No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 135: Mark Broadie

Episode Date: April 23, 2018

Columbia Business School professor Mark Broadie joins to talk about stats in golf, how he developed strokes gained, how it relates to the PGA TOUR, and how it relates to the amateur golfer. There’s a... The post NLU Podcast, Episode 135: Mark Broadie appeared first on No Laying Up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yeah. That's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most! Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up Podcast. Welcomeing in Columbus Business School Professor and the author of every shot counts. Mr. Mark Brody, Mark, I was going through our direct messages. I had first contacted you to come on the podcast about four years ago and somehow criminally never followed up on that but welcome and we finally making this happen. Oh, thanks for having me Chris

It's it's a pleasure after all these years. No looking forward to one I think I've learned a lot and for the record I want to before I say it This is not a book promotion you did not ask to come on to promote your book But I read your book every shot counts several years ago. And it changed the way that I thought about golf and followed your work very closely after that. So I've always looked forward to talking stats at the end. I think listeners to this will understand maybe, you know, some I would say don't know

what all what stroke skeindes, but I think some understand it roughly and even talking to some of the other no-lang up guys before we started recording. They're like, yeah, I want to learn about this. I need to know about this. So I think people are going to learn quite a bit. But I'm sure you've told the story many times. But first, I want to get kind of an understanding of what your background was and how you ended up kind of revolutionizing the way golf is analyzed from a statistical standpoint.

Well I got into this, you know, many years ago now. Some people you mentioned, you mentioned the book think that, oh, I decided into this, you know, many years ago now, some people you mentioned, you mentioned the book, think that, oh, I decided to write a book in a year later, a book is published, and that's not at all what happened. I started, you know, playing golf when I was a teenager, and so it's been sort of a personal passion of mine, and then I, you know, became an academic, and I teach and do research at Columbia Business School in New York and so my professional passion is analytics. And then I said, well, you know, I can put these two together

because there's so many unanswered questions in the game of golf. And so I got to combine my personal and professional passions in doing golf analytics. And the questions I originally sought to answer were things like, what's the difference between a golfer whose average score is 90 and a golfer whose average score is 80? Where do those 10 strokes come from? Or you could say the same about a scratch golfer and a touring professional. Where do those strokes come from?

And it's not at all obvious that where they come from, in part because traditional stats just don't have a hope of answering questions like that. If you count, fairways hit or greens hit, greens in regulation or pots, there's just no way you can decode what's really going on in the game of golf. So that was the original intent and I started this way back in 2000 and 2001. Did you, I mean, I kind of looked to, and I was a kind of a big proponent.

I used to be a much bigger baseball fan than I currently am, but was a big fan of Saber Metrics in baseball and kind of bucking the trends of using batting average, home runs, RBI's. And as always, I think with golf, things just always tend to lag behind other sports. Was there any kind of motivation from seeing statistical trends or kind of more robust statistical analysis in other sports that led you to wonder,

like are golf statistics that we currently use the best ones? No, that really wasn't the motivation at all, but I think, you know, it's very different because baseball being a team sport and having a much longer history of baseball stats and golf being an individual sport and sort of being in the dark ages in terms of the stats, but there are a lot of parallels. And I'm fortunate enough to be an academic and I now teach elective course on sports analytics. And I spend most of the time on the major sports baseball, basketball, football. And there's a lot of parallels between the analytics you can do in those sports

and what goes on in golf. And it was sort of surprising to me that that stroke scheme basically has parallels or analogs in all the other sports. Was there, when you set out to do to kind of start the analysis, were you kind of aware that I guess, did you already kind of know what you were going to discover or you thinking like, all right, I've realized that, you know, putting is overrated blah, blah, blah, I just need to prove it. Or was

it kind of a revelation once you started gathering all this data, what you ended up discovering? Oh, it was definitely a revelation. I didn't start with a question like how important is putting? I started with a question, where are these 10 strokes between a 90 golfer and an 80 golfer? Or put another way, if I gave you a magic club where you could hit your drives 20 yards further, what would happen to your score? Those are the kinds of questions I was trying to answer. And to answer those questions, you needed number one data. And there just wasn't any data out there. This is again around 2000, 2001 to answer these questions. It

was before the shot link system on the PGA tour, it was before GPS had all these commercial applications so it's before game golf and arcos and a bunch of others. And so the first step was really, how do I get data? In this case, for amateur golfers and like many people before me said, well, I'll start collecting data and put it into an Excel spreadsheet and, you know, quickly as in an hour or so realize that that's not really the way to go.

And so spend a couple of years building a desktop program called GulfMetrics to be able to have amateurs collect data which ended up looking almost identical to the shot link data that the PGA Tourist started to collect in 2003. So the first, you know, the first were these questions and then was the data, it was only after starting to analyze the data. They said, well, now that I've got all this data, how exactly do we answer the questions? And it was only after that that some of the insights about the importance of a putting

and approach shots and other things came out. So that was a surprise. What would you say was the most noteworthy thing you learned once you had accumulated all the data? That the findings, the insights, the results were very consistent across a wide range of golfer groups. So if you take a look at the difference between a high handicap and a middle handicap or a low handicap, between average tour pros and the best tour pros, the same sorts of result whole, namely that about 65% of the scoring differences occur from shots outside 100 yards

and about 35% from shots within 100 yards of the whole. And so, you know, 10 strokes, if you want to go from a typical 90 golfer to a typical 80 golfer, about six and a half of those 10 shots come from being better off the tee and outside 100 yards and about 3 and a half of those strokes come from being better inside 100 yards, including putting. So what's something that you've heard on television over the years, or especially after doing all your research, you hear now and just cringe, is just something that you've heard on television over the years, or especially after doing all your research you hear now and just cringe as just something that's just flat out not true.

So a lot, I'm sure. Yeah, there's a lot. This is maybe not related to my research, but you hear that, you know, touring pros swing at 80%. I don't think so. You see how far they hit it? They're not swinging at 80%. I think what you see is great rhythm and balance. And so it looks like it's effortless, but they're swinging really hard and really fast. There's a lot of others that sort of, you just sort of shake your head out.

