[Tom_Doak]

An old quote from Henry Cotton is the title of Mark Broadie's book, which sought to analyze golf strategy by breaking down the averages of all the ShotLink data compiled by the PGA TOUR.


Andy Johnson let me borrow his copy of the book last week so I could brush up on how TOUR players think now.  Broadie's book has apparently become their Bible for strategy, because there is enough data that it exceeds their own personal experience.


Before I start discussing what I've taken from the book, has it been discussed here before, and I just missed it?  How many of our posters have actually read the book?

[Pete Lavallee]

I haven't read the book yet but Brodie does write a monthly column in GOLF Magazine where he uses examples on the TOUR to back his theories.

[Scott Warren]

I don't recall Mark's work ever being discussed in detail on GCA.com, Tom. Interested to hear what you've taken from the book.

Pete -- thanks for the heads-up on those columns, will try to find them online. Mark also did an episode of the No Laying Up podcast earlier this year:
https://nolayingup.com/2018/04/23/nlu-podcast-episode-135-mark-broadie/

[Joe Schackman]

I have read his book. It is very interesting and thought provoking but I'm a financial analyst by trade so that kind of stuff interests me.  If you have any passing interest in advanced baseball stats it is in kind of in that vein.

It definitely has helped me understand how the pro-game works and how and why the best players create separation from their competition.

I do think it is hard to take the lessons and apply them to directly to your own game. However, because I'm an excel dork I found someone's spreadsheet online (edited it for my own use) and started tracking a personal "Strokes Gained". It has been cool/ fun but the biggest issue is my stats are pegged against professional golfers which obviously means I'm essentially "Losing strokes" on every shot.

But the big insight I gained is that I was always under the impression I was a bad short putter. Worked at it all the time and saw some putting improvement but still felt like I missed a lot. From tracking these metrics I realized I'm actually a bad lag putter and THAT was the reason I wasn't really missing too many short putts. I was just putting from too far away. Sounds obvious but it took seeing the data for it to click.

[JESII]

It has been discussed some, but well worth a current, focused thread. AG Crocket is well versed and a solid advocate of Broadie’s work. I’m not well versed (haven’t read the book, and only a couple of the articles) and skeptical of the stats...


Is it possible that working harder on your 200-225 game is more valuable than working on your putting?  If so, why is it that virtually every winner is among the leaders that week in putting?

[Jim Sherma]

This type of analysis is based on large sample sizes just like baseball analytics. It’s true that in any one week the strokes gained leaders in putting tend towards the top. Broadie’s analysis shows how the player’s average play across many rounds result in year end results. Just like when Billy Beane in Money Ball said his shtick didn’t necessarily work in the playoffs because the sample sizes were too small.

[Joe Zucker]

I agree, it is a very interesting book if you have an statistical mindset.  I'm not sure any of Brodie's findings are earth shattering, but putting the shot link data with some common sense thinking makes a lot of this findings seem obvious.  But I suppose most great revelations seem ordinary once you know them. 


The most interesting part or Brodie's work to me is identifying why and where pros are so much better than amateurs.  If an amateur challenged a tour player to a putting contest, they could very easily win 1 of 2 out of 10 games with a bit of luck.  But if an amateur challenged a pro to a contest with a 6 iron, they will lose 100 out of 100 games no matter how lucky they are.  Seems obvious once you state it, but Brodie shows that pros make up so many shots with the long game. 


Jim, I would guess the winners are also among the leaders in the 200-225 range as well.  As great of a putter as Tiger was, I think Brodie showed that the majority of his strokes gained against the field were in the approach category.  The margin is so small on the tour and everyone hits it so well, putting seems to be all that is left to differentiate them.  The winner may not "gain" a ton of strokes vs other pros with the long game, but they gain a lot compared to a scratch player.  It's been a few years since I read his book, but I remember a lot of his book identifying the differences between pros and amateurs rather than splitting the hairs that separate the top few hundred golfers in the world.

