Strategy Question About Difficult Opening Hole

[Ty_Webb]

2 hours ago, billchao said:

Oh ok I misunderstood your original post. 

Hit driver. Make it a good one.

That's the plan I think - if it's not a good one then getting through wasn't meant to be

Edited July 16 by Ty_Webb
Clarification

[p1n9183]

Crunched the numbers.. the order is left to right. OB, rough, fairway, rough and OB. Percentage is distribution of shots, and below average from each distance/lie

Driver:   190 left

3 Wood:  220 left

2 Iron:  240 left

Despite been Driver the worst average I would hit driver because if you hit 3 wood or 2 iron you are still going to have a long shot to the green where you can still hit a couple OB that is going to make the hole average a little higher. From 190 I'm positive you can miss the green but still keep it in play (based on the 50 yards between penalty hazards). 

Just to mess around, you can play it as a 3 shot hole like they mentioned before. If you have an average of 40 yards fairway you can easily hit 2 shots of 180 yards and keep the ball in play 100% of the times (a couple on the rough) leaving yourself 100 yards to the green for your 3rd shot. That's an average of 4.8 for a tour pro, is not that much over risking going for it in 2. 

Edited July 16 by p1n9183

[klineka]

I'm really struggling to understand how the average score on a 460yd hole with a nearly 20% chance of hitting it OB when using driver is as low as a 4.68. Especially because birdies will almost never happen. 

I don't have specific facts to base this on but I strongly suspect that the average score on that hole for the event will be higher than 4.68.

[Ty_Webb]

1 hour ago, klineka said:

I'm really struggling to understand how the average score on a 460yd hole with a nearly 20% chance of hitting it OB when using driver is as low as a 4.68. Especially because birdies will almost never happen. 

I don't have specific facts to base this on but I strongly suspect that the average score on that hole for the event will be higher than 4.68.

So I dug back through the last time an event like this was played there. On that occasion, the 10th was 435 yards so tee must have been a little up and the average score was 4.72. 3 birdies, 41 pars, 44 bogeys, 12 doubles and 3 others. This is also making me think perhaps my memory is playing silly buggers with me and it's actually not quite so death or that's a penalty area left. Otherwise I'm sure there'd be more "others". It was the 2nd hardest hole though. Hardest was a 445 yard par 4 on the front - that was more about pin position though. Pin on the back of the green and if you were about 15-40 feet short of the flag with your approach/pitch/putt, the ball would collect at the front of the green about 80-90 feet away. 

[saevel25]

43 minutes ago, klineka said:

I'm really struggling to understand how the average score on a 460yd hole with a nearly 20% chance of hitting it OB when using driver is as low as a 4.68.

Because strokes gained is not about pars or birdies, its fractional benefits of hitting the ball longer and taking into account expected score from the rough, bunker, or fairway. Also, it isn't really OB 20%. He said missing right is OK. 18% OB is really being overly conservative. I will be consistent. 

As an example, if someone had the shot zone that produced 20% OB (just being consistent), 40% rough, 40% fairway. They play this hole 100x and hit driver each time. Odds are the golfer is going to have outcomes like this: 9 OB left, 20 left rough, 40 fairway, 20 right rough, 11 right OB. 

Using PGA Tour data, from 180 yards out. The average score from the possible outcomes is, 

Rough: 4.3 strokes (adding the tee shot strokes to the expect score from 180 yards out in the rough)
Fairway: 4.1 strokes
Lost ball is difficult. I think something like 6.2 is probably close. 

Here is the weighted average, 4.3 * 40% + 4.1 * 40% + 6.0 * 20% = 4.6 (math works out to me)

Let's inflate the PGA Tour data to make it more relevant to a scratch golfer. I think 10% actually might work out well. Let's say a scratch golfer shoots like a 78 on a PGA Tour course, and the PGA tour player averages 68. That is like 12%. Maybe it is closer to 15%. So, I inflated scores by 15%. 

Rough: 4.9
Fairway: 4.7
Lost Ball: 7.1 (not sure this makes sense. would a scratch golfer average triple bogey from hitting on OB. oh well). 

Scratch weighted average = 5.26, maybe that sounds better? 

Looking at the 2-iron example from 240 yards out but inflating the PGA Tour strokes gained data by the same 15%. I get expected score hitting 2-iron off the tee to be 5.08 strokes. 

Like above, the difference between the driver and the 2-iron is not that big. 0.18 strokes on average. 

So, PGA Tour 4.12 expected score.
Example golfer with 20% OB rate, 5.26 expected score based on questionable inflation of PGA tour numbers. 🤣

[Ty_Webb]

5 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

Lost ball is difficult. I think something like 6.2 is probably close. 

Lost ball is recursive, so lost ball is basically dropping yourself back into the tee shot again and adding 2. If we simplify the math a little, then I think it's something like this:

10% left OB, 15% left rough, 50% fairway, 15% right rough, 10% right OB (let's say - I'm not 100% sure what right miss is like). Left is a better miss than right if it's in the rough. Left rough for a PGA Tour player is going to be perhaps 3.25, right rough 3.35 (more shots that is). Fairway about 3.1. So doing the math, we get:

20% x (X+2) + 15% x 4.25 + 15% x 4.35 + 50% x 4.1 = X

0.2X + 0.4 + 0.6375 + 0.6525 + 2.05 = X

3.74 = 0.8X

X = 4.675

So 6.675 is the score from OB. 

