Canadian National Junior Championships - Analysis Results

In mid-June I was engaged by the RCGA to provide statistical analysis for their Future Links National Junior Championship.  The field was comprised of the best 99 players in Canada in the ages from 14 to 18 (66 boys and 33 girls).  I had the pleasure of working very closely with Doug Roxburgh, Director, High Performance for Golf Canada and Henry Brunton, RCGA Men's National Team Coach.

After the players signed their scorecards each day, Doug and I helped them with the entry of their ShotByShot.com data.  Meanwhile, Henry tested each player's vitals on Trackman.  These  efforts produced an unusual combination of technical and performance data.

After the event, I created a new, Player Ranking report that revealed in ShotByShot.com proprietary terms where players in the field ranked in each important skill, and why.  Finally, with some collaboration from Doug Roxburgh and me, Henry compiled an excellent Summary of our findings and included the ShotByShot.com Top-20 ranked players in each facet.  For a copy of this complete report, please contact me directly (psanders@shotbyshot.com).

Conclusion

From my point of view, it was very gratifying to see that in every part of the game the levels of play were clearly delineated by the important balance of good shots/results and ERRORS.  I realize that I harp on this point, and how "traditional" stats ignore errors, but our analysis of this event dramatically demonstrated my point.  As we progressed up the scoring ranks, invariably the see-saw effect revealed fewer good results and a greater number of errors.  These results were clear in every facet and vividly illustrated in the Short Game results displayed below.  Bear in mind that this is an elite field of the best 66 boys in Canada.  Finally, we determined that the short game played a relatively greater role in the scoring differences than any other facet.

The six points on the graphs represent:

1.  Winner - Richard Jung

2.  Nat. Team - The 7 National Team members

3. - 6.  The 4 scoring quartiles - 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Q