So they'll say a player is 19 out of 20 on putts inside of 10 feet at the tournament this week. And that could be factually correct. So it's not like shaking my head like they're saying something that's wrong, but the implication is that this player is now standing over a 9-foot putt, and the implication is that they have a 95% chance of sinking it, which is way far from the truth. Because most of those putts inside a 10 feet are actually inside of three feet. So it's sort of just a meaningless waste of airtime

to talk about how many putts of a sunk inside of a 10 feet. It would actually be better to talk about how many putts did many puts of a sunk inside of a 10 feet would actually be better to talk about how many puts did they sink between five and 10 feet than, you know, inside of 10 feet? Now, to your first point, I remember the first time I ever saw Ernie L's Swing a Club in person. I was a kid. I couldn't believe it.

I mean, you could hear the club in the transition phase. You could hear the wind that came off the club face for how hard he swung it. But it makes it look so effortless. So I'm glad to hear you say that. And secondly, the point on your putting, every time I see that stat, it does kind of jar you and I get why they pop it up there, especially I think somebody had one the other week that they were 54 of 54 inside of 10 feet.

But another one that gets me is I never I never know what a good number is, but when someone tells you how many feet of puts you've made over the course of the day, does that set me in anything to you? No, other than you know, larger is better. Yeah, but you could have made 150 foot putt it, excuse everything, but yeah, that that one always confuses me but It also kind of I guess I'll ask it in the form of a question in that If you could sum up when tiger woods was dominating the PGA tour if you could summarize how he went about doing that or the leading factor that went into his domination of the PGA tour what would you say that was? That's that's an easy one He dominated with his approach shots.

And that's a surprise to most people, but if you think about the traditional golf stats, that's the hardest part of the game to measure. There is no one of the traditional golf stats that directly measures approach shots, approach play. The closest might be greens and regulation and there's many flaws with greens and regulation but you know that includes drives and and approach shots and there's other other flaws with that that we could we could talk about but one of the misconceptions about tiger woods is that tiger woods was a great putter and so people say yeah he was a great putter. And so people say, yeah, he was a great putter. That must be the reason, you know,

he won so many majors and so many tournaments. And that's true. He was a great putter. But he gained more than twice as many strokes from his approach shots as from his putts. So there's not an inconsistency there that putting was really not the key to his performance, it was approach shots. But hunting was really not the key to his performance.

It was approach shots, but he was really good at the short game. He was actually, for most of his career, a really good driver. And that's why he's sort of Tiger Woods as opposed to Ernie L's or Phil Michelson or some other great players. That Tiger Woods was great at everything. But the one part of his game that really stood out was his approach shots. And one way to phrase that, that I often talk about in seminars or talks, is that if he was an, Tiger Woods was an average driver, had an average short game, and was an average

putter, and you just let him have his superior approach shot. He would be in the top 10 in the world. Yeah, and I think you hear it almost more these days. Maybe not as much in the last year, but in the last five years, people say, Tiger, he just can't put like he used to. That's what's really holding him back currently when I think in reality it doesn't have nearly the same advantage over the other players from T-Degrees. Is that something you would agree with? Yeah, I agree with that 100% and even in his most recent comeback where he's been playing great and doing very well at Bay Hill and almost winning at Valspar and others. He's been putting really well. One of the things that's been holding him back is his approach shots. Not that they're

not good, his approach shots, I had him rank something like 25th in the 2018 season, but he's not number one like he used to be. If you went back from 2003 to 2013, he was in the top five in Strokes game from approach shots every single year with most of those years ranked number one. And one year is ranked fifth and a couple of years is ranked fourth and almost all the other years he was ranked one. And he was just phenomenal with his approaches to give you an example. The leaders in approach shots for a typical year might be at 1.3 strokes game per round. And there is a number of years where Tiger was at two strokes per round.

And it's like, wow, I mean, he's already eight strokes ahead in the tournament before everybody else tees it up. So why did he win so much? Well, to win, you need to get to about three and a half or 3.7 strokes game per round. And he was getting two just from his pro shots. And you throw in that he was a good putter or great putter. And then you add the other stuff. And, you know, he was he was winning it, you know, 30, 40% win rate in certain seasons.

I can only imagine the depth of the, at which your tiger, amazing tiger stats go. But that's that's fantastic. All right, Tron, a quick break. We announced this past week that we're going to be playing in the BMW Charity Pro Am in Greenville, South Carolina in May against each other. Won't you fill us in a little bit on the details? Yeah, we've got all the details on the website, but just for your edification,

Calo, we've given a ton of prizes, Rogue drivers, Rogue Three Woods, Pudders, Wedges, Balls, Irones, everything. So we'll announce the official prizes eventually. What are you gonna be playing with? We've maybe needed to do a what's in the bag and we haven't done it yet.

What are you gonna be playing with next week, next month? The big addition to the bag lately has been this new exo putter. It's got me a little nervous. I miss your scare. You're rolling it a little bit better last night. We're not gonna say our scores from last night, but what else you got?

I'll be honest, I shot 84. I already posted it. I shot 86. No, I mean, the road's been awesome. I'm still playing the Apex pros. I think I'm going to put the X forged in the bag. That's the current dilemma I'm under. I love the Apex pros, but I've got the X forage. And it's just too tempting. They're sitting over there. But we're going to do more what's in the bag stuff in the future. But one update you guys on the prizes and stuff and big shout-outs

Callaway for helping chip in with with the charity giveaway. So check that out the details on our website now. Let's get back to Mark Brody So I want to get in kind of Stroke's game. It's something obviously you've talked a ton about And we'll get into some of the nitty-gritty details But first I want to know So stats like driving accuracy and greens and regulation. I feel like five years ago or so, even up to then, they were still being used, but they're kind of becoming extinct, which I'd like to see. But can you explain to us why stats like driving accuracy in greens and regulation are not very useful?