[Tom_Doak]

I have read his book. It is very interesting and thought provoking but I'm a financial analyst by trade so that kind of stuff interests me.  If you have any passing interest in advanced baseball stats it is in kind of in that vein.

Guilty as charged!


I agree that some of the conclusions of the book are hard to apply to your own game.  Broadie insists that the same relationships of driving - approach play - short game - putting apply across the board, but golfers like us are much inferior at approach play, so some of the conclusions as to how TOUR players should approach strategy just flat out don't compute for us.


I can compare it to baseball.  For example, the stats geniuses have crunched the numbers and will tell you that bunting is never a good strategy now.  And maybe it's not in the average game of a 162-game season [especially if your team is not going to the playoffs, anyway].  But in a one-run postseason game in the 7th inning with Justin Verlander on the mound facing you?  A one run strategy is suddenly a bit more relevant then.


Likewise, baseball teams built around speed tend to underperform in the postseason, because while taking an extra base may work most of the time against most teams, it can just kill you when it doesn't work against a better defensive team in October.  And that's not just a case of "small sample size" ... it's that the average level of competition has changed, and all the percentages need to be recalculated accordingly.

[Tom_Doak]

So, how do we apply Broadie's findings to golf courses?  He has averaged out the data for every shot on every TOUR course ... that's all the TPC's and Harbour Town and Riviera, but not Augusta or U.S. Open or Open Championship venues, because Shotlink doesn't cover them.  I think that's an important omission, which I'll get to in a bit. 

And the key to Broadie's book is ignoring such distinctions, and letting "big data" convince us that on average, certain strategies work, so those are the ones we should go with.

Sure, those are also "small sample sizes," but I think we could all agree they are different courses than the TPC at Sugarloaf from a strategy standpoint, with greater penalties for mistakes.


I was going to get into the details, but I find I have left the book on my desk at the office, so that part will have to wait til tomorrow.

I did think enough of the book to send a copy to Mike Nuzzo today; I figure with his engineering (and baseball fan) background he will have some conclusions after reading it, too.


It's a very good book, written very convincingly -- indeed, it is probably more convincing than it should be!  I recommend it to you all, as I think it would improve debate here. 

In the end, though, my goal is to see what there is in the findings of the book that I can reverse-engineer from a design standpoint, to produce different results.  And before I act on any of that, I need to be convinced his findings are accurate ... some of which cause me skepticism.

[Tom_Doak]

Is it possible that working harder on your 200-225 game is more valuable than working on your putting?  If so, why is it that virtually every winner is among the leaders that week in putting?

One thing I wondered about this stat was, how many shots per tournament do TOUR players even hit from 200-225 yards?  I would agree with the idea that shots of such length separate the men from the boys most nakedly, but not if we can't build holes where we put those lengths into play.  And the players HATE playing a bunch of 220-yard par-3's.


On the other hand, perhaps the reason why long hitters don't overpower short courses is that they don't get to separate themselves from the field with more of these lengthy approach shots.

[A.G._Crockett]

I have read his book. It is very interesting and thought provoking but I'm a financial analyst by trade so that kind of stuff interests me.  If you have any passing interest in advanced baseball stats it is in kind of in that vein.

Guilty as charged!


I agree that some of the conclusions of the book are hard to apply to your own game.  Broadie insists that the same relationships of driving - approach play - short game - putting apply across the board, but golfers like us are much inferior at approach play, so some of the conclusions as to how TOUR players should approach strategy just flat out don't compute for us.


I can compare it to baseball.  For example, the stats geniuses have crunched the numbers and will tell you that bunting is never a good strategy now.  And maybe it's not in the average game of a 162-game season [especially if your team is not going to the playoffs, anyway].  But in a one-run postseason game in the 7th inning with Justin Verlander on the mound facing you?  A one run strategy is suddenly a bit more relevant then.


