Up To The Challenge?

Posted on June 16, 2014 by moegolf

Martin Kaymer, Pinehurst #2, or Erik Compton….in all three cases an emphatic YES!

Martin Kaymer torched the field by 8 shots in this U.S. Open return to Donald Ross’s fabled Pinehurst #2. As the fourth biggest margin of victory on record, this performance is on level with the runaway wins of Tiger at Pebble in 2000 and Rory at Congressional in 2011.

The scoreboard doesn’t lie

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His back-to-back 65’s in the first two rounds were the first time anyone has had two 65’s in a U.S. Open. The 9-under finish was the third lowest score to par in U.S. Open history. With stats like 77% fairways hit, 63% greens in regulation, average driving distance of 305 yards, and 110 putts, an average of 1.53 per hole, he was hitting it in play, sticking it close, and making the putts that mattered. There is no wonder he waxed the competition.

Another first, Kaymer has won a quasi-major (The Players) and a major (The U.S. Open) in just six weeks……and he beat two of the strongest fields of the year….leading wire-to-wire. This is Ubergolf if we have ever seen it….it puts him comfortably among the top performers of his generation.

Kaymer got everything he asked for and more

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Golf journalist Rex Hoggard said, it was like Kaymer was playing the more pedestrian Pinehurst #5 for four days while the rest of the field was playing the championship Pinehurst #2. As we saw with Tiger and Rory sometimes one player shows up at a major with a game the rest of the field cannot recognize.

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Pinehurst #2 held up to the expectations of the USGA in fine fashion. Mike Davis continues to break the mold of playing U.S. Opens on monster long emerald green layouts with knee high rough. It started with bringing the Open to a municipal course at Bethpage Black in 2002 and continued by returning it to the more modest distances of Merion last year. Aligning with the Pinehurst powers to restore #2 to it’s original Ross character by removing 40 acres of Bermuda rough and allowing the adjacent areas to the fairway to return to their native roots, the USGA presented a fast and firm challenge that looked more like an Open Championship than a U.S. Open. With Chambers Bay and Erin Hills on the schedule two of the next three years this sand based, brown is beautiful campaign will likely continue.

Pinehurst #2 was not your typical day at the office for these guys

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The players seemed to relish the challenge presented by unpredictable lies off the fairway and the unique domed greens of Pinehurst #2. Sand shots took on a totally new connotation when any ball was wayward. The green side recovery shots we witnessed were a far stretch from the typical hack and flop of a U.S. Open weekend. Putts on greens in regulation took on a whole new meaning since more than one of the guys putted off a green he had already hit in regulation. If you remove the outlier of Kaymer’s 9-under performance there were only two others in red figures at 1-under par. That passes a U.S. Open litmus test every time.

Then there was the Erik Compton story. Clawing his way to a second place finish at 1-under par in the pressure cooker of a U.S. Open with his second transplanted heart (the useful life of his original and it’s first replacement had been spent) Compton mustered resolve, courage, and fortitude that would make John Wayne feel proud. For the last three days Compton did what major winners like Justin Rose, Keegan Bradley, Adam Scott, Rory McIlroy, and Jim Furyk could not do-he took on every challenge that #2 presented shooting 3-under when it mattered and did not give any ground to the blitzkrieg of Martin Kaymer.

Erik Compton handled all the challenges at #2

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This from a man who has seen his life pass before his eyes at least twice already and who takes more medications in a month than many of us take in a life time.
As Randall Mell said of Compton’s inspirational play, “They’ll never forget what this remarkable man did here……nearly trumped the Miracle at Merion, Ben Hogan’s victory in his return from a nearly fatal car accident in the 1950 U.S. Open”.

LPGA pros in the on-deck circle

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And if you haven’t had enough of the all-you-can-eat Pinehurst experience the Women’s U.S. Open Championship begins at the same venue starting today. Shorter tees, hotter temperatures, same native rough areas and turtle back greens…..just another stern USGA test with a different set of protagonists in soft spikes.

