[Jeff_Brauer]

Garland,


Not sure why this topic rankles your feathers this much, but Broadie does show a descending line chart, noting that any pro above the line is more accurate than average, below is less accurate.  It's not that he doesn't acknowledge there are exceptions, but for golfers, he (and others who use stats similarly) thinks using stats to play for avoiding the miss is a statistically smart move.  You have given some one off examples, which don't really matter, other than proving that there are exceptions to every rule.  I believe his statistics are still valid for design use.


The data I mostly use isn't from his book, but from his 2009 golf metrics paper, which is obviously a foundation for his book, although I note a few differences I can't reconcile but haven't called him to discuss.  For me, even though his data was then just 513 A players and 513 D players, from which I have extrapolated the B and C dispersion patterns.  Surprisingly, those 513 shots are the most data available anywhere on amateur players, although the USGA/RA has been doing similar work in their last three distance reports, and before the Broadie data above, it did a one day, 150 shot dispersion study on a course in NJ.  BTW, those two studies and a few others I have collected from gca's over the years, seem remarkably consistent to me, although I am no statistician.


I feel pretty comfortable in using that to determine that if I want 1 in 8 D players to stay on the short grass to speed play, my play corridor needs to be X feet wide, and usually about 125%-150% wider on the right than left.  Of course, as I note in my book, accomodating 1 in 8 D players probably requires an area the size of Montana, LOL.  My perception is that having at least some data that can corroborate that I, a) thought about it, and b) am statistically above the vague "preponderance of shots should be contained" legal theory is my driving force in using his and other data.


Which brings me back to the question of why this data, or disproving it, seems so important to you?  Just asking.

[Garland Bayley]

Not sure why this topic rankles your feathers this much,

...

Which brings me back to the question of why this data, or disproving it, seems so important to you?  Just asking.

1. The statement highlighted is meaningless (depending on how he wants to define the word tend), or wrong. If you take his data from the top 40 strokes gained driving, you will find that the most accurate five drivers are significantly shorter than the top five drivers. They average 17.4 yards shorter, but average 0.634 degrees more accurate. That means the longest drivers lose almost 18% in accuracy to gain their 17.4 yards. Had he said that highly trained top professionals tend to be both long and accurate, I would have no problem with it. But of course that too would be meaningless, because they wouldn't be top professionals if they weren't highly trained.

2. He bases his "descending  line" result on a vast amount of data, but offers no information on the source of the data for nonprofessional golfers. The article I was able to find and post a link to indicates that the source of his data was not a properly scientifically chosen sample. Therefore, it seems disingenuous to me to present results from his data as if it were scientific without a proper disclaimer. Likewise presenting like it were scientific without having it go through scientific review. (I would be interesting in knowing more about the paper you mentioned.)

3. Certain posters on this site mislead readers of the site by promulgating such questionable statements like they were unassailable facts.

4. I should have suspected this from seeing his quotation before reading his book, but I find his writing and the editing of his editors to be quite sloppy now that I have read his work. For example, page 136 "Downhill putts: Target should be farther beyond the hole." Sloppy (or lazy) use of the word target, instead of, for example, "desired finish". For the conventional use of the word target, making your target farther beyond the hole on downhill putts than you do for uphill putts would result in you putting off the green oft times.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Garland,


I thought it was somewhat poorly written, and I don't know if it was you or someone else who felt thought it was padded to turn a booklet into a book, a charge I could level at many, many books.  So, I'm with you there.


That said, my take on golf stats is they don't have to be nearly as accurate as say, space shuttle engineering math.  It's a pretty new field, and no one's life is on the line, so I give them something of a pass.  It's sort of similar to the statistical legitimacy of golf business studies, which I find to be much less stringent than in other fields, again, perhaps due to lack of data.


And, all that said, for my purposes, they are a step forward.  And, while you adequately answered my question as to rankled feathers, you didn't address why it seems so important to you, as basically, an uninterested bystander.  I still don't see why there would be so much anger, even if Broadie really is only a first step to understanding golf shots.

