When is taking a risk vs playing safe really worth it?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Retyping my answer from the center of the green thread, but for strategic golfers, I think it's a legit question.


That is, exactly when is the risk of a bold shot worth it?  Yes, Joe H lays out the case for it being just plain fun for some to aim at every flag, and it can be, but for those playing for score, or those down to just a few balls in their bag , I doubt that idea holds.


I would love to hear from both the stats guys and a wide range of golfers. 


Just some random thoughts, but while Mac and others mentioned golfers playing within their skill level and paying the price for exceeding it, I suspect that as we know more about golf statistically, that for average golfers, hitting for the middle (or as far away from trouble as the design allows) is the highest percentage play in almost every case. 


I suspect it is for better players, to a lesser degree, i.e., like a football coach rarely going for it on 4th down and 2.


Similarly, would a bold, heroic option on the first hole be as tempting as the same option on 15-18 where a score or match might be decided?  I would guess most folks play the first few holes a bit defensively to avoid bogey, and that risk is more tempting later in the round if you are really thinking about it.  There is the old philosophy that if you make a bogey, then you need to make two birdies to get to -1.


Intuitively, it makes sense to me that risk holes are better later in the round when you may really need to make up that extra stroke, on par 5 holes, where you have a chance to gain 2 strokes.  It also makes sense to think like pros think, and as a gca, plot a random placement of easier holes where taking the risk makes sense, vs harder ones designed so taking a risk doesn't make sense, i.e., reward the player who wisely picks the right spots.


As mentioned, there are probably some stats available now that might shed some light on this, at least for pros, and of course, even good ams would probably benefit from playing more conservatively for best score, but that may vary from skill set to skill set, i.e., good putters might be tempted to play safe and accept longer putts, etc.

[Gib_Papazian]

My philosophy is fairly simple: As a low-ball hitter, I've got a better chance of making a birdie with a (3rd shot) short iron in my hand than trying the hero shot with a fairway wood . . . . . unless there is room to run the ball onto the putting surface.


My Doug Sanders swing hits it very very straight for the most part - unless I try to jump out of my shoes . . . . . blasting away brings 6 or 7 into play, while the worst thing that can generally happen with a smart layup is cussing at a lipped out birdie putt.

[Jason Topp]

The Decade Golf people have formulas for these decisions.  The basics are - Off the tee - hit it as far as possible as long as you have a 60 yard window in which you will still be in play, layup if your window is less than 40 yards.  Never chase favorable angles because data suggests that angle makes little difference in actual scoring average and any advantage is outweighed by the risks taken off the tee.

On approach shots - map out your pattern of shots and match it so the maximum number of shots wind up on the green, 

It is a boring formula.  Nonetheless,  the reasoning makes sense to me.

It undermines most of the stuff we talk about here relating to creating strategic alternatives on the course.  I am not sure it throws that stuff out but given the proliferation of this approach by players architects should be taking it into account when designing any course that might be used for a competition.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Jason, I mostly agree with your thoughts, but was afraid to say those things out loud around here!  I may have sucker punched you, lOL.


I had forgotten those DECADE stats when I posted, but they do sound familiar, and as an average golfer, I always wondered why strategy would call for me to take a chance with a driver, the least accurate club, to get an easier shot with an iron.  I suspect for longer hitters, there is never an advantage to risking a hazard with a driver, because with a short iron in your hand, you have to have less chance of hitting the greenside hazard. I also recall the stats of distance to pin and GIR is lower from the rough, so despite the laments of "bomb and gouge" being heard across the land, rough and hazards do make a scoring difference.


And, JN knew intuitively if not statistically that he was better off with just one shot pattern, vs trying to craft a shot to the architecture.


When designing tee shots, it has occurred to me that according to DECADE stats, I should probably make the width of the landing zone just under the 68 yards that I think they recommend as wide enough to go full out off the tee.  I can see lots of players saying, "oh, what could possibly go wrong if I hit the driver to a 64 yard wide area?  I mean, the 68 yards is something like 99.9% likely to contain a tee shot, but (I'm guessing here) 64 yards would probably be 93% or something and might be seen as worth the risk.


Years ago, I watched a golf match with Jack Tuthill, and there was some discussion about the angle one played over the other, so it can make a difference some times, but its pretty rare.

[JESII]

Quite often I think...


There has to be some level of competence involved. The idea of giving up a full shot to avoid risk is a lot. But the risk can't be more than a shot Cutting a corner off the tee where you'd have to retee if you don't pull off a shot you can really only pull off 50% of the time just isn't worth it. Likewise, a bogey golfer could cut a large number of strokes by simply playing more conservatively...

