PGA Tour: We (or at least the PGA Tour does) Go Again: Notes from the Ballwasher

1).No Steven Gerrard around to inspire our Golfing friends, but the 2014/2015 PGA Tour season starts this week in California's Napa Valley, at Johnny Miller's Silverado resort. None of the current players were around when Silverado was a regular Tour stop, so the slate is wiped completely clean for the Frys.com Open.

2).Two topics have dominated the US Golfing headlines this past week:
~Tiger Woods, because he always does, whether it's his new restaurant, poor taste in jeans or the extraordinary spectre of his participating in a Ryder Cup task-force. Gawd knows why - what on earth does he have to offer?

~The continuing US Ryder Cup post-mortem. It seems most of the low-hanging blunders from Watson are now picked over by the journos, with the most sensible conclusion being that their ignominious visit to Scotland was a total Team effort, from top (PGA President Bishop) to bottom (Webb Simpson's unseemly stream of texts to his Captain pleading his case to be on the Team - instead of his fellow Wake Forest alum, Bill Haas, as it turns out).  

3).I see David Howell has been added to the European brains trust selecting Darren Clarke for Hazeltine. Good.

But what does Colin Montgomerie think he's doing, allowing himself to be quoted that the top five candidates are Messrs Clarke, Bjorn, Harrington, Westwood and the Mechanic? Would have thought he should be doing the impossible and stfu. Perhaps he's hoping for the riposte: "What about you Monty?"? Berk.

4).Meanwhile, the PGA tour are exacting their own petty revenge by grouping Kuchar, Mahan and Walker together for Thursday and Friday at the Frys, and sticking Westwood with Ben Crane. That'll learn ya Lee!

5).Interesting to cast one's eye over the Tour's 2013/2014 year-end stats. Among lowlights are:
~Drive for show, putt for dough?
The top four in driving distance (Bubba, Dustin, Rory and Holmes(T4)) all won tournaments, with 3 x Majors and 2 x WGC's amongst them) while Matt Every is the only Top 5 putter to have won (and he promptly disappeared).
~Fairways and Greens? Only Jim Furyk of the top 5 straightest drivers finished in the FedEx Top 50, whilst two (Toms and Slocum) missed the Play-Offs altogether. And Chad Campbell led those hitting the highest %age of greens only to miss the Play-Offs.
~The leading putters were McDowell, Baddeley, Chalmers, Every and Jacobson - only Every won and Chalmers putting genius returns to the web.com Tour.

6).One stat that doesn't lie, not too much anyway, is the "all around" ranking where Scott leads the way, followed by Dustin & Rory, Sergio, Ryan Palmer, Justin Rose and Bubba. The first real outlier is Kevin Chappell and this is a timely reminder that Chappell will win one day, and don't be surprised if the California boy plays well this week.

7).We're only a month away from the first WGC tournament of the new season, the HSBC Champions in Shanghai. There will be no defending champion as Dustin is still in exile, but entries into the field via the owgr Top 50 closes after next week's tournaments - and it won't be long before we're looking at the owgr Top 50 year-end channel into the 2015 Masters.

8).Amazingly (to me anyway) Frannie Molinari is not exempt into any of the next 12 months' Majors or WGC's. Given his slide in the world ranking to #49, I'd say he's taking a huge risk dividing his time between Europe and the US. At least last year's flops, Colsaerts, Hanson, Lynn, Olesen etc, had some double-dipping to help them but Molinari doesn't have anything unless he can secure a year-end Top 50 Ranking. A strong finish on the Algarve this week will help a lot!

9).The Tour follows Napa Valley with a trip to Las Vegas next week (Padraig Harrington among the early declarations) and then the Georgia Coast for the McGladrey before heading overseas to Malaysia and Shanghai.
The fields will be respectably strong at each tournament as most players who got off to a good start last "fall" enjoyed decent seasons - winners like Walker, Simpson, Moore, Kirk, Dustin, English.
Those who play well in the autumn will likely take most of the West Coast Swing off and there are growing concerns that these Hawaiian and California events will be weaker than usual.

