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What Would a PGA Tour Player Shoot at Your Home Course?


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What would a Tour player fire at your home course?  

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  1. 1. What would a Tour player fire at your home course?

    • Under 60
      20
    • 60-65
      71
    • 65-70
      46
    • 70+
      2


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I know it's probably not making a huge difference in the discussion, but it's probably at least worth pointing out that the stats that some are using in regards to the PGA Tour players are all accumulated during PGA tour events, and under tournament conditions.  That likely means something.

As a kid growing up and watching the Olympics I used to find it very amusing that the figure skaters would all (except for maybe the winner) fall or stumble on a jump or two during the actual competition but during that exhibition at the end with no pressure, they would always perform flawlessly.


The closest thing I think we have to a sample of a PGA player in a casual round, by the way, is:

Here's a couple of excerpts:

Quote

Alright.....I'm in no condition to give a full report. We'll save that for tomorrow, but I will give the scores.... We played the same tees. 6771 yds. 73.3/139. I shot 85...... :8) Graeme shot 63, and really never made a putt! I need to go back over the card tomorrow, but I think he hit all 18 greens!

 

Quote

No, he really never made anything over 10 feet......of course, he never really had anything over 10 feet all day. He did chip in for eagle on one par 4 though. I've never seen anything like it......! I'll post the scorecard tomorrow too.

It's too long to bother posting here, but post #229 (page 13) contains @David in FL's full recap of the day.

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Graeme was also playing his home course AND was not an average tour player at the time. The greens and other conditions were good.

Dave, FWIW, said 67 or so. 6800 yard course. He had tour status.

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Erik J. Barzeski —  I knock a ball. It goes in a gopher hole. 🏌🏼‍♂️
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From the tip at my course, PGA pros will shoot 60 - 65.   When the web.com tour played at the course, they introduced longer tees which are not available to the public now.  From that special tee, top PGA players will play 65 - 70.

RiCK

(Play it again, Sam)

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2 minutes ago, iacas said:

Dave, FWIW, said 67 or so. 6800 yard course. He had tour status.

Is that assuming some standard of course rating or just taking into account yardage as being the determining factor?

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8 minutes ago, iacas said:

Graeme was also playing his home course

Yeah, this is why I qualified it with "the closest thing I can think of ..."  It wasn't his first trip around that place.  But I have a rebuttal to that as well ... two of my best all-time scores (the one time I broke par many years ago) and when I shot a 76 on a 7400 yd. course in Montana a few years back were both courses I've still to this day only played once.

11 minutes ago, iacas said:

...AND was not an average tour player at the time.

I don't think this is a valid argument.  The "depth of field" arguments and the Tiger V. Jack arguments where its frequently pointed out that nearly all of these guys is capable of winning any given week suggest that the dropoff from top tour player to average tour player isn't very far.

15 minutes ago, iacas said:

The greens and other conditions were good.

Also overstated IMO.  Most of us play on courses with at least decent grooming.  The amount of times my ball is knocked off line by a deformity in a green is probably similar to the amount of times I've ended up in a sand filled divot.

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Not crazy about I know a guy who knows a guy anecdotes but I know a guy that went to high school with Steve Jones, 8 tour wins including a major. He's not just a guy he's my office assistant's hubby. They still hook up for a round here and there when Steve is around and have since they were HS buddies. He said SJ's scores were/are always under par but vary.

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Dave :-)

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27 minutes ago, Jeremie Boop said:

Is that assuming some standard of course rating or just taking into account yardage as being the determining factor?

It's wwhatever he had in his mind as being a typical golf course.

18 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

Yeah, this is why I qualified it with "the closest thing I can think of ..."  It wasn't his first trip around that place.  But I have a rebuttal to that as well ... two of my best all-time scores (the one time I broke par many years ago) and when I shot a 76 on a 7400 yd. course in Montana a few years back were both courses I've still to this day only played once.

Your rebuttal is lame. ;-) Most people score better on courses with which they're familiar. You know this.

18 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

I don't think this is a valid argument.  The "depth of field" arguments and the Tiger V. Jack arguments where its frequently pointed out that nearly all of these guys is capable of winning any given week suggest that the dropoff from top tour player to average tour player isn't very far.

Yes it is. There's still a drop-off between the best players and the worst players on the PGA Tour, even if that drop has decreased quite a bit over the last 40 or 50 years. There's still a drop, and the OP specified middle-of-the-pack PGA Tour players - of which Graeme was not at the time.

18 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

Also overstated IMO.  Most of us play on courses with at least decent grooming.  The amount of times my ball is knocked off line by a deformity in a green is probably similar to the amount of times I've ended up in a sand filled divot.

