No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 461: Mark Broadie

Episode Date: July 28, 2021

Mark Broadie joins us to discuss the origins of his groundbreaking work in golf analytics research and the evolution of the strokes gained metrics.  Mark also breaks down some inefficiencies in the OWGR rankings system, how he would use his data to pick a Ryder Cup team, and some potential improvements in technology that could help refine the strokes gained metrics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yes! That is better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No-Lang Up Podcast. I am very excited about today's episode with Mark Brody, Columbia professor, the inventor of Strokes Gained, talking, as you might guess, a lot about Strokes Gained, about data and golf, about Colin Moore, Kawah, Tony Fina, Louis Usthason.

A lot of the topics we discuss pretty frequently in the on this show, it pays to get somebody in here to actually really knows what he's talking about that can help us interpret a lot of data that we're trying to interpret some on our own. There's a great profile on Mark Brody at SchwabGolf.com. They do this great series. It's called the Challenger series.

They profile four or five different people every year, different groups of people every year that are challenging the status quo in some way in golf. They're very digestible, short videos that put some faces to the voices you hear in golf and tell their story a little bit, how they're changing some way that golf is being played or in Mark Brody's case, how data is interpreted, and his reach through the game of golf is very deep. So SchwabGolf.com, check that out. They got a great series of challengers.

We'd always try to feature their challengers on our podcast throughout the course of the year. So SchwabGolf.com, and here's our podcast, interview with Mark Brody. Cheers. All right, I don't know if you actually collect data on this particular topic, whether or not you've tracking how many times you've told the story behind Stroke's game and what it is, but I swear every time I have somebody explain it to me, even if I think I understand

it, I think I know it a little bit better after hearing it explained. So, if you don't mind explaining the concept of Stroke's game, both for myself and any listeners out there that may not be 100% familiar. Well, the short phrase to summarize stroke skein is it's progress to the whole measured in strokes. And I think the best way to understand that is, is with an example. If you're on the tee on a difficult par of four,

the average strokes to hold out might be 4.2 for this 450 yard hole. So instead of thinking of yourself as being 450 yards away, think of yourself as being 4.2 strokes away from the hole. And so an average swing, an average shot, would move you one stroke closer to the hole. So you take one swing off the tee and if you get to 3.2 strokes away from the hole you're doing average. If you hit a short drive off into the rough you're you're not going to be 3.2 you might be 3.5 strokes away and that's 3 tens of a stroke worse than average or your stroke's gained as minus 0.3 where you pipe a drive 300 yards down the middle of the fairway then you start off 4.2 strokes away from the hole and after that you might

only be 3 strokes away from the hole. So in one swing you've gotten 1.2 strokes closer, which means your stroke's gain is 0.2. So in order to measure stroke's gain, it's progress to the whole measured relative to a benchmark, which is usually the PGA tour benchmark, but if you're an amateur golfer, it could be a scratch go bench marker could be a bench mark for an 80 golfer. And it just quantifies what we know and what we see, whether it's a good shot or a bad shot, but it quantifies it in terms of these fractional gains and losses. I think things really clicked for me in the last year and a half or so. I've gotten to play a decent amount of golf with many tour professionals. And I find myself in matches with them. And, you know, I'll hit a good drive down the fairway and they will hit one 20 to 25 yards further than me

and in a better angle and learning how to keep up with them when they have that advantage on me has been maybe the best lesson to learn in strokes gained, right? If you're just out there playing by yourself, you hit a great drive right down the middle of the fairway. You might, you know, you don't have that great shot to compare it to, you know, as to what a true gain off the tee looks like. And I don't know, that was kind of a light bulb moment that went off for me. But one thing I wanted to ask, and I don't know this,

when I'm watching TV, when I'm watching golf on TV, what are some examples of perfectly average shots, shots that gain zero strokes, lose zero strokes? TV when I'm watching golf on TV. What are some examples of perfectly average shots? Shots that gain zero strokes, lose zero strokes, let's say, you know, it could be an example of a T-shot, a shot from 150, a shot from 100 yards. What would you say the benchmark is for a lot of the shots that we see on TV? Roughly speaking, a shot from 150 yards in the fairway if a pro puts it to 23 feet, that's about average. And some people think that's horrible. It's like, no, no, they're much better than that. And they said, no, they're not. From 200 yards, if they put it to 30 feet, that's an average shot. There's

a misconception that, you know that these pros are so good that from 100 yards, they're always within 10 feet and it's just not true. So stroke's gain, I think, helps you get some intuition about how good are good shots and how bad are bad shots. And it also goes the other way that you could be an amateur golfer in your 60 yards

away in the fairway and a pinnest cut on the right side of the green and you miss by about 10 feet to the right and you put it into the sand. You say well I only miss by 10 feet right on my target but dumping that 60-yard shot from the fairway into the sand you're losing about three quarters of a stroke and stroke scheme really helps you to think, you know, pay more respect to hazards. What is so we're talking 150 yards, 23 feet being the average. What is is that an even pretty 50 50 on as far as that is that a median as well?