[iacas]

5 hours ago, p1n9183 said:

Despite been Driver the worst average I would hit driver

What was the point of "crunching the numbers" then? 🤣

4 hours ago, Ty_Webb said:

So I dug back through the last time an event like this was played there. On that occasion, the 10th was 435 yards so tee must have been a little up and the average score was 4.72.

Bingo.

[Ty_Webb]

11 hours ago, iacas said:

Bingo.

?

[p1n9183]

On 7/16/2024 at 10:10 PM, iacas said:

What was the point of "crunching the numbers" then? 🤣

Gathering proper information is vital to make better decisions. Understanding the numbers is a big part of it. 
I can teach anytime you want 😉 !

 

On 7/16/2024 at 5:56 PM, Ty_Webb said:

So I dug back through the last time an event like this was played there. On that occasion, the 10th was 435 yards so tee must have been a little up and the average score was 4.72.

Sounds about right, with 30 yards less, PGA average drops down to around 4.4. So for scratch players should be around 4.8. (around 8 shots difference between a pro and a scrach player over 18 holes... is +0.4 shots a hole). 

One thing that must be considered also is lucky tree bounces. In this hole you can miss right or left 20 out of 100 balls (20%) but some of them are going to bounce back to the fairway making the average a little lower if you consider it.      

[Ty_Webb]

Thanks all - got there this morning and saw that they've basically ripped out all the gunch on the left, so it's really just rough over there under the trees. The one bit they haven't done is marked as a penalty area. Anyway, I hit my driver in the fairway, missed it in the greenside bunker on the right, splashed out to about 10 feet and missed it, so I made 5 anyway. Then flubbed a pitch on the next hole and made bogey on a relatively easy par 5. Not good. Played the other 16 holes in even though, so I'm pretty pleased overall with how I did. It was definitely a lot easier to hit that drive now than it was last time I played it.

It wound up being 5 and ties get in and there are already 5 people in at -1 or better. I don't think that's going to be good enough though. Couple of people on the course at -3 and only a handful of holes remaining. 

[klineka]

12 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

Thanks all - got there this morning and saw that they've basically ripped out all the gunch on the left, so it's really just rough over there under the trees.

Sounds like it's driver all day then.

Solid playing overall, well done.

[Ty_Webb]

14 minutes ago, klineka said:

Sounds like it's driver all day then.

Solid playing overall, well done.

Definitely and thank you - after the morning wave, the cut is -3. Still half the field to play, but I don't imagine it going any lower than that. I'd be miffed if I had shot -2. Yikes. 

Funnily enough (he wouldn't think so), one of my playing partners lost his first drive right (waaaaaaay right) and hit his second into a penalty area on the right (they have that on both sides now although both are fairly small), had to pitch out to the fairway, hit his next just short and got up and down from there for an 8, so I witnessed an "other" first hand...

[pganapathy]

I know you already played the hole, but my suggestion would have been get early to the course and hit a few balls on the range with Driver, 3W and 2i.  See which club is performing best on the day and then hit with that and go ahead.  Anyway, seeing your score of +2 and 5 people at -1 I can only assume you didn't make it through.  Better luck for next time

[klineka]

3 minutes ago, pganapathy said:

I know you already played the hole, but my suggestion would have been get early to the course and hit a few balls on the range with Driver, 3W and 2i.  See which club is performing best on the day and then hit with that and go ahead.  Anyway, seeing your score of +2 and 5 people at -1 I can only assume you didn't make it through.  Better luck for next time

I believe he said there was no range.

Edit: Yup

On 7/15/2024 at 11:38 AM, Ty_Webb said:

Driving range is 200 yards max...Tee time is 8:10am, so no chance of going elsewhere to hit some drivers first. 😕

Edited July 18 by klineka

[Ty_Webb]

Final stats are up. The 10th played the hardest hole this time at 4.75. 4 birdies, 44 pars, 42 bogeys, 10 doubles and 7 others. 

[pganapathy]

On 7/18/2024 at 1:40 PM, klineka said:

I believe he said there was no range.

Edit: Yup

I get that it is a short range and I assume a net at the back to prevent balls going further than 200.  In any case, hitting a driver 200 yards is enough to give you an idea of ball flight and how you are hitting it.  My logic is simply that if you are hitting a club well on the day, go ahead with it off the tee

[colin007]

1 hour ago, pganapathy said:

I get that it is a short range and I assume a net at the back to prevent balls going further than 200.  In any case, hitting a driver 200 yards is enough to give you an idea of ball flight and how you are hitting it.  My logic is simply that if you are hitting a club well on the day, go ahead with it off the tee

Ranges this short usually have a no driver/woods rule

[pganapathy]

1 hour ago, colin007 said:

Ranges this short usually have a no driver/woods rule

Didn't know that.  Am assuming there is no net at the back to prevent balls going too long which would explain this rule