mdl

Erik can be gruff but look at that Nadal-French Open table! Jordan would have to have like double win shares per finals game (filtered to folks with at least, say, 3 finals in their career) than 2nd place to even be able to start a conversation about whether it stacks up versus Nadal! I was growing up when Jordan was dominating and he was incredible but it was never like why bother watching the NBA playoffs because we already know the outcome like it has been with the French open for almost two decades!

@Ty_Webb thanks for the explanation of the old CONGU system! I don't think your 19 round statement is right. That would depend on what someone shoots! But regardless, the 4 stroke buffer zone by itself obviously strongly biases the system towards a lower handicap. It sounds like the evidence shows that it biased caps downwards more than the 8 or 10 best out of last 20 differentials that the traditional US and now WHS uses does. The article itself is basically just a whine about variance 😆 It used to be the handicap system in the UK was biased enough against worse players that low cappers won a lot of the time. But it's just a fact that worse players have a much higher variance in their scores. Unless you bias handicaps down so much that a high capper's expected net score of even their best 50% of rounds is well over par – like apparently the old CONGU system did – in unflighted net events high cappers are almost always going to win. That's just statistics. As Erik and others have said, the obvious solution is flights. Hopefully as time goes on it sets in with club leaders in the UK that unflighted tournaments are too biased against their most dedicated members (where lower cappers are generally over represented) and start to flight their tourneys properly.

I think it's both it doesn't matter at all and of course it matters For driver and metals (I'm going to die on the cross of not calling a metal club a wood!) I find I care less. I've seen some where I found the particular alignment markings distracting. But in terms of just the aesthetics 🤷‍♂️ I don't mind bright or dark colors or more or less subtle graphics on the sole. For irons I think I care mostly because of how we've been socialized. Fat top line is for "bad" players, so makes me feel less confident. But I'm almost certain I could overcome that if it dropped my handicap! I very seriously considered single length irons which generally look fatter.

Ha. Fair. As a professional in data science and machine learning with my grad work in statistics, you're right I should probably be more circumspect about how confident we could be in any model estimates given how thin the overlap is without having looked at the data, simulated for sensitivity, etc... But what's the internet for if not for being wildly more confident online than you would be in a professional capacity

@iacas and @DaveP043 both fair points. To Erik's point, for sure the overlapping data – majors with only a few LIV players in each and only since LIV players started competing in majors – is not extensive. That makes estimation of relative difficulty of placing in a LIV event versus other tours more variable. But IMO it wouldn't be that hard to overcome those issues and estimate a fair set of relative points. Off the top of my head you could anchor on the world rankings distribution of LIV players when they joined versus that on other tours. Allow the estimates to drift from those implied by that relatively slowly over time as more majors data comes in. Do a separate analysis on depth of field and the effects of the different format to construct the distribution of points across the rank where a player finished a tournament. As in, a PGA tour event might give out 15, 12, 10, 8, 8, 7, 7, 7, 6, 6 points for places 1 through 10. You might estimate the total strength of field on LIV is 1/10 that of the PGA. But instead of giving the above points * 0.1, because of the week depth of field and tournament format, you give 2.5, 1.7, 1.4, 0.8, 0.7, 0.4, 0.4, 0.3, 0.2, 0.2. IOW, almost all the points go to the top finishers. To Dave's point, I guess what I'm saying is that feels political. Like, those specs from the WGR were basically written to accommodate the various versions of format across what were recognized as legit tours at the time WGR was imagined. It feels like a technical cop out to say that a new tour with some truly top tier players doesn't fit the specs designed to fit existing tours from the time of conception. I'm advocating just doing the statistics to give them the WGR points they deserve, which would be a satisfyingly tiny number

I am 100% in favor of refusing to do a favor to the Saudis. But they should just say that. This reads like bullshit rationalization on top of a political decision. It wouldn't be that hard to hire someone like Broadie to leverage majors – where players from PGA, Euro, and LIV all compete – to estimate a strength and depth of field and the effects of tour and tournament structure to weight and structure WGR points per finishing position per tournament on each tour accordingly in a fair way. Honestly that would even be better! We all know that LIV competition is a joke with a tiny number of real talents at the top and then a bunch of has beens and AAAA players. From a statistical model we'd have specific numbers to show it. You'd get a small fraction of WGR points for a LIV win versus a PGA win, and effectively zero points for finishing outside the top 3 or 7 or something like that at a LIV event. So then all LIV players who don't finish top 5-10 at every major would fall out of the top 75 or top 100 in the world and LIV would officially be a joke unless they can lure more PGA players.