Is it 50% of those balls will be inside that or yeah and I always quote the median in never the average 23 feet yeah 23 feet is half inside and half outside that that number and the problem with you know all sorts of traditional stats are misleading for for a number of reasons but if you throw in you know one shot that's a hundred feet away or 150 feet away, that really skews the average. So I always look at median. I look at the leave and feet from the hole

where half are closer and half are further. What can you talk about that there with the 60 yard shot that gets dumped in the bunker on a right pin? What is data in stats? What can it teach both professionals and amateurs about where to aim as far as the smart place to aim? What's normal to be expected for your variety of your shot pattern, things like that?

I feel like I've learned a decent amount about that as I've gotten into competitive golf and it's been surprising to me what that answer is. But I'm curious if any of your teaching or work with professionals has aligned with any of that. Well, I think the number one sort of strategy implication, like for amateurs from 150 yards in a fairway, the median lead for an amateur is 56 feet. So it's almost 20 yards. So that says you should do the best to get the ball on the green, which generally means aim for the middle of the green because your shot pattern is so huge that

if you go at the flag you're going to bring sand, rough water into play and the tradeoff just isn't worth it. But in terms of strategy, you should become more aggressive as your shot pattern shrinks. As it gets smaller and smaller, you can afford to fire at a flag. So when does your shot pattern get smaller? Well, it gets smaller as you increase in skill. So from 150 yards, an 80 golfer has a smaller shot pattern

than a 90 golfer, and a pro has a much smaller shot pattern than either an 80 or a 90 golfer. So that's why you would see pros being more aggressive from 150 yards than amateurs should be. But as you get closer to the hole, generally you shot pattern shrinks. So from 100 yards, it will have a smaller shot pattern than from 150 and from 50 yards, it will be smaller than from 100 yards.

So you basically want to aim for the middle of the green on your longer shots and only as you get much closer to the hole. You know, if you're off the green chipping, you want to chip the balls close to the holes possible, you don't want to chip to the center of the green. And I think that's just so intuitive and so simple, but you know, most, most amateurs, you know, see the flag, hit it the flag, and that's not a recipe for shooting a lowest scores. On chipping, I feel like this is, correct me if I'm wrong, I feel like this was one of your lessons I got out of your book.

It's been a couple of years since I've read it. I'm probably due to go back through it. But I've learned somewhere along the line, the lesson with chipping is hit it, chip it really close or it doesn't really matter where you chip it to. One, either poke holes in that or to explain why that is the case. That is the case.

You want to chip it to leave yourself the shortest pot possible. Generally, you don't want a chip to say leave yourself an uphill pot because then you'll have a lot more six footers than than three footers. A three foot downhill side hill put on every green in in the country perhaps except some of the most steeply sloped fastest fastest greens like a gustor maybe a couple other greens in in the country, perhaps except some of the most steeply sloped, fastest greens like a gustor, maybe a couple other greens in the country, maybe Oakmont. Three footers from anywhere around the hole, you're going to sink at a much higher rate than a six footer,

which you'll sink at a much higher rate than a nine footer. So distance is sort of king. And so you want to have the shortest putt possible which means you want to center your shot pattern on a chip shots around the hole. Just like you would for a 30 or 40 foot putt, you want to leave yourself the shortest second putt to minimize your three putt rate. And this notion of chip to leave yourself an easy second pot is just wrong because your second pot, if it's from five or six feet, is going to be tougher than a side hill three footer. Couple follow ups on that. And one, I have a theory and I want you to poke holes in it at

your will here. But in my theory, great ball strikers have a bit of a price to pay when it comes to strokes game putting because you're unlikely to leave yourself in a great spot to put from with an approach shot compared to a lesser ball striker that might miss more greens, you know, when chipping up, they are more likely to lead themselves a more favorable put, whether that be that uphill or the right the left or whatever that may be. And they're just more likely to lead themselves a more favorable put, whether that be that uphiller or the right the left or whatever that may be. And they're just less likely to be above the hole perhaps than someone whose first putt comes, you know, directly after a shot that was played from 200 yards.

Is there anything to that? Cause I feel like I've tried to make this argument with Rory and his puttingt for a very long time and I'm just hoping somebody could actually shed a light on that. So what you said theoretically is absolutely true. In practice, it makes so little difference as to be unmeasurable. So you take a look at some of the best ball strikers versus the worst ball strikers and the

difference in the number of greens they hit might be one per round. The difference in proximity might be 20 feet versus 22 feet. So if you take a look at the distribution of puts that they have uphill downhill side hill from different distances, it's very, very similar cross golfers. There are no golfers that systematically leave themselves more eight foot uphillers compared to other golfers. It just doesn't it doesn't happen. You've got a certain number of shortpots, mediumpots, longpots, side hill, uphill, downhill and that distribution is very similar cross

golfers. If a pro can't leave an approach shot within 30 feet of the hole it's not like they can leave it in a particular spot it's gonna hit and sort of roll to wherever it rolls and depending on the you know the hole and the hole location and it might be more likely to be a downhill putt versus an uphill putt or over a ridge, but all of those things are pretty much beyond the control of a player. So if it was the case that they were systematically missing greens and chipping to certain spots and leaving themselves easier putts, then you would be right.