[Garland Bayley]

Jeff,

He does claim scientific results in the book. For his shot link data, he has a valid claim since he has total coverage of the sample space as long as he only uses it to report results for the tour pros in the data. Interestingly he admittedly violates his own criteria for accepting data by including Rory's stats even though the data set is only 3/5s of what he requires for other players. Then magically it turns out that Rory is the primary example of long and straight to support his claim that long hitters tend to be more accurate.

For the rest of his data, he does not have a validly scientifically derived sample from the sample space. So statements about all golfers are not scientifically valid. He even goes to absurd lengths by even calculating strokes gained for a round Bobby Jones wrote about, and stating that Bobby lost 0.7 strokes to the average PGA tour putter. He made no mention whatsoever about why that is a total nonsense stat!

BTW Congrats on Ran et. al., putting at least two of your courses in his latest top 100.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

to support his claim that long hitters tend to be more accurate.

First, it's not his "claim." It's simply what the data shows. It's the "result," not his "claim." He's not proving or disproving a hypothesis.

Second, the results says more fully: "Longer drivers tend to be straighter: driving distance and driving accuracy improve with golfer skill." If you compare two PGA Tour players (roughly equally skilled), there are going to be differences. One will be longer and/or more or less accurate. One will be a better putter. But, on average, they're all going to be longer/more accurate than the average scratch golfer (and better putters too), given a large enough sample size, which he achieved.

I'll ask again: what's your data set that shows otherwise?

For the rest of his data, he does not have a validly scientifically derived sample from the sample space.

Yes, he does.

Look, if you just get to keep saying "it's not" then I can say "it is." Because… it is. He didn't select only those players who would fit his hypothesis (largely because he had no hypothesis). He had thousands of players of varying ability levels chart their shots. These are the results.

His results are "scientifically valid." Not that they even need to be, because he wasn't conducting an experiment: he was measuring. So, more importantly, they're also statistically valid.

So statements about all golfers are not scientifically valid.

They are.

Where's your data set?

Better players tend to be both longer and more accurate. Those "three" adjectives are all linked. Broadie could have just as easily written this: "Straighter drivers tend to be longer: driving accuracy and driving distance improve with golfer skill."

Your mistake appears to be using either small sample sizes (i.e. accurate PGA Tour players compared to some other PGA Tour player, or small numbers of such) or anecdotal (long hitting wild players you know).

My daughter hits a ton of fairways. More than I do. She also hits it about 70 yards shorter than I do. Better players are generally both more accurate and longer. Your refusal to accept that with no real evidence is boggling.

[Kyle Harris]

I’m measuring when I use a Stimpmeter.


If I don’t do it correctly, and nobody is there to review it, my results are not valid. Scientifically or statistically.


When a claim is made about statistics, it becomes science.


Untested science. But science.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

When a claim is made about statistics, it becomes science.

Nope. Science is more than that, and though (often) based in observation, it typically involves much more than just counting things up and saying "this is what the data says."

I can stand in front of a grocery store and count the number of people wearing blue jeans, then tell you as a percentage. There's no hypothesis. There's nothing to learn except the counts. No knowledge base is advanced. Very few people would call that "science." Are census takers scientists? No. They're tabulators. Counters. Data collection is a part of science, but it isn't in and of itself "science" as most would define it.

Broadie shared the results of millions of golf shots and said that higher skilled players tend to be both longer and more accurate. It's not 100% of the time, hence the sizes of the bubbles and the use of the words "tend to." This should be obvious to all: better players do tend to be longer and more accurate.

And again, if Garland has a data set that says otherwise, let's see it. He doesn't.

[Sean_A]

It isn't saying much, is it? Better players tend to be longer and straighter stands to reason. The real question is how much better do you have to be to be longer and straighter (I don't know the than who part which is very important)?

Ciao

[Tim Martin]

It isn't saying much, is it? Better players tend to be longer and straighter stands to reason.
Ciao

Millions of shots to determine an outcome that was already a forgone conclusion?