June, 2014

Donald Ross Meets The Wayback Machine

Posted on June 10, 2014 by moegolf

When the head honchos of Pinehurst called on Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw in 2008 to consider restoring the famed Pinehurst #2 to it’s original Donald Ross character they had to feel like Mr. Peabody and Sherman cranking up the old Jay Ward Wayback Machine.

Coore and Crenshaw (C & C) were the obvious choice for this task because of their success with sand based terrain in Nebraska and Oregon and their reputation for copious attention to architectural detail of the classic golf courses. With the USGA’s Mike Davis enthusiastic in supporting this change it added to the pressure that it would need to be done in time to showcase #2 for unprecedented back-to-back appearances of the men’s and women’s U.S. Open Championships at Pinehurst in June of 2014.

From it’s introduction in 1907 Pinehurst #2 was Donald Ross’s obsession. He spent the next 35 years tinkering with a flat piece of North Carolina sand hills terrain turning it into one of the most captivating strategic golf challenges in the states. It built it’s reputation through the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s hosting some of the most important annual professional and amateur events and national championships in the game of golf.

Bronze tribute to Donald Ross the famed designer of Pinehurst #2

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Ross’s architectural principles were pretty simple-use the sandy base to create a wide open hard and fast running layout with interesting twists and curves into accessible small convex green arrangements made up of sharp falloffs, grassy hollows, and bunkers. In the original design there was virtually no rough just wide fairways between the tree lines and primitive adjacent landscape full of sand, scrub brush, and wiry vegetation.

This put a premium on making the right positioning decisions off the tee for the day’s flag position. Executing precise approach shots into these mounded green complexes would be the key and being able to play creative recovery shots when they were rejected would be equally important.

This style of design lent itself to flexibility in strategic approach and enjoyment of the game by players of wide ranging golf aptitudes. As George Waters says in his book “Sand and Golf-How Terrain Shapes The Game”, “Too many golf courses focus on separating a good shot from a bad one. The real goal should be to separate a good shot from a great one, while allowing the bad shots to eventually find their way home”. Pinehurst #2 was always a championship caliber course playable by every man.

Time and taste in golf course design changed all of that and the owners of Pinehurst #2 let it morph over decades into a Bermuda grass laden array of 18 lush green bowling alleys between the pine trees. It lost the unique rugged look and strategic character that Ross had envisioned. Worse, the holes meandered off the original strategic lines that Ross had created.

By the end of 2008 the groundswell of criticism got to the owners and C & C were brought in to rediscover and reveal the original Donald Ross intent. They were given a Carte Blanche to do whatever they felt need to happen to bring #2 back to it’s original glory. For the most iconic golf resort in the U.S. this was not without great risk since the American golfer’s appetite for the lush Augusta Green look had not abated.

C & C started the work in 2009 and two very fortunate things happened early in the process. First, Bob Farren, Pinehurst’s director of course maintenance, told Coore that the original center fairway irrigation line installed 80 years ago and long since abandoned was still in the ground. Revealing that line and an associate 30 yards on either side of it gave them the original fairway borders to work with. They now had an accurate skeleton of the original design.

Second, Craig Disher, a Pinehurst resident who knew spent much of his retirement years studying course design, revealed a cache of low-level aerial photos taken by the War Department in 1943 which would provide them with the blueprints they would need of original green sizes, fairway lines, and shapes of bunkers. These photos proved invaluable during restoration in understanding and implementing the original design and intent.

Over the next four years the C & C operatives marshaled the stripping of over 35 to 40 acres of lush green Bermuda rough grass and the reintroduction of the natural sand and scrub off fairway areas of Ross’s day. The replacement of this rough with sparse native planting created natural looking inconsistent rough areas with a perfect balance of penalty and recovery available. Pros and schlubs alike meandering off the fairways would be presented with a new set of strategic decisions to make off of unpredictable lies.