So I said theoretically you're right, but I did look at Stroke's Game Pudding, accounting for a green contours, accounting for uphill downhill and side hill. And the answer is yeah, it makes a difference on individual pots and it makes a small difference in a round or two, but over the course of the season, the rankings of putters by Stroke's game putting, taking to account green contours versus not, there's almost no difference, almost no difference. That's one of those maddening things that is just hard to come to terms with, right? I know you can tell me the numbers of an uphill eight footer

or I would make less, less of those I guess than a tough five footer, but it just, one of those things just doesn't feel that way in reality. I think that's, I think it's freeing in a way and can be frustrating in a way sometimes too, right? You know, I can feel like I'm struggling on left to right or for whatever reason,

but what I think what you're saying is over, over a big enough sample size to actually matter, you will find that the data will even out eventually regarding those things. I mean, have you ever on a chip shot said that I'd like to have this right to left breaking putts, so I'm going to aim right to the hole rather than left to the hole for a left to right breaking putt? I mean, if you do that again, you're systematically going to have more right to left putts, which you think are easier, but they're also going to be much further from the whole.

And distance dominates slope, basically. That was something I think I remember we talked about a couple years ago, was maybe new frontiers and statistics would include information on slopes and things like that. Sounds like you have access to some of that information. Is that an expectation that we can expect to see in the future as golf fans as well, or what are the lessons that data taught you? Oh, I hope so. I would love for it to be incorporated into TV broadcasts and other analyses, which would

say something like, well, this eight footer, the average make percentages is 50%, but this straight up hill, the make percentage is 56% or this downhill slider, maybe it's only 42% because it does make a difference on an individual putt and it really is another way to quantify the difficulty of the putt as affected by the slope around the hole. So, you know, not all eight footers are created equal, saying over the course of a season it tends to average out, but wouldn't it be great on a broadcast to to be able to know, you know, how much easier or more difficult a putt is? Yeah, I think I always say something like even, you know, with either t-shots or with putts

as well, kind of circles circles around a hole in terms of where that 50% mark is. Green on the inside, right on the outside for where they're putting from would be great lessons to teach. And I think off the tee, some kind of line in the fairway. They have those lines that show longest drive of the day,

and on a couple of those holes. If they had some, almost like the first down line in football where it showed, yeah, this line, if you hit it further than this, you're gaining shots on the field. If you're hitting the fairway versus, you know, it helps really illustrate the guys that are losing shots versus gaining shots. I think there's a ton of opportunity there. And I hope we see something like that.

Yeah, I love that idea. I'd much rather see a circle or an ellipse around the hole from a sand shot than then he now says this player is two for five in sand saves this week. Yes, that doesn't teach you a whole lot, right? It doesn't say that's combining two stats into one and not really quite telling the story. But something I've always struggled with is this element I think that seems pretty impossible to capture in data. That's a shot going behind a tree, a bad line, a bunker. You know, how does any of that get factored into stats, right?

If I drive one into the lip of a bunker and I punch out sideways and hit it into the fairway, my understanding, I'm paying the price on my stroke scheme approach there and not my stroke scheme off the tee. Is that accurate to say? And is the expectation just that over the course of a season or what not, those numbers were all even out? So yes and no. So if, for instance, you have a buried lie in a greenside bunker, then that's really not part of the data. So it's pretty hard

to tell this, you know, nice lie versus a fried egg egg but if you're behind a tree and you have to chip out you can see that and Stroke's gained will call that not a shot from the rough but it will call it a recovery shot and when you do that that gives the penalty on the two shots combined to the T-shot and not to the chip the shot that chips out same thing if you're You know in the in the sand by a lip and you you basically have to just just wedge it out from there That would be called a recovery shot as well. So you have the normalized fairway rough sand But we also have this other lie recovery, which means you don't have a clear shot toward the hole.

And when you've got a chip out, that's then labeled a recovery shot. And the penalty for that is attached to the T-shot, not the approach shot. I never knew that. There's not a stroke-sc Game Recovery stat available on websites. Is that something that automatically does? It recognizes if you don't get it within a certain range of the hole that is just a recovery shot? That's correct. Yeah, and that's something that could be split out, just like we could have Strokes Game approach

from the fairway, Strokes Game approach from the sand, Strokes Game approach from the rough. You could have Strokes gain from recovery shots. But that's one of the things I track on T-shots. What fraction, I don't care so much, what fraction are put in the fairway, I do care what fraction are hit in the recovery or penalty situations, because that's far more important for strategy and other considerations.

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The discount is applied automatically. And for existing Charlie customers, you can get $10 off a sand and water bottle holder with code NLU free now through the end of July. So you wanna walk the course in style, Walker trolley is the push cart for your game. Let's get back to Mark Brody. What can you tell us about angles? On the PGA tour, it just seems what I'm watching.

It seems pretty rare that they play a major impact just due to softness of turf and players ability to, a player's ability to hit high shots these days. But are there any major takeaways from your research in terms of angles created off the tee or angles coming in approaching greens or anything like that? Well, I think the, you know, Scott Fawcett and loose Wagner have done similar work

and have been, you know been pretty vocal about it. I think they hit the nail on the head when they say, angles matter, but you shouldn't take them into account in your strategy. Meaning, because of the way the pen is cut, it could be better to be on the right side of the fairway than the left side of the fairway. But that doesn't mean you should aim for the right side of the fairway than the left side of the fairway. But that doesn't mean you should aim for the right side of the fairway and put half your shots in the right rough because that's far worse than having those shots in the right rough

being somewhere in the fairway versus having more shots also coming from the left side of the fairway. So angles matter, but you shouldn't change your strategy because of it. Whereas, hazards off the T matter, and you should change your strategy because of it. And it has to do with the size of the shot pattern and how you can move your target to avoid a hazard typically. But when you move your target to favor one side of the fairway, because of the size of a player's t-shot or driver shot pattern, you're bringing more shots from the rough end of play. That's just that way is the gain from the angle.