Sure. There are so many flaws, and I'll try and give you a brief answer. But number one flaw is units. That it's very hard to measure driving distance, which is in yards versus putting, which is in strokes, versus hitting fairways, which is just you hit a fairway. You don't, they're not in the right units. And that makes these kind of things incomparable.

How do you compare a player who drives it 10 yards further with another player who hits 50% of his fairways versus 60%. It's very hard to compare when you have different units. So another thing that's wrong is that greens in regulation and driving accuracy are these counting stats. You either hit a green in regulation or you don't. You either hit a fairway on your T-shot or you don't. They don't distinguish between big misses and little misses. So if you miss the fairway into the, you know, the fringe of the fairway, the first cut, then that's not a big penalty. You're in, you're in the rough, that's a bigger penalty. You're in the woods, that should be a bigger penalty. You put it in the water, that should be a bigger penalty. You put it out of bounds, that should be an even bigger penalty. And Stroke's gain takes all of that into account, whereas driving accuracy is just,

you hit the fairway or you didn't. It's the same thing with greens and regulation. You can hit a green and it counts, but you don't get extra credit, hitting it five feet from the pin versus 20 feet from the pin. And if you miss a green, well, every miss green counts as zero, they count the same, but if you miss on the fringe versus missing in the sand versus missing in the water, those are really different misses that all count as a miss green in regulation.

So another flaw of traditional stats is they're just zero one kind of things, and they don't take into account these fractional differences and shots which are really important. And the third thing is there's no adjustment for what is the field doing versus, you know, playing at one course versus another. So to give you one example, the average driving distance at a TPC Scottsdale might be 300 yards and the average distance a week or so ago at Harbor Town was 275 yards. So if you don't measure things relative to the field, a player that plays at Harbor Town is going to look like his 25 yards shorter than somebody else that plays a TPC Scottsdale, even though the player hasn't changed their

driving distance at all, just, you know, the driving distance that shouldn't be fooled by which course you played. So that's just a few of the flaws. Is that, is that, is that, is that, is that, is that, is that, is that, is that, is that something that, that's something that's pretty perfectly, just saying that I wonder how badly DJ's driving distance took a hit by playing the heritage this, this, this, but um well his his his driving distance took a hit, but if you measure it relative to the field, it was quite interesting right at Kapalua, he was 25 yards longer than average and at Harbor Town, he was 20 yards longer than average. So if you measure things relative to the

field, you get a much better picture. And I was really curious. You got Dustin Johnson playing at Harvittown. What's what is going to happen? And yeah, he was a lot shorter than than his usual, but he still, you know, hit it further and, you know, hit it, hit it out there 20 yards further than the field average at Harvittown. Yeah, we didn't even discuss the the flaw in the driving distance that but I think that one's so flawed. We don't even need to discuss, but I can't I can't imagine how many times you have tried to explain this over the years and It does make sense to me, but in your in your best way to somebody that doesn't know what strokes gained is How would you explain it to them?

So if you have a tough par four where the stroke average is 4.2, then a par in the hole is a good score. You're beating the field, but you're beating the field by two tenths of a stroke. So if you compare the field average, 4.2 with the player's score, in this case a 4, then the player is gaining two tenths of a stroke. That's basically what Stroke's game does, is it measures performance relative to the field. And then the question is, well, how do you break that down further into each stroke?

And it's the same idea, which is, you wanna measure the quality of a shot relative to an average tour player shot from that particular spot or from that condition. So let's take putting to start with if a tour player has a 30 foot putt, what would the field do, what would be an average performance on a 30 foot putt, and the answer would be they get down in about two strokes. The PJ tour average from 30 feet is two. So if you sink a 30 footer, you're doing one better

than the field average. And if you take two puts, you're even. And if you take three puts, you lose a stroke. So that's sort of the simplest way to measure cutting is not just by counting puts, but by measuring it relative to what, the average tour pro would do. And so that sounds like it's the same as sort of counting puts, but where it gets interesting is when you take a look at other distances.

So the other easy one to talk about is putting from eight feet. So from eight feet, tour pros have a 50% one put rate rate and a 50% two-put rate. So the average one and a half puts from eight feet. So if a Tour Pro sinks an eight footer, they take one versus the average of one and a half, they'll gain a half a stroke on the field. And if they take two puts from eight feet, they'll lose a half a stroke on the field.

So every shot can be measured relative to what a average PGA tour player would do from from that situation. And all strokes gain does is it adds up those fractional gains and losses over every shot to come up with how many they gain or lose on the whole and then how much they gain or lose on the round. And now you've got a nice breakdown. If a player beat the field by 2.7 strokes in a round, then where did they gain or lose?

And you can follow it all the way down to each individual shot. But at an intuitive level, if you see a great shot on TV or at a tournament, it's going to have positive strokes gained. And if you see a poor shot, it's going to have positive strokes gained. And if you see a poor shot, it's going to have negative strokes gained. And all strokes gain does. It sort of quantifies that in terms of fractional gains and losses relative to an average tour player. I think we can approach it two ways. We can start at the whole and work backwards and work from the T to the whole. But I think in reading your book, though, the one of the biggest things I took

away from was that I was placing way too much blame on my putting for my poor scoring and that the finality of having an eight foot putt for a par and when I miss it, I say, I just cost myself a stroke by missing that putt without factoring in the fact that only a Torporo makes this putt 50% of the time. And so there's going to be some variance. If I keep leaving myself eight foot parputs, maybe I'm doing something along the way that is not setting myself up. So in my mind, I had set out that I was just a terrible putter. And it kind of opened my eyes like, no, I'm not a terrible putter. Like, I hit eight greens today. And I left myself a bunch of eight and ten footers. And so I hear people say like, oh, you know, you should spend the most money on a putter.

