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Deep Dive Analyses in TST Members' Games- Feedback Requested


RandallT
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Loved the article, what a great read. 

While I dont think I would want my game looked at, I am starting to be more curious about my game when it comes to the short stuff. I know GG uses 100 yards, while 60 yards is maybe considered better. I basically wonder what part of the 100 yards and In I suffer at.

Would love to start figuring that out this Summer if anyone could put me on the right path to analysing that!

Any chance some of these spreadsheets using the LSW benchmarks could be made available for the forum? :)

I do review each round and count my nGIR but its the only stat I maintain on my own.

As for the article, I did like knowing the player's history. Would even be interesting to see someone who made a recent equipment change, but I dont know a statistical review would ever lead to an equipment change conclusion.

Edited by cutchemist42
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I definitely enjoyed the read and I thought it was a pretty good analysis of his game. I'm curious, though, are you able to extract any sort of "raw" data from GAME GOLF (in terms of the initial distance from hole, the club used, and the ending distance from hole), or is it just the information you can slowly sort through using the web interface? If it's only the latter, it seems like in the future it might be nice for GAME GOLF to implement some way to take the data yourself to crunch your own numbers.

The one critique I have is about the 6th recommendation at the end: 

  1. For your iron play, read and implement the "Control Your Low Point" section of LSW. This could be why most of your iron shots are short, as reflected by GG.

It seems to me that this would fall under a similar umbrella to the 1st and 2nd points (about finding an instructor and working on key swing mechanics) and that the solution to hitting shots short instead lies within the suggestion of implementing shot zones. Essentially speaking, the shot zone of @Fairway_CY appears to be falling short of the target with all of his irons. Would the solution not to be for him to take a little bit more club than he normally would for a shot, since his current club selection appears to be based on contact that is better than average for him? Obviously improving the consistency of strike would be helpful, but I would think that the fastest way (and most correct way) to correct this issue would be to simply use the shot zones that he will map out, and ensure that the shot zone for that particular club doesn't end up short compared to his target. 

  I would volunteer myself for review, but I don't fit your criteria and I certainly am not able to play enough golf around now for it to mean anything (today was beautiful, sunny and 65, with about two inches of snow on the course :pound:). I do appreciate the insight you gave me in the past in one of your more informal deep dive reviews, though, because I think that they're tremendously helpful and I know that the advice you (@RandallT) gave me about working on my driving is one of the things that helped push me past scratch. I never even thought to look there, since I figured I hit it okay and didn't hit it OB too often, but improving that portion of my game definitely took the stress off the rest of it for me.

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Great feedback, @Pretzel. I think you've zeroed in on what I'd consider the weakest part. Here's some background (and ideas for future).

When we discussed the feature, one idea was to do a straight stats analysis. Another was to do add formal recommendations from an instructor, up to and including a swing analysis (like evolvr feedback video). What we went with was what you see there- a layman's shot at documenting how to proceed, using the layman's best interpretation of LSW and the analysis. It's not meant to be gospel like a Golf Digest article might go about it, but just to document how we regular folks might puzzle out a plan for improvement.

We could try different ways in the future, such as creating a thread where we as the community came up with ideas for recommendation for the person being featured. Crowd-source it, so to speak.

I love your idea about taking more club, for example. I'd have never thought of that- and it seems very insightful. The idea of the community chiming in to help one of our own appeals to me. Much like a My Swing thread, except that instead of looking at a swing, we are looking at their game profiles and come to our own conclusions about how we'd proceed.

But yes, I accept your point about #6 being subordinate to #1/2. My thought when writing that section was to pick out portions from LSW from the sections where CY was weakest (#6), but I added a few "big picture" things like getting lessons first- so that came off as a bit incongruous.

 

5 hours ago, cutchemist42 said:

While I dont think I would want my game looked at, I am starting to be more curious about my game when it comes to the short stuff. I know GG uses 100 yards, while 60 yards is maybe considered better. I basically wonder what part of the 100 yards and In I suffer at.

