Staying below the hole - Brilliant or Bogus?

[Hardspoon]

11 hours ago, saevel25 said:

https://aimpointgolf.wordpress.com/2016/02/28/finding-ones/

OK...this whole post is going to be a bit of a graphic-design and data-visualization tangent, so I'm going to put it in an OT "box"...but it was inspired by this article, so I'm throwing it in here.

Spoiler

One of my pet peeves is when people try to make arguments and use terrible graphics:

That doesn't really say much of anything.  So, I started thinking...if you could try to illustrate this with a "heatmap", what would it look like?  Would you gain any insight?

So...first I started with a heatmap of PGA pro's make % on putts by distance only.  Basically, this is an illustration of the "distance gradient" described in Lowest Score Wins, for putts:

Green is a 100% one-putt...yellow is a 50% one-putt...red is a 0% one-putt.  So, that yellow ring at 7'-10" represents the 50% make zone for a PGA pro.

OK, so far so good...but what happens if you apply the slope "penalties" described in the article?

I had no way to quantify what the author was talking about in terms of how much more difficult it actually makes putts, so I used (what I thought was) an aggressive assumption: any straight putt is 25% easier (than baseline), and any putt directly across the fall line is 25% harder (than baseline).  All other angles of putt are interpolated in between those two.

Interesting (I thought).  Even with a pretty aggressive accounting for the slope (25%), you'd still look at that and think it's much more important to get the ball close to the hole than it is to worry about where it ends up on the "clock".

I need to play around with this more now that I have the methodology down for creating these...and I suppose I could add the slope factor...but I think it could be a good illustration of the idea that distance is more important than location in a PRACTICAL sense, when you're trying to actually pick a target (rather than just saying, "Well, I wish this putt was uphill.").

 

[n0g0]

Take a look at Dave Pelz's book on putting. He did the measurements rolling a putt with a tool, and found that on a constant slope, uphill putts break less than downhill putts. Not to mention that if a "perfect putt" travels at a speed leaving a miss 18" past the hole, judging an uphill speed that will lose speed with distance is easier than judging a downhill putt that gains speed (gravity). So the article is correct. And that means your heat-map is close, but the green zone should be triangular, and so should the above and below zones. A combination of yours and the article would be the best map, since proximity inside 3 feet is so critical. Outside that,  leaving the ball with an uphill putt is the absolute best course management plan. Now good luck hitting the wedge shot that puts you there!

[Buckeyebowman]

17 hours ago, boogielicious said:

It was the Masters on the first hole in a nearly level spot. He 'jacked' it because he didn't aim correctly. It had nothing to do with slope.

I've played on fast greens and once I got used to the speed after a couple of holes, I adjusted. In some respects, you can be more accurate on your start line with fast greens because your backstroke length is shorter. All things being equal, I would rather be closer to the hole for my putt. Up or down or side hill doesn't matter that much unless there is a steep ridge to deal with.

You're right. And it seemed like he got rattled and in a hurry. Which is death!

[iacas]

40 minutes ago, n0g0 said:

Take a look at Dave Pelz's book on putting. He did the measurements rolling a putt with a tool, and found that on a constant slope, uphill putts break less than downhill putts. Not to mention that if a "perfect putt" travels at a speed leaving a miss 18" past the hole, judging an uphill speed that will lose speed with distance is easier than judging a downhill putt that gains speed (gravity). So the article is correct. And that means your heat-map is close, but the green zone should be triangular, and so should the above and below zones. A combination of yours and the article would be the best map, since proximity inside 3 feet is so critical. Outside that,  leaving the ball with an uphill putt is the absolute best course management plan. Now good luck hitting the wedge shot that puts you there!

Dave Pelz is not entirely accurate. He hasn't updated much of his information in 20 years or so.

Downhill putts do not gain speed - they simply lose speed less quickly. A putt that goes 18" past the hole on an uphill putt is putting to a significantly smaller effective target than one that goes past a downhill hole location 18".

Uphill putts break less because they have less time to break. Simple stuff.

The heat map wouldn't really be a triangle. Distance matters quite a bit. So you should worry much less about leaving an uphill putt and quite a bit more about getting the ball closer to the hole.

[MacDutch]

Don't think its brilliant or bogus (for me). I just have more confidence putting up hill then downhill.

Edited May 18, 2016 by MacDutch

[n0g0]

It seems to me that the big takeaway is "get it as close as possible". And if circumstances won't allow for pin-hunting, and you know you'll be some distance from the hole greater than 8 feet, then (and only then) better to be below the hole.

This video on Aimpoint probable reads makes a lot of sense to me as to why we'd want to avoid the 90* putt, if possible:

 

[CarlSpackler]

I went with other. Every putt has a line and speed which, if hit correctly, will be successful. I've never understood why they say left-to-right putts are easier. Or is it right-to-left? The stories you tell yourself or believe are likely to become reality.

