Have you seen Dave Pelz's statistical work in the Short Game Bible? He makes a very convincing, data based argument that wedge play or closest to the pin from 100 yds and in is the most important factor in determining success on the tour.

Why? Because being better than others at getting close to the pin from 7-4 iron distance does not mean much. Even if a player gets a higher percentage of his mid-range shots closer to the pin than competitors it doesn't matter. Because even the best touring pros seldom get a shot beyond 100 yards from the pin close enough to make the next shot (a putt) the last.

Being more accurate than others at 125-225 yards still results in two more strokes whether the player gets mid-iron shots 12 feet or 25 feet from the hole on average. Ninety-five percent of the time both competitors take two puts to finish the hole.

Plez did not find much colleration between driving distance or putting skill to money won on tour. What really matters is when the player misses the green. How often does he get up and down? Players who can consistently get full wedges, partial wedges and pitches within 10 feet of the pin convert their next shot into the last shot much more often than those who cannot.

Touring pros only hit the green in regulation about 65 percent of the time or in other words, the best players in the world only hit around 12 greens in regulation. That leaves 6 greens where the best players in the world have to try to get "up and down". It makes perfect sense to me that those who get their wedges consistently closer to the pin than others win a lot more money.

Sorry I didn't get back to you, I haven't had time to study this yet. Your points re my email are well taken, and I appreciate that you're trying to establish a correlation that might actually have some value to golfers. There's certainly years of data available; maybe you could become the Bill James of golf.

Just wanted to pop in to acknowledge your post, I don't have anything constructive to add at this time. I will say that looking at the rsquare function made my head hurt, I'm more comfortable using correl(). The results seem relatively similar, anyway.

btw, I think those functions depend on real numbers or references in the data. I notice in your spreadsheet that the B column, or x-axis, contains text (like T7, tied 7th). I thought your rsquare values were a little high, did you account for that?

What may be obvious to you and me, is not to others. There are slews of people out there that, if you listen to them, believe that length off the tee is the sole and determining factor in scoring.

Even if it is obvious, what I'm attempting to do is put some weight into these assumptions and beliefs. I have yet to see someone try and put some numbers behind these categories. The importance is in the weight...

Your other thoughts are interesting and like you alluded would be hard to compilate. I'm unfortunately bound by what statistics are available.

The rule seems to be stating the obvious.
1) Driving distance does not equal score
2) Driving Accuracy means less today and means less than putting
3) Putting means less to score than greens in regulation

Lower scores means more money.

It would be interesting to see how the same player fares in scoring from 100 yards, 110 yards, 120 yards, through 250 yards from a Par 4 pin and see the average score from those locations. You could create 2 categories for these scores (rough and fairway).

This analysis would indicate how much better a player would score if he/she could hit the ball 10 more yards and where that benefit would be the greatest. Some players may have some scoring aberrations.

You could then analyze (from a scoring perspective) the benefit to the score from the fairway versus the rough.

I think you would need multiple years for players to have some real significance to the stats (sorry).

I would guesstimate that the added 10 yards is important to score and is what pushes some players to the top. I would also guesstimate that being in the fairway versus the rough for some players is what pushes them to the top.