Would love to start figuring that out this Summer if anyone could put me on the right path to analysing that!

Any chance some of these spreadsheets using the LSW benchmarks could be made available for the forum? :)

I do review each round and count my nGIR but its the only stat I maintain on my own.

As for the article, I did like knowing the player's history. Would even be interesting to see someone who made a recent equipment change, but I dont know a statistical review would ever lead to an equipment change conclusion.

We can chat re: your short game! I seemed to recall you had a good stats tracking tool already- maybe I'm confusing a prior discussion you and I had elsewhere? I'll reach out to you soon. 

And yes, nGIR is pretty key, certainly.

It would be interesting to see someone someday do an equipment change after the analysis, and maybe do a follow up later to see if that change made a big difference (if they didn't do lessons).

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Driver: :ping: G30, Irons: :tmade: Burner 2.0, Putter: :cleveland:, Balls: :snell:

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Just now, No Mulligans said:

If you are looking for another guinie pig, I'll volunteer.

Cool! On the list. I'll buzz you to discuss future plans. 

My Swing


Driver: :ping: G30, Irons: :tmade: Burner 2.0, Putter: :cleveland:, Balls: :snell:

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1 hour ago, RandallT said:

I love your idea about taking more club, for example. I'd have never thought of that- and it seems very insightful. The idea of the community chiming in to help one of our own appeals to me. Much like a My Swing thread, except that instead of looking at a swing, we are looking at their game profiles and come to our own conclusions about how we'd proceed.

But yes, I accept your point about #6 being subordinate to #1/2. My thought when writing that section was to pick out portions from LSW from the sections where CY was weakest (#6), but I added a few "big picture" things like getting lessons first- so that came off as a bit incongruous.

 

Makes sense, I can see that it was definitely tied into LSW, which I wouldn't necessarily call a bad thing. I would just perhaps be careful to avoid suggesting someone fix a scratch in their paint by rebuilding the fender, rather than suggesting they repaint it for now until a new and better fender is finished being built (if that analogy makes sense - the better contact is the true long term fix but for immediate improvement you can simply choose a better club based on the center of your shot zones). 

Overall, though, I really enjoyed reading it and the fact that this minor thing was the only part I could find that I didn't think fit perfectly says a lot about the quality of your writing. Keep up the great work helping people out!

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I just want to point out that, as I read it when Randy initially sent me the article, the full swing was holding me back. I interpreted that as primarily contact. 

Since my initial reading of the article a few months ago, I've worked quite a bit on my game. My primary focus was my weight being forward at impact. 

Penalties have been largely cut from my scorecards (with an occasional hiccup here and there) and I'm hitting a bunch more greens in regulation... frequently hitting 7 to 9 in a round as opposed to 2 to 5 in a round. 

I think that, for any individual, what they read can and likely will be interpreted differently by each person. Trying to find a cookie cutter or mold is going to be difficult. 

To me, the benefit was more in seeing how someone else viewed the stats as opposed to how I was using them. My perception of my strengths and weaknesses was different than what Randy was reading. That led to me looking at things from a different point of view which led to a focus on practicing full shots from 130 to 180 yards more often as opposed to me practicing my driver and wedges and leaving everything in between to chance. I've gone from having zero confidence in my irons and blowing most shots short and right to gaining about 5 to 7 yards with most irons and playing a bit of a draw. 

I guess what I'm saying is it's going to be an imperfect science and it's up to the individual being assessed to be willing to pay attention to what's being said. On the flip-side, it's also up to the author to kinda know his audience and write it in a way that the subject can benefit the most. I felt that his article about my stats did just that. 

I'm looking forward to seeing how his next one comes out and possibly doing a follow up assessment of my game and stats in the future.

CY

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13 hours ago, Fairway_CY said:

That led to me looking at things from a different point of view which led to a focus on practicing full shots from 130 to 180 yards more often as opposed to me practicing my driver and wedges and leaving everything in between to chance.

