Thursday, May 14, 2009

A Better Way to Track Long Game Improvement

How Good Was Henrik Stenson’s Long Game Last Weekend?

He may have won the recent TPC golf tournament, a “mini-major.” But according to the PGA Tour’s stats, Henrick's long game did not rank in the top 10 in the field. I strongly disagree! Here are his long game statistics as displayed on PGA Tour.com:
Driving Accuracy – T11 (73.2%, or 10.24 of 14 fairways hit)
Greens in Regulation – T12 (68.1%, or 12.25 of 18 GIR's)

What’s wrong with these stats?

As I've commented previously, the Fairways Hit stat is by far the weakest performance barometer of all traditional golf statistics for two reasons. First, it ignores driving distance. But most importantly, it ignores the differences between the relative severity of the fairways missed. By this measure, a drive hit OB counts the same as a "miss" sitting up nicely in the first cut. That is so wrong!

Greens in Regulation (GIR’s) is the best of the “old school” golf stats because it means two positive things. First, the long game was efficient enough to achieve the green in regulation. Second, it identifies that there was a birdie opportunity. Its shortcoming is that it does not measure or describe what happened on the holes where the golfer did not hit the green in reg. On the PGA Tour, this conservatively leaves out 33% of the holes and, by the way, the holes where not-so-good things happened. For most amateurs, this golf stat is really a waste of time for tracking improvement because the average 15 to 19 handicap golfer hits only 4 greens a round.

A much better Long Game barometer

I put Henrik Stenson’s long game to a better test – his Long Game Efficiency Index (LGEI - patent pending). This simple test adds up his total Long Game strokes (all strokes from outside 50 yards), divides that number by his GIR’s to arrive at his Efficiency Index.
What makes this statistic better? Because it combines the best of what GIR’s tell us with everything that happened in the long game on all 18 holes. As such, penalties, flubs and miss-hits on the non-GIR holes are all counted.

Henrik’s LGEI in the 2009 TPC:
Total Long Game Strokes per round: 33.7 / 12.25 GIR’s = 2.75 LGEI

Now, to put this into perspective, the hypothetical “perfect” long game round would be:
Long Game strokes 36 / 18 GIR’s = 2.00 LGEI

Winners on the PGA Tour:
Long Game strokes 33.5 / 13 GIR’s = 2.58 LGEI

The BEST I have seen – Tiger Woods in his 2006-07 streak of Seven Consecutive Wins:
Long Game strokes 32.75 / 13.75 GIR’s = 2.38 LGEI

Bottom line, I’d bet that if we calculated a LGEI for every player in last weekend’s TPC event, we would see Henrik’s Long Game ranking jump to #1 or very close to it. His performance was remarkably efficient. Think about it – on a tight Pete Dye golf course full of hazards, he had a total of two Long Game mistakes in 72 holes. One drive resulted in such a poor position that he was forced to simply advance the ball, and one approach shot found a water hazard.

I agree that it can be painful to re-live penalties, flubs and mishits, but here's a niblick of truth: owning up to them and committing to reducing them is critical to improving your golf game. For the most complete picture of the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of your golf game, log on to www.shotbyshot.com.

2 comments:

  1. Nice going with this new index Pete. You certainly make the case for a new treatment of these indicators, therefore better appreciation of outstanding performances such as Henrik's at Players. I hope your "patent pending" goes through and that PGA Tour tech guys adopt it - of course for a substantial royalty fee.
    C. Mann

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  2. Peter - is the LGEI calculated in the current version of Shot by Shot? I think this might be very useful for all golfers.

    Sincerely,
    Brian Gallant, CPGA, B.Sc.Kin, CAO Coach
    BG Golf Academy at FireRock
    www.bggolf.ca

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