OWGR top 20 strokes gained

[natureboy]

3 hours ago, Phil McGleno said:

I do not think it is as specific as you think.-I have heard criticisms that it is too broadly based and some of that may simply be because of how difficult it would be to get real valid stats from areas that are too small. One yard forward in a fairway bunker might be blocked out by the lip but a yard back and it may be fine. Or one yard right and a tree is in the way.

Or hitting a pocket of really deep rough versus normal height or a nested versus perched lie. That's a completely valid critique. Small individual variances in lie do matter to expected score. As a workable approach for tour statistics collection and comparison, how would you implement a 'perfect' system? Isn't strokes gained a huge improvement over the more traditional stats?

Maybe if you were calculating strokes gained on your own you should qualify being blocked by a fairway bunker lip or a really cr^##y lie as a recovery rather than sand condition?

I'm not sure how finely detailed Broadie maps his shot locations. With so many shots available in the Shotlink database it's quite likely that there are different expected shot numbers depending on how close the ball is to the big lip within that fairway bunker. His research papers talked about an algorithm for automatically identifying recovery shots based on the deviation from the expected or average target and/or shot distance (basically using the computer to automatically ID a punch out / get it back in play shot). If that's in use and refined, I would think he's got some more detailed expected score versus location numbers than some critics might believe based on the charts and info most see in Every Shot Counts.