Players of all levels make more putts on faster, smoother greens, particularly shorter putts. This affects PGA Tour players a bit more because they're more likely to hit the line they intended to hit - a bump, then, is only going to increase the odds of a miss.

Sorry, Drew. I don't just make this stuff up. ;-)

1 minute ago, Dave2512 said:

Not crazy about I know a guy who knows a guy anecdotes but I know a guy that went to high school with Steve Jones, 8 tour wins including a major. He's not just a guy he's my office assistant's hubby. They still hook up for a round here and there when Steve is around and have since they were HS buddies. He said SJ's score were/are always under par but vary.

Kinda matches what Dave said.

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1 hour ago, iacas said:

It's wwhatever he had in his mind as being a typical golf course.

I was just curious, I know length is one of the larger factors in the difficulty of a course, but I wasn't sure if there's a rating that would be considered standard for a normal difficulty course.

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8 hours ago, iacas said:

I should have added "from 50 to 125 yards." They don't get up and down nearly as often as people seem to think.

But because they play on courses that are considered quite difficult compared to the average home course, wouldn't their up & down % be expected to increase due to having closer misses on average - particularly with slower greens to hold approaches?

Quote

PGA Tour players are way better at the longer shots than people tend to realize.

The comment above is not to discount this, but only emphasize how the two go together. If you apply a fantastic long game on a shorter course on average they will have an easier time being more consistent and hitting the ball closer to the pin on average and therefore making more putts. Or do you think they would have the same expected proximity on one of our home courses as they would on the tougher tour courses and setups?

8 hours ago, Chilli Dipper said:

The difficulty of the courses the pros play on is also overestimated. Tournament conditions are a step above what the average golfer is used to, but for the most part, the tour isn't playing on courses whose operations revolve around hosting a championship event every year. Resorts and private clubs still need to keep their flagship courses open (and playable) to paying guests and members for the other 51 weeks of the year. Simply put, the pros aren't facing U.S. Open conditions every week.

When the field averages even par for the week at any given tour event, it's in conditions that aren't radically different from what normal golfers face at that course during the rest of the year. Now, that's shooting a 71 or 72 on a course where a scratch player can expect to shoot 75 or 76, so these guys are good. They've also had days of practice on the course to prepare, have dialed in to the speed of the greens, and have every yardage and every slope charted out. Playing blind on an unfamiliar course, a pro may get into a groove and card a score in the low 60s. But it won't be easy.

I get you on the tournament prep being very different to hitting a course blind, but to some extent the OP is comparing how we play on our home courses day-in, day-out vs. the tour pros moving from place to place. How would we score visiting a course blind relative to our home course where most of the scores are posted and we are very familiar with the layout and greens. Granted pros make it a point to know this stuff with yardage books and memory. Still switching between venues and conditions rather suddenly vs. gradual changes we would tend to experience on a home course must add some difficulty.

I came across a good study that analyzed all PGA tournament scores for 2007 including field average adjustments. He had the unadjusted scoring average that year as 70.704. If you figure the average course setup is ~ CR 75 and add one stroke for 'tournament conditions' (and added difficulty of Major setups) then that was about 5.3 strokes below average rating.

So relative to a Course Rating (slope should not matter to a pro), and assuming a standard normal distribution, 95% of the scores should range between -6.7 and -3.9 below the rating. However, his analysis detected two interesting features, the curve (with a ton of samples) is approximately symmetric with a ~ .4 skewness. This right skew means the most frequently expected result (the mode) is actually slightly lower than the mean. So that implies that even on tour setups the lower than average scores are expected just a bit more frequently (the left tail and shoulder are slightly thicker and probability for scores lower than the mode slightly higher.). Here's an approximation of what the distribution would look like relative to strokes below the CR.

Appx PGA Avg Scoring Dist - 2007 - field avg - right skew - sm.PNG

In comparing courses with higher average scores (like the U.S. Open) the study found that the standard deviation of scores increased. The 'tougher test' created more of a separation between the players. Also the players whose scores tended to skew left were poorer players on average in terms of results. They averaged a relatively high score, but they could go really low sometimes.

The relevance this has to the thread is that on the easier home courses that most of us tend to play, the tour players would be more bunched in their expected scores with higher probabilities around the mean of -5.3 relative to the CR and possibly more toward the low side with the left-skewing, less-consistent scorers reducing the size of the right tail and extending the left while holding the 'field average' the same. It could skew the distribution toward lower expected score (though the most frequently expected value would still be around the mode).