The difference between the penalty for being in the fairway is greater than the advantage for having a better angle from the fairway is greater than the advantage we're having a better angle from the fairway? I can definitely follow that for 80 plus percent if not more of levels of golf. But I think is it fair to say like if I'm watching the open championship which we're recording this the day right after it wrapped that you know it didn't play as firm this time around but there are situations where the you know the firmer it gets, the angles, they're very well could be a situation where it's worth having balls in that right rough,

if that's a better angle than being in the left fairway. Is that anything that can be quantified in data? That's something that I know, that's very much shoved in our face of saying, like these angles don't matter, here's what the data says, but I find it super hard when I'm playing Link's Golf, you know, and I'm in a situation where I have a 60-yard pitch shot off hard pan over a bunker to a firm green. I have a hard time picturing that I wouldn't be better off,

you know, even being 120 yards away with a proper angle into the green and somewhere I can run the ball up onto the green. Is that something that can be quantified? Oh, absolutely, it can and absolutely that makes a difference. So I was speaking in generalities, but it depends on how deep is the rough. So if you have pretty deep rough in the rough one, PGA tour courses is generally thicker and heavier and tougher to get out of than on public or club courses.

And it's even thicker and heavier US open courses typically. So it depends on the rough. If you've got light rough, I know I know many amateurs that would rather be in the rough than the fair work as the ball sits up but there's less chance of thinning it or hitting it fat. But another thing that you point it out, you could be 60 yards away on hard pan and it's hard to spin it with a half swing. Whereas from 100 yards you take a full swing and you can spin the ball so you can hit it higher and get it close to that way. So those are real effects they can be measured. And there's somewhat the exceptions but they're important exceptions.

And so I 100% agree you're not imagining that at all. And that's where, you know, there's such a data overload now, I think, which I'm in support of. If I'm not clear, I'm a big fan of statistics. I've learned a lot of lessons. I think a lot of lessons are to be learned. But at the same time, there seems to be, and it's a conversation we have pretty often when we are watching PGA Tour Golf and it comes down to winning or losing tournaments, which

seems to be the way, the ultimate way to decide the success of a player. And that sometimes, the play that is required for you to win a tournament, to excel, to make a birdie when you are caught up in a probability maze, if you will, if somebody players at the top, the data would suggest you should play this safe shot, yet if you need to make the birdie, it requires this particular shot. And I'm just wondering if you can weigh in on, if you're following what I'm saying there, if you can say, you know, PGA tour shots are not linear, there's some shots that are more important than others when it comes down to the end of a tournament.

If it's worth changing strategy, weighing in, saying, a birdie here is worth this much concern, and a bogey doesn't cost me as much as a birdie would get me. Do you see what I'm getting at? Absolutely, and I agree with you 100%. I think the problem is that club golfers and amateur golfers that even pros might think that on the first tee of round one that that logic applies.

I absolutely believe it applies late in the tournament when you're close to the lead. I absolutely believe it applies when you're a stroke or two outside the cut line. You must become more aggressive because birdies are all that matter, bogies and doubles are don't. And so you can, can and should change your strategy because winning, there's a non-linear payoff to winning as you were saying, that a win is worth so much more than a second or third, that birdies become far more valuable than bogies, that means you should adjust your strategy to become more aggressive in those situations. It's the reason and hockey that teams that are behind by a goal

pull the goalie. That you wouldn't pull the goalie in the first minute of a game because it's a negative expected goal strategy. It's more likely that the other team is going to score than you will. But late in the game, if you're down a goal, you don't care about losing by two goals or three goals. You care about getting that one goal to tie and getting that one goal to tie. That probability will go up if you pull the goal and put an extra skater out on the ice. It's the same reason that bunting and baseball in the early innings for a non-pitcher typically doesn't make sense because outs are really valuable. It's not worth it to move a runner along one base. But late in the game, if you're down

by a run and you need to run to tie the game, bunting can become important. So your strategy should depend on where you are in the game and what the score is and the same thing in golf. If you're near the lead with a few holes to go, you should change your strategy accordingly. Help me make sense, I guess, of two guys we've talked a lot about in recent months and weeks is Tony Fiena when it comes to his close calls in PGA tour events and Louis Ustazins run in major championships over the last five, six,

seven years and how they are able to succeed at such an incredibly high level yet not beat entire fields. And maybe I'm tying this in with a question of what you think of stats like expected wins or you know some of the stuff I often cite from datagolf.com that you know kind of does analysis of based on how you played you would expect to win this many tournaments which we all know tournaments don't necessarily fall out that way but is there anything that you know that would help explain why those two guys I mentioned seem to be rise to the top so frequently yet can't beat 100% of fields because I am at a loss for words from being able to explain it. I don't think I can explain it, but I really do think expected wins is a great measure.