10).But there are 47 tournaments, some of them "opposite field" stops, and most of the cream will rise to the top.
Just like the final Premier League table, the year-end rankings don't lie, and Lee Westwood, for one, could use a high finish this week to boost his motivation for the new season.
Message to Englishman Casey, Davis, Donald, Poulter and Westwood; This is how you rated last year:
Davis: 110th
Westwood: 107th
Casey: 95th
Donald: 89th
Poulter: 78th.
Any other sport and you'd've been relegated, the year-end rankings don't lie!

re point 5; Looking at individual golf stats instead of more all encompassing outcomes like stroke average, wins, fedex rankings etc reminds me of the problem of surrogate outcomes being used to measure the effectiveness of treatments in clinical trials. So, a drug can be shown to reduce blood pressure but this does not mention whether mortality rates are improved.

I am not sure we can read much into individual stats and should focus more on how well players perform overall compared to each other.

Mac,
Surely that's why these stats are published.
You'd think the guy hitting most greens in regulation would be a strong competitor in tournaments week in and week out, but in Campbell's case, for instance, he leads the Tour in gir yet can't reach the Top 140 in year-long money or points.

Whereas Jordan Spieth hits only 62% (152nd) in greens "hit" yet finished in the Top 30.

So, when a player sits down with his "Team", as Zach Johnson for instance does each year, that player looks at all his stats and sees readily where he needs to improve. In some cases of course, it will be to make your strong points even stronger, as in Zach's case as he sees his putting ranking dip from Top 11 each year 2010 - 2012 to 79th last year (and all the way to Gleneagles).

Does it matter what you'd think if it isn't true?

score/finishing position is the true marker of how a player is performing. Don't get tied in knots about GIR, it is not a fact that GIR must indicate success, so don't worry about it.

Mac,
Quite.
But it is an interesting sign of glaring weaknesses elsewhere and that was my point:
Just because a player exhibits expertise in a certain area, that's all it does, no guarantee of success elsewhere.
The bigger point, of course, is that length matters, and it seems that most course set-ups (and technology) cater to the long-ball superstars by allowing them to fire away with impunity.

It's not just "chicks" who "dig the long ball", to paraphrase the great Greg Maddux.

Cheers kwini, great write up.

Re. 3). Intentionally or not, Monty is in fact gauging the media and public opinion about the future captain. I think there's consensus on this board that DC is a clear favorite, but it is wise to gauge opinion beforehand.

Mac, How good would your score be if you hit Zero greens compared to hitting 18?

Or even 6 greens to 12.

The more greens you hit, the more birdie putts you have, and if you combine high GIR with good putting stats then I think you can see why it's a useful stat to look at.

Super

That seems logical - but doesn't have to be true - but do you know of any models which can accurately predict scores based on performance stats?

No of course not, it doesn't claim absolutes or even a tentative prediction, but for a very long time I analysed my scores and stats and I began to see patterns emerging in regards to score and certain stats.

Noticing stuff like where your misses are (e.g. short or long) or whether you are getting up and down 80%instead of 60% tells you a lot about where you are and where you could potentially get to with some improvements.

Mac,

Stat's just show tendancies and probabilities - nothing more, nothing less. But to suggest they don't highlight weaknesses and strengths is just daft.

I have just noticed that Padraig Harrington is not taking his one-time career earnings exemption this year, but is playing on Past Champion Status alone.
With $22M in career earnings to date, he'll still be eligible to use that exemption at a later date, and is of course exempt in to the PGA and Open Championship, but he won't get that many starts except by begging, borrowing and stealing with (assumed) Irish charm.

Rolling the dice Padraig . . . . . .

Good Job Kwini,

IIRC, Paddy will get into some of the Invitationals because he is a former Major Champ and played a full schedule last year.  (its an exemption that John Daly has exploited before).  

I have been working on some correlation between 2014 rankings, and quite frankly, none of the most noteworthy PGATour Stats have a strong correlation with Adjusted Stroke Average (used for Vardon)

Here are some Correlation Coefficients:

Vardon to 

Strokes Gain Putting = 0.43
Strokes Gained Tee To Green = 0.76
Greens in Regulation = 0.44
Driving Accuracy = 0.08
Driving Distance = 0.19

Perfect Positive correlation would be 1.00
No correlation would be 0.00
Perfect Negative Correlation would be -1.00

For some perspective, the correlation coefficient between Driving Accuracy and Driving distance is -0.51.  I would expect negative correlation between these two stats.