On 5/25/2016 at 8:38 PM, iacas said:

If you're a 0.0 then ten of your rounds will average the course rating, but the other ten might average three or four strokes higher.

But what would you expect as a total spread for the average scratch population? You agree that with the average population of golfers by handicap there's a decrease in score variability with increasing skill versus the average population at each handicap level having the same average scoring distribution, yes?

IMO, the answer to the OP greatly depends on the CR.

On my course from the tips, they'd be expected to shoot under 65 over 50% of the time. On a CR of 72, I'd expect  below 67 over 50% of the time. At Oakmont (in non-Open setup), under 73 over 50% of the time. And that would be without accounting for a possible 'going low' effect from the typically easier home course setups we face (not including Oakmont there. They would face some hazards you don't find on tour either - lost balls could be an issue for some.

I'm not sure I agree that they'd expect to putt worse. At the least because I would expect their proximity to the hole to increase on all shots due to the typically shorter length (shorter irons on average into each hole) along with relatively slower, softer greens.

Edited by natureboy
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Kevin

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The greens I play on are terrible. I've only had the privilege of playing private courses a handful of times, but it just made me realize how crap my greens are. I gotta think that this would add some strokes.

Colin P.

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1 hour ago, colin007 said:

The greens I play on are terrible. I've only had the privilege of playing private courses a handful of times, but it just made me realize how crap my greens are. I gotta think that this would add some strokes.

You're hoping to pull out the popcorn aren't you?

I don't think so, but it partly depends. I think just by dint of their excellent 3-putting on greens that are more challenging for that skill (stimp increases relative distance error) they are probably better than most ams on any green. At the same time,  I expect that a blind visit (with a warm-up) could add a wrinkle in adjustment to slower stimps relative to what they are used to.

But I'd agree that generally a muni course is more roughly treated and perhaps would have a few more unpredictable bumps than a private club even if the stimps are the same.

Edited by natureboy

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1 hour ago, natureboy said:

But because they play on courses that are considered quite difficult compared to the average home course, wouldn't their up & down % be expected to increase due to having closer misses on average - particularly with slower greens to hold approaches?

A PGA Tour player's game is optimized to do well on the kinds of courses they play, where conditions are fairly uniform from hole to hole and week to week. Their proximity would not change significantly playing on different greens - it may even suffer slightly if they couldn't adjust well, or if some greens released while others plugged and sucked back.

Additionally, as noted, bumpy greens decrease make percentages, so even if they were a foot closer, they might actually take the same or more putts.

1 hour ago, natureboy said:

The comment above is not to discount this, but only emphasize how the two go together. If you apply a fantastic long game on a shorter course on average they will have an easier time being more consistent and hitting the ball closer to the pin on average and therefore making more putts. Or do you think they would have the same expected proximity on one of our home courses as they would on the tougher tour courses and setups?

Same answer as above. Proximity might even suffer due to poorer conditions, failure to adjust, differing conditions hole to hole, etc.

1 hour ago, natureboy said:

But what would you expect as a total spread for the average scratch population? You agree that with the average population of golfers by handicap there's a decrease in score variability with increasing skill versus the average population at each handicap level having the same average scoring distribution, yes?

I'm not going to guess, and it's off topic anyway. I was just quickly pointing out that scratch doesn't mean they average the course rating. They don't. Only in their 10 best rounds.

1 hour ago, natureboy said:

IMO, the answer to the OP greatly depends on the CR.

Of course. But most of a course rating is still the distance. If it's wide open with no rough, no trees, and huge greens, it'll be lower, but not a lot.

1 hour ago, natureboy said:

On a CR of 72, I'd expect  below 67 over 50% of the time. At Oakmont (in non-Open setup), under 73 over 50% of the time. And that would be without accounting for a possible 'going low' effect from the typically easier home course setups we face (not including Oakmont there. They would face some hazards you don't find on tour either - lost balls could be an issue for some.

67, 66.7, something like that, yeah.

But not 61. Not 59. Not 63 very often, either.

1 hour ago, natureboy said:

I'm not sure I agree that they'd expect to putt worse.

Studies have shown this to be the case. Players of all ability levels, given time to adjust, putt better on faster, smoother greens than slower (and ostensibly bumpier) greens.

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1 hour ago, natureboy said:

I came across a good study that analyzed all PGA tournament scores for 2007 including field average adjustments. He had the unadjusted scoring average that year as 70.704. If you figure the average course setup is ~ CR 75 and add one stroke for 'tournament conditions' (and added difficulty of Major setups) then that was about 5.3 strokes below average rating.

...