Likewise, baseball teams built around speed tend to underperform in the postseason, because while taking an extra base may work most of the time against most teams, it can just kill you when it doesn't work against a better defensive team in October.  And that's not just a case of "small sample size" ... it's that the average level of competition has changed, and all the percentages need to be recalculated accordingly.

Tom,

What a given manager in MLB decides to DO with the stats about bunting are clearly situational, and that means that it's going to be a judgement call many, many times.  Good managers know this, and act accordingly.  But the stats are what they are; deciding what to DO with them is the variable.  This is true whether you're talking about base stealing, sacrifice bunts, the relative value of a strikeout, and so on.  Baseball is the poster child for all of this simply because it's a series of one on one confrontations between a pitcher and a batter.


Likewise the Broadie research.  His finding about proximity of approach being the single biggest divider between lesser and better golfers at EVERY level isn't arguable.  But what a given player, pro or high handicapper, decides to DO with that is another matter.  If my proximity of approach is more typical of a player with a higher index than I have, then it's up to me to figure out why and address that; Broadie doesn't prescribe fixes because he doesn't know my causes/flaws.


So maybe I don't hit it far enough off the tee, or maybe I'm too wild off the tee, or maybe I have the wrong equipment, like long irons.  There are a lot of possibilities for WHY I don't hit the ball closer, and it's up to me to figure that out and address it thru a practice plan of some sort.  While the proximity problem for me and a Tour pro have the same OUTCOME, namely that we're too far from the hole, the reason(s) that we're hitting our first putts from too far away may be, and likely are, completely different.  And so should our attempts to fix the problem.

I have always been a sweeper; I never take a divot, even with wedges.  I really believe that this prevents me from being a better iron player, at least in terms of consistency, and I intend to address that this winter.  I doubt there is a single player on Tour who has as his intention for the off-season to learn how to take a proper divot, but I believe that most, if not all, Tour players will have something that they hope to accomplish this year with an eye toward hitting it closer.

As Jim Sullivan very kindly wrote, I love the book.  If your mind bends that way anyway, get it; you'll enjoy it and find parts of it to be really thought-provoking.

[A.G._Crockett]

So, how do we apply Broadie's findings to golf courses?  He has averaged out the data for every shot on every TOUR course ... that's all the TPC's and Harbour Town and Riviera, but not Augusta or U.S. Open or Open Championship venues, because Shotlink doesn't cover them.  I think that's an important omission, which I'll get to in a bit. 

And the key to Broadie's book is ignoring such distinctions, and letting "big data" convince us that on average, certain strategies work, so those are the ones we should go with.

Sure, those are also "small sample sizes," but I think we could all agree they are different courses than the TPC at Sugarloaf from a strategy standpoint, with greater penalties for mistakes.


I was going to get into the details, but I find I have left the book on my desk at the office, so that part will have to wait til tomorrow.

I did think enough of the book to send a copy to Mike Nuzzo today; I figure with his engineering (and baseball fan) background he will have some conclusions after reading it, too.


It's a very good book, written very convincingly -- indeed, it is probably more convincing than it should be!  I recommend it to you all, as I think it would improve debate here. 

In the end, though, my goal is to see what there is in the findings of the book that I can reverse-engineer from a design standpoint, to produce different results.  And before I act on any of that, I need to be convinced his findings are accurate ... some of which cause me skepticism.

Broadie's sample sizes are neither small, nor confined to Tour pros or Shotlink; his data collection actually started BEFORE Shotlink was available.  He covers his methodology and samples early on in the book, and I think the reader comes away satisfied that his data is valid.  And if memory serves, he even comments that he found it surprising that the conclusions about pros holds up across the entire spectrum.

[Tom_Doak]

Broadie's sample sizes are neither small, nor confined to Tour pros or Shotlink; his data collection actually started BEFORE Shotlink was available.  He covers his methodology and samples early on in the book, and I think the reader comes away satisfied that his data is valid.  And if memory serves, he even comments that he found it surprising that the conclusions about pros holds up across the entire spectrum.