Approach and recovery from this makes Pinehurst #2 unique

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As Waters says, “On well designed sandy courses, the interplay between firm conditions and clever architecture places approach and recover shots among the highlights of any round”. The added bonus was the restored #2 had 700 less sprinkler heads and needed 40 percent less irrigation to maintain it’s firm and fast playability.

The routing of the course did not change so the basic 70 par and strategic approach to playing is in tact. Mike Davis of the USGA did prevail on C & C to flip the par on the 4th and 5th holes. The 5th was the hardest par 4 on the course and with a new tee lengthening the yardage into the high 500’s it will now be the hardest par 5 on the course. The main difference is that the 6 or 7 some of the players would have made on the hole anyway will seem less of a self-esteem issue. The 4th had the tee relocated to the original Ross location further to the left. It now will be a seriously long wrap around dogleg left par 4 where a pitch and a putt may be needed to save par.

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With the two U.S. Open Championships now at hand it will be up to the professionals to give the renewed Pinehurst #2 their blessings as an appropriate venue for competitive golf at it’s highest level. It will remain for the owners to convince the green’s fee paying public that brown is the new green. Then this entire experiment might turn out to be, pardon the Jay Ward pun, a watershed moment in the time-line of American golf course design.

June, 2014

Right To Push

Posted on May 31, 2014 by moegolf

In this week’s NCAA Men’s National Golf Championships the use of push carts at the hands of members of the nationally ranked Stanford Cardinal Golf Team seems to have turned a few heads.

As you can read in this article “A Pushback Against Push Carts” by John Paul Newport of the Wall Street Journal, some talking heads felt that use of push carts by young golfers represents unmanly behavior. These are obviously the same people who think that dropping cigar ash on a putting green is no big deal.

A Good Walk Enhanced…….

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Trent Dilfer, former NFL quarterback who obviously took a few too many head hits from charging lineman said “push carts are a BAD look for these kids”. PGA pro Bo Van Pelt agreed. Ex-PGA pro Steve Flesch said that using them in tournaments doesn’t look right.

As Newport says, these are prejudiced expressions of thoughtless macho men who continue to perpetuate the ludicrous notion that hand carts somehow represent a more lowly form of muni-golf. They are oblivious to the concerns of golfers of all wage categories who want to get a good walk on the golf course without the stress of lugging 20 lbs of equipment on their back.

Hand carts have been the mode of transportation for golf clubs everywhere but the United States forever. The snobbishness Americans cling to against their use is just senseless.

I dare say that Dilfer probably does not carry his bag from his trunk to the bag drop at the celebrity events he plays in and Van Pelt and Flesch pay others to carry around their coffin sized bag of golf goodies when they play in a tournament.

At our place we fought for almost 20 years for the right to stay out of motorized carts if we choose and walk the course for our physical well being. We finally prevailed and hand carts have become a seamless part of the fabric of our country club every day of the week. Many of those who fought it vociferously are now adopters.

At least guys with a college education are starting to get it. Stand up and assert your right to push anywhere you play.

(Click to read John Paul Newport’s article “A Pushback Against Push Carts”)

May, 2014

State Of The Game

Posted on May 27, 2014 by moegolf

We know that golf has become a global game and so has the dissemination of information about it. For the last few years the folks at TalkinGolf Radio in Australia have built a library of podcasts, for your listening and learning enjoyment, from interviews with a variety of notables in the game of golf.

Australian Rod Morri moderates these heady conversations along with the help of Geoff Shackelford of Golf Digest/Golf Channel/Geoff Shackelford.com, Mike Clayton a former Aussie touring professional now turned golf course designer, and Scottish columnist John Huggan. They cover an array of golf stuff that matters in unvarnished conversations without editorial constraints-this means no holds barred-they tell it like it is.

