Share your New Strokes Gained Data from GAME Golf!

[Dave2512]

10 minutes ago, dsc123 said:

Right, but Game Golf calculates your strokes gained putting by comparing your data to the data collected from its other users.  So if those users' data is junk, then so is yours.   

Yep and given it's all user reported and policed what I've seen it's all over the place. I see people sign rounds with missing tags, missing holes from incomplete rounds and funky inaccurate things like a driver tag and a putt tag that shows they hit a 420 drive and made an eagle one putt. A few of the locals I follow don't appear edit much. I suppose it's useful for some things but the GG benchmarks are iffy at best.

[iacas]

12 minutes ago, Dave2512 said:

Yep and given it's all user reported and policed what I've seen it's all over the place. I see people sign rounds with missing tags, missing holes from incomplete rounds and funky inaccurate things like a driver tag and a putt tag that shows they hit a 420 drive and made an eagle one putt. A few of the locals I follow don't appear edit much. I suppose it's useful for some things but the GG benchmarks are iffy at best.

To play devil's advocate to that, how many scratch golfers do you think are that careless?

Because, currently, their stats are based on scratch golfers.

Of course, if a 7 handicapper forgets to tag seven or eight shots a round… he too is a scratch golfer.

[dsc123]

3 minutes ago, iacas said:

To play devil's advocate to that, how many scratch golfers do you think are that careless?

Because, currently, their stats are based on scratch golfers.

Of course, if a 7 handicapper forgets to tag seven or eight shots a round… he too is a scratch golfer.

Ha!  You might even get a few 18 cappers who don't tag their second putts and game golf thinks their scratch golfers who make 100% of their putts.

 

You're right that scratch golfers are more likely to be careful than hackers, but they've got to be really careful to get within 3 feet of being correct.  If they're just careful to tag all their shots and move them to the right part of the green, there's still a lot of error in that.  I can't find find any info on the website about the accuracy of the GPS but if its 2-3 yards then miscategorization is within the margin of error for most putts.    

[Dave2512]

17 minutes ago, iacas said:

To play devil's advocate to that, how many scratch golfers do you think are that careless?

 

I am hoping not many. I don't follow many scratch guys but the other stuff I see is whacky. I stopped using the compare function because the guy that averages 80 strokes on GG could be the guy I described. He's just randomly tagging 80 times. That said those types seem to sign rounds less frequently than the stat hounds.

[Golfingdad]

1 hour ago, dsc123 said:

You're right that scratch golfers are more likely to be careful than hackers, but they've got to be really careful to get within 3 feet of being correct.  If they're just careful to tag all their shots and move them to the right part of the green, there's still a lot of error in that. 

In my (non-programmer) head, I'm imagining a situation where the app/device uses the GPS data to get you to the green, but from that point, instead of bothering to try and tag putts, move around putts, and move around flag positions in a feeble attempt to overcome the "garbage in, garbage out" aspect and become more accurate from short range, just have us input a first putt distance and, as necessary, a second putt distance, third putt distance, etc.  I feel like it could be programmed to give some pretty good results from that data.

[iacas]

1 hour ago, Golfingdad said:

In my (non-programmer) head, I'm imagining a situation where the app/device uses the GPS data to get you to the green, but from that point, instead of bothering to try and tag putts, move around putts, and move around flag positions in a feeble attempt to overcome the "garbage in, garbage out" aspect and become more accurate from short range, just have us input a first putt distance and, as necessary, a second putt distance, third putt distance, etc.  I feel like it could be programmed to give some pretty good results from that data.

I still like to see where the putts were hit from on the green.

@mvmac is on a phone call with @GAME Golf in a few minutes. I'm sitting in the dermatologist's office.

[Dave2512]

It would be nice to know why some are getting these insane results, losing 8 strokes on the green and 1 from the tee stuff. That's a huge WTF. I'd be shocked if anyone putts that bad.

[iacas]

5 minutes ago, Dave2512 said:

It would be nice to know why some are getting these insane results, losing 8 strokes on the green and 1 from the tee stuff. That's a huge WTF. I'd be shocked if anyone putts that bad.

I'd be tempted to go through @Jeremie Boop's rounds and see what I'd estimate…

[Dave2512]

He won't mind, modesty is his thing. 

[RFKFREAK]

2 hours ago, iacas said:

I'd be tempted to go through @Jeremie Boop's rounds and see what I'd estimate…

I know based on the @RandallT did on 3 of my recent rounds, I'm hugely suspect of what GG says about my results so I wouldn't be surprised if you did go through @Jeremie Boop's rounds that you'd gather some significantly different results from what GG came up with.  

[Dave2512]

I hope they have a good answer for the variance. It's just okay as a stat tracker and the comparisons are kind of meh. After a season of using it I learned a little about my game but all of it was just seeing the simple truth, I am not a good ball striker. As an improvement tool no matter how I look at it there is just one conclusion. 

[RFKFREAK]

1 hour ago, Dave2512 said:

I hope they have a good answer for the variance. It's just okay as a stat tracker and the comparisons are kind of meh. After a season of using it I learned a little about my game but all of it was just seeing the simple truth, I am not a good ball striker. As an improvement tool no matter how I look at it there is just one conclusion. 