Holy shit. Within the rules of this game this is the winner by a mile! Aside from @Vinsk's genius nomination, but kind of along the same lines in terms of zen/jedi mind, how about goldfish brain power? The ability to maintain a maximally positive and calm frame of mind and not even "forget" bad shots but not even have it be an issue that a bad shot could stick with you and have a negative effect on future shots.

Sure there are limitations in control of the golf ball with super GI irons, like they're designed to get the ball up in the air so it can be difficult to knock balls down under the wind. But really for us mortals who don't need to be able to hit like 15 different shapes (hard fade, baby fade, straight, baby draw, hard draw, at low, mid, or high trajectory), my understanding is that the biggest issue is swing speed. I game driver SS around 110mph and can get it up to 120mph on the range with not game worthy consistency of results. I get fit to the player's irons side of the spectrum because with my swing speed I hit balloons and fliers with irons on the super GI side. If you're not swing particularly fast there's no need to get fit because you've gone from a 20+ to an 18 index! Like others have said, you can play very very very good golf with super GI irons. Though if you have recently caught the bug and just want new irons, go for it

I've heard this for years and have even advocated it to folks as an easy way to remember the rules better. But I've never been positive it's actually true! Thanks for looking into it!

Agree with this, though honestly here in Portland I sometimes take LCP in the rough too. Def some courses here where in late winter or spring, in the rough or the fairway, it's like 50/50 your ball is covered in heavy mud if it's not embedded. We're not allowed to post scores then anyway so I take liberal cleaning to keep it fun To the OP, as everyone has said, you played it correctly.

At the right course where his length doesn't hurt as much I might vote for Tom Kim. Of the rest, my heart says Rickie. If I had to bet I'd have a tough time choosing between Cantlay and Xander.

At a 16 handicap it may not be the right answer for you, but I think it's worth hitting a few 2 irons! I currently only carry 13 clubs, and the only club between driver and 4i is my 2i! I should probably get fit for a 3w. But for me my driver and wood swing quality/results on a given day are much more correlated than my driver and 2i results. So if I'm wild with the driver, I've generally been wild with the 3w. But I might not be with the 2i. On days when I'm hitting my long irons solid but not the driver, the 2i is a clutch tee club. You say you feel better over your 5i than your hybrid or you 5w, so maybe a 2i would work for you?

I don't know how things work at Chipotle in terms of monitoring revenue versus materials. For a giant corporation like Chipotle, if there's no chance the staff gets in trouble and your savings come out of their paychecks, take your free extra meat. Like you, if they asked me I'd tell the truth. Same thing at a small business, you should correct the mistake. You guys need to lighten up! It's a cramped little world where one is thinking at all about the ethical considerations of what you can see out your window!

Ha. Yeah I honestly would be in favor of banning using marks on the ball to line up putts. It's SO f***ING SLOW. Because of the angle of your vision when you're squatting over the ball, the variance in where the line actually points in comparison to the start line you want is so high. Adding another walk behind the ball and squat and examine on most holes on top of the one for reading the putt makes folks who use that painfully slow on the greens. Though I agree with @iacas that the bigger problem is the broadcast. I'd of course love it if the leaders on Sunday were finishing in 4-4:30. I'd rather not watch 3 hours and only see the leaders' back nine 😆 But really the problem is broadcasting long pre-shots and too many commercials. I'd MUCH rather watch a 3 hour back nine with 2x more shots shown per minute than a 2:15 back nine with the number of shots shown per minute now.