[natureboy]

On 5/18/2016 at 11:58 PM, Hardspoon said:

OK...this whole post is going to be a bit of a graphic-design and data-visualization tangent, so I'm going to put it in an OT "box"...but it was inspired by this article, so I'm throwing it in here.

  Hide contents

One of my pet peeves is when people try to make arguments and use terrible graphics:

That doesn't really say much of anything.  So, I started thinking...if you could try to illustrate this with a "heatmap", what would it look like?  Would you gain any insight?

So...first I started with a heatmap of PGA pro's make % on putts by distance only.  Basically, this is an illustration of the "distance gradient" described in Lowest Score Wins, for putts:

Green is a 100% one-putt...yellow is a 50% one-putt...red is a 0% one-putt.  So, that yellow ring at 7'-10" represents the 50% make zone for a PGA pro.

OK, so far so good...but what happens if you apply the slope "penalties" described in the article?

I had no way to quantify what the author was talking about in terms of how much more difficult it actually makes putts, so I used (what I thought was) an aggressive assumption: any straight putt is 25% easier (than baseline), and any putt directly across the fall line is 25% harder (than baseline).  All other angles of putt are interpolated in between those two.

Interesting (I thought).  Even with a pretty aggressive accounting for the slope (25%), you'd still look at that and think it's much more important to get the ball close to the hole than it is to worry about where it ends up on the "clock".

I need to play around with this more now that I have the methodology down for creating these...and I suppose I could add the slope factor...but I think it could be a good illustration of the idea that distance is more important than location in a PRACTICAL sense, when you're trying to actually pick a target (rather than just saying, "Well, I wish this putt was uphill.").

 

I don't think it's OT. Very relevant. Two questions...how do you do those sweet heatmaps? How would the implications of the article I posted (https://aimpointgolf.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/speed-changes-everything/) earlier in the thread - also by Aimpoint - affect the map?

The article I included seems to indicate that missing due to higher green speed plus slope affects make percentage above the hole a bit more severely than below - at least at 10 feet.

Edited May 19, 2016 by natureboy

[iacas]

6 hours ago, natureboy said:

I don't think it's OT. Very relevant. Two questions...how do you do those sweet heatmaps? How would the implications of the article I posted (https://aimpointgolf.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/speed-changes-everything/) earlier in the thread - also by Aimpoint - affect the map?

The article I included seems to indicate that missing due to higher green speed plus slope affects make percentage above the hole a bit more severely than below - at least at 10 feet.

Distance is still far more important. If you're so good that you can try to pick out quadrants to hit the ball, go for it. But not even PGA Tour players have Shot Zones that small all the time.

[Hardspoon]

 

7 hours ago, natureboy said:

how do you do those sweet heatmaps?

OT:

Spoiler

The colorization is done using the Layers>Adjustments>Gradient Map in Photoshop.  Red mapped to 0%, yellow 50%, green 100%.  To do that, you need a grayscale image where each pixel has a K-value (in CMYK) that corresponds to the % putts made from that location.

You could probably do that directly in Photoshop for simple stuff (like the distance gradient)...I used AutoCAD topo surfaces because I can do that quickly.

I would like to play around with mapping real stats with this method...the distance gradient looks neat to me, and I like that it is actually based on facts...the rest is just so wishy-washy.

I'm actually curious about whether I could create a massive Excel spreadsheet (these are 600x600 - yikes) that would actually have a % value in each cell ("pixel") and then use Conditional Formatting to colorize it...hmm...paging @RandallT ... #nerdalert

 

7 hours ago, natureboy said:

How would the implications of the article I posted (https://aimpointgolf.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/speed-changes-everything/) earlier in the thread - also by Aimpoint - affect the map?

If I make another aggressive assumption (25% more likely to sink a straight uphill putt than a straight downhill one, along with the 25% slope "bonus")...it'd look like this:

Again, at this point it's still somewhat reasonable (a 15% chance of sinking an 11-footer straight uphill, versus 10% baseline)...and the distance gradient still seems so dominant that you would just try to hit the ball close. 

Of course, you can keep jacking the numbers until you get something that looks kind of like that Aimpoint graphic, and would suggest you should aim below the hole:

But there's no way this is accurate - basically, the chance of a one-putt from 25' straight uphill has gone from 10% to nearly 40%.  Yeah, right.

There's nothing groundbreaking in depicting the numbers like this, and I suppose there could be some bias in how I've chosen to illustrate them, but I think that graphics like the Aimpoint one are very misleading because they are so one-dimensional.