[Peter Pallotta]

Jeff -
I'm a double minded man, unstable in all my ways.
I want to play the joyously fun-filled golf that Joe H does, but I also want to play smart golf with a card and pencil in hand as I try to shoot my lowest possible score.
Luckily, this tense dichotomy basically resolves itself every time -- because as an average golfer it doesn't much matter what I want/try, since the results will almost be the same, i.e., essentially random!
Peter

PS - I resent Joe H as much as I like him: he can happily play such fun filled golf mostly because he knows (as I do) that he can shoot in the 70s pretty much any time he wants! It's easy not to be a slave to the card and pencil when you've mastered that metric a long time ago!

[Kalen Braley]

I agree with Jim here, risks occur quite frequently.


Whether its flirting with the rough from a green-side bunker recovery, playing an aggressive line off the tee for a better angle, or attempting to take the break out of a putt and bringing a 3 jack into play.  I'm not sure if you would call them "bold" but at the end of the round, especially for a higher cap player they can add up very profoundly...

[Tom_Doak]

The most important thing is that every player has to define “risk” for themselves.


Jack Nicklaus told me his definition was being 100% sure that if he hit a good shot, it would work out.  Obviously he didn’t always hit a good shot, but he wouldn’t try a shot if he had any doubts about it.  I feel like Tiger had the same test.  He would try to hit all kinds of shots under pressure, but he had faith in those shots.


I’m guessing that ethic would have them being more aggressive than the generic formulas say.

[Tom_Doak]

I thought about all these new strategies a lot in the run-up to building Memorial Park.  But at some point, I felt that if you really designed a course around these principles, it would probably be boring as hell, and in fact my job was to tempt the players to go outside their comfort zone.


The other option is to build a course like Whistling Straits, with difficult angles if you play away from the trouble off the tee, and nasty hazards all around.

[Sean_A]

The Decade Golf people have formulas for these decisions.  The basics are - Off the tee - hit it as far as possible as long as you have a 60 yard window in which you will still be in play, layup if your window is less than 40 yards.  Never chase favorable angles because data suggests that angle makes little difference in actual scoring average and any advantage is outweighed by the risks taken off the tee.

On approach shots - map out your pattern of shots and match it so the maximum number of shots wind up on the green, 

It is a boring formula.  Nonetheless,  the reasoning makes sense to me.

It undermines most of the stuff we talk about here relating to creating strategic alternatives on the course.  I am not sure it throws that stuff out but given the proliferation of this approach by players architects should be taking it into account when designing any course that might be used for a competition.

For pros?


Ciao

[Thomas Dai]

Competition or social/friendly game?
Matchplay or medal play or stableford?
1 round or 2, 3, 4 round event?
New ball, old ball, found ball, last ball?
Favourable wind/weather, strong adverse wind/poor weather?
Favourable lie, bad lie?
Favourable stance, bad stance?
Favourable landing area, unfavourable landing area?
…. ie ..it depends …. 5 inches between the ears time.
Atb

[Ken Moum]

The best exercise is to play without flatsticks. Can't aim at the flag...


Closest I've come is playing in fog on the course where I grew up. One of my best ball striking rounds ever.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

The Decade Golf people have formulas for these decisions.

Scott wasn't the first one to do it (and their adjustments are pretty narrow — a ten handicapper needs to aim more than a few extra yards left when there's water right). Heck, though we wrote it out before him, I don't really lay claim to that either, because good players have almost always done as we talked about.

The closer you are to the hole before you hit the shot, the closer you're likely to be after you hit it. Unless there's a bunch of trouble, advance the ball as much as you can — whether off the tee or in favor of a GIR or an nGIR.

But for approach shots, the green is pretty "white" in our "shades of grey" system and the rough, bunkers, etc. are varying grey or darker.

This is one of the reasons I disagree with many about Tobacco Road, and why I've always felt that for me the course is over-rated: it's a very simple test strategically if you have a modicum of willpower and can resist the temptation to try the hero shot.

[Tom_Doak]

This is one of the reasons I disagree with many about Tobacco Road, and why I've always felt that for me the course is over-rated: it's a very simple test strategically if you have a modicum of willpower and can resist the temptation to try the hero shot.

Yes, but many people cannot resist, which is why it’s popular.  For many, the price of failure is getting to tell their friends about the 20-foot deep bunker they were in.