I like the work that the data golf guys do. It's hard when you only have four majors and so you only have four chances to win a major at most four different major winners in a season. There's going to be so many other players that had a chance to win and have close calls that you can sort of point the finger at a lot of them. Why didn't speed win this time? Why didn't Louis win this time? Why didn't Tony Fina win this time. Why didn't Louis win this time? Why didn't Tony Fina when this time? And you know, some people are going to come up on the

short end of the stick more often than others. So whether it's anything in the way they've approached it or the way they react to the situation, I really couldn't tell you. But I think expected wins is a very good measure. And I use this back in 2017 in a golf magazine feature story about who is the best player without a major. And prior to 2017, you go through this expected wins analysis or expected major win analysis. And the person who was the most negative at the time was Sergio Garcia. And then he went and won the Masters and sort of got that monkey off his back.

But at the time, and again, this was about four years ago, then I went and said, OK, now that Sergio is off this list because of his major win, who's next and the rankings were Steve Stricker first, Lee Westwood, Luke Donald, Matt Kutcher, and Paul Casey. And Steve Stricker at the time his expected major wins were one and a half. So it's not like he was expected to win three or four and had zero. He was at one and a half. Lee Westwood at the time was at one point two, same thing with Luke Donald. So you're really talking about fine lines and it's hard. Probably your

observations watching TV, you would have much better Analysis of what you saw with Louis Ustay is under Tony Fiennell, and I would see in the data I think it also just comes down to someone's got to be on the bad end of an expected wins number, right? Like just mathematically Some people are gonna be the names we know are going to be on the higher end of the, you know, on the positive end of that and someone's got to pay the price of it and it's going to net out to one, two or three people as it is. And I think those are the names that come to mind.

But I tried to make this analogy on our recap podcast from Sunday of the of the open championship. And trying to, we always get super excited after a young guy wins, you know, maybe a major or multiple majors in projecting out their, their overall career majors win. So I'm going to put you on the spot with this one. If you were to set Colin Morakal as over under for career majors, if you were a bookmaker, what would be a fair over under to set? Wow. I am on the spot and I'm not sure I would give my

answer here much, much credence, but I would say five. Okay, I said over under four and a half and some guys were taking, you know, I always like to put the half in there, make you really think on the over under, you know, push. I would have taken four and a half of my thought about putting it in a half of your recovery. But I put it, I equated it to, and I'm not, you sound like you're pretty in tune with baseball statistics as well, but I equated it to someone having a pretty high batting average on balls and play as it stands right now, and that when he's put himself in contention at majors, he has gotten victories out of it. And it'd be very unfair to project that pace of success, of converting

success in a major to victory out for the rest of his career. Am I on to something with that? Absolutely. I agree with you 100%. I mean, if you look at Rory the week after he won his fourth major, and you ask the same question, what, What number would most people have said and take a look some number of years later, and he's still at four, and he's a great player. It's not like he's gone anywhere. He's still in the top 10 in the world, and he's still contented and competed for plenty of majors,

and it's hard. There just aren't that many majors. So if anybody says that Colin Morica was you know over under on major wins is six seven eight I think they're smoking something caught up in it caught up in some recent excitement I have been that guy before I think I've given Rory I've given I've given a lot of majors to Rory over the years but on on the specific note on Mara Cala, can you, you know, I think it's still kind of flying under the radar.

Maybe this past week has really brought it to attention, but his iron play prowess even has kind of snuck up on me. And I saw the stat a couple of weeks ago that it was the fourth best strokes game approach season in history that he's having this current year. The first three, of course, being different seasons from Tiger Woods and I was calling, yeah, all right, there's gotta be a typo in there somewhere. Turns out to be accurate. Can you add any perspective into just

how great of an iron player Colin Morakawa is? Well, one measure of greatness is, what you just did comparing to Tiger Woods and I looked a few weeks ago and I had Colin Moricawa gaining a stroke and a half shots per round on his approach shots. Which doesn't sound like a lot. Tell us why that's a lot, too.

Oh, it's a lot. Why it's a lot? Well, usually the leader in this stat at the end of the season is maybe it's one shot per round. So that's 50% more than the typical leader in a season. If you take a look at Tiger Woods for his shot link career, he's at three-quarter of a stroke per round.

And he's one of the best iron players in history, if not the best iron player. And as you mentioned, he had several of these phenomenal strokes gained approach rounds, which were over one. I have in 2012, he was at 1.4, 2013, 1.7, something like that. But so he's gaining 50% more strokes from his approach play than a typical leader in a season, which is just phenomenal. Put it another way, he starts a tournament, six strokes up on the pack. So one and a half strokes better for four rounds.

He's got a six shot lead walking into the first tee and he needs to get to about 14 shot lead to win the tournament. So that's, I think a measure of just how phenomenal his approach shots are. And I don't know, I haven't done this calculation, but it's something like, his know, his, his approach shot from 150 or like an average tour player is approach shot from 100 yards. Oh my god. Where his approach shots from 200 yards are like an average PGA tour player is from 150. I don't know if that's exactly right. Don't quote me, but that's, that's the order of magnitude of what we're talking about to try and translate it into some other more understandable terms. That's what did it for me was when you put it on a per tournament basis of, you know, even over the next best guy,

he's two shots up on him, which is so many shots. If you almost any pro golfer, if you shave two shots off your game, you make it to the highest level of, you can play on the PGA tour almost. That's the thin margin that we're talking about and what how big his gap is with Iron Play. It blows your mind. Yeah, Tigers, Tiger, I think I've just flipping through his year by year. I think I saw 2006. He was over two shots, gain strokes, gain approach,

per round, which is the highest that I had seen, but which is just flat out absurd. But what's the next frontier in statistics? How can they get even better? And what are reasonable expectations as to how data analysis and golf could get even better? Well, I think one way that it gets better is with better data. And the technology is here.