On my course from the tips, they'd be expected to shoot under 65 over 50% of the time. On a CR of 72, I'd expect  below 67 over 50% of the time. At Oakmont (in non-Open setup), under 73 over 50% of the time. 

I gave you reputation, but my head hurts. You owe me an Advil. That's a lot of words. 

The bolded just feels too low to me still, but you've done your homework. 

I spot-checked a notoriously easy course PGA West Nicklaus, and the PGA players average 69.5 or so, and the CR on the scorecard is listed at 74.3.  I guess 5 strokes under CR is a decent rule of thumb for pro setups.

The trick is that you said it yourself: as you make courses easier, you tighten up the dispersion, right? There's less separation. So as courses get lower CRs, say down around 70, pros might be shooting fewer than 5 strokes under that, theoretically. We might project an average just over 65, perhaps, for a CR of 70.

My gut still tells me that shooting that extremely low even on easy courses is very hard. I think pro's don't necessarily succeed because they go incredibly low. They succeed because they consistently go relatively low. They rise up because they play well often, in multiple tournaments, across a long span of time. I think they separate themselves from non-pros because of consistency, rather than shockingly low scores on easier setups. Just my gut. Maybe that makes no sense. 

 

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11 minutes ago, iacas said:

67, 66.7, something like that, yeah.

I got the same number curiously, but since it's a single round...

11 minutes ago, iacas said:

But not 61. Not 59. Not 63 very often, either.

I agree that the rarity of high 50's scores seems to represent a kind of hard lower limit - extremely rare, even for casual rounds.

When these sort of constraints exist in nature, distributions quite often are log-normally rather than normally distributed so I wonder if the shape of the distribution for the expected field scores might change due to having an average closer (especially on lower CR) to that limit and the fact that even on the very tough courses their distribution already is slightly skewed right.

If such a shift in shape towards log-normal happened (more relative skew for lower CR) that would increase the likelihood of the low scores in the distribution - the mode would be shifted to the low side relative to the average. 

11 minutes ago, iacas said:

Studies have shown this to be the case. Players of all ability levels, given time to adjust, putt better on faster, smoother greens than slower (and ostensibly bumpier) greens.

Did these studies control for each variable (smooth, fast) independently?

In other words were both green mowing heights tested by the same groups of players just after being cut to different heights after a full equal course of conditioning for surface smoothness and a similar test on equal mowing height, but say a week or month of prep similar to a 'typical low' non-tour standard.

The latter is possibly difficult, because more manicured / maintained courses have accumulated quality over time while more roughly treated courses accumulate dings over time so accounting for relative smoothness independent of the grass mowing height may be hard to do. Doesn't mean attempting to answer the question wouldn't be insightful.

My point is that courses that maintain a high stimp standard on the greens tend to be very well manicured over time and that could be the difference relative to a muni where the dings accumulate and accumulate. So even if you lowered the speeds on the well-manicured course and raised them on the muni the relative underlying smoothness of the green surfaces may remain the same, so the answer might be that people putt better on better maintained greens.

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2 minutes ago, natureboy said:

Did these studies control for each variable (smooth, fast) independently?

No, because smooth and fast tend to go together. Unless you're talking about an artificial surface, slower greens tend to be bumpier greens.

And… faster greens (even if you could control "bumpiness" independently) require smaller strokes, so they would also logically result in slightly better putting stats.

Plus the other stuff you said.

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30 minutes ago, iacas said:

No, because smooth and fast tend to go together. Unless you're talking about an artificial surface, slower greens tend to be bumpier greens.

Curious if that's because of grass height alone or better surface maintenance. But yes for the OP scenario the pros will get slower, bumpier greens on average and likely linearly with the rating.

But not for certain. I'd still like to see a comparison on a really well maintained 'old school course' that intentionally stimps lower due to having more contour.

Quote

And… faster greens (even if you could control "bumpiness" independently) require smaller strokes, so they would also logically result in slightly better putting stats.

But because they will be closer on average mightn't they be making about the same length stroke? Would putting stroke length increase at the same rate as proximity decreases due to shorter holes?

Why does a longer stroke automatically mean harder? Personally I would think that it's harder to be precise with smaller changes in stroke length when there's a finite limit of human muscle control / precision. Maybe there's a sweet spot instead of a longer stroke = less precise, shorter stroke = more precise?

34 minutes ago, RandallT said:

The trick is that you said it yourself: as you make courses easier, you tighten up the dispersion, right? There's less separation. So as courses get lower CRs, say down around 70, pros might be shooting fewer than 5 strokes under that, theoretically. We might project an average just over 65, perhaps, for a CR of 70.