It's the club you're gonna use the most throughout the round. Explain to me why that's a bad way of thinking. So one of the European tour pros that I've been friends with for a long time is Eduardo Molinari. And you might also know his brother Francesco Molinari who's now playing on the PJ tour, but

Eduardo said this, if I had a contest with an amateur and we could choose between having a nine hole putting contest or we could hit nine T shots on a 200 yard par three Who do you think would win and and the answer is Eduardo Mullen Ari is going to kill most any amateur hitting 200 yard approach shots to a hole. He's going to hit the green more often, he's going to get a closer to the hole. In nine hole putting contests, an amateur would have a chance, even against a tour pro. It may only be a 25 or 30% chance, but an amateur would have a chance of winning a nine hole putting contest

with a tour pro, and amateur would have no chance at winning a nine hole approach shot contest with a tour pro from 200 yards. The differences are just dramatic from that range, the differences in skill levels. It's a good way to think of it. And it also just goes towards the handicap system, right? The longer the whole, typically the lower the handicap number, essentially saying this is going to be easier for a low handicap or harder for a high handicap.

Digging in a little bit more on putting. So let's say we have this eight foot putt that is essentially a 1 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 that is essentially a one and a half average 50-50 that a tour pro will make it Does it does your data? Give any information on whether that is pretty consistent for a downhill or uphill putt and and also like the data that we see from the PGA tour if we You know does it factoring in the slope of a putt the break of a putt into the likelihood that somebody will make it which will ultimately affect their strokes gain putting so this is a sort of a put, the break of a put into the likelihood that somebody will make it, which will ultimately affect their stroke's gain putting. So this is sort of an esoteric distinction, but I think of strokes gained as performance relative to a benchmark. And so that's the theoretical concept, and then you can implement that in a number of

different ways. In the implementation we worked with with the PGA tour, all 8-foot putts are equal and the average that goes into that is 1.5 as we talked about. But there's no reason that you can't be more accurate in creating the benchmark than that. I've done this analysis before and it is true that on the steepest fast greens, that there's a big difference between an 8-foot downhill putt and an 8-foot uphill putt. And so there may be a 20% difference in make rates. So for example, an uphill 8-footer pros make 55% of those and a downhill just 35%.

So there's a 20% difference in those make rates between uphill and downhill pots, but those are only on the steepest greens, which are less than 5% of greens are that steep. On more typical slopes that you see where holes are cut on the PGA tour, the difference in uphill and downhill make rates on 8 foot pots is about 7%. So they'll make 54% of uphill pots and maybe 47% of downhill pots. And so the amount that you're missing if you sort of

ignore the uphill downhill difference is just a fraction of a stroke. It's 0.03 or something. It's a 3.5 or whatever. It's really a minor difference. So I think of counting putts as being sort of very crude and doesn't give you a good ranking or a good measure of putting performance. Stroke scale putting where you just look at the distance of the putt gets you 90 or 95% of the way there, but you're absolutely right that you could do even better and get to 98 or 99% accuracy by factoring in the slope at the hole and exactly how difficult the putt is taking into account more than just the distance. Would you say for an amateur golfer that it's more important to get the ball close to the hole

than it is to leave it, leave yourself an uphill put? I know it's a broad question and there's distances gotta be factored in, but is there a major difference in leaving yourself a put that breaks or an eight footer straight up the hill? Absolutely, I think the evidence says that it's better to end up closer to the hole than leave yourself an uphill putt. One way to think about that is if you take

this the shot pattern of your putts and if you're you know 20, 30, 40, 50 feet away, you pretty much want to have that centered around the hole so that you have as many one, two, and three footers as possible. So you want to, it's like throwing a dart at a dart board. You want to center it around the bull's eye to give the most chance of it going in or hitting the bull's eye, but also to leave yourself the shortest second putt. If you aim to leave yourself the shortest second putt. If you aim to leave yourself,

your goal is to leave yourself with a second putt that's uphill, instead of having one, two, and three footers left, you're gonna have three, four, and five footers left. And yeah, though that five foot uphill putt is easier than a five foot downhill putt, but it's always easier to have a two foot side hill putt or a two foot downhill putt than it is to have a two-foot side hill putter, a two-foot down hill putter,

than it is to have a five-foot uphill putter. And so there is a big difference between uphill and downhill, but there's an even big difference between three footers and five footers. And that's why you want to sort of in your longer putt strategy, try and center it around the whole route and try and leave yourself an uphill putt strategy, try and center it around the whole route and try and leave yourself an uphill putt. I'm not really sure I have a question with this, but I was just surprised to see in the data and looking at the charts within the book

that how fast the drop off of the make percentage goes, even for professionals, once you get outside like that 12 foot range, and just how small the make percentages are on putts even for pros in that range kind of was that I opened her for me and that you know I always wonder why I don't make more birdies and it's probably because I'm not hitting the ball close enough to the holes easy as that sounds an amateur just isn't going to run in that many 15 to 20 foot putts over the

course of around. Yeah and one of the the ways I try and try and demonstrate that is by by asking a question which is in the book, which is in a four-round tournament. So you take players that make the cut, they play four rounds, how many puts over 21 feet do they sink on average? And I'll ask plenty of people, listen, you read the books, you probably know the answer, but so how many puts over 21 feet in a four-round tournament does a PGA tour pro sync? The average is 1.4 in four rounds, which is tiny. And most people will guess four or five, six, seven, eight. They think they

sync a boatload of a putts in in four rounds over 21 feet. And the main reason for this is the make rate from 20 feet is just 15% and it goes down after that. And then you say, yeah, but when I'm looking at the leaders, I'm looking at the winners, they're making a lot more. And it's true that winners make more putts than average tour pros. And when they they win they tend to be hitting their approach shots closer and sinking more of those putts. Do you know how many putts winners make in the week that they win?

