Sunday, February 21, 2010

2' Feet 11" will Haunt Villegas

I am really enjoying watching the PGA Tour players compete in the WGC Accenture Match Play event. It is the format that the majority of us enjoy and we can empathize and think along with the big boys. There is no question in my mind that they play differently. The normal, stroke play events require a much higher degree of control and game management because even if not a winner, every stroke is worth a great deal of money. I also believe that the change in format puts a different type of pressure on the world's best players and cite as an example the short putt missed by Camillo Villegas on the 23rd hole of his match against Paul Casey. Let's call it 3 feet that would have ended the match and placed Camillo in the finals. Instead, the hole was halved, and he went on to lose the match. We have all done it - I know I have.

Perspective on Villegas, his Putting and 3 Footers

His World Ranking: 24
In 2009, Villegas won $1.8 million in 21 events. His best finish was 3rd, with four Top-10 finishes, ten Top-25's and only two missed cuts. Very consistent! If we are to put any stock in the Tour stats, he managed all this despite being a below average putter.
  • His Putting Average (Putts/GIR's) - 2009 Rank 116. Everyone who reads Niblicks of Truth knows I hate this old stand-by tour stat, and why. Please just trust me - ignore it.
  • Total Putting - 2009 Rank 191: While not up to ShotByShot.com's putting analysis standards, this stat is so much better than putts/GIR. It is a weighted average of the player's rank in each of six new ShotLink putting stats. I won't bore you with the details but it is an array of putting ranges from 3 to 25 feet, and 3 Putt Avoidance from 25 feet. It may not be perfect, but Camillo's 191 Tour ranking is definitely not good.
3 Footers
One of the Tour stats with which I cannot argue is "Putts from 3 Feet." In 2009, Camillo missed only 7 in 88 rounds. He was successful with 637 of his 644 attempts - 98.9% This seems fairly good but it ranked him #146. Evidently the average of the PGA Tour would have only missed 6 - 99.19%. Further digging revealed that 3 players were perfect from 3 feet last year:
  1. Steve Stricker: 662 of 662 in 81 rounds
  2. Bob Heintz: 557 of 557 in 59 rounds
  3. Ian Poulter: 442 of 442 in 59 rounds (no wonder he is in the finals of the match play)
How about the rest of us from 3 feet? The percentages below represent 3 feet and closer so not exactly the same as the Tour numbers above. I will run the specific 3 foot # soon, but for now you will get the point:
  • 10 handicap - 94%
  • 18 handicap - 90%
Consider that we amateurs face at least ten putts in the 3-foot range each time we play. They are worth practicing - just ask Camillo Villegas!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

How Refreshing - A Real Par 5!

The AT & T Pebble Beach Pro-Am is played on three different courses and ShotLink is only set up on one - Pebble Beach. As a result, Shot By Shot's analysis can only be done on two of the four rounds of this tournament, which makes an in-depth analysis of what won and what didn't impossible. Nevertheless, it was still a very entertaining event on a magnificent golf course.

It was nice to see an exciting finish and I was stunned by the car wrecks on the par-5, 14th hole, especially by the two final groups. First, a quadruple bogey (+4) is somewhat rare on the PGA Tour and generally follows a major mistake off the tee requiring a re-tee. In this case we saw two contenders for the lead play hockey around the 14th green for back-to-back 9's. Bryce Molder and then Paul Goydos did their best impressions of choppers. It was both hard to watch and interesting to see how well they handled their demise.

They were not alone as the hole ranked the 5th most difficult of the 54 holes played with an average score of 5.187. Not that anyone really cares about the hole rankings or how they are ranked, but I believe this hole was clearly the most difficult and should have been ranked #1. Instead of ranking based upon the greatest margin over par, the holes should be ranked based upon the greatest margin from the Tour's average scoring on holes of like par. Below are the scoring averages for the entire 2009 PGA Tour season:
Par 3's = 3.08
Par 4's = 4.06
Par 5's = 4.68

The event score for the 14th hole was a full half stroke higher than the 2009 Tour scoring average on par 5's. According to this week's ranking, the most difficult hole at Pebble was the par 4, 9th with a scoring average of 4.253. OK, it was .25 strokes over par and that is difficult but it was only .19 strokes over the average scores that can be expected on par 4 holes at this level. See my point?