As you might expect, there is a pretty strong correlation coefficient (+0.88) between the "All-Around rankings" and Vardon Stroke Average and between the FEDEX ranking and Vardon (+0.81)

Cheers GPB,
EDIT! Don't think Padraig has quite the cachet with US sponsors or Tour Directors that Daly has!

Just a note to say Stage 1 of Q-School is underway at five locations, and continues at more venues the next couple of weeks.
No BIG names though plenty of college hotshots, web.com near misses and Tour players for a brief, shing moment.
Won't bother to comment unless there's interest - the most "noteworthy" British golfers involved appear to be David Skinn, Ben Briscoe and Jimmy Gunn, but sure there are others I've missed.

Interesting that at least a couple in the Frys field are playing Stage 1!

Didn't Boo Weekley top the GIR stats one year and yet failed to keep his card??

Good write up Kwini - I too was pleased to see Howell get the seat at the Euro RC Captain X Factor judges table - a bit of common sense and never seems to have an ulterior motive.

I think a lot people mistake the "Drive for show, putt for dough" maxim to mean as long as you're a good putter you'll score well. Really it means "it doesn't matter how well you drive if you can't get the ball in the hole". Of course stats are useful and will show a player areas of strength and weakness, but they have inter-dependencies which cloud them a bit. At the simpler level drive better and you'll be playing approaches from the fairway so you'll get the ball closer and your putting will look better as a result. But these guys have access to much more atomic data and really know what's going on with their game.

Shame there isn't a "Course management" stat.

Your average club player could be several shots better off by using common sense, but for most, it's out with the driver at every opportunity.

Hence why most golfers are rubbish.

incontinentia wrote:Didn't Boo Weekley top the GIR stats one year and yet failed to keep his card??

I think you might be right inco.

Thanks GPB, humans should never assume our instinct will reveal the truth.

High GIR is only really useful if you combine it with Good putting stats.

You could hit 18 greens and still have 40 putts.

If you hit a high number of greens in regulation, hit them close and have a low number of putts, you are going to be shooting some good scores.

Whereas, if you are a long driver, and also accurate, it doesn't mean anything if it takes you a further 3 shots to get the ball in the hole.

Easy to get the wrong end of the stick from stats.

super_realist wrote:
Whereas, if you are a long driver, and also accurate, it doesn't mean anything if it takes you a further 3 shots to get the ball in the hole.

yes, because if you were short it would take you 4.

Not necessarily. The point being that you still have a shot to make into the green and you can still miss the green whether you're playing an 8 iron in or a 6.
You might be less likely to miss the green with a shorter iron, but if you aren't good with approach shots being 20 yards further up the fairway isn't going to win you tournaments.

The player with the best distance to accuracy ratio I could find was Hunter Mahan (i might have missed someone)
Not exactly setting the heather on fire and his T46 for GIR doesn't reflect his distance and accuracy.

Looks like the only meaningful stat is who has the lowest stroke average, no prizes for guessing who that is.

Any idea how "strokes gained driving" is determined?

EDIT: I guess Mahan also leads the stat "strokes lost choking in Ryder Cup"

No idea, Pedro, most stats mean very little in the real golfing world.

Mahan certainly has the choking stat sorted out.

Well if you can take 20 yds off your driver and hit the fairway and it then means your "strokes gained driving" improves, then it should be worthwhile considering?

Yes, I'd agree that if you can hit the fairway more often, even if you are shorter (course management) then the next shot although longer is from an easier position than being in the rough potentially.

Personally, I hit 3 wood off the tee most of the time, I'm shorter than a driver with it, but hit the fairway most of the time.
However, unless this results in an increase in GIR as well, then it's not a massive help overall in strokes.

I think it's important to make a distinction between stats for amateurs and stats for pros. For amateurs GIR allied to good/decent putting usually results in a decent round, but a decent round for pros needs to include birdies (usually), so maybe a more relevant statisic would be "average distance from the hole in regulation" or something like that. Also, pros tend to scramble pretty well, so missing the odd green doesn't cost them too badly, whereas it will cost the usual amateur at least one stroke in general...

Correlating Driving Distance and Driving Accuracy with GIR should then be interesting, as there must an optimal combination of how far and how precise you hit it and how many greens you hit. That could be expanded further with Putts per GIR (to assess whether hitting it further from the pin actually matters). You could even correlate it further with fairway width.