It's not quite cost effective yet, but to have trajectories on every shot and every putt. And so now you can take a look at launch angles and spin rates, but also how the ball is moving through the air, how higher players hitting it, how lower they hitting it, where is it landing versus where is it finishing on the green, those kind of things I think open the door for lots of new analyses and new stats. Because you're trying to quantify what golf fans know and what players know. And it's from 200 yards, you want to hit your long irons high and from 80 yards you want to hit your

wedges low, which is one of those contradictions, but if you're 200 yards away how do you get it to stop close to the to the hole? Well it's either trajectory or spin and it would be nice to know how much of those things influence outcomes for various players and we're close because radar systems, camera systems, launch monitors are available, it's just a question of deploying. I mean, who doesn't want to see more of the tracer technology on TV broadcast? Well, imagine you had that for every player and every shot, then you can do some really wonderful analyses. Maybe this was this question made a fit a little bit better when we were talking about

Finau and Usthason, but I want to cover the topic of variability and that you know, in just watching Morakawa this past week, he is as we know, not a very strong putter. His stats do not check out very well when it comes to putting, but he does seem volatile with the putter. And it seems like averages, we see averages a lot when it comes to Strokes game, all of this stuff, but how does variability get rewarded in golf? Hitting your averages every week,

I would think would give you probably zero wins, but some volatility could mean lifting a lot of trophies. And I don't know what my question is related to that, but I'm wondering if you could kind of speak to the benefits of being volatile and having a really high peak might be in pro golf. Well, I think you'd like to see a player who's consistent with their ball striking and has variability in putting. And it's the case that the best ball strikers tend to rise to the top of the leaderboard weekend and week out. The winners in any given week tend to be the best putters out of this group of the best ball strikers. So Rory talks about his driver being a

consistent weapon because he is so long and relatively straight with his driver that he can count on that weekend and week out. Col him more a cow, I can count on his irons, weekend and week out. They're not going to win every week, but if they have a hot putter that week, that's going to really increase their chances of winning. And there's a lot more variability in putting rounds. In a given round, you could, in the extreme cases,

gain six strokes with putting, or you could lose five or six gain six strokes with putting or you could lose five or six strokes with a horrible putting around that. That variance is huge where you don't see that kind of variance in driving because Rory is consistently gaining 20 yards on his on his drives. It's not like one week is 40 yards longer on average and the next week he's three yards longer on average. He's about 20 yards longer week and week out so that consistency that comes from distance leads to consistent stroke gained in driving. So consistent stroke gained in ball striking, get you to be one of the top players in the world and it translates into

win on those weeks where you have a hot putter. That's a little bit of a simplification, but I think it gets at your question about variability. Nope, that makes a lot of sense. What would a situation have to be for you to recommend to a player? Yes, you are better off laying back here than hitting it further down the hole. And you touched on some of that, and we were talking about 60 yard shots,

not being able to hold spin. Is there a number, and maybe that's a pro golf and an amateur golf question? That number might be very well-be very different. But I recall here in something along the lines of Tiger learning, if he hit it to 55 yards or from 40 to 55 yards, he was terrible or something, and he never laid up to that

number, something along those lines. Because in general, I hear fights against, yeah, don't lay up to your favorite number, get it very close, but I think there is also being too close in that regard. I'm wondering if you can share any insight there. So I do think that there's a difference between amateurs and pros but the difference between 80 or 90 yards or 80 or 100 yards if that's your favorite wedge distance versus 30 or 40 or 50 almost every tour player and probably every tour player is significantly better from 30 or 40 or 50 yards and they are from 80 90 or 100 even if they feel like it's an uncomfortable distance

from 50 yards, and again, the exceptions are things like on your second shot, if there's water right up near the green, you might want to lay a little bit further back to avoid that hazard. That's a primary consideration, number one. The second is, if the pin is tucked just over a bunker and the best play is to hit a little long of the pin and spin it back, you might be able to do that better from 80 or

90 yards than from 40 or 50 yards. So spin and whole locations is the second consideration. And then for amateurs, if you have the chip yips and you know from 50 yards you're more likely to chunk it or skull it than you are from a hundred, then I'd say the message is yeah for you you should hit to a hundred yards and you should also take a lesson because you're much worse from 50 yards than you should be because almost everybody, amateurs included are better from 50 yards than 100. And that makes a lot of sense.