So, circling back to the topic: in my opinion, the following can ALL be true:

• Uphill putts are easier than downhill putts
• Putts with less break are easier that putts with more break
• When actually deciding where to aim, don't worry about either of the facts above, because they are basically irrelevant...it's better to just be closer to the pin

Anecdotally, if I'm between clubs or something, and I'm trying to decide whether it's better to miss short or miss long, that decision is almost always going to be dictated by what is adjacent to the green (bunkers, steep slopes, OB) rather than the slope.

EDIT: I do realize these don't take into account 3-putt %...I doubt that changes anything, but, yes, I'm only looking at your chances of SINKING the putt.

[Patch]

I like up hill putts. Plus, when the tilt was right I have even had few putts drop in on the top side of the hole. That wouldn't happen on a down hill putt. 

[natureboy]

15 hours ago, Hardspoon said:

 

OT:

  Reveal hidden contents

The colorization is done using the Layers>Adjustments>Gradient Map in Photoshop.  Red mapped to 0%, yellow 50%, green 100%.  To do that, you need a grayscale image where each pixel has a K-value (in CMYK) that corresponds to the % putts made from that location.

You could probably do that directly in Photoshop for simple stuff (like the distance gradient)...I used AutoCAD topo surfaces because I can do that quickly.

I would like to play around with mapping real stats with this method...the distance gradient looks neat to me, and I like that it is actually based on facts...the rest is just so wishy-washy.

I'm actually curious about whether I could create a massive Excel spreadsheet (these are 600x600 - yikes) that would actually have a % value in each cell ("pixel") and then use Conditional Formatting to colorize it...hmm...paging @RandallT ... #nerdalert

 

If I make another aggressive assumption (25% more likely to sink a straight uphill putt than a straight downhill one, along with the 25% slope "bonus")...it'd look like this:

Again, at this point it's still somewhat reasonable (a 15% chance of sinking an 11-footer straight uphill, versus 10% baseline)...and the distance gradient still seems so dominant that you would just try to hit the ball close. 

Of course, you can keep jacking the numbers until you get something that looks kind of like that Aimpoint graphic, and would suggest you should aim below the hole:

But there's no way this is accurate - basically, the chance of a one-putt from 25' straight uphill has gone from 10% to nearly 40%.  Yeah, right.

There's nothing groundbreaking in depicting the numbers like this, and I suppose there could be some bias in how I've chosen to illustrate them, but I think that graphics like the Aimpoint one are very misleading because they are so one-dimensional.

So, circling back to the topic: in my opinion, the following can ALL be true:

• Uphill putts are easier than downhill putts
• Putts with less break are easier that putts with more break
• When actually deciding where to aim, don't worry about either of the facts above, because they are basically irrelevant...it's better to just be closer to the pin

Anecdotally, if I'm between clubs or something, and I'm trying to decide whether it's better to miss short or miss long, that decision is almost always going to be dictated by what is adjacent to the green (bunkers, steep slopes, OB) rather than the slope.

EDIT: I do realize these don't take into account 3-putt %...I doubt that changes anything, but, yes, I'm only looking at your chances of SINKING the putt.

You still haven't shared how to do the heat maps 

 

As far as your analysis, the act of comparison to the putting baselines could be part of the issue in teasing out the answer.

The putting distance baselines are large group averages comparing expected putts to only one dimension - distance - across all other varying conditions with the other factors like first putt location on the green ignored. It's not a simultaneous regression on distance, slope, stimp, and putt location. So while distance is likely the primary factor statistically the location may change the expected putts by distance baseline in differing locations of slope.

The baseline is essentially a measurement of the group average putting success for average green conditions for a given distance. Maybe if you did a baseline for a given skill group that captured all factors, the expected number of putts by location & distance would vary from the overall average distance baseline. That would affect the values and appearance of your heat map.

And yes I think that to 3-putt likelihood is important. It might be affected by position relative to the hole on a fast slope as a putt slows less quickly on a steeper downhill putt vs 'level' on the same green and slows more rapidly vs 'level' on uphill putts so errors in putt speed are likely to be more costly in terms of an extra putt on downhill ticklers vs. uphillers. I would think because of this effect that you have more room for speed error lagging uphill.

Think about what happened at the Players on Saturday (almost) everyone had bad scoring day despite likely having (on average) the same ball striking as the earlier days. If distance to the pin is the 'only' factor in putting success then the stimp shouldn't have mattered much, right?

Possible caveat with the above Players Champ example: avg proximity on approach may have been affected significantly too, though I think the greens were still considered relatively receptive, despite the stimp. Anyone have numbers on field average proximity for Thurs/Fri/Sat/Sun at The Players?