I think it can be useful as a tool.  For example, it tells me where more of my misses are so it can help me with my shot zones.  Overall, your index of 6.9 tells me that if you think you're not a good ball striker, my 24.8 index would tell me I'm a horrendous ball hitter.  Of course I know that but theoretically, it also will show me how I've improved over time. 

[RandallT]

Here's one theory about Jeremie's strokes gained, from looking at a couple of 9-hole rounds in the past month. Here's a hole that might be relevant:

When he hits his drive well, he crushes it. 285yd drive in the fairway.

But there's a catch. It shows +2 penalty there, and I think GG strokes gained calculation might ignore that. In fact, he might be gaining strokes on his drive on this kind of scenario (that's a nice drive!), but in reality, it appears he hit one OB and teed up again to hit his 3rd.

Why doesn't Game Golf show this hole as shot 1 as an OB penalty? Then it could show shot 3 as a good drive. Do you not tag shots when you hit them off the tee out of bounds?

Just a theory, of course (I have only looked at 18 holes to see what I could find). In the hidden text below, I've entered each shot from two of his 9-hole rounds, and you can see how the strokes gained add up compared against Mark Broadie/PGA data, in case anyone finds that helpful.

Spoiler

As you can see above, 5 penalties that I saw off the tee, 4 of those on driving holes (3 of those 4 were re-tees). So that's 6 strokes lost driving right there on the 3 re-tees. I think it's at least possible that Game Golf is ignoring shots that result in penalties. (that doesn't explain why their other categories are different, however)

As I calculate it, this is the strokes gained for every shot in the round above (rough approximations from reviewing the rounds on Game Golf):

So GG had over 8 strokes lost to putting against a scratch player, I had just over 7 when compared to PGA. Not too far off, but still fairly different as PGA players putt better than scratch. I was really taking guesses on initial putt distance though.

GG had less than 2 strokes lost for each of the other areas, but I got: 10 driving, 7.5 approaches, 5 short game (each shot shown above).

This is just "one" round (actually 2 9-hole rounds), and GG used 10 rounds. It's certainly possible this one round was not at all representative. Apples-apples would require the same rounds to be used. I just wanted to spot check one round to see what I saw.

 

 

[dsc123]

 

4 minutes ago, RandallT said:

Here's one theory about Jeremie's strokes gained, from looking at a couple of 9-hole rounds in the past month. Here's a hole that might be relevant:

When he hits his drive well, he crushes it. 285yd drive in the fairway.

But there's a catch. It shows +2 penalty there, and I think GG strokes gained calculation might ignore that. In fact, he might be gaining strokes on his drive on this kind of scenario (that's a nice drive!), but in reality, it appears he hit one OB and teed up again to hit his 3rd.

Why doesn't Game Golf show this hole as shot 1 as an OB penalty? Then it could show shot 3 as a good drive. Do you not tag shots when you hit them off the tee out of bounds?

Just a theory, of course (I have only looked at 18 holes to see what I could find). In the hidden text below, I've entered each shot from two of his 9-hole rounds, and you can see how the strokes gained add up compared against Mark Broadie/PGA data, in case anyone finds that helpful.

  Reveal hidden contents

As you can see above, 5 penalties that I saw off the tee, 4 of those on driving holes (3 of those 4 were re-tees). So that's 6 strokes lost driving right there on the 3 re-tees. I think it's at least possible that Game Golf is ignoring shots that result in penalties. (that doesn't explain why their other categories are different, however)

As I calculate it, this is the strokes gained for every shot in the round above (rough approximations from reviewing the rounds on Game Golf):

So GG had over 8 strokes lost to putting against a scratch player, I had just over 7 when compared to PGA. Not too far off, but still fairly different as PGA players putt better than scratch. I was really taking guesses on initial putt distance though.

GG had less than 2 strokes lost for each of the other areas, but I got: 10 driving, 7.5 approaches, 5 short game (each shot shown above).

This is just "one" round (actually 2 9-hole rounds), and GG used 10 rounds. It's certainly possible this one round was not at all representative. Apples-apples would require the same rounds to be used. I just wanted to spot check one round to see what I saw.

 

 

You are probably right.  When you tag penalties they are not attached or associated with any particular shot.  

[Dave2512]

Good catch. 

[iacas]

I think we're just scratching the surface here guys. I think very good things are inbound.

[Dave2512]

That is good news.

[Golfingdad]

4 hours ago, RandallT said:

Why doesn't Game Golf show this hole as shot 1 as an OB penalty? Then it could show shot 3 as a good drive. Do you not tag shots when you hit them off the tee out of bounds?

This is how I tag them as well.  Since I can't walk to the OB spot and mark where the first one ended up, I simply tee up another, and add the +2 like Jeremie did.

Perhaps, similar to the putting idea I had up above, they could add a way to manually estimate shots that lead into penalties like that.  Instead of just a "+2", let you be more specific and say it was OB or lost, and let you manually tag it afterward.  Maybe a blue line showing the stray drive, then a +1, then the red line showing the third shot and so on.

I dunno, just brainstorming here.