My gut still tells me that shooting that extremely low even on easy courses is very hard. I think pro's don't necessarily succeed because they go incredibly low. They succeed because they consistently go relatively low. They rise up because they play well often, in multiple tournaments, across a long span of time. I think they separate themselves from non-pros because of consistency, rather than shockingly low scores on easier setups. Just my gut. Maybe that makes no sense. 

I agree about the unlikelihood of really low scores (high 50's e.g.). See my post to Erik about the possibility of the distribution shape changing from approximately normal toward more log-normal with the 'bunching'. Basically the pros have less 'room' to separate themselves while bunching up against the hard lower limit and high scores still happen and affect the average, but the mode is toward the low side and the scores around it would become more likely relative to the average.

This shape is more extreme than I had in mind, but it conveys the general idea of an increasingly skewed distribution moving toward a log-normal shape. The chart on the right is really the same distribution on a log scale but it allows a side-by-side comparison of a 'normal' shape next to a strongly skewed log-normal shape. The 'Density' axis is essentially a measure of likelihood of an individual result so the peak is the most likely individual score (mode).

log.jpg

Edited by natureboy

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41 minutes ago, natureboy said:

But not for certain. I'd still like to see a comparison on a really well maintained 'old school course' that intentionally stimps lower due to having more contour.

I wouldn't, and it's this kind of random unverifiable side road that you tend to travel without anything more than speculation. Let's not do that here.

41 minutes ago, natureboy said:

But because they will be closer on average mightn't they be making about the same length stroke? Would putting stroke length increase at the same rate as proximity decreases due to shorter holes?

Like that. Nobody said they'd be any closer. A 360-yard hole is still going to be a 360-yard hole. They may actually play longer if the course is not as firm as a PGA Tour level course.

Too much speculation with no way to verify anything. Moving on…

41 minutes ago, natureboy said:

Why does a longer stroke automatically mean harder? Personally I would think that it's harder to be precise with smaller changes in stroke length when there's a finite limit of human muscle control / precision. Maybe there's a sweet spot instead of a longer stroke = less precise, shorter stroke = more precise?

I don't agree, nor does my experience working with players on SAM. Generally speaking shorter strokes are better: they deliver the face at a better angle and more consistent speed at impact. So if you have a 15-footer on a faster green, you'll generally put a better stroke on the same 15-footer on a slower green.

(I am not saying that players should strive to have "short" strokes.)

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@iacas

Not sure why you feel the need to try and make people feel stupid? What's the attitude all about?

Because you seem to think that nobody else has any valid arguments, I felt compelled to contact a friend of mine and ask him about the subject. He has won twice on the MacKenzie Tour, 4 times on the Gateway Tour and played in the US Open in 2010 at Pebble Beach. I Facebooked him a few days ago and heard back from him today. He said that his Tour buddies of that calibre typically shoot in the mid 60's (or lower) if they play an "average" course for a Pro-Am or a sponsor's event or for a casual round. He added that he played a municipal course in Phoenix last week (he didn't say which one) and shot -8 without ever having seen the course before. And he was never able to make it through the final stage of Q-School so he self-admittedly doesn't have the skillset of the PGA guys.

I still say the average Tour player would shoot in the low 60's at my course. Here's the scorecard of it, and Nick Taylor's scores from the 2006 Provincial Tournament. He was only a junior at the time and hadn't played for the University of Washington yet. Safe to say his handicap has improved a little bit since then :-P and he still shot 68 twice and under difficult tournament conditions! No way he'd shoot that now. 

Nick Taylor  blank.png

Round: 4
Position: 1
Score: -11
Strokes: 277
Tip: Click on a hole number to compare Nick’s score to the field.
Hole 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Out 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 In Total
Yards 363 381 374 191 496 406 524 197 401 3333 530 197 424 487 559 166 393 428 286 3470 6803
Handicap 16 4 14 18 10 2 12 8 6   11 15 3 1 7 13 9 5 17    
Par 4 4 4 3 5 4 5 3 4 36 5 3 4 4 5 3 4 4 4 36 72
Round 1 5 3 4 3 4 4 4 3 4 34 4 3 4 4 5 3 3 3 5 34 68
Round 2 4 3 4 3 4 3 6 3 5 35 5 3 4 4 5 3 4 4 4 36 71
Round 3 4 4 3 2 5 4 4 3 4 33 4 3 3 4 6 3 4 4 4 35 68
Round 4 4 3 4 3 5 3 5 3 4 34 5 3 4 4 5 3 4 4 4 36 70
Key:   Eagle   Birdie   Bogey   Dbl Bogey
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