[Rob Marshall]

I got a kick out of Garland pulling in the quote "Downhill putts: target should be farther beyond the hole." When I read the book I remember thinking "what does that mean" Showed it to friend and he was equally confused.

[David Ober]

For the rest of his data, he does not have a validly scientifically derived sample from the sample space. So statements about all golfers are not scientifically valid. He even goes to absurd lengths by even calculating strokes gained for a round Bobby Jones wrote about, and stating that Bobby lost 0.7 strokes to the average PGA tour putter. He made no mention whatsoever about why that is a total nonsense stat!

100% agree with this. Also, something that's being missed in all of this is that no golfer is "average," and many golfers have wildly out of the norm traits in their games. Try to tell my buddy with the pitching yips to "get as close to every green as possible," as a strategy, and you just gave the guy the worst possible way of playing golf ... for him ... on certain holes.


I've seen the guy make double, triple, and worse many, many times from 20 to 50 yards in front of a green where he has to cover a bunker with a pitch shot. But with a full wedge (80 to 120?) he makes par, or birdie (and some bogies, of course) virtually every time. Guy was a 1 to 2 who had the full game of a +3/+4, the putting of an 8, and the pitching game of a bad beginner.


Strokes gained or Fawcett can't tell him what to do because they don't have HIS data. If they did, they would tell him "Hey, you probably don't want to ever leave yourself a "tweener" shot over a bunker if you can help it. You tend to make huge numbers from there and very reasonable numbers from 80 to 120."


And in reality, the system would never pick up how bad his game truly is with those shots, because he's usually picking up at bogey or double depending on who he is playing in match play (where the overwhelming majority of golf is played for amateurs)!


Golf statistics are in their infancy for the average golfer. I'm excited to see what new we can learn in the future, but right now there just is not enough accurate data on average golfers, and the stats guys don't know what to do with outliers. They don't want to have to bother with them, as they are just "outliers" if you are looking at the data statistically only. However, each outlier is a living, breathing golfer whose strategy needs to be adjusted based on who they are as a unique golfer, not adjusted based on the "average."


There is much to be learned from averages for sure, but I'd just like the language that the stats guys use to be tempered more frequently: "For most golfers ..." "The overwhelming majority of golfers..." etc.


I think I'm making sense here. But who knows anymore. The older I get the more I doubt myself.

[Kalen Braley]

Without casting judgement in either direction on this issue, I think the number 1 problem with presenting conclusions based on data is:

A person has already formed a notion on something and is looking to find data that would support it, instead of going in with none (as best as possible) and trying to follow where the data leads them. I'm certainly not guilt-free on this one..

[Erik J. Barzeski]

It isn't saying much, is it? Better players tend to be longer and straighter stands to reason.

Pretty much.

[George Pazin]

I haven't read through the 7 pages of responses to this, but I will say this:


People who say others need to play the right tees fundamentally don't understand how others play golf. The notion of multiple tees fixing everyone's problems is the one single thing that most golfers, whether they're high or low handicappers, great or terrible architects, whatever, get wrong.


It's an awful solution to a completely different problem.

[Garland Bayley]

It isn't saying much, is it? Better players tend to be longer and straighter stands to reason.

Pretty much.

Unfortunately what Erik wrote is not what Broadie wrote! With what Erik wrote, I have one thing to say.

DUH!

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Unfortunately what Erik wrote is not what Broadie wrote! With what Erik wrote, I have one thing to say.

False.

Second, the results says more fully: "Longer hitters tend to be straighter: driving distance and driving accuracy improve with golfer skill."

That's quoted directly from the text beneath the graphic which has been posted a few times in this topic:
https://thesandtrap.com/gallery/image/34-figure-6-1/

I also wrote this:

Better players tend to be both longer and more accurate. Those "three" adjectives are all linked. Broadie could have just as easily written this: "Straighter drivers tend to be longer: driving accuracy and driving distance improve with golfer skill."