A.G.:  I'll grant you all of that, and as I wrote above, I found the book very convincing.  Maybe too convincing.


My point is that golf courses are different from one another, just like golfers are, as you so elegantly outlined in your previous post.




So I will start with one of his conclusions that I found most jarring, which is that putting from above the hole is no different statistically from putting from below the hole.  His stats "prove" that you have a better make percentage from six feet above the hole than from eight feet below the hole, so, there would almost never be a good reason to aim an approach shot to stay below the hole, instead of aiming right at it.


Do you think that holds up at Augusta National?


I don't.  It might very well hold up at the average TOUR event, because they are so conservative with their hole locations and finding relatively flat spots for them. 


Some people have tried to pretend their maximum tolerance for slope at the hole is around the value at which you might not be able to stop a downhill putt on a very fast green, but I have never bought that, because I know the slopes on some famous greens are way above the TOUR's tolerance.  Instead, what Broadie's finding suggests to me is that the TOUR does their set-up so that golfers can fire it at the flags most every week without worrying about being above the hole ! 


And, of course, the strategy that works so well from week to week could just fall apart at The Masters.  But that's a small sample size, so we should ignore it ?

[Peter Pallotta]

Re the 200-225 yard shot: but what happens to 'separation' when the Adams 3 hybrid that a short hitter uses flies higher, stays straighter, goes further and lands softer than does the 5 iron the slightly longer hitter uses?  Maybe like in many other areas of life, the middle ground is disappearing fast: you need to be either a rescue-club-loving-shrimpkin or an every-approach-shot-is-a-wedge-behemoth.  (From a recent article: Luke Donald's coach was an early and under the radar adopter of the Broadie stats, and he says it helped get the not-long-hitting Luke get to # 1. But that was 7 years ago now. Anyone think we're likely to see a repeat?)       

[Tom_Doak]

Re the 200-225 yard shot: but what happens to 'separation' when the Adams 3 hybrid that a short hitter uses flies higher, stays straighter, goes further and lands softer than does the 5 iron the slightly longer hitter uses?  Maybe like in many other areas of life, the middle ground is disappearing fast: you need to be either a rescue-club-loving-shrimpkin or an every-approach-shot-is-a-wedge-behemoth.  (From a recent article: Luke Donald's coach was an early and under the radar adopter of the Broadie stats, and he says it helped get the not-long-hitting Luke get to # 1. But that was 7 years ago now. Anyone think we're likely to see a repeat?)     

That result is presumably baked into his statistics already, but, what happens is that the gap between the better player and the average player is narrowed just a smidgen.


The odd thing is that a lot of people will pretend to be horrified by that - "don't make the game easier!"  But to me the game needs more of that.  The problem with golf is that the gap is too big.  Anything which narrows it a bit makes the game more competitive, so it comes down more to who was the best player on the day.

[Peter Pallotta]

T - I was thinking more about why tour pros don't like 225 yard Par 3s, and thought maybe it was because the longer hitters feel they have (relatively) less advantage nowadays. (Par 3s in general too: Corey Pavin used to make up strokes field there.)
P

[A.G._Crockett]

Broadie's sample sizes are neither small, nor confined to Tour pros or Shotlink; his data collection actually started BEFORE Shotlink was available.  He covers his methodology and samples early on in the book, and I think the reader comes away satisfied that his data is valid.  And if memory serves, he even comments that he found it surprising that the conclusions about pros holds up across the entire spectrum.

A.G.:  I'll grant you all of that, and as I wrote above, I found the book very convincing.  Maybe too convincing.


My point is that golf courses are different from one another, just like golfers are, as you so elegantly outlined in your previous post.




So I will start with one of his conclusions that I found most jarring, which is that putting from above the hole is no different statistically from putting from below the hole.  His stats "prove" that you have a better make percentage from six feet above the hole than from eight feet below the hole, so, there would almost never be a good reason to aim an approach shot to stay below the hole, instead of aiming right at it.