I agree. Just looking at the data was what I think sold you. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this chart was enlightening:

cy_ApproachData.jpg

For the 75 opportunities in the range 120-220yds from the FAIRWAY (disregarding bad lies in the rough) over 8 rounds, you hit the green 22 times, and near green 45 times. As we discussed prior to publishing, that was a wakeup call.

When we plugged that into the PGA shot data, those 75 shots at a green from the fairway accounted for about 40 strokes lost, and that was likely a ball-striking problem. In other words, for fewer than 10 shots from the fairway per round in the 120-220 range, you were giving away 5 strokes to the pros. That led us to look at the LSW ceilings for approach shots. Sure enough, you were well off the mark of the ceilings for that section, so the recommendations were included.

I mention all this, because I think the data is key. GG just doesn't give us this type of detail yet, although they've got the info. They give you this:

cy_gg_approach_scatter.jpg

Yes, you can do various dropdowns to see how you do from range and get a visual feel for the results. You can see how many go left, right, short, long, etc.  But I don't see the numbers on hitting the green or getting near the green- which to me is critical. It also helps to see your stats on hitting greens from various ranges to align with the benchmarks in the book.

Maybe OT for this thread, but I felt this was a case where GG is letting the users down just a bit. CY is a smart guy who knows how to use stats, yet iron play didn't jump out of their analysis as an area to focus on. Not even in its own final assessment! In fact, approach shots were ranked dead last.

gg_recommendations_cy.jpg

GG can do better with the data they have on approach shots, and expose the magnitude of the problem better (in my humble opinion). I don't get the sense of urgency from the scatter plot above that I do from the chart above. And they probably devoted a TON more resources into developing their scatter plot than I did on a basic chart. In fact, I think I can make a case that GG has buried the lede.

To bring it back to the point of the thread, I was tempted to show more data and reports, and less of my text around it. Hopefully, that mix was ok in the article. I tend to get verbose- as you can tell from this post. 

 

 

My Swing


Driver: :ping: G30, Irons: :tmade: Burner 2.0, Putter: :cleveland:, Balls: :snell:

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2 hours ago, RandallT said:

They give you this:

cy_gg_approach_scatter.jpg

Other things which should be considered is approach shots by club option, also with selecting the "Rounds" feature to compare.
In the chart above, it shows "All Rounds" yet above Randy indicates rounds were last 8?
"For the 75 opportunities in the range 120-220yds from the FAIRWAY (disregarding bad lies in the rough) over 8 rounds"
Another misconception is the broad range, 120-220. Not many players hit greens beyond 170 yards, yet many are faced with those shots frequently.
And, I feel the data could be better reflective by comparing approach shots which are for GIR, not include other attempts which occur after a chip out from the woods (recovery per say) that occur during rounds. Granted pars can still be saved or birdied if lucky enough to hole out, but saving par and bogey, saves strokes when bad or poor tee shots are made.

2 hours ago, RandallT said:

GG can do better with the data they have on approach shots, and expose the magnitude of the problem better (in my humble opinion).

That hits the Nail directly on the Head ...  ;-)

Overall I would like GG to breakout round analysis in two other categories which would be beneficial to high handicap players by having a distinction between total pars compared to total holes with scores greater than double bogey. Then they would see the strengths in their game along with holes with the higher scores.
For anyone to score better or worse, they need to address the cause of the higher scores. Is the cause from - Bad tee shots or OB(stroke & distance is a round killer if occurs multiple times)
hazards (that require drops with penalty), or shanked or duffs or pulled hooks.
Then break down scrambling, sand attempts, chip and pitches around the green.

GG needs to show trends in some manner. Either by rounds or dates (month to month) etc.
I would like to see the data be more clearer than just a general sum of things for a better analysis. (in my humble opinion).

Johnny Rocket - Let's Rock and Roll and play some golf !!!

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