So four rounds over 21 feet and he guesses on that one. I would say three. Three. That's a good guess. 2.4. Oh my god. One stroke essentially that gave me there. Less than one per round. That's 2.4 putt sunk over 21 feet by the winners in four rounds. So it's less than one around. So winners win by putting better for sure, but it's not usually by by sinking long ones, it's by sinking a lot more of the shorter ones. With all this conversation around, you know, putting percentages from distances and whatnot,

kind of a broad question here, but what do you make of Jordan's speed overall as a putter? Well, first of all, he's a great putter and he is especially good as when you look at his stats from sort of the 10 to 20 foot range or the 15 to 25 foot range. So it is absolutely true that he is a good putter, great putter, and other than this year, he gains, most of his gains come from this 10 to 25 foot range or 15 to 25 foot range, which is just really, really remarkable.

So I just find it when people are saying he's such a great potter, but his make percentage from the key potting range between four and eight feet is actually a little bit more suspect. So I just was, I find his kind of relationship with putting kind of perplexing in that the closer he gets, he's actually not essentially one of the best on tour, but the further way he gets, he pretty much is the best on tour. And so many narratives get driven on the broadcast saying he's the best putter in the world. And I just think the data kind of supports it,

supports a lot of other people in front of him, and especially this year, this year's been kind of a come down year for him on putting, but was just kind of curious on your thoughts on how his skills vary from, you know, distances close and far. So there's, so one data point and then one, one misconception. So I have him in the last few years gaining about a quarter to almost a half a stroke in puts from 7 to 21 feet, which ranks them inside the top 10.

Whereas in 2018, he's losing almost a third of a stroke from 7 to 21 feet, putting them ranked 195th so far. Or another way you could say, from last year to this year, he's losing, he's a half stroke worse in that range compared to last year, which is a lot for a terra professional to be a half stroke worse in sort of this mid-range of puts. But what I think is a misconception about this, it's not at all the case that Jordan's spieth would rather

have a 15-foot putt than an 8-foot putt. Jordan's spieth is so much better. Even as an average putter from 8 feet, he's gonna sink a lot more puts from eight feet than as a great putter from 15 feet. So I think it gets overplayed. Yeah, it's not like when Jordan's beef is out in the fairway, 200 yards away that he's saying, gosh, I hope I don't knock this to eight feet, I'd rather be at 15.

That's absurd, but that is literally what is implied by much of the commentary you hear on broadcast. Yeah, I just find the difference between a six and eight foot putt is just so critical for almost all players that they make. Jordan makes 80% of his putts from six feet this year, and that's ranked 31st, and from eight feet he makes 47%, which is 133rd. I'm sure there's not enough data there really to fully explain that, but just the value in that.

And when you're within that 10 feet, there's a lot of variables, even within that that drive home, how fast you're going to get the ball in the hole. I'm curious, if a professional has the same distance put, does it matter statistically if it's for par or for birdie when factoring in the likelihood that they'll make it? Yeah, this is sort of a subtle point to answer this question. And the answer is yes, there's a statistically significant difference between par and birdie puts, but practically significant no. And so when you go through the analysis and the data, TOUR pros are better,

all things being equal at par-puts than birdie-puts, but it's only a tiny bit. It's less than a tenth of a stroke per round. And I think what is both statistically and practically significant is the difference in make rates between first putts and second putts and what I mean by that. If you're out in the fairway and you knock it on to the green 5 feet away, that's a 5 foot first putt, whereas if you're 25 feet away and you put it to 5 feet. That's going to be a 5 foot second put.

And the difference in make rates between first putts and second putts of the same distance is huge. And that's true for PGA tour pros and it's also true for most amateurs. But, you know, the takeaway from this is that amateurs should always watch their first putt, you know, how is it traveling when it gets to putt, how is it traveling when it gets to the hole, how is it traveling when it goes by the hole and also watch their playing partners on the green because you get a lot of information about how fast the green is and what the slope is,

especially around the hole, by watching the putts. And that's incredibly significant where par putts versus birdie putts doesn't make that much of a difference. So you're saying your second put on a green from five feet is more likely to go in than your first put on the green from five feet. Absolutely, a lot more, a lot more likely. And that's even, that's even controlling for uphill and downhill and those kind of differences. So all taking all this data on putting, what's the best, if you want to translate this for people listening at home, they want to take something to the course with them.

What's the overall lesson you would give people based on all of your data and research on putting that might help an amateur? Well, the first thing is, where are you going to practice? And I would say, if I don't have any information about a particular player, the general advice is to work on your shortputs. And by shortputs, I'd say three to ten feet. And that literally means also three footers. There is a significant difference in

tour pros at the three foot range. There's an even bigger difference in amateurs at the three foot range that typically, you know, a scratch golfer from three feet is going to be a lot better than a 90 golfer from three feet. So you want to work number one on the shortputs, three to ten feet, not to the exclusion of mid-range and longer putts, but the biggest bang for the buck is by improving your short putts. And there's two reasons for that. Why is there such a potential for gain on shortputs? Well, number one is skill differences, which I mentioned. There's big skill differences in a three to 10 foot range. And number two is the number of those shots

that you have per round. You just have a lot more of those shortputs because they can be a first putt from five feet. They could be a second putt from five feet. And I hope not,, a first putt from five feet, they could be a second putt from five feet and they hope not, but a third putt from five feet. But you have a lot more in the three, the 10 foot range than you do in the, you know, 30 to 50 foot range. So it's skill differences and the number of strokes that I'd say, you know, work on your short putting primarily, but not to the exclusion of mid-length and longer puts. That's good.