Do you think that holds up at Augusta National?


I don't.  It might very well hold up at the average TOUR event, because they are so conservative with their hole locations and finding relatively flat spots for them. 


Some people have tried to pretend their maximum tolerance for slope at the hole is around the value at which you might not be able to stop a downhill putt on a very fast green, but I have never bought that, because I know the slopes on some famous greens are way above the TOUR's tolerance.  Instead, what Broadie's finding suggests to me is that the TOUR does their set-up so that golfers can fire it at the flags most every week without worrying about being above the hole ! 


And, of course, the strategy that works so well from week to week could just fall apart at The Masters.  But that's a small sample size, so we should ignore it ?

Not at all, and that's the point.  In fact, you don't even have to make it as macro as ANGC vs an "average" Tour stop; on almost every course, there are pin positions that demand that you be below the hole.  To ignore that would be a misapplication of the data, but it doesn't invalidate the data at all.


But without digging out the book to reread the putting stuff, I'll say this.  It's entirely possible that while the make percentage is higher from above the hole, so is the three putt percentage.  Though I don't anymore, but I used to play in a lot of scrambles.  In those, I always preferred the downhill putt because our team only had to get one close to two putt, and the slope eliminated a lot of the speed issue; you just had to pick a line, and your best putter got to see it three times. 


The key thing to remember about Broadie's data is that it is macro and it's data; it isn't necessarily prescriptive for ANY golfer, for ANY golf course, or for ANY golf hole.  I played in a CGA four ball tournament at Tobacco Road yesterday, and I guarantee you that my partner and I made sure that we NOT above the hole on #16.  But on #8, I was WAY below the hole and I four putted, despite  much as I hate to admit that and in spite of knowing that I had to get above the hole.  No absolutes; very dependent on the player, the course, and even the hole.  But that doesn't in any way invalidate the data; it just puts the pressure on ME to know how to apply it.  And how not to...

[Tom_Doak]

The key thing to remember about Broadie's data is that it is macro and it's data; it isn't necessarily prescriptive for ANY golfer, for ANY golf course, or for ANY golf hole.  I played in a CGA four ball tournament at Tobacco Road yesterday, and I guarantee you that my partner and I made sure that we NOT above the hole on #16.  But on #8, I was WAY below the hole and I four putted, despite  much as I hate to admit that and in spite of knowing that I had to get above the hole.  No absolutes; very dependent on the player, the course, and even the hole.  But that doesn't in any way invalidate the data; it just puts the pressure on ME to know how to apply it.  And how not to...

A.G.:  I totally agree with you, but that's not the way it's interpreted by many people. 


Just like the geniuses who tell you it's proven fact that you should never bunt, there are lots of people now [including a lot of TOUR pros] who maintain that the data PROVE that it's statistically better to go for it than lay back in nearly all cases except where penalty shots are a factor.


It has given modern players faith in a game plan that's much, much different than the players of Jack Nicklaus's era used.  There may be a lot of situations when it's wrong, as you say, but players have been coached to believe in it instead of letting doubt come into play.  TOUR pros like to think in black and white, and here are the numbers in black and white.


P.S.  I misspoke on the putting, it's the scoring average [not the make %] that is the same from above and below the hole.  That was the part that surprised me.  I guess the make % must actually be a bit higher from above the hole, as you infer, to make up for the occasional three-putt.  But, of course, that would NOT hold up at Augusta, as the late Ben Hogan would be the first to attest.

[Jim Sherma]

My reading of the books has the “so what” as determining an optimal strategy based on a true understanding of the distributions from which your different shot outcomes are resulting from. The dynamic programming solution he advocates as an optimal strategy is the lowest aggregate expected value given the expected value of each shot in succession. Hence the conversation of playing to the left rough when your dispersion is bringing ob right into play.