Great responses so far, especially @Shindig. Def recommend that how to flight shots thread. I often use that technique, also learned from that thread. A few thoughts... One, I wonder what you consider a "full" swing with the scoring irons. Even the pros, who are wildly more talented and dialed in than us, don't consider the max distance they can hit consistently their "full" distance. So maybe they can hit their PW 160y consistently, but can only hit it 146y with the control and consistency they want. So in one sense you could say pros ~always hit their "3/4" shot even when they're not flighting the ball. Two, a related point is that swinging too hard will decrease your distance consistency. If you tone it down a bit, you'll hit the sweet spot much more consistently. That will decrease your distance dispersion and maybe even increase your average distance. Three, on top of "3/4" being your stock swing and explicitly flighting the ball, I've had some success taking honest "3/4" or "1/2" shots as my approach shots. For me, the feel is less flighting the ball and more taking mid to long range pitch shots but with longer clubs than my 60˚ which is my default short game club. For example, if the pins aren't near the front of the green, at 80y instead of a "full" LW I might hit a GW where I bring my hands back only to the bottom of my rib cage. Or from 100y instead of a "full" SW I might hit PW where I bring my hands back to just below lead arm parallel.

Added my most recent three rounds. Reflects my being in the middle of a big swing change, and not having practiced putting at all this season! Basically, lots of good ball striking holes, at least a handful of blow up holes, and bad speed control on the greens leading to too many 3-putts. Scores: 85 - 87 - 89 GRI: 9 - 10 - 9 Penalties: 2 - 4 - 2 Putts: 32 – 37 – 38 Predictions: 77 - 75 - 77

I agree with all the points about how this isn't a particularly meaningful prediction or inferential model. But's a fun descriptor of PGA players and a fun exercise for the rest of us who are at least close to PGA tour age range! I came in at 116.7mph, which is about right. I game probably something like 108-110mph, but I'm capable of sustaining 120mph swings for the fences with dispersion reasonable for long drive competitions but not for on course. If I quit my job and took up golf full time I could totally get to gaming 116mph 😆

I did this same exercise (though my checkpoints were different) but it never took much on the course except for giving me some check points with my 60˚ beyond my "feel range" which is about 40 yards. But... Right after getting my new irons I ended up chatting with a father and son next to me at the range. Later they were competing hitting targets. I happened to be holding my new gap wedge and lined one up for fun and hit the bulls eye at 75yd. Now I'm totally in love with partial swing shots! I'm hitting what feel like pitch shots out to 100 yards now!

I think in general spending money or even time on promotional or free single brand fittings is a waste. I got fit for new irons this spring. I hit 6-7 shafts and then the top three shafts with 5-6 different club heads. The variance across brands and shafts was shockingly large in many cases. A one brand fitting with their OEM shafts would've left me with no understanding of the range of fits I could get. Granted, like you I came in with not terrible numbers, so the biggest differences were in the negative direction from my previous irons. But I did in the end get a slight improvement in average numbers and a not enormous but noticeable both on trackman and the course improvement in distance dispersion. How old is your driver? I switched from an R7 Quad to a 2015 Nike I got at the going out of business sale on campus (I work at Nike, obviously without a fitting beyond choosing the XS shaft given my swing speed) and gained 10-15 yards. Then I finally got fit for a new driver a year ago and gained another 10-15 yards and better dispersion (ended up with a Callaway Epic Speed). That being said, if what you've got is a high quality driver that fits you well from 10 years ago then yeah you might not be able to find something better. But I don't think a PXG only fitting tells you that. And if your current driver is in the 12+ or 15+ year old range, I'd be really surprised if you can't find some extra average distance.

Awesome! Though I'm a little disappointed he's not rocking britches 😉🤣 I'm also glad we've mostly moved past smoking is cool in American culture. But those outfits!!

In case haven't looked at the side bar when you click through to the above. This is WAY better and got me particularly excited for this week!

Good catch. I've totally been background working on that 😆 Better than it used to be. But yeah, as you can see if it's not what I'm concentrating on my hips will drift back a bit.

Been working on: Better swing plane through the finish (club exiting lower at A8/A9), less in-to-out plane) More open at impact and into the finish More stable club face through the zone = less whippy/flippy, straight arms longer into the follow through

Feeling great about my progress!

I might need to go to Lowe's....