I've written (and you've ignored) this, too:

Where's your data set?

What's your evidence to the contrary?

[Rob Marshall]

Erik, since you are so in tune with Broadie could you explain to me what this means "Downhill putts: target should be farther beyond the hole."

I agree with Garland. Follow that advice and I’m looking at some long comeback putts.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Erik, since you are so in tune with Broadie could you explain to me what this means "Downhill putts: target should be farther beyond the hole."

Even though it's wildly off topic…

I will note that the graphic on page 136 is on the errata page:
http://everyshotcounts.com/errata/

(I believe the Kindle version gets updated.)

The content makes sense if you actually read it all. I won't quote the whole section, but the thing some of you seem to have missed (maybe because you didn't actually read the book?) is that Mark is talking about four foot putts, and he says things like this:

For short putts, the main goal is to sink it, because a three-putt is not a big worry. In order to be sunk, the putt has to reach the hole. So the target needs to be set far enough beyond the hole so that almost all putts have a chance to go in. By setting the target beyond the hole, pros leave almost no putts short. Let’s consider two short putts, a four-foot uphill and a four-foot downhill. How far beyond the hole should you set your target for these putts? Should the target be farther beyond the hole for the uphill putt or the downhill putt?

And if you read more than a sentence or two taken out of context, the meaning of the word "target" is pretty clear.

[Garland Bayley]

Unfortunately what Erik wrote is not what Broadie wrote! With what Erik wrote, I have one thing to say.

False.

Second, the results says more fully: "Longer hitters tend to be straighter: driving distance and driving accuracy improve with golfer skill."

Here is what Broadie made as a highlighted point in his book.
Page 103, “Longer hitters tend to be straighter hitters.”
That is the whole total of his statement at that point.

As for the part that you show he wrote on the next page: ": driving distance and driving accuracy improve with golfer skill."

I have already said:

DUH!
Now for what you wrote:

...
I also wrote this:

[/font]

Better players tend to be both longer and more accurate. [/u][/font]

Emphasis and underlining added.

I believe that is the statement Sean was responding to.

Again

DUH!
You continued:

Those "three" adjectives are all linked. Broadie could have just as easily written this: "Straighter drivers tend to be longer: ..."

I doubt you will find data to support that! I doubt you will find posters on this website that support that!

...

Where's your data set?

What's your evidence to the contrary?

You seem to not have been reading the thread with much comprehension or recall. I retract my guess that you were an English Lit major, because even they comprehend and recall better than you seem to.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Here is what Broadie made as a highlighted point in his book.
Page 103, “Longer hitters tend to be straighter hitters.”
That is the whole total of his statement at that point.

Yes, it's highlighted… but you're lacking the context. You're reading the headline, not the entire article.

That's your mistake. You're arguing about something you still apparently haven't read and something you clearly don't understand. You're reading a headline, not the thousands of words that flesh out what that means.

The paragraph above that:

Across a wide range of golfers, from 115-golfers to tour professionals, do longer or shorter drivers of the ball hit it straighter? From Figure 6.2 we see that John Daly’s average distance is 20 yards longer than Jim Furyk’s. Compared with Jim Furyk, John Daly hits fewer fairways and his directional error is almost one degree larger, a huge difference in accuracy. Intuition might suggest that long and wild go together. But let’s compare Boo Weekley to Shigeki Maruyama. Weekley’s average distance is 15 yards longer than Maruyama’s, he hits more fairways, and his directional error is one degree smaller. Weekley is longer and straighter than Maruyama. For every long-wild and short-straight pair of pro golfers, there’s another long-straight and short-wild pair. For tour pros, there’s little relation between distance and direction. Looking across a range of golfers from amateurs to pros, a clear pattern emerges: Longer hitters tend to be straighter hitters.

The paragraph right after that "headline" (basically a pull quote, emphasis added):

Figure 6.3 shows the longer-straighter pattern across golfers. The reason long hitters tend to be straighter hitters is simple: Golfers with better skills score lower because they hit better golf shots, and better drives are both long and straight. Tour pros are the longest and straightest of all.

