What's wrong with Golf Stats?

When I took up golf seriously, I started keeping track of the “stats” that I read about in Golf Digest: Fairways Hit, Greens-in-Regulation, Sand Saves and Total Putts. I saved each round, created a simple spreadsheet and set about to learn exactly where I needed to improve. I became frustrated quickly as I encountered two major problems. First, the only stats that I had for comparison were those published on the PGA Tour. As a 14 handicap, the pros were obviously playing a dramatically different game. Worse than that, I could not draw any definitive correlation between my best and worst rounds using these traditional performance barometers. The good news: this experience motivated me to scrap these statistics and start over with data that would provide real insight.

In my view traditional statistics don’t work because golf is a multifaceted game, played in 3-dimensions – up, down, right, left, long and short. It cannot be properly represented by flat, YES or NO answers to 1-dimensional questions. What follows are the problems as well as the solutions that SHOT BY SHOT offers.

Fairways Hit:

Problem: The best example of the problem with traditional stats is the question of whether a player hit a fairway – or not. With traditional stats, a YES answer is always presumed to be a better outcome than a NO answer. But is this correct? Which would you rather have – a drive that ends up only 175 yards out but in the middle of the fairway, or a 275 yard rocket that ends up in the first cut of rough? And if you miss the fairway, wouldn’t you prefer the 275 yard rocket over a ball hit Out of Bounds or Lost? This stat treats the two misses equally.

Solution: To address this obvious flaw, SHOT BY SHOT.com will soon release a new feature: Driving “Miss Diagnosis.” Our users will categorize each of their missed fairways as one of five degrees of severity ranging from Best (a good lie/opportunity) to Worst (OB or Lost ball). We believe the insight presented will set a new standard in golf statistics and analysis.

Greens-in-regulation (GIR’s):

Problem: This is by far the most useful of the old-world stats because a YES tells us something definite and positive about that hole. There are two problems: First, most amateurs do not hit very many. The average, male 18 handicapper will hit less than 4 of 18 greens each round. Along with this, there is no indication of what happened, or how bad it was, on all those other holes.

Solution: To address this flaw, SHOT BY SHOT created our patented, Long Game Efficiency Index. We evaluate the ratio of total long game strokes to GIR’s that results in a complete overview of a player’s long game. An article was published on this innovation in the May 2006 Golf Digest.

Sand Saves:

Problem: Also known as a 1-putt following a greenside sand shot, this one stat actually encompasses two facets of the game – sand play and putting. Unfortunately traditional stats ignore the rest of the short game, which usually comprises a far greater number of shots per round but it also ignores Errors (shots that miss the green).

Solution: SHOT BY SHOT evaluates both Chip/Pitch and Sand facets by a combination of how close shots are hit to the hole and errors. We were the first to recognize the impact that errors had on the game and to build it into our analysis.

# Putts per round:

Problem: This stat is relatively easy to keep but has a major flaw in that it ignores the distances of the putting opportunities. A 2-putt from 3 feet counts exactly the same as a 2-putt from 75 feet. Would you balance your checkbook just based upon the number of checks you wrote? Let’s hope not!

Solution: SHOT BY SHOT was the first to include the distance of the first putting opportunity on each green, over 18 years ago. We have developed proprietary models for the accurate analysis of every putting opportunity. We can compare each player’s putting performance by distance range to that of their peer/target group and point out exactly where they need to practice.

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