Stubbornness or lack of research?: "Drive for Show, Putt for Dough"

[ZappyAd]

53 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

Probably not. If your strokes gained driving and approach is 0 then you have less birdie opportunities because you have more short game shots and typically shorter putts. So his strokes gained putting is in conjunction with his strokes gained tee to green  because he has to make putts at a significant distance to have that much strokes gained putting. 

I thought that strokes gained was taking all of that into account - e.g. if you got closer through a massive drive the strokes gained from that drive are essentially because you have a shorter putt that you are more likely to make relative to a longer one.  Then you move onto putting and if you make that shorter putt more often than you 'should' you gain strokes putting.  i.e. the long game and putting strokes gained are independent.

 

[natureboy]

1 hour ago, saevel25 said:

Probably not. If your strokes gained driving and approach is 0 then you have less birdie opportunities because you have more short game shots and typically shorter putts. So his strokes gained putting is in conjunction with his strokes gained tee to green  because he has to make putts at a significant distance to have that much strokes gained putting. 

That's a good point - they are all somewhat interrelated.

He still might have pitched, chipped, & putted out of his mind to nab the win with zero SG in the long game, but that's a less statistically likely performance. Plus it adds pressure that could bleed negatively into overall performance.

It might be more accurate to say with zero SG approach & driving he would have fewer realistic / makeable birdie opportunities. It's still possible to make a string of them, just much less likely. At Valspar, his short game and putting really made up for an only slightly above average long game performance. With zero gains from the long game in all four rounds, though, he would have lost there.

 

54 minutes ago, ZappyAd said:

I thought that strokes gained was taking all of that into account - e.g. if you got closer through a massive drive the strokes gained from that drive are essentially because you have a shorter putt that you are more likely to make relative to a longer one.  Then you move onto putting and if you make that shorter putt more often than you 'should' you gain strokes putting.  i.e. the long game and putting strokes gained are independent.

I think what he is saying is that with 0 SG in the long game it's very likely that Jordan would not have scored as low because he'd have a lot of up & down's and long putts to make. Possible yes, but less likely than with a good long game performance.

Edited January 12, 2016 by natureboy

[saevel25]

1 hour ago, ZappyAd said:

I thought that strokes gained was taking all of that into account - e.g. if you got closer through a massive drive the strokes gained from that drive are essentially because you have a shorter putt that you are more likely to make relative to a longer one.  Then you move onto putting and if you make that shorter putt more often than you 'should' you gain strokes putting.  i.e. the long game and putting strokes gained are independent.

Your response doesn't make much sense. 

The longer the putt you make the more strokes gained you receive compared to a shorter putt. You are more likely to have longer putts when you hit a lot of GIR because the average proximity is around 30-33' for PGA tour players versus something like 6' for a short game shot. 

That is why the winners typically have a high strokes gained putting with strokes gained long game because they are draining longer putts. 

Lets say you miss every green and have 18-3' putts after having an amazing short game day and you make all of them. Your strokes gained putting would be +0.72 for that day. 

Lets say you hit 15 greens. Your average proximity is 20 feet from the pin. An amazing ball striking game. Let's say you have 27 putts and your average distance made is 12 feet. So an amazing putting day. Your strokes gained putting would be the 3.5-4.0 range. 

See how amazing ball striking can lead you to have an amazing putting day because it gives you opportunities to make longer putts. 

 

[mvmac]

10 hours ago, saevel25 said:

Probably not. If your strokes gained driving and approach is 0 then you have less birdie opportunities because you have more short game shots and typically shorter putts. So his strokes gained putting is in conjunction with his strokes gained tee to green  because he has to make putts at a significant distance to have that much strokes gained putting. 

Good point.

[ZappyAd]

11 hours ago, saevel25 said:

Your response doesn't make much sense. 

The longer the putt you make the more strokes gained you receive compared to a shorter putt. You are more likely to have longer putts when you hit a lot of GIR because the average proximity is around 30-33' for PGA tour players versus something like 6' for a short game shot. 

That is why the winners typically have a high strokes gained putting with strokes gained long game because they are draining longer putts. 

Lets say you miss every green and have 18-3' putts after having an amazing short game day and you make all of them. Your strokes gained putting would be +0.72 for that day. 

Lets say you hit 15 greens. Your average proximity is 20 feet from the pin. An amazing ball striking game. Let's say you have 27 putts and your average distance made is 12 feet. So an amazing putting day. Your strokes gained putting would be the 3.5-4.0 range. 

See how amazing ball striking can lead you to have an amazing putting day because it gives you opportunities to make longer putts. 

 

Up to a point I can see that but it can't be linear - take for example your guy who has an amazing ball striking day.  If he has an even more amazing day so that his average proximity is 15 feet then his strokes gained for 27 putts is going to be lower because he should be making more of those putts because they are closer.  Take it to the extreme where he stiffs everything to within 3' on approach and his strokes gained on putting goes back to 0.72 at best (in fact if he took 27 putts he would probably be negative because he should be making all of them).  