Figure 6.3 is of course the one I and others have quoted a few times. The bold words appear literally about nine or ten words (depending on how you count) away from the pull quote you love to cite.

As for the part that you show he wrote on the next page:

It's a pull quote. A headline. Because you refuse to acknowledge that you're missing (or intentionally ignoring) not only the immediate context - i.e. the stuff that's a few words away, or a few inches, or all the stuff around the pull quote - but the context as a whole doesn't make this a Broadie issue or error - it makes it yet another Garland mistake.

Those "three" adjectives are all linked. Broadie could have just as easily written this: "Straighter drivers tend to be longer: ..."

I doubt you will find data to support that! I doubt you will find posters on this website that support that!

OMG. Mark Broadie's data supports this. As he explains right in this very section of the book.

[A.G._Crockett]

For the rest of his data, he does not have a validly scientifically derived sample from the sample space. So statements about all golfers are not scientifically valid. He even goes to absurd lengths by even calculating strokes gained for a round Bobby Jones wrote about, and stating that Bobby lost 0.7 strokes to the average PGA tour putter. He made no mention whatsoever about why that is a total nonsense stat!

100% agree with this. Also, something that's being missed in all of this is that no golfer is "average," and many golfers have wildly out of the norm traits in their games. Try to tell my buddy with the pitching yips to "get as close to every green as possible," as a strategy, and you just gave the guy the worst possible way of playing golf ... for him ... on certain holes.


I've seen the guy make double, triple, and worse many, many times from 20 to 50 yards in front of a green where he has to cover a bunker with a pitch shot. But with a full wedge (80 to 120?) he makes par, or birdie (and some bogies, of course) virtually every time. Guy was a 1 to 2 who had the full game of a +3/+4, the putting of an 8, and the pitching game of a bad beginner.


Strokes gained or Fawcett can't tell him what to do because they don't have HIS data. If they did, they would tell him "Hey, you probably don't want to ever leave yourself a "tweener" shot over a bunker if you can help it. You tend to make huge numbers from there and very reasonable numbers from 80 to 120."


And in reality, the system would never pick up how bad his game truly is with those shots, because he's usually picking up at bogey or double depending on who he is playing in match play (where the overwhelming majority of golf is played for amateurs)!


Golf statistics are in their infancy for the average golfer. I'm excited to see what new we can learn in the future, but right now there just is not enough accurate data on average golfers, and the stats guys don't know what to do with outliers. They don't want to have to bother with them, as they are just "outliers" if you are looking at the data statistically only. However, each outlier is a living, breathing golfer whose strategy needs to be adjusted based on who they are as a unique golfer, not adjusted based on the "average."


There is much to be learned from averages for sure, but I'd just like the language that the stats guys use to be tempered more frequently: "For most golfers ..." "The overwhelming majority of golfers..." etc.

I think I'm making sense here. But who knows anymore. The older I get the more I doubt myself.

FWIW, Broadie would never tell your buddy with the chipping yips NOT to play holes accordingly.  Here's a quote: "While the importance-of-the-long-game principle applies for all groups of golfers, from the best pros to the worst amateurs, individual golfers have unique areas of strength and weakness.  To get better, golfers need to understand where they stand."  And a bit earlier, Broadie even has a section where he talks about "awful" shots, and urges amateurs to track these in order to better address their scoring issues AND identify their best strategies for playing.

I love Broadie's work; no secret there.  But I've never made the mistake (or misrepresentation; take your pick) of saying that Broadie's book is an instruction manual of any sort; it isn't, and it wouldn't be useful that way.  If a golfer reads the book, and isn't led to try to better analyze THEIR OWN GAME, but instead thinks that Broadie is telling him/her or ANY other golfer how to proceed, then he or she has completely missed the point.