I'll take that with me today as well. But, so we, Stroke's gain putting has been around longer than, you know, some of the other statistics Stroke's gain around the green, Stroke's gain approaching, off the tee, and then overall Stroke's gain, T-degree. And so I think, even for myself, in most listeners, the putting is easier explained than kind of really fully understanding

what the statistics mean from T to green. Just because you're on a putting surface and we talked about factoring and uphill and downhill but overall, it's kind of the same factors when you're on the putting green, whereas even moving backwards from your approach shot, there's a lot more factors to consider where, you know, is one foot in the rough

that much more damaging than 10 feet in the rough versus behind a tree. So I don't know what the best way for you to explain it is, I don't know if it's a start from the tee or work backward from the green, but I'd like to understand what goes into, like from a stroke-skating approach standpoint or even off the tee, how much somebody's punished by a ball,

being one foot in the rough versus 10 feet, or how you factor in trees, angles, and is there a way that the data fully captures that, at least the numbers that we look at from the PJ tour perspective, are these kind of things factor did? Yeah, so I can maybe give you a couple of examples, depending on your time here, but let me give you a couple of examples depending depending on your time here

But let me give you an example of something that actually happened in 2016 at TPC Scott Stale so you all seen the 16th hole and the you know the great Gallery and and stands and thousands of people around that well in 2016 Three players played the whole Brendan D. Young three players played the whole Brendan D. Young, Brent Snetaker and Zach Blair, and they all birdied the whole. So same day, but they did it in different ways. So it turns out that the way they, you know, they set the T in this whole, the average score in the whole was about three.

All three of these players hit the green. They all sank their birdie putts, so they all gained a stroke on the field. They each had a green in regulation, and they each took one putt. And so from the traditional stat viewpoint, the performances were the same. But if you take a look at what happened when you have shot link data and you can see where every shot started and every shot finished, what happened is that Brendan Neung hit us T shot to a foot. Brantsoneticaker hit his T-shot to eight feet and sunk the putt. And Zach Blair hit a shot to 30 feet and sunk the putt.

And so now when you take a look at Stroke's game, you say, well, Brendan Young, he hit his approach shot. He started three strokes away from the hole. And he put it to a foot. That's two strokes away from, sorry, that's one stroke away from the hole because everybody is gonna sink this one footer. So he gained a stroke on his approach shot, his T-shot, and then he was even with the field because he sunk a one foot putt. That's pretty understandable,

I think. So his approach shot was so much better that all the credit for the one stroke gain on the field went to his approach shot. Then Brandt Snetaker who hit it to eight feet while he started three strokes away from the hole on the tee. He hit it to eight feet where we saw that's one and a half strokes away from the hole. So he got one and a half strokes closer to the hole with one swing of the club. So he gained a half stroke on his tee shot and he gained another half stroke by thinking the putt. So it was sort of equally split between a really good T-shot and a really good putt.

So it was a half stroke each for that. And then Zach Blair who hit his T-shot to 30 feet. Well, he was three strokes away from the hole in the T. On the green at 30 feet, he's two strokes away from the hole. So he took one swing to get one stroke closer. So that doesn't gain anything on the field. He gained it all by sinking his 30 foot putt. So you have three different ways to make a birdie, and stroke's gained sort of accurately shows that Brendan Young's tee shot deserved one stroke credit. Grant Snetaker's tee shot deserved a hash stroke credit, and Zach Blair's T-Shot deserved none of the credit, and you know the rest went to the putt. So that's an example where greens and regulation and putts doesn't tell you anything. You think about greens and

regulation as a measure of ball striking, and here it doesn't distinguish between those performances, but Stroke's game tells you exactly what you, what anybody can see, that you hit this 170-yard T-shot to a foot, that's a great shot. Everybody knows that. And Stroke's game just sort of quantifies that and adds it up across all these shots. So it's essentially applying the same thought process

of it takes this amount of strokes, you know, when we look at putting it takes two strokes to get down from 30 feet, whereas if you go back to, I don't know what the number is, if you go back to 130 yards, the average, and maybe further than that, maybe 150 yards or 160 yards, the average Torporo will get it home in three strokes, essentially. So you're just extracting the thought process

of how many strokes it will take a player to get the ball in the hole from a particular spot. Exactly. And so if I had to give a one sentence definition of stroke scheme, it's progress to the whole measured in strokes. You think of not measured in yards or feet, it's progress to the whole measured in stroke. So if you start four strokes away from the hole on the T on a par four, an average shot will put you somewhere three strokes away from the hole. But if you

hit it long and straight in the fairway, you know, you bomb at 300 yards in the fairway and you're only 2.7 strokes away from the hole. Well, if you go from four strokes away to 2.7 strokes away, that's 0.3 strokes better than an average shot. An average shot goes from 4 to 3. If you go from 4 to 2.7, you gain 0.3. You hit an average length, you know, t-shot into the rough. If you go from 4 strokes away to 3.4 strokes away, then you've just lost 4 tenths of a stroke. So, strokes gain is just progress to the whole measure in strokes. All right, now let's say we're factoring in like I one guy is a foot into the rough 175 away and another guy same distance from the hole but is behind a tree. Is there and he is let's say 20

20 yards offline. Does the data does the data allow you to kind of assess what of assess how many shots it will take a player to get from the whole, the further offline they get from the fairway? Absolutely. And so what we take into account is how far are you away from the whole and what is the condition? Are you in the fairway or in the first cut or are you in the rough or you behind a tree or are you in the sand, whatever. And so roughly speaking, the difference between equal length t-shots, one which ends up in the fairway and one which ends up in the rough, is going to be a difference of about three-tenths of a stroke. If you're then in the woods, it's going to be about a half to three quarters

of a stroke because you've got to punch out. It depends on how far you can advance the ball. If you put it into the water, well, that's about a one-stroke penalty. If it's a lateral hazard, and if you hit it out of bounds, it's about a two-stroke penalty. So those are sort of huge differences. Hitting the fairway versus hitting in the rough is about a three-tenth of a stroke difference, whereas hitting the fairway versus putting a ball out of bounds is a two-stroke penalty. is hitting the fairway versus putting a ball out of bounds. This is a two-stroke penalty.