[jeffwarne]

The Decade Golf people have formulas for these decisions.  The basics are - Off the tee - hit it as far as possible as long as you have a 60 yard window in which you will still be in play, layup if your window is less than 40 yards.  Never chase favorable angles because data suggests that angle makes little difference in actual scoring average and any advantage is outweighed by the risks taken off the tee.

On approach shots - map out your pattern of shots and match it so the maximum number of shots wind up on the green, 

It is a boring formula.  Nonetheless,  the reasoning makes sense to me.

It undermines most of the stuff we talk about here relating to creating strategic alternatives on the course.  I am not sure it throws that stuff out but given the proliferation of this approach by players architects should be taking it into account when designing any course that might be used for a competition.

I wonder how the formula changes if the middle of the fairway is dotted with Westward Ho #6 like mounds and the favorable angle side is less himalayic?
If a course lends itself exactly to a formula, and there aren't enough "it depends", I say it's a poor design-especially something built recently with ample resources.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Yes, but many people cannot resist, which is why it’s popular.  For many, the price of failure is getting to tell their friends about the 20-foot deep bunker they were in.

Yeah, absolutely. Plus if they try 10 hero shots, double and triple nine of them, but pull one off… they love it.

It's never been what I enjoy about golf — one of the best shots I ever hit was a long iron on #10 at TR, just came off as perfectly as I had pictured it (and it didn't even find the green, missing about two feet into the fringe and about 20 feet from the hole).

And I tell everyone they should see it once for themselves, so they can make their own opinion. And it's kinda trippy.

[Kalen Braley]

Erik,

I'm struggling to understand your issue here.

Its one thing to impose a very penal shot that says you must hit it here, or else, with no other alternatives.

...and quite another to tempt the player to hit a heroic shot with a big reward or punishment, but still leave other options to at least get par and maybe birdie.

Isn't this one of the primary reasons for this website?  To evangelize implementing features with real choices? Isn't this good for the game and what actually makes for fun golf? 

[Terry Lavin]

I thought about all these new strategies a lot in the run-up to building Memorial Park.  But at some point, I felt that if you really designed a course around these principles, it would probably be boring as hell, and in fact my job was to tempt the players to go outside their comfort zone.

Great analysis. It’s interesting to hear about an architect’s inner musings. There’s too much clutter in my cranium to contemplate internal dialogue on the golf course, but it’s nice to read about some online.

[Ben Hollerbach]

Erik,

I'm struggling to understand your issue here.

Its one thing to impose a very penal shot that says you must hit it here, or else, with no other alternatives.

...and quite another to tempt the player to hit a heroic shot with a big reward or punishment, but still leave other options to at least get par and maybe birdie.

Isn't this one of the primary reasons for this website?  To evangelize implementing features with real choices? Isn't this good for the game and what actually makes for fun golf? 

When devising a strategy that is golf's equivalent to the Economic Man, that is solely rational and calculated, temptation and the reward for a heroic shot would be measured appropriately within the confines of scoring advantage. Thus the shot would no longer be heroic, it would either be an acceptable strategy, or an unacceptable strategy.


BUT....as the true Economic Man does not exist in human behavior, players do not play with 100% rational decision making. They don't value shots solely based upon scoring advantage, as the end behavior could end up feeling very boring. Temptation and heroics play towards our enjoyment in a way black and white strategy often can't.

I heard a PGA Tour player recently talk about the value of one shot in tournament play is not equal to all other shots. That for them, the cost of a shot on Thursday is very different than the same shot on Sunday. This is primarily in context to final finishing position and the rewards that come with it. When your position in a tournament or match is fairly well established and the number of holes remaining is limited, with each hole the penalty for a risk becomes less and the reward becomes greater.


Whether its a PGA Tour player who is in the top 20 with less than 9 holes to go trying to move up into the top 10, or a player in a club match who's 2 down with 4 to play, their finishing standing is fairly well established regardless of a risky play. So to take on a risky shot presents them with a higher value proposition.

[Michael Felton]

At the end of the day, all the strategy options come down to what's the likelihood of a given shot winding up in a given spot and what's the average number of shots you'll take to complete the hole from each spot. In theory you could come up with a likelihood of hitting it in every possible square yard of the course and for that square yard what's the expected number of strokes to finish. Then strategy is just about minimizing your expected score. This incidentally is how strokes gained works, except you've narrowed down the places the ball could wind up to the one that you hit it in.


What DECADE and Erik's 50 shades of grey stuff is trying to do is simplify that stuff down into manageable calculations that you can do in real time. I find DECADE's method pretty easy to apply so I like it.