And a topic that we also cover a lot on this podcast to the point where I think people are sick of me talking about it, but you could explain a lot better than I could would be the official world golf rankings. And I think my opinion on them shifted greatly with a paper you published on how the official golf rankings are. The points are distributed and how it may potentially be unfair worldwide. Can you give listeners, could you explain kind of your theory, I guess, on that and whether

or not you think you see any potential changes coming down the pipe in the in the world golf rankings. So when I published the the Every Shot Counts book, one of the messages was, driver show putt for doe might be the most famous expression in golf, but it's also wrong. Or, you know, bomb and gouge is is not right because the value of distance is huge, but these players aren't gouging it out of the rough all the time. So some of it was counterintuitive or surprising,

whereas for the official World Golf rankings, my colleague Dick Rendellman and I published the paper that you referenced in 2013 that analyzed the official World Golf rankings. And her conclusion was that the rankings were biased against PGA tour players. And unlike other work, many people said, yeah, we knew that, it's obvious. It wasn't... It wasn't... you're just telling us what everybody already knows.

And I was like, oh, okay, but all we did as academics was objectively measure and quantify that bias. So it wasn't surprising to many people, but it was at least, you know, quantified that bias. And then there have been a number of other articles. I had hoped then Dick and I had hoped that that had hoped that that would lead to some sort of change. And I think it did lead to some conversation and some talk in the golf community, but

no change has happened. And then in 2019, among others, Doug Ferguson, who's a writer for the Associated Press, basically said the same thing. That the official world golf rankings, he goes, who's a writer for the Associated Press basically said the same thing that the official world golf rankings he goes is still biased. It's been like that for the better part of 2020 years. We've pointed to Grendelman and I pointed out a flaw and the question then is now one of change management. It's something that other of my colleagues in a business school know more about than me, how do you go from a system that has some flaws to a better system, and how do you actually get that implemented

and accepted, and that's a little bit beyond my pay grade? Hmm. What is that, what would you say the inputs are in that, in their model that drive the flaw, right? I mean, I know one of them being, you know, on the European and Asian tours that they have no matter with the field strength, they have a minimum number of points that they're

required to give away on an event basis. Is that the main driver of it? Yeah, I would say that. It's one, I would say, you know, the flaws that you refer to are not so much in the top 20 or 10 or 30 in the world because the best players tend to play against each other. And in majors, in World Golf championships, in a lot of time, in the Premier, PGA Tour events and European Tour events. The impact is more on players outside the top 35 or 50.

And the points are distributed according to a strength of field calculation. And I think you can do better than count how many players are in the top 200. If you've got a weaker field and there's not many players in the top 200, then or no players, then what the official World Golf rankings use is this alternative minimum and that's somewhat arbitrary and not necessarily a fair representation of the strength of the field. So I think there's ways to improve the system, but the minimums I think are one issue. Yeah, I think my issue with it is what you're saying there. You can rise up the rankings without going head to head with a lot of these players.

You can bypass guys that are playing against top players weekend week out. And you know, you can you can beat a lot of 200 and 300 ranked players and find yourself rising up even into the top 50 in the world, which seems seems a little bit backwards. But what how one one final kind of question here that I want to know how you measure clutch. I don't really know how to ask that question. I just want to know if clutchness is a predictable skill engulf and if you have any insight on that. So I think of clutch play as having two components. One is how well do you perform which is stroke skeamed as one measure? And when, when are you worried about this and usually final nine holes of of a tournament when you're in the leader or close to the lead? so

How do you take those those two things into account? Well stroke scheme measures performance, but clutch is when your wind probability is Significant or when the change in wind probability is significant, which is also referred to as a high leverage situation. So if you have you know is also referred to as a high leverage situation. So if you have, you know, 1% chance to win a tournament or less, then it doesn't matter what you do on the next few holes, you're not going to win. It's not sort of a clutch or high leverage situation, but if your win probability is, you know, 20 to 20 to 30%.

It only has two ways to go up to one or down to zero. And the changes in win probability are huge. So win probability is the primary way to measure pressure or to measure the leverage of a situation. And it takes into account how many strokes behind the leader are you, the further behind you are, the lower your win probability, but also how many players are in between you and the leader.

So you could be two strokes behind and there's only the leader in front of you where you could be two strokes behind and you've got to pass five other people. And the last thing that matters is there, one, two, five, nine holes left. So all three of those can be nicely summarized by win probability. And so I think of measuring clutch play as Strokes gained piled on top of a win probability calculation.

So I just got some late breaking news. The PGA of America just announced that Mark Brody probability calculation. So I just got some late breaking news. The PJ of America just announced that Mark Brody is the captain of the 2021 United States Ryder Cup team. How would you go about filling out a Ryder Cup team with all the access to all the data you have? I struggle with with trying to figure out we have all this measured stroke-play data applying that to match-play situations and team environments and matching up players that would play well together, what are considerations you

would make in that process? Well, I first resigned and turned over my capmanship to somebody who's more qualified than me, but a lot of what people, I think, talk about, would go into the thought process, which is who are the best players overall? And by that I mean over a substantial period of time. I wouldn't pick Phil Mikkelson because he won the PGA championship and has not performed well otherwise. So overall I mean over some nine months, the two-year period of time.

But you also want to see sort of who's hot, who's informed, who's playing best currently. So you can measure that over some more recent time period, one, two, three, or four months, something like that. Then you want to look at who plays better or worse on this particular writer cup course. And then you want to look at hoop hairs well with others in terms of their game. I'm not so much, don't have much knowledge in terms of the psychology or maybe you want two players who are friends or two players from the same country or same state playing together.