And that's what stroke scheme factors in. So absolutely, it matters how far off line you are. And more importantly, are you in the trees where you've got to chip out to the fairway or do you have a clear shot to the green? And that matters. And so if you've got to chip out, we call that that you're in the recovery condition. So most people think of, well, I'm in the fairway, I'm in the rough, I'm in the sand, but

we add another category which is you're in a recovery situation. And that sort of means that you're in the trees and you've got to chip out or could mean that you're in rough, that's really deep. And instead of, you know, you'd want to hit a five iron that you're in rough that's really deep and instead of, you know, you'd want to hit a five iron if you're in the fairway, but you have to take a wedge to hack out. Well, that also counts as a recovery situation. How far down the fairway, or let's say, you know, Rory McAroy versus throwout,

a middle average driver of the golf ball, I don't have a number in front of me, but how much further down the hole does Rory have to hit it where it's okay if he's in the rough, he's still gaining on a average driver of the golf ball. Okay, so let me switch just a little bit and put bubble Watson in there instead of Rory, even though they're about the same. I just happened to know Bubba's stroke-skinned driving stat. So one way to think about this distance accuracy trade-off is this.

Bubba hits his drives about 20 yards longer than the tour average, and that's over all par fours and fives, not just the two measured holes where they're more likely to hit driver. That includes other holes that might be a dog leg or sort of layup holes where, you know, most players are hitting hybrids or whatever. So across the season, Bubba Watson will average 20 yards longer relative to the field per drive. Each one of those drives will gain him about one tenth of a stroke relative to the field. So if you have you know 14 t-shots on par fours and fives each 120 yards longer gaining about a tenth of a stroke he's 1.4 strokes up in a typical round based on his extra distance.

And now you say, okay, yeah, but you hit it longer, you're probably not hitting as many fairways. And this is where I think the bomb and gouge term is a little bit misleading because, you know, Bubba Watts in a couple of years ago was one of the, you know, least accurate drivers on the tour, but it may be a surprise, he missed about one more fairway

per round than the field average. That was it. He missed about one more fairway, and he didn't hit any more into penalty situations. So each one of those mis-fairways cost about three tenths of a stroke. So he misses one more fairway on average than the field, that costs them three tenths of a stroke. So he misses one more fairway on average than the field. That cost them three tenths of a stroke.

So he gains 1.4 from his distance. He loses 0.3 because he misses a fairway. So net, he's up 1.1 strokes per round with taking distance and accuracy into account. So that's a huge advantage, but it's really hard to see on any individual shot because gaining a tent that doesn't sound like much. And people say, yeah, he hits a 20 yards further, but he just missed a five foot putt, and it's the putt that matters. But no, if you gain

a tent of a stroke because you're 20 yards longer, and you do that 14 times around, that's again even taking into account the extra misferway. That's 1.1 strokes gained from his driving and multiply that by four rounds and now you're at four four and a half strokes advantage. And that applies pretty similarly to Rory and to Dustin Johnson as well. From going all the way back to the tee, I wanna know, when you start, let's say it's a par four, do you start at a flat number four for the whole or is there an average expected score

based on the yardage of the whole? Or is it a moving average like throughout the course of a tournament? Like, this is a 4.4 hole, so if you make a four, you gain throughout the course of a tournament, like, you know, this is a 4.4 hole. So if you make a four, you gain four tenths of a stroke. I'm just kind of curious as to how the model works in terms of is it moving average, or is it based on the distance from the T to the hole?

Well, you could, you could implement this in different ways, but first it's not based on the par. Right. So it's a PAR, sort of irrelevant. What you want to get at is the field average on each hole. And there's a couple of different ways that you could implement it in order to have this appear on websites and on mobile devices in real time.

But the goal really is to have, you know, if the stroke average on this par 4 is 3.8, use that. If it's 4.2, you want to use that. Same thing on par 4s and 5s. In reality, what's done is the distance is taken into account. And then there's a field adjustment that happens at the end of the round. So to give you an example, if you ignored the scoring average on all the holes and you computed everybody strokes gain relative to an average course, and then you applied that to Har Harbor Town where people are driving at 25 yards shorter.

And everybody would look like they're losing strokes off the tee because, you know, they're hitting at 25 yards less than the typical tour pro would do at an average course. But what happens is we adjust everything to the field so what the field did that day then becomes zero. So nobody is then penalized for playing Harvard Town because they're all driving it shorter. And that same adjustment to the field applies to approach shots and short game shots and to the greens. So that way players are not rewarded or penalized because they're putting on flat greens

where the make rate from eight feet is 55% instead of 50%. Or if it's, you know, putting at a gust or putting on slopey greens or putting on bumpy greens where the make rate from eight feet might be 45%. What you do is you compute the stroke's gain of the field relative to an average course benchmark and then you just make a minor adjustment.

And that adjustment turns out generally to be quite minor. So it's interesting to talk about and we want to get it as accurate as possible, but it turns out to be a really, really small adjustment in the end. Would you, from both a professional standpoint and for amateurs at home, is there, does the data support, let's say it's just a par five or a short par four, does playing back to a specific number benefit players, both at both levels or does getting us close to the green as possible tend to lead to the best results?

So there's a sort of a general answer for a hole. If you don't tell me about the player and don't tell me about the hole, the data is crystal clear that closer is better than further. That if there's no, you know, horrible trouble around the green and if you're not going to put it into the water or trees or whatever, that going for parrhoves and two, again, if you're not going to put it in trouble, we're just pushing it up closer to the green, you'll score better. And there's a lot of ways to demonstrate that. One is that if you gave a PGA tour pro throughout the season the option on every par 5 to place the ball

at say 89-100 yards in the fairway and play the whole out from there or take the average score on par 5s of everybody in a season. Who would be better off taking the average score in a par five or giving the player the option to play every par five from their choice eighty nine year hundred yards in the fairway. Who would be better off? I would I would guess the average score. Absolutely. And by a lot. So the notion that you would always want to lay up to eighty nine year hundred yards is is just focus. to lay up to 89-100 yards is just focus. However, the answer is really more subtle than that. Every hole you've got to take into account how much trouble is there up near the green versus 70-89 yards

away. What is the pin location and how much spin do I need to apply? So if you've got a choice between being 40 yards away and 80 yards away, and the pin is cut close over over a bunker and you need to hit it beyond the hole and spin it back, well, you might be better off at 80 yards to be able to do that than at 40 yards. And so there's definitely special situations and circumstances where you might prefer to be further rather than closer, but as a general rule, closer is better. Yeah, it's not to be applied universally, but I've started implementing that as well. When all those factors are considered, if it makes no difference from an angle standpoint, it's better to be 50 yards away versus 90. It's better to be 50. But almost no laying up is optimal.