This is no more than a scientific approach to determine whether you should hit a 3-wood off tee (like you and Stenson), take off a few yds of your driver, or continue hitting the driver like there’s no tomorrow. We all have an idea that Tiger Woods should leave his driver in the bag, but a.m. stats could substantiate whether it’s actually good or bad for his particular situation.

Depends on how bad you miss it. I'm quite low on GIR (clearly if I ought to practice approach shots more) but saved massively by having a very neat short game where I get up and down about 80% of the time.

Agree though, I think rather than present individual stats as if they are meaningful on their own they ought to somehow combine stats within a ratio to give a better idea of whether it's beneficial to their game or not.
Some sort of graphic would help with this and being able to compare that to other players at the same time.
Lists of numbers are fairly useless and very boring.


For example, Gerry Watson is very long but has shiversome accuracy.

super, do we have a business idea?

Very possibly Pedro. It's rather amusing that the PGA haven't already implemented this. They've tons of stats, but make no actual analysis of them. Just present it like a shopping list.

I used to keep graphs and analysis of every round, I determined which holes would cause me trouble, or worked. Very simple stuff.
I don't take my golf so seriously anymore, but I notice trends in my game I might not necessarily picked up on.

out of interest, how do they determine the putting stats: is it average number of putts per round? average distance per putt made?

Ultimately you can only do so much with stats, but basically for pro golfers if they're hitting plenty of approaches close and making a few putts they'll be doing ok .

Agree with SR and pedro, more useful would be correlating stats together to find out if certain plays are beneficial or not (for instance: driver vs 3-wood, correlated with what happens from your next shot).

Mad for Chelsea wrote:out of interest, how do they determine the putting stats: is it average number of putts per round? average distance per putt made?

Ultimately you can only do so much with stats, but basically for pro golfers if they're hitting plenty of approaches close and making a few putts they'll be doing ok .

Agree with SR and pedro, more useful would be correlating stats together to find out if certain plays are beneficial or not (for instance: driver vs 3-wood, correlated with what happens from your next shot).

That's the thing MFC, they record literally hundreds of stats. GIR, Average Putts per GIR, Putts inside 7' etc etc etc, but they do nothing with them other than rank them.

The PGA Tour stats section is enormous. And we all know the players probably skipped math classes in college to play golf and would therefore not kow how to analyse them.

But I found this interesting paragraph under "Strokes gained putting:"

"The number of putts a player takes from a specific distance is measured against a statistical baseline to determine the player's strokes gained or lost on a hole. The sum of the values for all holes played in a round minus the field average strokes gained/lost for the round is the player's Strokes gained/lost for that round. The sum of strokes gained for each round are divided by total rounds played. The Strokes Gained - Putting concept is a by-product of the PGA TOUR's ShotLink Academic program, which encourages members of the academic community to perform research against the wealth of ShotLink statistical data. Professor Mark Broadie from Columbia Business School developed the early concept which was later refined by the TOUR (2564)"

I hope he gets royalties?

Chelsea,
The array of stats that they keep is dazzling, scarcely worth the layman bothering to drill down and look at them all.
Having said which, if any player wants to review his tendancies (length, accuracy, sand play, missing greens left and right and from what distance, putts made from certain distances, when they need a leak, you name it, they've got it) compared to everyone else, he can.

You can also have a go at deducing "course management" - for instance, a year or so ago, Stricker and Donald were among the top half dozen in par-5 scoring, not because they hit the ball 3,000 miles, but because they laid up to exactly the right place and were mustard with their wedges and short game.
Similarly, the likes of Laird, Westwood, Harrington etc, who have length to spare off the tee, often compare poorly on Par-5's.

One stat that I was surprised about was Gary Woodland being the only player on Tour last year who never missed a putt of 3 ft or less. And we still think of Woodland as all length and no short game. Same with Dustin & Bubba, long as you like but also usually close to the top of the charts in "3-putt avoidance". Who'd've thunk it??!!

But at the end of the day, that's all they are, stat's!

Lots of love for European Tour Member Brooks Koepka in the golfing media's idea for a winner at the Frys.

Not so sure about that, especially after checking out the pgatour.com "gallery" of Silverado's 18 holes, and wouldn't be surprised to see short-but-straight rewarded. There are a couple of long Par-3's but no overly-long Par-4's, whereas accuracy, or at least placement, off the tee is important on most holes.
Not totally dissimilar in that respect to Royal Montreal's set up where Tim Clark emerged as the winner.

