the players time on tour in a flexible way (by including dummy variables for each additional year on tour). This turns out to not matter at all. After accounting for overall trends coming from technological changes and other factors, players do not appear to systematically get longer or shorter as they age on tour. Of course, at some point, we'd expect players to eventually lose distance with age, but for the vast majority of players, this doesn't happen until they're already off the tour.

December 2003, State of the Game program on the Golf Channel.

"The biggest reason for distance increases in the last two or three years, not the last ten, starts with the Tour player finding out how to maximize launch conditions" Taylor Made CEO Mark King

He continues, "Higher launch, less spin, speed is the same, the ball goes 20 yards farther". ... "That isn't the face [of the club], that isn't the length of the shaft. That isn't how strong the guy is."

Frank Thomas book Just Hit It points out that high handicappers do not benefit from the distance gains, because they don't find the sweet spot very often. He does conclude that high MOI is beneficial to the high handicapper, but at one point in the book he admits that benefit is marginal.

I wouldn't go to the CEO of Taylor Made for an unbiased assessment of the effect of new driver technology. Of course, he'll tell you that they're new drivers help you hit it further. My speculation regarding greater gains for high handicappers was made precisely because they don't hit the sweet spot all the time. It's hard to increase distance for players that hit the sweet spot every time (especially since the COR is limited). Alternatively, if you can increase the sweet spot, you could considerably increase the average distance of high handicappers. Obviously, you won't increase their maximum distance much, but you'll bring up the average by making their misses better.

[Garland Bayley]

... It's hard to increase distance for players that hit the sweet spot every time ...

No! It's easy now! That's why the tour pros can do it!

With modern technology any player that is not hitting his chosen ball with his chosen driver at optimal conditions can be measured and improved by making club, ball, and perhaps setup changes. It has nothing to do with COR.

[Garland Bayley]

...

I truly find your graphs hard to believe. Your graph says that player physical capabilities were on a decline from 1990 to 1993, then miraculously were responsible for 20 yards of increase for the next 10 years, followed by them getting fat and lazy and having their physical capabilities decline again.

I see what you mean, but the declines are pretty small (a few yards). That could be attributed to changes in the courses, setup, conditions, or player strategy (more players hitting 3 woods off the tee as David points out). I wouldn't want to overanalyze any small change on the graph, but the general finding is that the within-player gains in distance are not nearly as great as the overall gains. That suggests to me that player replacement accounts for about half of the distance increases, while technological changes can, at most, account for half.
...

Who's overanalyzing? This is just common sense. You posit players are getting faster better stronger, but you graphs showing them getting slower worse weaker in over half of the plots. That says to me you are not capturing player performance even in the slightest.

[Jim Nugent]

I have extended this analysis through the 2014 season, and the following graph gives the main results.

As you see from the black line, average driving distance on tour has increased by 27 yards since 1990. However, if we look at within-player increases in distance (estimated through a regression with player fixed effects), this increase is only about 13 yards. In other words, about half of the overall increase in distance has come from player replacement rather than the same players hitting the ball further due to technological advances.

For the within-player gains, you'll also notice that the biggest gains came between 2000 and 2001 (a 6 yard jump) and 2002 and 2003 (a 7 yard jump). As I said before, this coincides with changes in ball technology. This suggests that going from wound balls to modern tour balls accounts for about 13 yards -- most of the within-player gains since 1990. Since 2003, PGA tour players have, on average, not gotten longer (although the average distance has still climbed due to player replacement).

We also see gradual within-player gains in the mid 90's which could be attributable to titanium drivers. However, these gains are not as significant as the apparent benefits of the new ball.

While the potential impact of titanium drivers and the modern ball are detectable and significant, they are still smaller than the replacement effect. New players are longer than the old players they replace, and we probably would have seen distances increase by 14 yards or so since 1990 even with no technological advances.

Anthony, when comparing driving distance, I think you have to factor in changes to the courses during the various times, esp width of landing zones. 

During a few periods driving distance went down, even for the same players.  1990-93, 2005-10 look like two examples.  Why is that, if not due to changes in the courses?

[Craig Sweet]

If you can't generate the club speed the new drivers aren't going to add any distance over your 1995 model club...the only way you'll generate more club speed is better technique and better conditioning.

[Anthony Fowler]

You posit players are getting faster better stronger, but you graphs showing them getting slower worse weaker in over half of the plots. That says to me you are not capturing player performance even in the slightest.

I must not have been clear. When I said players were getting faster, better, stronger, etc. I was referring to the new players joining the tour relative to the older players leaving the tour. The new players appear to be longer than the old players. I made no claims about individual players becoming better over the course of their careers. The gray curve in my graph looks at within-player changes in driving distance. Yes, individual players appear to have lost distance between 1990 and 1993 and again between about 2005 and 2014. Why is this the case? I don't know. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the courses, the fairway widths (as others have pointed out), changes in player strategy, and maybe even some negative changes in technology. However, like I said before, I don't think we should over analyze these drops too much, because they're small. Nonetheless, since 2005, individual tour players have not gained distance on average, despite all of the supposed technological breakthroughs like 460cc, adjustable drivers with higher MOI and optimized launch conditions.