[Tom_Doak]

My reading of the books has the “so what” as determining an optimal strategy based on a true understanding of the distributions from which your different shot outcomes are resulting from. The dynamic programming solution he advocates as an optimal strategy is the lowest aggregate expected value given the expected value of each shot in succession. Hence the conversation of playing to the left rough when your dispersion is bringing ob right into play.

I've not had time to read it from cover to cover yet; I've only read about halfway so far, and then glanced through the rest.  I'll have more time this weekend to get up to speed, once I've signed about 400 more books and dug out addresses for sixty people who will soon have a nice gift!


The diagrams of strategy on a par-4 with water or o.b. in play did stand out to me.  His recommendation is for players to aim 32.5 yards wide of a hazard whether it's in the fairway or not, because the penalty shot costs them so much more than the fractional penalty for being in the rough.  In theory, those numbers would change with the length of the hole -- i.e. it might be worth the risk if you could drive the green and make eagle sometimes -- but he does not present that scenario as far as I've seen.


The reason this is so important to me is in trying to design strategy into golf holes.  If great players are so convinced by the general arguments in the book that they shouldn't ever aim to one side of the fairway for strategy [because there's no statistical advantage on the average hole], or their decisions are all driven by the presence of water and o.b. instead of bunkers, then the Pete Dye approach would be to try to maximize the disparities they don't acknowledge. 


I'm only starting to get a sense of what those disparities are, but the one I've mentioned already is tilted greens.

[A.G._Crockett]

I'm a stats freak; always was, and I'm only getting worse as I get older.  As a HS basketball coach, the time I spent breaking down game film was just crazy, especially in the postseason.  I keep fairways, GIR's, putts, up and down, sand saves, and penalty strokes for EVERY round of golf I play, and I've got every round I've played for the last umpteen years on a computer program called Scorekeeper.  So I'm a little bit nuts on this stuff, and I'm the first to admit that.

But a baseball story about bunting.  My son was a baseball player all thru HS, and a year of Legion ball afterwards.  I coached when he was first starting out, but when he started playing travel ball he had passed any expertise I had, so I started pitching BP and keeping the scorebook during games.

So we're hosting a big summer tournament, and I'm sitting behind home plate with the guy who is running the scoreboard, and there's a sacrifice bunt; the pitcher fields it and throws out the batter and the runner on first moves to second with one out.  But here's the thing:  BOTH sets of fans, seated on either side of me in bleachers behind their team's dugouts, applauded!  It was startling, and I started paying attention and it happened EVERY time there was a "successful" sacrifice bunt.

You know where I'm headed with this, I'm sure; it is just not possible that the same play can be good for both teams in equal measure.  I knew it then, even before the metrics that we all know about now came out; what I didn't know was which way the see-saw actually tilts.  And the data shows, beyond any question, that ON AVERAGE an out is more valuable than a base.  A runner on first with no outs is more likely to score than a runner on second with one out; there is no doubt about it when you examine thousands of those two situations.

But an NL manager whose pitcher is coming up with a runner on first and nobody out in a one run game would be a dope to apply the macro data to a micro situation, and we all know THAT, too.  That clearly isn't the same as a runner on first and nobody out with Jose Altuve coming up in an AL game.  Baseball lends itself to macro analysis and micro decision making in a unique way, but golf isn't far behind, and that's what Broadie's stuff is all about.


Broadie's data shows that Tour pros don't get above a 50% make rate on putts until they are at around 9', and that nobody in the world is consistently making a lot of putts of 20' or longer, and that good putting is primarily three putt avoidance by good lag putting and being rock solid inside 4'.  BUT, and this is the key, how a given player applies that to his or her game is a whole other matter.  Broadie isn't saying the 15 index guy shouldn't spend time practicing putting; he's saying that spending time on the putting green trying to make a lot of 30 footers might not be time well spent vs. other aspects of putting. 


