statistics | golfaddictsrx

3 hacks and a scratch… Strokes Gained in a Scramble

Posted on October 9, 2015 by golfaddictsrx

Alright so the title is a little dramatic… But the premise is accurate. As a low handicap and as an engineer, I often end up as the “A” player in a group full of “D”s at the charity scramble. Not a problem. Scrambles are always fun, even when I know I’ll be playing my own ball most of the day. It’s a fun atmosphere with a lot of teamwork, cheers, and alcohol consumption.

I’ve pondered in the past how adding a bunch of hacks to a low handicap can affect the potential score as the winners of these scrambles typically shoot seemingly impossible scores. You’d swear the best club in the bag was a pencil. However, with a little strokes gained analysis, it is possible to quantify just how much adding a few (very) high handicaps affected my potential score. So let’s look at how these hacks helped me shoot a 66… And before I come across as a total ass (too late), I’m using hacks as term of endearment. Most of us are hacks.

Without further ado, let’s introduce the team…

The Team… He told us to jump…

My Golf Analytics – 5/25/15 – Tangle Ridge

Posted on May 28, 2015 by golfaddictsrx

The rain continues… The state of Texas is fixing to turn into Waterworld. What a contrast from two years ago when Texas was experiencing extreme drought. The water would be great for the golf courses, but we need the sun to come out as well. Somewhere in between storms I was able to sneak out on Memorial Day and spend some much needed time on the golf course with my wife and my pops. We were lucky enough to squeeze in 18 holes and though the course was wet, it wasn’t as bad as I anticipated. We played lift, clean, and place. Other than the greens being slow from lack of mowing, we couldn’t have asked for a better day.

I saw some good signs from this round. The unexpected dip in my ball striking turned itself around. I started to adjust to the new driver setup and golf started feeling easy again. Even though the story of being bipolar between tournament and non-tourney rounds continues, playing like I did on Monday tells me that the game is there. Monday had potential to be special. I use Game Golf to track all my shots, you can view the round here.

Lets dive into the analysis. It’s about to get nerdy…

The Damage

Tangle Ridge Scorecard – 5/25/2015

Ball Striking vs. Putting

Posted on May 21, 2015 by golfaddictsrx

In case you missed it, Rory McIlroy had a career day last Saturday at Quail Hollow. He did it not only with his ball striking, but with a great putting day for a guy that is typically an average putter at best.

Rory’s course record 61 gained 10.2 strokes vs the #quailhollow field, better than 1 in 12,000. Top 10 rounds in 2015 pic.twitter.com/TQHrXJn8ae

— Mark Broadie (@MarkBroadie) May 17, 2015

Incredible.

As Rory begins to show his dominance, the debate has begun on who would be more dominant in their prime… TIger (a la 2000) or Rory today. The two did it differently. Rory is a tremendous driver of the golf ball. Not only is he long, but he is exceptionally accurate when he is on. While Tiger was certainly long relative to the field, I don’t remember him ever being the straightest driver of the golf ball. However, Tiger was much more consistent with the flatstick than Rory is. Both are great iron players.

So which is more important? Ball striking? Or putting? The simple answer is both. You need to do both well to do what Rory did last weekend, which is shoot 61 with 11 birdies and no bogies. You need to strike the ball well to put yourself in position for birdies and similarly if you don’t finish off with a great putt, the iron shot is useless. Rory gained 4.84 strokes on the field with the putter and 5.32 strokes on the field from Tee to Green for a total of 10.16 strokes gained on the field last Saturday. Almost a 50/50 split for the strokes he gained between ball striking and putting. You can see these stats here.

This discussion led me into a debate with a buddy about which is more important, ball striking or putting? In Rory’s case, it’s ball striking. Rory is a streaky putter at best and he relies on his ball striking to separate him from the field. Rory is currently ranked 69th in strokes gained putting on the PGA Tour with the bump he received from finishing 21st in strokes gained putting at Quail Hollow. Last week was better than his usual outing, but it is largely skewed because of his performance Saturday. The other days amounted to -1.624 strokes gained. More in line with his typical performance. On the other hand, he was #1 in strokes gained tee to green, gaining an average of 4.2 strokes per day from tee to green. He won the tournament by 7 strokes.

My argument to my buddy is that if I would have putted for Rory on Saturday, he would have still won the tournament. Now I realize that I am making this argument following a horrendous putting display by yours truly on Sunday, so I’ll substitute myself with a typical scratch player using numbers provided by Mark Broadie in Every Shot Counts. It’s about to get nerdy…

Golf Analytics – Using Game Golf

Posted on May 16, 2015 by golfaddictsrx

Analytics have been taking over the sports world over the past couple decades. Statisticians have been employed by most major sports franchises to crunch numbers and calculate stats such as Wins Above Replacement (WAR) in baseball, point differentials when a player is on/off the court in basketball, and when it makes sense to go for it / kick a field goal / or punt in football.

Golf is no different. Thanks to the addition of Shotlink data to the PGA Tour, every shot hit in a tour event is tracked in a detailed manner. Shotlink answers all of the following questions:
What lie was the ball hit from (Fairway, Rough, Tee, Sand, Putting Green, Recovery)? What kind of lie did the shot end up in?
How far was the shot from the hole? How far did the shot go? How far off target was the shot?

My Strokes Gained vs. an average PGA Tour field, split by tournaments and regular rounds.

All of this data can be aggregated and used to study golf decisions and golf shots from a new perspective. The trending statistics being used on PGA Tour broadcasts are Strokes Gained. If you aren’t familiar with Strokes Gained, you can check out my primer here. The basic gist of Strokes Gained is quantifying the quality of a shot vs. a reference. In this case, the reference is how close the PGA Tour averages from a similar distance / lie. If you want an in depth explanation of Strokes Gained, I highly suggest reading Mark Broadie’s book Every Shot Counts.

If you aren’t into numbers or stats, then ignore the words and look at the pretty plots. Otherwise, its about to get nerdy…