So going from a truly awful day where you don't hit a green to 15 greens @ 20' then yes you have more chance to make shots on your putting.  But incrementally improving your ball striking from there you would seem to have less chances to make strokes on putting, so it isn't always better ball striking means better putting potential.  His maximum potential strokes gained starts low if he misses every green, gets higher as he starts to hit greens and make more putts then starts to go lower again as his approaches are closer and closer to the flag (and actually goes to 0 if he holes every approach!)

Question is where are pros on this scale on a good and bad day?  Does Jordan go from missing every green on a bad day to 15 GIR @ 20' on a good one, or does he go from 15GIR @ 30' to 15GIR @20'?  Because the impact on his potential putting strokes gained will be different up to and including even having a different sign.   Someone could work it out from the data and show what the correlation is because the whole strokes gained thing is about looking at the numbers and seeing what they show.

And I think we are talking about different things which is why you don't think my original comment made sense.  I was saying that if you hit a longer drive, then on average and all other things being equal you will score better because you are closer to the hole (i.e. you have gained some amount of strokes) and that is independent of what you might then go on to do on the putting green (which I think does make sense).  

You are talking about the maximum potential envelope for strokes gained on the putting green based on the quality of approaches, which is not independent of the long game but doesn't actually translate into strokes gained until you actually make the putts.  I can see what you are saying might be true but has anyone actually proved that for a pro player?  i.e. are they at a point where hitting more greens outweighs the benefit of getting shorter putts?

 

[iacas]

14 hours ago, ZappyAd said:

Up to a point I can see that but it can't be linear - take for example your guy who has an amazing ball striking day.  If he has an even more amazing day so that his average proximity is 15 feet then his strokes gained for 27 putts is going to be lower because he should be making more of those putts because they are closer. Take it to the extreme where he stiffs everything to within 3' on approach and his strokes gained on putting goes back to 0.72 at best (in fact if he took 27 putts he would probably be negative because he should be making all of them).

Yeah, you don't seem to understand how strokes gained works.

Every time the guy has a 15-foot putt, he can lose 0.22 strokes or gain 0.78 putts if he makes it. There's really nothing else he can do. Once he's putting, he's putting.

From three feet, he can lose 0.96 or gain 0.04 strokes. That's about it.

The second putt doesn't even matter (or the third), because the math works out all the same.

So a guy hitting it to 15' all day could gain a maximum of 18 * 0.78 = 14.04 strokes, and if he two-putts them all, lose about 3.96 (they add up to 18). A guy hitting it to 3' all day can gain a maximum of .12 strokes or lose, well, they don't two-putt from 3' very often, so that's just getting silly.

From 3' there's only really strokes to be lost, but a guy hitting it to 3' all day would make up a TREMENDOUS number of strokes gained on the shot(s) that came before it.

Strokes gained only cares about two things: where your ball was, and where it is now. If you got closer to the hole than the average person from there, you gain strokes. If you do not do better, you lose them.

It's all inter-related: a guy who hit it to 40' all day but two-putted would gain strokes putting, but lose them (more than he gained putting, probably, since he's probably over the scoring average) from tee to green.

[ZappyAd]

11 hours ago, iacas said:

Yeah, you don't seem to understand how strokes gained works.

Yes that is quite possible !  But what you wrote is how I understand it and I think it matches with what I said in response to the quote that " See how amazing ball striking can lead you to have an amazing putting day because it gives you opportunities to make longer putts.  "

It can make a big difference when you go from missing greens to hitting them, but when you go from hitting most to hitting most a bit closer (which is where I guess most pros are) then I am speculating that it doesn't make that much difference to the maximum possible strokes you can gain from putting (and even reduces it) because like you say you are gaining the strokes on your approach shot and the putts are just shorter putts that you are more likely to make.  So an amazing ball striking day doesn't necessarily lead to an amazing putting day because you gained the strokes in ball striking already and if you gain more in putting it is because you are putting hot.

So that speculation would imply that Jordan has more strokes gained putting at the top of that leaderboard because he was putting well over a set of opportunities that was similar for the top 10-20 guys, and not that he had loads more putt opportunities because of 1 or 2 strokes gained on the long game.  

Honestly I don't have much experience for the sensitivity of one set of parameters to movements in the others when it comes to strokes gained but it strikes me that the relationships aren't always linear and a positive movement in one area doesn't always imply the same sign movement in another.  So if Jordan had made 0 strokes gained in his long game would that actually have made his putting strokes gained lower, or would he in fact have had higher because he was so hot that he would have made some of the longer putts he was left with?  Obviously we don't know and it is a less likely event for it to be higher but any time you are gaining strokes you are exhibiting less likely behaviour and so I just think it could be a definite maybe.