And also hoop performs the best under pressure I think is something you might want to consider, but with a great qualification that performance under pressure is almost necessarily a small sample size. And so you've got to be careful about how well somebody performed under pressure in the past is not necessarily of, you know, a guarantee of these returns in the future as the government warnings say when you invest in hedge funds. But I think you want to take all those factors into account exactly how you do that. I'm not sure. That's what I've been screaming from the rooftops is somebody that, you know, comes up and has

that high variability week of winning something, still being the specific example, that that does not necessarily project out very well. I never understood why winning an event in May means you're going to play great in match play four months later on a totally different golf course. That's what I feel like a point I have to keep making to some of my other colleagues that I won't name. But one that doesn't- I'm with you on that argument, so I agree there. Absolutely. Well, are there any new misconceptions about data

and golf or anything you hear on TV that you still kind of roll your eyes at? And I say that kind of partially wondering if we've maybe steered too far away from Drive for Show Putt for Doe, I think you may have answered some of that in terms of how much week to a single week of great putt and can impact you and whatnot. But just kind of wondering if you feel like there's any still

lingering misconceptions out there, or any new misconceptions you're seeing. I don't think this is what you're headed for, but I think one misconception is that stroke's name is just for pros because you see it on pjtour.com, you might see it in broadcasts or podcasts or newspaper articles. It's great for amateurs, and there's many more amateur golfers than there are pros. Just as fairways, greens, and putts are not very informative for pros, they're not very

informative for amateurs either. And I think if every amateur who wanted to improve their score, track their shots, and look at a Stroke's Gain report for one or more rounds, I think they would very quickly see where their strengths and weaknesses lie, where they should get a lesson or where they should practice. And for many, it's pretty eye-opening. Yeah. The most freeing thing I learned from your book was, I used to put a lot of pressure on my putting, and if I miss an eight-foot par putt, I blamed my putter for that.

And if it's a 400-yard hole and I miss the eight-foot par putt, I said, you wasted a full shot with your putter right there. And that's just not the case. And it took me a long time to learn. I actually just lost a half shot. And hey, if you were better at the ball striking part of this, you would not have the eight footer for par the best way to prevent losing shots

is to not leave yourself the eight footer for par. And that helped so much. That helped visualize the whole thing to me. What? So if we started, let's say we started at zero with strokes getting went before strokes gained. And then the day strokes gained came into this world. That was, you know, we were, that's, that's day one. How far are we going to run up against the data wall? Things have moved so far, right? And I'm asking this

question in a very confusing way, but I'm saying how much more room is there in golf, both from what we've learned from analytics, to keep expanding, what percentage of the way along the way of optimization are we in terms of stats and analytics and how that affects the way the game has played? Well, I think we're maybe 30% on, and I think golf is this sort of infinitely intricate game that there's there's a lot more to go and I'm really amazed if I'm making up the number the number 30% but

When you start off the the podcast that's can you give us a quick explanation of strokes game? I would say probably 80% of the golfers out there have no clue what it is. So I think there's a huge amount of education still to do. And I think there's a lot of possibilities there. And then for sort of more refined stats, I think a lot of it would be, as you mentioned earlier, let's have better data visualization and graphics on TV, rather than just, here's another number, here's yet another number.

It would be nice to be able to visualize things a little bit better and layer that on top of the video feed. I think that I hope is coming and I think would make a big difference. Yeah, I think that would serve golf fans greatly. Last question we're gonna get you out of here on this. What's been the highlight of your golf journey? Your name is synonymous with this movement

and golf, what's the coolest thing that's come out of it for you? Well, I certainly never expected to meet and develop friendships meets and develop friendships with as many PGA tour players and European tour players and coaches of I have. I'm an academic and I spend eight to ten hours a day at a desk typing away at a computer and then people ask, how did COVID affect you? And for me, not as much as others, I still spend eight or ten hours a day typing away at a computer. But when I go to TIGALF events, and I just know many of the pros and I know many of the coaches, and that's certainly been a highlight. But it's really gratifying to see analytics make such been a highlight, but it's really gratifying to see analytics make such inroads into media, TV, radio, podcasts, and articles. And even more than that, it's rewarding to hear

many pros and college players and others say that Stroke's Gain has changed the way they approach the game, the way they practice. You know, Bryson is one example of somebody that, you know, realized the value of distance. Roy McRoy called Stroke's game, the best new stat in golf in well, and then he said forever, really, couldn't ask for anything more than that. So it's been just, you know, loads of fun,

living the dream. Well, I'll say in the first podcast we did, I asked you, what's your diameters work on? What's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your,

what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your,

what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what better. So that's one fantastic. One final nugget to leave people with there and how they can improve at the game of golf. But Mark, thanks so much. One for all the data work you've done in preparation for this podcast and for coming on and telling us, teaching us up on some things. I think people take a lot from this one. I know I sure did. So thanks so much for your time. Greatly appreciated.

Thanks so much for having me on and And thanks for all that you guys do to bring golf to a much wider audience. You guys do fabulous. So thanks for everything you do. Appreciate that, cheers. I'd be the right club. Be the right club today. That is better than most. How about him? That is better than most.

How about in? That is better than most. Better than most. Expect anything different.