In essence, the theory goes that you should hit driver into a 65 yard wide window about 95% of the time. 5% of the time you'll be outside that and it'll cost you a penalty of some description (maybe). A 1 or 2 stroke penalty 5% of the time is worth it if you're 50 yards closer to the green 95% of the time, because that 50 yards closer is worth maybe 0.25 strokes per time. Then there is the slightly higher likelihood of being in the rough the further you hit it and everything and 65 yards is the point where it makes sense to go long. Scott's theory basically breaks down to:


- you won't always miss the fairway with driver
- you won't always hit it with your long iron/hybrid
- the benefit of being that much closer to the hole is big enough that it's worth your while to hit driver most of the time.
- while there are definitely sometimes better angles, it's virtually never worth trying to get them because the cost of missing outweighs the gain if you hit it - basically if you think you have a 0.1 stroke benefit from a better angle, but you're going to hit 10% of your shots out of bounds trying to get the angle, then it's not worth trying to get the angle. Sometimes you will get it just because your variance happens to land in the spot with the better angle and not much less often than if you were aiming for it


If you hit it long and wild with your driver, but more controlled with your irons, then it probably does make sense to drop down to an iron more than Scott would suggest, but then he'd say you should work on your driver then.


So DECADE works out very aggressive off the tee, but then much more conservative approaching the green. It's the same concept as everywhere else. Each shot option has a range of possible outcomes with each having an expectation. There are modifiers for bad things like hazards and bunkers, but for the main part, you pick a target vs the edge of the green that optimizes your scoring expectation.


It's fairly difficult to come up with ways to break it, but it is quite formulaic and the formula is based on averages, so you can play around to modify those averages. Best example I can think of is the 7th at the Bridge. There is a bunker in the middle of the driver landing area. For me, that's smack in the middle of it and I think based on his formula, you should hit three wood (given my distances at any rate), but if you get it by the bunker, there is about another 60 or 70 yards of roll to pick up going down the hill. You have to quite thread the needle to get it, but the enormous gain if you do makes up for the loss of putting it in the bunker IMO. There are other spots where I don't quite agree with his formula, but as far as making it work for the vast majority of players, it's basically spot on.

[James Brown]

What’s so interesting to me about the golf analytics debate is the reality that while the best strategy to shoot lower scores over the long run is to play the percentages as the DECADE philosophy suggests, how does that equation look when you might only play a course one time. 


17 at the Old Course comes to mind here.  DECADE has you hitting way, way left off that tee.  But a well struck drive hit over the C or the S will be a memory forever.   This raises real questions about the real purpose of golf, A La Tin Cup!

[Paul Rudovsky]

Erik and Tom--


I am surprised at your thoughts on Tobacco Road.  I have always viewed it as one of the greatest designs in the game...simply because Stranz tempted players to do something really stupid...and how many react by doing exactly that (including moi the first couple of times I played it).


To me, the greatness of golf is the mental side...and great golf architecture focuses on that as well.  That is the genius of The Old Course, and in a different way, the genius of Tobacco Road.  It is also the genius of todays great architects including Tom.  Wide fairways with multiple ways of playing hole makes the player chose between options...and that requires thinking.  Messrs. Jones, Hogan, Nicklaus , and Woods are the greatest players in history (IMHO) mostly because they thought much better on the course than their competition.  I am not minimizing their physical skills, perseverance, determination, and willpower by saying that...but golf is a mental game first and foremost.

[Jason Topp]

Paul


My take on Tobacco Road is that that it presents cool visuals but ultimately less compelling golf. 

Once one knows the course, you just aim for the middle of the next target area.  The target areas are big, even if they are hidden. I recall the par threes as not having a lot of variety.

The exception is the par fives which tempt one to take a tight line in order to reach the green in one less shot.

I suspect it is a course that gets less interesting the more one plays it. 

[Rob Marshall]

I wish that Scott would put out a book vs the subscription thing. I bought Broadies book thinking it would have more strategy that stats.

[Michael Felton]

What’s so interesting to me about the golf analytics debate is the reality that while the best strategy to shoot lower scores over the long run is to play the percentages as the DECADE philosophy suggests, how does that equation look when you might only play a course one time. 


17 at the Old Course comes to mind here.  DECADE has you hitting way, way left off that tee.  But a well struck drive hit over the C or the S will be a memory forever.   This raises real questions about the real purpose of golf, A La Tin Cup!

From the new back tee the decade target looks to be right around the D, since the tee is further left. From the forward tee, if you have a 67 yard window and you aim at the middle of the cone then it’s actually about the H of hotel. Target splits the shed in the middle.