So, again: Data is what it is, and it isn't arguable.  What you or I DO with data is up to us, and varies situationally.  If I ever get to play ANGC, especially if I qualify for the Masters  , it will be my intention not to be above the hole; with only a couple of exceptions, when I play my home course tomorrow, I'll be trying to hit it as close as I can, without regard to above or below.

[Thomas Dai]

A couple of initial questions -
A) How does Brodie’s work compare to the data Dave Pelz was collecting years ago?
B) Does the Brodie data show areas of the game where the tour pros are weak (or relatively weak in comparison to other areas)? I’m thinking Pete Dye’s thoughts on tour pros not liking semi-blind pitch shots, so he designed features so that they would have to play half-blind pitch shots!
Atb

[A.G._Crockett]

A couple of initial questions -
A) How does Brodie’s work compare to the data Dave Pelz was collecting years ago?
B) Does the Brodie data show areas of the game where the tour pros are weak (or relatively weak in comparison to other areas)? I’m thinking Pete Dye’s thoughts on tour pros not liking semi-blind pitch shots, so he designed features so that they would have to play half-blind pitch shots!
Atb

A. Broadie's data is far more extensive because of the addition of Shotlink, and maybe because of Broadie's academic credentials and abilities.  I don't see the work of the two guys as contradictory in any way, fwiw.  I DO think Pelz, in some situations at least, came at the data with a predetermined bias about the short game and putting that Broadie didn't have.

Pelz starts with the idea that because a larger percentage of the total shots in a round are either on the green or within 100 yds that those shots are the most important, and then he TEACHES METHODS for hitting those shots.  Broadie just goes into greater detail and looks at the game from the tee to the hole and describes what is happening in between at all levels of play, but he doesn't teach or recommend methods of getting there.  Pelz teaches HOW to putt; Broadie is more about telling you your chances of making putts from any given distance based on your handicap.  Pelz teaches HOW to hit a lot of partial wedge shots; Broadie just isn't doing that sort of thing.

B. Without pulling out the book, I'll generalize an answer and say "no", but that isn't really what Broadie is doing, exactly.  He's describing what does and does not happen ON AVERAGE based on macro data, and the question you are asking might be much too individual.  It would be up to the individual player, pro or amateur, to decide what their own particular strengths and weaknesses are, and how to either play the game or go about practicing.  Which brings us back to how you APPLY the data to yourself, to an individual course, or even an individual golf hole.

[Steve Kline]

I really enjoyed Broadie's book and found the conclusions very compelling. They seemed obvious after reading the book and seeing the data. However, it took me reading the book to see the obviousness of the conclusions.


However, I have found the work of Scott Fawcett more compelling because he makes use of the data but provided better practical application of the data, at least in terms of the way I think. I'm pretty sure Bryson DeChambeau is a big proponent of Fawcett's decade system. And, Fawcett works with many high level college programs. So, his strategy ideas are going to become more common on Tour.


Tom Doak - I highly recommend that you check out some of Fawcett's videos and thoughts in addition to Broadie's.

[BCrosby]

Interesting that Dave Pelz comes up. He did some fairly rudimentary sabre metric work on the short game that he included in one of his books.


I remember thinking that his data didn't say what he thought it did.


His reasoning went something like:


- no one regularly makes putts longer than 20 feet, so good lags are good
- good putters make more putts regularly inside 20 feet; they separate themselves from the pack even more on putts inside 10 feet.


So Peltz concludes that you should work on improving your long and short putting.


But it seemed to me that buried in his stats was another conclusion:


1. only players hitting lofted iron approaches regularly get within 20 feet of the pin, and
2. only players who are long off the tee regularly hit lofted iron approaches, (That data is probably dated now. No one on the Tour today hits mid or long iron approaches. But bear with me.)
3. then shouldn't I spend my limited time and money in learning to be longer off the tee?


In short, becoming a better putter doesn't help much unless I am hitting my approaches within 20 feet and I can't do that unless I am hitting approaches with lofted clubs.



Bob

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