Mac O'Grady's Ballstriking

[MacDutch]

So you finally found out Erik? Well, I must say I had a good laugh 

[iacas]

5 minutes ago, MacDutch said:

So you finally found out Erik? Well, I must say I had a good laugh 

I tend to think that eventually, logic, reason, and facts will be enough… but I'm not insane, and I reach a breaking point where even I realize it's a complete waste of time.

[Yff Theos]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

Do not quote me, respond to me, or @mention me.

Ok, and viceversa, please.

[boogielicious]

1 minute ago, Yff Theos said:

Ok, and viceversa, please.

Stop. Just stop. 

[MuniGrit]

On 1/3/2018 at 2:00 PM, kpaulhus said:

Ball striking is the #1 reason why PGA tour players are at that level. If you put me and Dustin Johnson on a team and he hit all the shots and I only putted for him, we could win a PGA Tour event. Put us the other way around, and well, DJ would be making a lot of putts for double or worse.

I doubt it.

[iacas]

8 hours ago, MuniGrit said:

I doubt it.

It’s true.

There’s very little separation in putting.

[saevel25]

8 hours ago, MuniGrit said:

I doubt it.

Dustin Johnson averaged 1.81 strokes better than the field on the PGA Tour in tee-to-green strokes gained (#1 on the tour)

Dustin is 81st in strokes gained putting at .096 in 2017. That isn't out of this world good. There are definitely good putters out there who putt better than the average PGA Tour player.

Dustin Johnson doesn't need an out of this world putter to win a PGA Tour event.

 

 

 

[kpaulhus]

8 hours ago, MuniGrit said:

I doubt it.

Last year, the top 200 PGA tour players averaged 1.75 putts per hole. 

Take a guess what my average was in 2017.

 

Spoiler

1.71

 

[MuniGrit]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

It’s true.

There’s very little separation in putting.

 

1 hour ago, saevel25 said:

Dustin Johnson averaged 1.81 strokes better than the field on the PGA Tour in tee-to-green strokes gained (#1 on the tour)

Dustin is 81st in strokes gained putting at .096 in 2017. That isn't out of this world good. There are definitely good putters out there who putt better than the average PGA Tour player.

Dustin Johnson doesn't need an out of this world putter to win a PGA Tour event.

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, kpaulhus said:

Last year, the top 200 PGA tour players averaged 1.75 putts per hole. 

Take a guess what my average was in 2017.

 

  Hide contents

 1.71

 

I'm not saying it isn't that big of a difference, I'm just saying I highly doubt DJ could win a golf tournament over 4 days with kpaulhus putting for him. Regular Joe's underrate how good touring pros putt compared to the regular Joe's, even the ones that are considered bad putters. You might average 1.71 putts per GIR but then again that isn't on the greens they play or with millions of dollars on the line and picking up 2 footers that turn into 3 footers.

[iacas]

6 minutes ago, MuniGrit said:

Regular Joe's underrate how good touring pros putt compared to the regular Joe's, even the ones that are considered bad putters.

The opposite is actually true.

PGA Tour putting is consistently over-rated, and amateur putting under-rated.

[Ty_Webb]

23 minutes ago, kpaulhus said:

Last year, the top 200 PGA tour players averaged 1.75 putts per hole. 

Take a guess what my average was in 2017.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

1.71

 

No they didn't. That is their putts/GIR, not putts per hole. Dead last is 30.42 putts per round, which is 1.69 putts per hole. Dustin was 99th with 29.10, which is 1.62 putts per hole. 0.09 putts per hole works out to 6.5 shots over a 72 hole tournament. It's not impossible, but it's quite unlikely. I don't think he won any tournaments by 6.5 shots and if he did, he putted well to do it.

[MuniGrit]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

The opposite is actually true.

PGA Tour putting is consistently over-rated, and amateur putting under-rated.

Maybe, but DJ isn't winning with an 8 handicap putting for him on PGA tour courses with the pressure on the line. We will never find out anyways.

[iacas]

21 minutes ago, MuniGrit said:

Maybe, but DJ isn't winning with an 8 handicap putting for him on PGA tour courses with the pressure on the line. We will never find out anyways.

An 80 shooter outputts a PGA Tour player 20% of the time. The other 80% is closer than you’d think.

Mac wasn’t a great putter but he wasn’t one of the best ball strikers his best year either.

