Minjee Lee's Proximity Stats

[iacas]

Golf Digest (@golfdigest) • Instagram photo

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Golf Digest shared a post on Instagram: "Is Minjee Lee golf’s best iron player right now? 🔥". Follow their account to see 13637 posts.

So that you don't have to click it…

"Wow! Impressive!" you might say?

"Hogwash! Bullshit!" I might say.

Why? Like the comments on the Golf Digest article, and then the responses to those comments… am I just being sexist? Putting down the women's game because I'm a man?

No. Here's what I think is happening here.

KPMG provided LPGA Tour with fuller range of statistics

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The popular statistic known as strokes gained is about to make its way to the LPGA Tour

Let's pull the important quote from there:

  Quote

It won't be the equivalent of ShotLink on the PGA Tour, an elaborate and expensive program that began with lasers and now incorporates cameras on every hole to show the shape and distance of every shot by every player.

The LPGA program will rely on caddies capturing the data through a pre-formatted scorecard, which then will be processed and analyzed by KPMG. The women would have access to the popular “strokes gained” statistics off the tee, to the green and putting, along with shot dispersion and proximity to the hole from various distances.

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So what do I think happened?

Let's imagine she hits the ball to 27 feet from 163. That's a good shot, and one that would rank roughly T54 on the PGA Tour. Let's then imagine that the caddie writes down 20 feet, which would put her first on the PGA Tour by three feet in 2022.

But what else would it do? It'd really hurt her SG:Putting stats, because from 20', she should average perhaps 1.88 putts, but because she's putting from 27', she'll average closer to 1.96 putts. Assuming she's an average putter, she'll lose 0.08 SG:P unfairly. 0.08 18 times is 1.44 strokes lost putting, which would be last on the LPGA Tour.

Where did she rank? 152nd out of 155, with -1.110 strokes gained (lost, in this case) per round.

So, yes, you can be first in SG:App… if you don't mind tanking your SG:P stats.

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To be clear, I think Minjee is a wonderful irons player. Hitting it to even 27 feet from 163 is a great, great shot. I also don't think her caddie was doing this nefariously here — I think he was just bad at estimating distances on the putting green.

How confident am I in this? Confident enough to send out a three-tweet "thread" on it:

KPMG Brings Analytics to the LPGA Tour at the Women’s PGA Championship | LPGA | Ladies Professional Golf Association

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The watchword in virtually all sports right now is “analytics.” The statistical breakthrough by Bill James in baseball decades ago now governs decisio...

P.S. Am I 100% certain that Minjee didn't average closer to the hole than every man from every distance? No, I'm not 100%. But I'd bet a LOT of money that she wasn't that good.

[Pretzel]

Definitely would make sense, particularly with the strokes gained putting being such a huge factor at more than a stroke lost each and every round. 

Self reported data is a terrible way to track these types of statistics, for exactly this reason. They’re only possible on the PGA Tour because of ShotLink, so trying it without such a system in place is a fool’s errand. 

[StuM]

I like that they are working to add more stats and understand it is a cost issue but wish they had the same tech as the  PGA in which case there would be no debate, the facts would be what they are.

Unfortunately with any human making a judgement on distance you will get different margins of error and comparability will be lost.  That is the beauty of the advanced tech on the PGA.  Even between the different LPGA pros there will be errors that hurt comparability.

if is a start but hopefully not the final step in more advanced tracking on LPGA. 

[ChetlovesMer]

  On 12/28/2022 at 12:39 AM, iacas said:

Golf Digest (@golfdigest) • Instagram photo

---

Golf Digest shared a post on Instagram: "Is Minjee Lee golf’s best iron player right now? 🔥". Follow their account to see 13637 posts.

So that you don't have to click it…

"Wow! Impressive!" you might say?

"Hogwash! Bullshit!" I might say.

Why? Like the comments on the Golf Digest article, and then the responses to those comments… am I just being sexist? Putting down the women's game because I'm a man?

No. Here's what I think is happening here.

KPMG provided LPGA Tour with fuller range of statistics

---

The popular statistic known as strokes gained is about to make its way to the LPGA Tour

Let's pull the important quote from there:

So what do I think happened?

Let's imagine she hits the ball to 27 feet from 163. That's a good shot, and one that would rank roughly T54 on the PGA Tour. Let's then imagine that the caddie writes down 20 feet, which would put her first on the PGA Tour by three feet in 2022.

But what else would it do? It'd really hurt her SG:Putting stats, because from 20', she should average perhaps 1.88 putts, but because she's putting from 27', she'll average closer to 1.96 putts. Assuming she's an average putter, she'll lose 0.08 SG:P unfairly. 0.08 18 times is 1.44 strokes lost putting, which would be last on the LPGA Tour.

Where did she rank? 152nd out of 155, with -1.110 strokes gained (lost, in this case) per round.

So, yes, you can be first in SG:App… if you don't mind tanking your SG:P stats.

---

To be clear, I think Minjee is a wonderful irons player. Hitting it to even 27 feet from 163 is a great, great shot. I also don't think her caddie was doing this nefariously here — I think he was just bad at estimating distances on the putting green.

How confident am I in this? Confident enough to send out a three-tweet "thread" on it:

KPMG Brings Analytics to the LPGA Tour at the Women’s PGA Championship | LPGA | Ladies Professional Golf Association

---

The watchword in virtually all sports right now is “analytics.” The statistical breakthrough by Bill James in baseball decades ago now governs decisio...

P.S. Am I 100% certain that Minjee didn't average closer to the hole than every man from every distance? No, I'm not 100%. But I'd bet a LOT of money that she wasn't that good.

Expand  

I remember when the state I lived in made a law stating that nobody can smoke a cigarette within 15 feet of the entrance to a public building. At the time I told anyone that would listen to me that it was one of the dumbest laws ever. Why? Because how far is 15 feet? I did an informal experiment just with some folks at work and had them one at a time stand 15 feet, by their estimation, from a wall. Some were as close as 6 feet others stood at more than 25 feet (that was the length of the tape measure we had to make the measurements.) It was pretty much all over the place. 

So, the law is dumb because lets say a 25 foot estimating person comes along who hates smoking at the exact moment a 6 foot estimating person who happens to be a smoker is smoking outside the building. Pretty soon an argument ensues. They should have made the law 100 feet. Then even if you are way off at least you are likely to still be pretty far from the entrance to the building. 

Human beings without some specific training are very bad at measuring distances by eye. 

[Pretzel]

One thing to note is that I’m not trying to be insulting to the caddie in my earlier comment. 
 

I’ve paced off the vast majority of putts that weren’t a tap-in that I’ve hit over the past ten years or so, and I can also say with absolute certainty that 99% of those “measured” distances were an under-estimation. I know this because the steps I use when pacing off a putt are almost always a little longer than 3 feet apiece to be able to comfortably keep a consistent length to each step.
 

It doesn’t really matter because I’m not ever comparing the measurements using my step length to measurements made by other people’s step lengths. It would matter if I was using it for that, but I only use it for comparison against myself. Asking caddies and/or players to do the measurements without the help of a tool is like asking people how far you have to drive to get from one place to another without using a map, you’ll get good estimates from people who do it a lot but they’ll still all be a bit different because nobody can measure perfectly without the help of tools.