Really looking forward to seeing how the course plays and, remember, 2 x Par-5's in the final three holes should mean a narrow lead will never be safe.

Good read again Kwini. Thanks.

Re. Monty - . What a prat. He has some serious issues with his humility.

Re. driving/putting and winning, the numbers are pretty unequivocal - distance kills and it far outweighs accuracy overall. Make a lot of GIRs as well and, over a period, those're your winners.

Thanks navy,
Am also inclined to think the "drive for dough" tendancy is indicative of PGA Tour marketing, let the boys hit away with impunity and see what happens. Let's face it, Joe Golffan doesn't want to watch Furyk and Clark (or, as Shotrock would surely add, Donald) every week, they don't drive ratings.
It's the Dalys, Tigers, Rorys, Bubbas and Dustins that draw the casual fan. (And, if they could only watch his absolutely effortless power, Colsaerts.)

Take out Mullet Watson's two Masters and the really big hitters in the last 6-7 years haven't made that "advantage" count much at all.

A lot of these big hitters such as Garrigus, Dustin, Colsaerts, Quiroz etc simply don't have games that match their distance.

Pube Head is the only big hitter with a fully rounded game.

super_realist wrote:Take out Mullet Watson's two Masters and the really big hitters in the last 6-7 years haven't made that "advantage" count much at all.

A lot of these big hitters such as Garrigus, Dustin, Colsaerts, Quiroz etc simply don't have games that match their distance.

Pube Head is the only big hitter with a fully rounded game.

I don't know how you put Dustin in the company of Garrigus, Colsaerts, and Quiroz.

Johnson has more PGATour wins than anyone age 30 or under (except Rory).  His 8 PGATour wins is nearly as many wins that Garrigus (1), Colsaerts (2), and Quiros (6) have combined on both the Euro and PGATour.

Its insulting to Dustin for him to be lumped in the company of journeyman rank/file players like Garrigus, Colsaerts and Quiros.  Dustin is a world class elite player.

You could well be right GPB, however, you could also add that his errant driving has cost him a great deal of tournaments too.

Agree on Dustin, he's obviously a top player. And probably the best currently without a major.

incontinentia wrote:Agree on Dustin, he's obviously a top player. And probably the best currently without a major.

Better than Garcia/Stenson/Donald/Westwood? Nah.

I think Dustin is a really good player, but I don't think he's at the level those guys are at or have been at.

Just read an hilarious quote on Wiki about Dustin Johnson, apparently his bird is up the duff. Due winter.............2015. That's a hell of a long pregnancy.

12-footer for a 59 from the suddenly well-rounded Colsaerts?

Agree about Dustin, like Colsaerts as good as he wants to be. Not sure he's at the Sergio/Stenson level though.

super_realist wrote:You could well be right GPB, however, you could also add that his errant driving has cost him a great deal of tournaments too.

More like his ability to interpret bunker rules that has cost him

He was in the bunker due to an errant drive

I guess his mind wasn't fully on the job in hand as well.

super_realist wrote:

Just read an hilarious quote on Wiki about Dustin Johnson, apparently his bird is up the duff. Due winter.............2015. That's a hell of a long pregnancy.

Winter 2015 is just 4 months away.  Why would that be a long pregnancy?

Have any of the golf swing geeks on here noticed how bowed DJ's left wrist is at the top of the backswing?

super_realist wrote:You could well be right GPB, however, you could also add that his errant driving has cost him a great deal of tournaments too.

and his driving has won more PGATournaments than anyone else under age 30 or younger, except for Rory.

Most golfers have their achilles heel.  For Luke it has been lack of distance and lack of accuracy.  For Sergio, it is propensity to hit the ball in the water.  SergH2O.  For Westwood, his putting.

I don't think it is driving that has kept Dustin from being the elite of the elite.  It is his mind and discipline.

The truly elite players are able to exploit their strengths and minimize their weaknesses.  Woods and Mickelson have not been very good drivers in the past 10-12 years, yet they have been able to minimize that part of their game because they have been so good at hitting out of the rough and get the ball in the hole.

Davis Love is +6 after 8 holes, which is not surprising after he was not even competitive on the Geezer Tour in two events last month (T64, T24).

He had no Top 25's on the Regular tour in the 2013-14 season.

The writing on the wall should be getting clearer to him.