A few questions here. We're taking up a lot of your time, but there's a couple more I want to get to. You can answer as quickly or as detailed as you want on this one. What would you say is the most important skill to have in golf? Approach shots from 150 yards. Approach shots as a category of shots is rather large. That's shots starting outside of 100 yards, excluding, excluding T shots on par fours and five. So that's where the better players distinguish themselves. And within that broad category, I'd say amateur should focus on maybe a hundred to 150 yards and low handicapped and scratch golfers and pros from 150 to 200 yards. So I'm just

sort of going to split the difference and say the most important skill is to be great at approach shots from 150 yards. And one stat to sort of quantify that a little bit. The pros leave half of their shots from 150 yards in the fairway within 23 feet of the whole and half outside of 23 feet. So that's a bigger number than most people think. On the other hand, 90 golfers leave it more than twice as far. Their leave is about 56 feet. So half within 56 feet and half outside of 56 feet, that's a really big number. So getting that number down for amateurs is huge for scores. I just learned something right there.

What would you say is the biggest misconception around golf or in your world of analytics and what is the biggest misconception? Well besides the importance of putting, which we could talk about some more, I'd say the misconception is that pros are long and wild and I'd say no, they're long and straight. They are, when you hit it 300 yards and you're just a couple of degrees off, that's awfully darn straight, whereas amateurs, you know, hit the ball, 200 and 225, and their dispersion is, you know, on a relative basis 200, 225. And their dispersion is, you know, on a relative basis, much, much greater.

So I'd say pros are not long and wild, they're long and straight. That's a big misconception. I think you and I are pretty much in alignment regarding this topic. And it may be too long for this late in the podcast, but what do you think of the way the official world golf rankings are structured?

And what are the biggest flaws in the rankings? So, you know, there's some work that you do that it's, it's very interesting because the result is surprising and you've got to spend a lot of time convincing people that in fact, the, the analysis makes sense. And this is why you get this counterintuitive result. The work that I did with Dick Rendleman on the official world golf rankings surprised almost nobody.

And that was that the official world golf rankings are very biased against the PGA tour and PGA tour pros and biased towards all the other tours. So if you take two pros of equal skill and you have one of them play on regular PGA Tour events and another one playing on, you know, the Asian Tour, the Japanese Tour, some of the other Sunshine Tour, Austral Asian Tour, some of those other tours, the person playing the PGA Tour will get less world ranking points and will be further down in the rankings by far compared to playing. On one of the other not not pga tour tours so that that's and it's and it's really important it's not so bad for the you know top ten or top fifteen in the world where.

bad for the top 10 or top 15 in the world where they're playing a lot of the same, those guys are playing a lot of the same events. They're playing in the majors, they're playing in the WGC's and then there's a few other tournaments. So the official world golf rankings, I think, does pretty well in the top 20 or so. But when you get out at 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 and beyond, then it's really significant. And I think hurts PGA tour players. I've a hot topic of conversation on this podcast for quite some time has been Alex Noren. And forgive me, I didn't give you any preparation for this one, but my case has been that he has been sort of the example of that and that through playing the European Tory shot up into the top 10 in the world rankings.

How do your metrics view somebody like Noren compared to his official world golf ranking? So, I'm not sure where he's ranked in the world, but I have him ranked 31st just on a stroke's game basis since January of 2017. So, that's exactly the two year. He's about 16th or 17th right now in the world. So that's about separation I would expect. I know he's a very talented player and I'm very impressed with what he's done, the PGA tour.

Again, that's a topic for another day. I've taken quite a bit of abuse for best hits on him, but are you, this may be, I don't know if you've already been asked this question before, but what's the most consistent or maybe the most valid criticism you hear regarding your analysis? Oh, well, I think one of the criticisms, just that people don't understand it.

So I think most people, when they hear a one minute explanation, they get it. Most people have an intuitive sense of what a good shot and a bad shot is. I think a lot of people just haven't heard a one minute explanation. So I think the biggest criticism is, what is this? I don't know what it means. And that takes a while for it to sort of seep into the consciousness

of the general public. You mentioned, you know, you don't hear quite so much fairways, greens, and putts. I still hear it a lot on TV broadcasts, whereas, you know whereas PGA tour radio, they do a great job of, I think, highlighting the player's performance using Stroke's gain, but other places are still stuck in the dark ages. Very last one I promise, and I made it all the way to the end before asking a Ryder Cup question. But what are your models show in terms of what the writer cup question, but what does what are your models show

in terms of who the favorite should be in in France later this year. And honestly, I haven't I haven't looked at that recently but you know a quick a quick lance at you know at what I have is the top 10 or the

top 15. They're mostly americans except for uh... john rom justin rose i guess paul casey who so there's more than where than i was thinking their and surgio so i don't know so that looks pretty even uh... and then you get to rory and we yeah so yeah it's uh... it's gonna be good yeah i think i'll have to change i I was thinking about this, you know, close to a year ago where it looked like the US would dominate.

And now just a quick, quick glance, it looks like it'll be exciting. Oh, it's gonna be a really good one. I'm excited for it. And it's both teams trending in a great direction. So Mark, thank you so much for your time. This was excellent. I learned a lot.

I'm positive at the listeners at home. Learned a lot as well. So thank you so much for your time. This was excellent. I learned a lot. I'm positive at the listeners at home Learned a lot as well. So thank you so much for taking the time and best of luck to you and all your future endeavors Well, thanks for having me on Chris really a pleasure. Enjoy it. Thanks Mark I That's better than most. That is better than most. Better than most. you