It is obvious that with today's length, the par 5 holes represent the real scoring opportunities on the PGA Tour. If players can't hit the greens in two, and most can, they can lay up to their favorite wedge distance and attack the flags.

What then was so hard about the 14th at Pebble? It was not the tee shot - 65% of the players hit the fairway (YTD Tour Avg. for Fairways Hit is only 62%). It was the green which presents a very small and unforgiving target. Only 53% of the field hit it in regulation. This compares to the Tour average of 84% for GIR's from 125 yards or less. The approach and short game shots to the small, firm plateau proved unusually difficult. It really did look like hockey as the balls slid past the hole, picking up speed as they ran over the other sides of the green.

Bottom line, #14 played a meaningful role in determining the winner. In addition to culling the list of hopefuls (Molder & Goydos), the 14th green extracted a critical bogey from David Duval (runner-up by 1). Finally, Dustin Johnson could credit his 1-stroke win to the very intelligent par that he recorded on this hole.

It will be very interesting to see how the USGA sets up #14, and how the players handle it, in the US Open later this year.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Stricker Wins - Tour Stats Strike Out Again



If you look to the PGA Golf Tour Stats to see what Steve Stricker did last weekend to win, you'd conclude that it was his PUTTING, aided by great SAND PLAY. Here are Steve's stats and rankings for the Northern Trust Open:
- Driving Accuracy = T10
- Driving Distance = T37
- Putts Per Round = 1
- Putts Per GIR = 3
- Greens In Reg = T10
- Sand Saves = T 1

These indicators of performance could not be more misleading. To point out exactly why, I analyzed Steve's performance on ShotByShot.com and compared it to that of the 2009 Winners on the PGA Tour:

Long Game Efficiency
Steve's accuracy off the tee was acceptable, albeit slightly below the 2009 Winners. He hit just under 10 fairways vs. 10+ for our 2009 Winners - no big deal. He made one mistake - drove into a fairway bunker on #9 (3rd round), and could only advance the ball 90 yards (half way to the green) BUT did make a 1-putt for par. Most important, Steve averaged only 11 GIR's which is more than 2 fewer than our 2009 Winners' 13.4. Bottom line, Steve's Long Game Efficiency Index (patent pending) came out to 2.96 vs. the 2009 Winners' 2.4.

Putting
Here lies the most dramatic discrepancy between PGA Tour stats and meaningful performance measurement. The heart of the issue is, as loyal readers of this blog can now recite by heart, that Putts per Round and Putts per GIR ignore the distance of the putting opportunities. While ranked #1 and #3 respectively in these stats, Steve's putting did not match up well to the 2009 Winners. Notice the ShotByShot.com graphic above showing Steve's 1-Putt percentages by distance range vs. our 2009 Winners. He is consistently below their standard.

Our analysis further revealed that the greatest difference fell in the 6 to 10 foot range in which he had 18 attempts and only made 9 (50%). Our 2009 Winners made 12 (66%) in this range. This is a large margin in a critical distance range.

How then, did Steve Win?
His short game - not necessarily his sand game - was the best I have seen. He had 26 short game opportunities (25 chip/pitch and 1 sand), and saved 20 of 26, or 77%. By way of perspective, Tiger lead the Tour in 2009 in scrambling @ 68%. More importantly, while Steve's putting helped, it was not the key. He simply chipped it really close. His average putting distance after his 25 Chip/Pitch shots was an incredible 3.8 feet. This compares to 5.9 feet by our 2009 Winners, and just outside 10 feet for the average 10 handicap. Further, of his 1-putt "saves," only 3 were outside 4 feet, and his average putting distance 2.5 feet. Even I might have been able to make most of those!

Included in the above short game numbers are Steve's 4 hole-outs from off the green. It is interesting that the Tour Winners do generally hole out once on their way to victory, but 4 is extraordinary. These were not putts from the fringe either. The closest was from 7 yards and the other three were all 20 yards or more from the hole.

One final shot at Tour Stats
Remember that Stricker was tied for #1 in Sand Saves. Exactly how good was his sand game? Hard to be sure as he only had one sand opportunity, but that effort flew the green missing the flag by 7 yards. The ShotByShot.com game analysis would consider that an ERROR. The "Save" came in when he holed out from the intermediate rough. So much for the Sand Save stat being a barometer of performance...