To better clarify my analysis, I have decided to tweak the graph below. Now, I'm plotting the the within-player distance gains (the gray curve from before) alongside the between-player distance gains (the difference between the black and gray curves from the previous graph). The black line shows you average distance gains that appear to have arisen through player replacement. The gray curve shows you the average distance gains that appear to have arisen through changes in the driving distances of individual players. The between-player changes can only arise through the new players being longer than the retiring players. The within-player changes could arise through changes in course setup, strategy, technology, etc. It's interesting that the between player increases have been really steady and consistent. In virtually every year, the new players joining the tour are a little longer than the old players leaving.

[Garland Bayley]

If you can't generate the club speed the new drivers aren't going to add any distance over your 1995 model club...the only way you'll generate more club speed is better technique and better conditioning.

Sorry Craig, but that is completely wrong.
1995 was about the beginning of drivers with spring faces. In 1998, the regulation was put in place to limit the spring. Within a year or two, all players would have drivers that met or exceeded that limit. That alone would add distance.
Then about 2000 the new balls came out. At that time the companies were learning about optimization. If the ball is not hit a the correct launch angle with the correct spin it will fall short with the same club speed even if always hit perfectly on the sweet spot. Drivers were created with more loft to get the right launch angle. Shafts were swap in and out to get the right spin.

Please correct me if I misunderstood you. My understanding was you to be indicating that swing speed was king, and conditioning was the key to swing speed.

[DMoriarty]

That's a good point, but the interpretation is a little more complicated. If more and more players are hitting three woods off the tee on the "measured drive" holes, this would cause both the overall distance gains and the within-player gains to decrease. It might lead us to understate the effects of technology (especially if we think that 3 wood technology lags behind driver technology), or it might lead us to understate the differences between new players and retiring players.

My guess is that it leads us to understate both the effects of technology and the differences between new and retiring players.   But then I am still not clear that these are necessarily distinct.  In other words, the new technology could be favoring one type of player over another, relative to the old technology.  If so, then it doesn't make sense to me when you say that "player replacement accounts for about half of the distance increases, while technological changes can, at most, account for half."

Would a 120+ mph swing speed translate as well on a tour with balatas, steel, and small persimmon heads?  I don't think so. I don't think the golfer would be able to control his ball, and I don't think the incremental distance benefit would justify such a swing with the old equipment.  In other words, the new technology is playing a role in selecting the players who will be successful on tour, and I don't think your numbers take this into account.

That said, I do very much appreciate your analysis and efforts at trying to figure it out, and I'd like to hear more.  For example, can you expand on how you came up with your "within-player" grouping? I am not sure I grasp it.

[Anthony Fowler]

That said, I do very much appreciate your analysis and efforts at trying to figure it out, and I'd like to hear more.  For example, can you expand on how you came up with your "within-player" grouping? I am not sure I grasp it.

Sure, I'll do my best. I'm estimating all of this with regressions, which is just a way of estimating conditional averages and differences. For example, I can run a regression where the outcome variable is average driving distance (for a given player in a given year) and the independent variables (the variables used to predict the outcome variable) are separate variables for each year. This is equivalent to just calculating the average for each year and subtracting off the average for 1990. That's how I generate the estimates of overall distance gains. Then, I can modify that regression by also controlling for each individual player by adding in an additional independent variable for each player (there's a Tiger Woods variable, Fred Couples variable, etc.). With this regression, I can now interpret the year effects as changes in distances over time while holding the player constant (i.e., within-player distance increases). An alternative (and nearly identical) approach would be to calculate all the within-player changes by hand. For example, suppose I wanted to know the within-player increase from 2000 to 2001. I could just calculate the distance gain for every player that was on tour in both years and calculate the average of those differences. The regression is just a way of doing all of this more efficiently.

Another advantage of this regression approach, which I'm not really exploiting, is that you could add more variables to these regressions to test additional hypotheses. For example, if we wanted to know how much of the distance increases are attributable to a switch to the solid-core golf ball, we could go out and collect data on when each player switched from a round ball to a solid-core ball. Then, assuming they didn't all switch in the same year (which they didn't because of the Strata guys in the late 90's, the Nike guys in 2000, etc.), we could estimate the average effect of switching to a solid-core ball and see what's left over after that. The only additional control variable that I've examined is player age (as mentioned previously), and it appears to not matter.

If anyone can think of specific factors that they think should be included in these regressions in order to test various hypotheses, I'd be happy to include them. For example, if anyone has data (or is willing to assemble it) on when each player switched to a solid-core ball, a titanium driver, etc., I'd be happy to incorporate that data in the analysis.

[Jim Nugent]

If anyone can think of specific factors that they think should be included in these regressions in order to test various hypotheses, I'd be happy to include them.

Well, the one I brought up earlier: to make sure the playing field is the same. 

[Jim_Kennedy]

Not a far-fetched sentiment, from "The Book Of The Links", 1912