The most interesting thing in all these pages of discussion, and not only on this thread, are the criticisms of Broadie's data, with ZERO data offered in it's place.  Broadie's data, regardless of perceived imperfections, is the best in the game, and there is no second place.  To say that he needs more data from high handicappers, while ignoring the fact that he has the best data set on high handicappers in the world, is sort of silly.  As are anecdotal criticisms of the data set based on "this guy that I once played with...".

The book was published in 2014; in the years since, if anybody in the world has complied data which proves a single thing in Broadie's work invalid, I am unaware of it. 

[Rob Marshall]

Erik, since you are so in tune with Broadie could you explain to me what this means "Downhill putts: target should be farther beyond the hole."

Even though it's wildly off topic…

I will note that the graphic on page 136 is on the errata page:
http://everyshotcounts.com/errata/

(I believe the Kindle version gets updated.)

The content makes sense if you actually read it all. I won't quote the whole section, but the thing some of you seem to have missed (maybe because you didn't actually read the book?) is that Mark is talking about four foot putts, and he says things like this:

For short putts, the main goal is to sink it, because a three-putt is not a big worry. In order to be sunk, the putt has to reach the hole. So the target needs to be set far enough beyond the hole so that almost all putts have a chance to go in. By setting the target beyond the hole, pros leave almost no putts short. Let’s consider two short putts, a four-foot uphill and a four-foot downhill. How far beyond the hole should you set your target for these putts? Should the target be farther beyond the hole for the uphill putt or the downhill putt?

And if you read more than a sentence or two taken out of context, the meaning of the word "target" is pretty clear.

The target to me would be a spot short of the hole. I want to hit the putt like it's a 2 foot putt. The "goal" world be for it to stop 2.2 feet from the hole if the putt is missed. Semantics. Thanks for the reply

[Garland Bayley]

Erik and A. G.,

Perhaps I fail to get across my point with my previous comments. When I indicate what Broadie wrote is wrong, I am criticizing his language.

To illustrate, let's consider his language on short downhill putts. He refers to the distance of the desired finish of a missed putt beyond the hole as the target. He doesn't refer to it as the target distance for missed putts. He refers to it as the target, which ignores that if the ball had really hit its target it would be in the hole. So since a ball really hits its target when it goes in the hole he is really referring to at least two targets. A high side miss target, and a low side miss target.

I hope you can see He has been a little careless in his language.

[Garland Bayley]

Now for the statement:

Longer hitters tend to be straighter hitters.

As you guys have pointed out, he follows on by giving his graph of averages for groups of amateurs and the pros.

When he earlier gave the example of young Arnie learning to hit it long before he learned to hit it straight, he didn't point out that Arnie could probably hit it 300 yards, but maybe averaged 260 because foul balls hit trees, don't run much in rough, etc.

So it seem what his contested sentence should have said:

Players that are able to maintain a long average for their tee shots tend to be straighter hitters. After all, being relatively straight is how they keep their average up.

Now if you put that on the book jacket, it will guarantee I won't buy the book!

No worries, you guys had already exposed enough of the content that I read the library's copy.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Perhaps I fail to get across my point with my previous comments. When I indicate what Broadie wrote is wrong, I am criticizing his language.

It's essentially a pull quote. You don't get to judge someone's "language" when you ignore the surrounding context.

That THIS is your point makes your entire argument here all the more laughable.

To illustrate, let's consider his language on short downhill putts. He refers to the distance of the desired finish of a missed putt beyond the hole as the target.

Again, because you don't read the context.

He doesn't refer to it as the target distance for missed putts.

He does, not by calling it the "target distance," but by the meaning of the words around the pull quote you like to focus on.

He refers to it as the target, which ignores that if the ball had really hit its target it would be in the hole. So since a ball really hits its target when it goes in the hole he is really referring to at least two targets. A high side miss target, and a low side miss target.

I have a start line target with my full swing shots. My ball hopefully doesn't stop on a spot a foot in front of my golf ball. It passes over it.

The word "target" has different meanings, especially when that's made clear by the context surrounding the pull quote.

I hope you can see He has been a little careless in his language.

Broadie isn't the careless one here, man.

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