[Ty_Webb]

11 minutes ago, iacas said:

An 80 shooter outputts a PGA Tour player 20% of the time. The other 80% is closer than you’d think.

Mac wasn’t a great putter but he wasn’t one of the best ball strikers his best year either.

And how often does an 80 shooter outputt a PGA Tour player the week said PGA Tour player wins a tournament?

And out of curiosity, is that 20% figure over one round? So to outputt over a four day tournament would be I guess something like roughly speaking 0.2 x 0.2 x 0.2 x 0.2 + 0.8 x 0.2 x 0.2 x 0.2 x 4 = 0.03. I'm assuming the 0.8 x 0.8 x 0.2 x 0.2 is going to swing the way of the tour player more often than not. Let's be generous and say 4% of the time over 4 rounds? That 4% of the time is going to be when the tour player putts pretty poorly. It's not impossible to win while putting poorly, but it's fairly unusual. 

[iacas]

Look, @Ty_Webb, my only point here is that PGA Tour players are not the phenomenal putters many people think they are. Dustin Johnson was 81st last year in SGP, at 0.096. He himself, among a population of over-rated putters, was nearly average.

So, take the below as more academic than anything else, not actually caring to argue for Kyle's point, mostly because it's really quite far off topic. In fact…

Spoiler

20 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

And how often does an 80 shooter outputt a PGA Tour player the week said PGA Tour player wins a tournament?

Under 20%, but not as much as you might think. Consider that a scratch golfer is 30%, and that's getting closer to 50%, at which point they'd be equals. The bell curves would align.

If this were an actual topic, I'd mock up some bell curves. Human beings are really bad at understanding probabilities and odds, and I think that's getting you here. When you define something as a victory, that's saying 0.0001 strokes could be the difference, but it still counts as a victory for one side or the other. That's likely to favor the side that wins more often, and as putting performance is kinda like a bell curve, there are bound to be a lot more of those close victories for the PGA Tour player, where they win by only a little - under a full stroke, even - than lopsided three-shot victories or the like.

20 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

And out of curiosity, is that 20% figure over one round? So to outputt over a four day tournament would be I guess something like roughly speaking 0.2 x 0.2 x 0.2 x 0.2 + 0.8 x 0.2 x 0.2 x 0.2 x 4 = 0.03. I'm assuming the 0.8 x 0.8 x 0.2 x 0.2 is going to swing the way of the tour player more often than not. Let's be generous and say 4% of the time over 4 rounds? That 4% of the time is going to be when the tour player putts pretty poorly. It's not impossible to win while putting poorly, but it's fairly unusual.

Again what you're missing is the fact that the margins of those "victories" is often well under a stroke. So if Dustin Johnson ever won by even four strokes, it's possible an 80s shooting golfer could have also won by putting for him that week.

It's not likely, of course, but it's possible.

 

Back to the topic, please.

[The Hook Meister]

Ball striking counts, but accuracy counts for a hole lot more. A 300 yard drive is nice, but if its in the wrong direction it does not mean all that much. It takes ball striking, a good short game, putting ability, and some ;luck to be rteally foods at this game.

[iacas]

58 minutes ago, The Hook Meister said:

Ball striking counts, but accuracy counts for a hole lot more. A 300 yard drive is nice, but if its in the wrong direction it does not mean all that much.

Per the OP ballstriking includes accuracy.

[Yff Theos]

I think I have found an interesting old article about Mac that is partially related to the discussion:

http://articles.latimes.com/1990-07-29/sports/sp-1594_1_golf-balls

And there are the most interesting quotes:

Johnny Miller used to call him dial-a-shot. "There isn't a better pure ball-striker than Mac O'Grady," Miller would tell people.

But he started feeling pain in his back in January, 1988, and a year later, when it was almost unbearable at times, he received the news about his condition.

Of course, even without the back pain, O'Grady has one more battle to wage before he can start thinking of being a virtuoso golfer again--with his putter.

[...] away from the voices inside my head that tell me I'm going to push, pull or miss the putts. I'm going to start making putts because I'm going to stop listening to those voices inside my head.

 

P.S. I can see the title of the thread I started has been changed again without my knowledge what is sad. Much sadder thing is that the new title does not reflect my idea of the thread but instead suggests something opposite to my intentions.