 

[JBailey]

At the Tournament of Champions last week, of the 3 top finishers, how did they rank for driving distance and putting?

Later,

John

[Clemsonfan]

http://www.pgatour.com/statsreport/2016/01/11/strokes-gained-hyundai.html

here is a link to the chart for the top finishers at the Hyundai T of C for strokes gained - is this what you meant by driving distance and putting?

Spieth gained 4.3 strokes per round on the field.  0.6 through driving; 0.8 approach; 1.0 short game and 1.9 for putting.

[JBailey]

36 minutes ago, Clemsonfan said:

http://www.pgatour.com/statsreport/2016/01/11/strokes-gained-hyundai.html

here is a link to the chart for the top finishers at the Hyundai T of C for strokes gained - is this what you meant by driving distance and putting?

Spieth gained 4.3 strokes per round on the field.  0.6 through driving; 0.8 approach; 1.0 short game and 1.9 for putting.

Being an old guy who hasn't played, or followed, golf for the last 20 years, I'm not familiar with the concept of the "strokes gained" stat that is used.  However, from the numbers you've stated, it looks like the shorter the type of shot, the more it influenced the outcome of the tournament.  

Looks like Spieth putted for the dough.

Wonder what the stats for Mr. Gomez at the Sony say.

Later,

John

Edited January 19, 2016 by JBailey

[iacas]

4 hours ago, Clemsonfan said:

http://www.pgatour.com/statsreport/2016/01/11/strokes-gained-hyundai.html

here is a link to the chart for the top finishers at the Hyundai T of C for strokes gained - is this what you meant by driving distance and putting?

Spieth gained 4.3 strokes per round on the field.  0.6 through driving; 0.8 approach; 1.0 short game and 1.9 for putting.

He did. He'd have won, too, with 0 strokes gained putting. (It's tough to say the corollary is true, because if he doesn't hit the same tee shots, does he gain as many strokes with his approach shots? Putting is terminal, though - its results are independent once you're putting.

3 hours ago, JBailey said:

Being an old guy who hasn't played, or followed, golf for the last 20 years, I'm not familiar with the concept of the "strokes gained" stat that is used.  However, from the numbers you've stated, it looks like the shorter the type of shot, the more it influenced the outcome of the tournament.  

Looks like Spieth putted for the dough.

A few things…

• It was a limited field event (33 players). This makes for small sample sizes. Add 120 more players and his numbers likely would have changed.
• Spieth, as noted above, still would have won putting average. Or "barely" better than average.
• He was in the top six in all four categories. It was a solid, all-around performance.
• Putting often contributes a healthy percentage to winning. The average is 35%. See the linked thread below for more on that. Suffice to say the summary is: winners often ride solid ball-striking with an unusual (hot) week putting. The top ten, though, is made up of players who had good ball-striking weeks, by and large.
• There's a lot of data out on this, @JBailey, so if you're in disagreement or something, feel free to be blunt about it and we can all discuss it.

Here's the topic (point #2 discusses its contribution to winning):

 

P.S. We aren't on the PGA Tour, so even if "drive for show, putt for dough did apply to them, it doesn't necessarily apply to us." Also, considering the outcome of ONE event is different than considering consistently good performances. Jordan Spieth was high in strokes gained putting last year, but he vastly outpaces many of the other top 20 putters. Aaron Baddeley, for example, was nearly 0.15 strokes gained putting better but clearly lost far more of those strokes elsewhere as he was really not heard of much in 2015, while Jordan had a year to remember.

[vangator]

JBailey, are you and old Honeyweller?

[JBailey]

15 minutes ago, vangator said:

JBailey, are you and old Honeyweller?

Well, I'm old, but Honeyweller?

Later,

John

[vangator]

10 hours ago, JBailey said:

Well, I'm old, but Honeyweller?

Later,

John

Must be a different JBailey.

[The Recreational Golfer]

There's a Trevino quote out there that says: "If you can't drive, you won't be putting for very much dough."

[DrvFrShow]

If you can't putt, you can't win. If you can't drive, you can't play. 

 

[golfsupporter]

Surely driving distance/ the long game alone isn't how to win tournaments. Take Spieth, tied 43rd last season for driving distance, but won 5 Championship events and took home the FedEx Cup trophy. And for most players (not at professional level) isn't it more likely that strokes are more easily gained putting than from tee to green?

[boogielicious]

25 minutes ago, golfsupporter said:

Surely driving distance/ the long game alone isn't how to win tournaments. Take Spieth, tied 43rd last season for driving distance, but won 5 Championship events and took home the FedEx Cup trophy. And for most players (not at professional level) isn't it more likely that strokes are more easily gained putting than from tee to green?

But those stokes gained putting are achieved because he got closer to the pin on his approach shot, which was possible because he got the ball in the fairway from a long drive. In Spieth's wins, his approach shots are what gives him the chance for birdies, not great putting alone.