Relative Importance of Driving/Approach Shots, Short Game, Putting, etc. (LSW, Mark Broadie, Strokes Gained, etc.)

[M2R]

Key words below:

Quote:

Originally Posted by M2R

For PGA tour players...

How is that different than - "(at the PGA Tour level)." in the post I quoted?

[saevel25]

That is strange when the pga tours own website has strokes gained putting at, 0.038 average for 2013, and 0.831 for the best. Note you cant subtract the two to get the difference because that is what the strokes gaines putting stat is already, a metric on how well a golfer putts better than the field. So no clue what that guy on the link is citing, but it looms sketchy.

[Parker0065]

~~~~Quote: Across golfers it is shown, somewhat surprisingly, that longer hitters tend to be straighter than shorter hitters.

From my experience in the game I would rewrite that statement as "For amateur/club golfers, the lower the handicap, the longer and straighter the player tends to be over higher handicap players"!

Better players have a better impact position, hit the ball more solidly, and the ball tends to go farther and straighter.

Humh,,,ball striking must be pretty important then,,lol!

[M2R]

That is strange when the pga tours own website has strokes gained putting at, 0.038 average for 2013, and 0.831 for the best.

Note you cant subtract the two to get the difference because that is what the strokes gaines putting stat is already, a metric on how well a golfer putts better than the field.

So no clue what that guy on the link is citing, but it looms sketchy.

The guy who published the Golfmetrics paper (subject of the article cited in the OP here) and the guy who helped the PGA set up the strokes gained putting statistic is Mark Broadie, same guy in both cases.

But aside from that I don't get the thrust of your comment. They are really two different things Golfmetrics is based on FRL referenced off Am1 players and a rather small sample size, strokes gained putting is fractional putts gained or lost based on distance referenced to some statistical database and normalized for the entire field.

If you go to http://www.pgatour.com/stats/stat.02564.html#2013 and look at the very bottom you will see Broadie mentioned, and if you add the best average .854 (Greg Chalmers) to the worst average -.961 (Eric Meierdierks) you will find a 1.815 stroke spread. But that is totally meaningless and bogus methodology in regard to the 1.8 number in the quote I posted (the addition is valid though). The Golfmetrics data and the PGA data just can't be compared that way, or in hardly any other way - IMO anyway.

[Mr. Desmond]

How is that different than - "(at the PGA Tour level)." in the post I quoted?

What I am saying is that the key words are "PGA Tour level..."

For Joe Average Golfer, the long game is more important than the short game.

For PGA Tour Players, they already have an excellent long game, and yes, some are longer than others, but they are the best 144 players in the world, and they try to shave strokes in the short game to make a difference on the leaderboard.

The gist of this thread, as I see it, is that to score consistently well, you've got to hit GIR at a higher rate. When you can hit a high level of GIR, you can shoot par with 2 putts. When you're not on the greens in regulation, you are relying on a short game to 1 putt -- that will work occasionally, it did for me, but it is still tough to break 80.

If you want to consistently break 80, a good long game will get you there consistently.

[M2R]

What I am saying is that the key words are "PGA Tour level..."

For Joe Average Golfer, the long game is more important than the short game.

For PGA Tour Players, they already have an excellent long game, and yes, some are longer than others, but they are the best 144 players in the world, and they try to shave strokes in the short game to make a difference on the leaderboard.

The gist of this thread, as I see it, is that to score consistently well, you've got to hit GIR at a higher rate. When you can hit a high level of GIR, you can shoot par with 2 putts. When you're not on the greens in regulation, you are relying on a short game to 1 putt -- that will work occasionally, it did for me, but it is still tough to break 80.

If you want to consistently break 80, a good long game will get you there consistently.

Totally agree with everything you wrote here. I just found that one item interesting and was trying to keep my comment apples to apples.

[billchao]

Interesting and unexpected line I just stumbled across in the [URL=http://www.columbia.edu/~mnb2/broadie/Assets/broadie_wscg_v_200804.pdf]Broadie Golfmetrics[/URL] paper:

Haven't had the time to read the entire paper yet, but I skimmed through it and found that it was interesting where a low handicap amateur loses 9.3 strokes to the top pros, but only 2.2 strokes in putting and 1.4 strokes in short game. Very interesting stuff, thanks for the link. Also note that 7.1 of the 11.5 stroke difference between low and mid handicap amateurs is from the long game.

[iacas]

Interesting and unexpected line I just stumbled across in the Broadie Golfmetrics paper:

I don't think that's terribly unexpected.

Pro1 and Pro2 were the same pros but with different round scores. All that seems to indicate is that when pros don't shoot par or above, their putting and short games don't produce as well. And "strokes gained putting" for example uses distance as virtually the only marker. If you're having a so-so day with the long game you might still hit a shot to 15 feet, but it might be above and left of the flag leaving a downhill, left-to-right putt. That won't show up as a long game stroke lost, but if you're in control of your long game and you put it beneath the hole (even 20 feet), it'll show up as a positive stroke gained putting when you hole the uphill putt.