Edited May 20, 2016 by natureboy

[Hardspoon]

20 minutes ago, natureboy said:

You still haven't shared how to do the heat maps 

Look at the "OT" box in my last post.  They're AutoCAD "topographies" exported as gray values and then colorized in Photoshop.

 

20 minutes ago, natureboy said:

The baseline is essentially a measurement of the group average putting success for average green conditions for a given distance. Maybe if you did a baseline for a given skill group that captured all factors, the expected number of putts by location & distance would vary from the overall average distance baseline. That would affect the values and appearance of your heat map.

Yes, point taken.  That's why I applied only adjustments with radial symmetry.  It still makes logical sense, I think, since the numbers are arbitrary anyway.  Rather than make uphill putts 10% easier, you make them 5% easier and downhill putts 5% harder.  The average value at that distance remains what it should be.

23 minutes ago, natureboy said:

And yes I think that to 3-putt likelihood is important. 

Agreed.  I'm already working on the next iteration of these (using Excel cells as "pixels"), and I'm using average putts to hole out rather than one-putt %.

 

[saevel25]

20 minutes ago, natureboy said:

Think about what happened at the Players on Saturday (almost) everyone had bad scoring day despite likely having (on average) the same ball striking as the earlier days. If distance to the pin is the 'only' factor in putting success then the stimp shouldn't have mattered much, right?

It also had to do with firmness of those greens and that the wind increased on Saturday. 

The greens are Bermuda grass. The STIMP for the downhill putts on those greens is going to be higher than compared Bent grass green with the same slope. This is because the grain influencing the speed. 

On this subject, I would say that if a golfer were to try to take away all downhill putts. That they would be substantially further away from the hole that the strokes lost on the proximity change would overtake the insignificant change in difficulty on an downhill putt versus an uphill putt. 

 

[DaveP043]

20 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

On this subject, I would say that if a golfer were to try to take away all downhill putts. That they would be substantially further away from the hole that the strokes lost on the proximity change would overtake the insignificant change in difficulty on an downhill putt versus an uphill putt. 

This is the thing, just get as close as you can, while avoiding any "death" spots in the green.  On my home club, we have just a few pin positions where, if you're on the wrong side of the hole, its extremely difficult to two-putt, and a bad first putt can bring four-putting into play.  In these very few situations, do NOT hit to the wrong side of the hole.  Otherwise, get it close, above the hole, below, or to the side.

[iacas]

13 minutes ago, DaveP043 said:

This is the thing, just get as close as you can, while avoiding any "death" spots in the green.  On my home club, we have just a few pin positions where, if you're on the wrong side of the hole, its extremely difficult to two-putt, and a bad first putt can bring four-putting into play.  In these very few situations, do NOT hit to the wrong side of the hole.  Otherwise, get it close, above the hole, below, or to the side.

Those situations are pretty rare, and mostly seem to exist on older courses which were built when stimp was lucky to get to 8.

37 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

On this subject, I would say that if a golfer were to try to take away all downhill putts. That they would be substantially further away from the hole that the strokes lost on the proximity change would overtake the insignificant change in difficulty on an downhill putt versus an uphill putt. 

That's basically it. Given the green slopes back to front (let's say 2% and stimp 10 or 11), which of these two is likely to result in lower scores (ovals are Shot Zones, black circles are the hole location, green entire surface is on the putting green):

I think virtually everyone would suggest that it's the former.

Only in extreme cases does something like this begin to make sense:

And the further problem is that this is on an infinitely sized green. If those Shot Zones overlap rough, bunkers, hazards, etc. that further informs the decision and supports the idea of getting the ball on the green, even if it means taking the downhill putt (because that's likely easier than playing out of a greenside bunker, a creek in front of the green, etc.

Even at the PGA Tour level, Shot Zones are often fairly large:

http://www.golfdigest.com/story/gwar-shotlink-feature-david-barrett-0113

[No Mulligans]

For someone with my lack of accuracy....  From 80 yards and out, I'm not worrying about above or below the hole.  I'm aiming at the center of the green unless there are hazards I'm trying to avoid.  Well, if I'm real close, like inside 20 yards, I'm trying to just get real close to the hole.

7 minutes ago, iacas said:

Those situations are pretty rare, and mostly seem to exist on older courses which were built when stimp was lucky to get to 8.

I think I was frequenting a course like that... Torrey Pines North.  Closed for redesign right now.  The biggest change seems to be... flattening the greens.

[Rainmaker]

I voted "other" because, at least what I think I notice, is that the announcers usually say that when it *is* smart . .ie, the high side would be tricky.  That is fairly common on tour - that the slopes on the greens are extreme and there are a bunch of dreadful 4-6 foot downhill putts out there.  Not always, though. 

I think, in general, the commentators do a pretty good job of describing the putts and the greens, etc.