To put it another way, among the same pros, when they don't break par, their swings aren't suddenly much worse, but they're in worse short game situations that result in poorer short game and putting performances.

Over the course of a season, the long game still matters more to PGA Tour pros in separating them from their peers.

[dbuck]

For me, to play to my current potential, the short game is more important. My long game is what it is, but I am fairly consistent. I seldom hit OB, and seldom hit in the drink, but do occasionally visit the greenside beach. I frequently am well within 100 yds in two on par fives, and take 4 to get down. My green side bunker play has been poor this year. I don't miss a lot of short putts, but I don't make a lot of long ones. If my short game on a given day is sharp I will shoot 40-42, if not I will shoot 45-46. For my potential to improve however, I think the long game is more important.

[M2R]

...

Humh,,,ball striking must be pretty important then,,lol!

Or like Zach Johnson said after the Northwestern Mutual WC win "It's better to be lucky than good but nothing beats good and lucky!"

OK that might not be EXACTLY what he said, maybe it was something like "I feel very fortunate and somewhat lucky,"

[M2R]

...

Over the course of a season, the long game still matters more to PGA Tour pros in separating them from their peers.

My gut feeling is that as well but I can't clearly articulate why like you did.

When I saw that line about putting being relatively more important for pros, I immediately thought maybe something with the study protocols or interpretation of the data was somehow a bit off. At first glance it looked like it might be because everything was referenced off Am1 performance, then maybe because pros play so much harder courses. But in the end I just gave up and called it strange.

I'm not discounting your explanation, I just have some questions that will take more thought on my part, or I'll just forget about it after a while

[Parker0065]

Or like Zach Johnson said after the Northwestern Mutual WC win "It's better to be lucky than good but nothing beats good and lucky!"

OK that might not be EXACTLY what he said, maybe it was something like "I feel very fortunate and somewhat lucky,"

Zach hit one hell of a ! @#$%^&*-ing shot! There's o bviously some luck on any ball that falls in from that distance but that shot was struck about as pure as you could hope for and fortunately for Zach, took the right bounces and went in!

[WUTiger]

A finance professor at Columbia Business School who also plays to a 4 HDCP has written a new book, Every Shot Counts . (March release).

Using a decade of Shotlink data from the PGA Tour, Mark Broadie has found that approach shot accuracy contributes the most to advantage of tournament winners. Within approach shots, accuracy from 150 to 200 yards out ranks as most critical, especially in the case of Tiger Woods.

So much for the idea that superior putting always carries the day. In recent tournaments, he found 14 winners who actually putted below average for all the players in the field that week.

Broadie also built a similar database on amateurs for 1,200 rounds played at 10 select courses. He has norms for golfers who shoot in the 70s, 80s and 90s. And, the contribution percentages of approaches, driving and putting vary little from group to group.

For more interesting details, see John Paul Newport's WSJ article on Broadie, Research Debunks Golf Myths:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304603704579325240773858318?mg=reno64-wsj&url;=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304603704579325240773858318.html

[Jakester23]

Great thread. I completely agree with the 150-200 yard shots being the most important shots. I play a course once and a while with one of my buddies that is 7000 yards, and I always struggle to score well because Im always hitting 6 iron and up into greens. My goal for this upcoming season is to improve in the 170-200 range since I struggle with that shot. Last year my last round of the season was at the 7000 yard course and I had 8-10 approach shots into greens from 185-210. I missed the green on all of them. I shot a 93(which isn't bad for me) and when I added up my score I knew that if I hit even a 3rd of those greens I would have been in the 80's(which is something Ive always wanted to do at that course).

[Crim]

So much for the idea that superior putting always carries the day. In recent tournaments, he found 14 winners who actually putted below average for all the players in the field that week.

http://thesandtrap.com/t/58816/65-25-10-practice-ratios-where-to-devote-your-practice-time

[colin007]

"He concludes, for example, that laying up short of a green to a comfortable distance, such as 100 yards, doesn't generally lead to better scores than knocking the ball as close as possible."

[flopster]

"He concludes, for example, that laying up short of a green to a comfortable distance, such as 100 yards, doesn't generally lead to better scores than knocking the ball as close as possible."

I could agree with that but of course the risk has to be within reasonable limits.

[iacas]

"He concludes, for example, that laying up short of a green to a comfortable distance, such as 100 yards, doesn't generally lead to better scores than knocking the ball as close as possible."

Yeah, I remember saying something about that in a video for a book pitch recently…

I know it's common for those who disagree to say things like "well that's a PGA Tour player, they play a different game than us." So…

To a surprising degree, he found, the skills and tendencies that separate top pros from the middle of the pack are what separate golfers at every level. Just as superstars like Luke Donald and Justin Rose have used strokes-gained analysis to improve their scoring, Broadie suggests ways amateurs can do the same.

The article also states that 28% of Tour pros advantage came from the tee (largely distance), and 40% from approach shots. That's almost 70% from full swing mechanics.