These world wide conversations come out about every fortnight with distinguished guests including authors, course architects, and dignitaries of the game. Their 39 episodes, each about an hour in length, have covered slow play, how money is ruining the game, marketing and the business of golf, bifurcation of the rules, Golden Age course architecture, and lots more. Guests have included golf analyst Judy Rankin, architect Gil Hanse, authors Mark Broadie and Curt Sampson, PGA of America President Ted Bishop, and Ran Morrissett one of the protagonists of GolfClubAtlas, the premier course architecture website.

I particularly enjoyed the conversation with Gil Hanse (episode 6) from 2012 right after he was awarded the task of designing the Olympic Course in Rio. It gives your a real sense of the design/build approach his firm employs in all their design projects. There is a wonderful rambling conversation between Morri, Clayton, and Shackelford (episode 32) about the charm and intrigue of Royal Melbourne. The conversation (episode 39) with Ran Morrissett, the editor of GolfClubAtlas, is a treasure trove of content. It covers everything from sand based course architecture with the restoration of Pinehurst #2 to the solace of playing with hickory clubs. This man knows what is good golf and is not afraid to share his opinion.

You can subscribe to these podcasts for free through Apple iTunes/State of the Game or by downloading the free Apple Podcast app.

This is heady stuff that will fascinate the golf devoted. Perfect companion for a long ride to beach or a quite hour of golf meditation in your favorite easy chair.

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State of the Game

Talkin Golf Radio
May, 2014

Stealing A Beamer

Posted on May 25, 2014 by moegolf

The BMW PGA Championship is the flagship event of the European Tour and it has been 50 years since an Irishman has hoisted this prestigious trophy. Starting the day seven shots behind the leader Thomas Bjorn, it seemed highly unlikely that Rory McIlroy would be the guy to break that streak. What it took was a frantic afternoon of jockeying bumper cars at the Wentworth Club in Virginia Water, England.

It was all blue skies for Bjorn until this unforced error on the 6th

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Starting the day five shots clear of Luke Donald, Bjorn seemed on cruise control when he made a two-putt birdie on par five fourth to get to 16-under par. But the yarn in his socks began to unravel when he bogied the par 3 fifth and then tried to do too much from the fairway bunker on six, heaving it into the bank the ball settling at his feet. A few more misdirected blows and the Dane made a triple bogey 7 to watch his lead enter the vortex. Another bogey on 9 and two more on 14 and 15 and you can say it was not Bjorn’s day finishing at 12-under.

His playing partner Luke Donald was hovering about but the sixth did him in as well with a matching triple bogey. Luke valiantly threw five birdies down the rest of the way but could not muster anything under par on the two five pars that end this unusual track. He too finished at 12-under par.

Lowry looked strong after his birdie putt went down on the Par 3 10th

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Shane Lowry was the hottest Irishman on the course most of the day and Bjorn’s main concern. An eagle-birdie sequence at four and five got him to 12-under and clearly in Bjorn’s rear view mirror. The ninth was a speed bump for all the leaders and a bogey there seemed to stall Lowry’s advance. He showed perseverance with five birdies on the inward half but two bogies in the stretch were enough to leave him one short at the end of the day.

McIlroy off the course looked like a dead man walking in the wake of his public breakup with Twitter gal and tennis starlet Caroline Wozniacki. Somehow he put all distraction at bay and played some of the most focused golf he has in the last year. A solid 69 on Saturday that included 5 birdies after an opening double bogey got him at least a mention in the pre-game talking head circles.

After a strong mid-iron into the par five 4th he buried the putt for an eagle that seemed to jolt the rest of the field as he got to double digits at 10-under. He watched the leaders behind him veering off the leader board and saw an opening developing for a run to the finish. A short miss at nine and a short-sided leave on the par 3 10th narrowed the opening.

Like a bolt Rory crashed the party with this unlikely short side birdie

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What separates superstars from regular stars is the bottled lightening in that back pocket they can call on when you least expect it. From a hairy lie with little room to work with, Rory holed the pitch on 10 to make birdie and pry his way back into contention at 10-under.

It was now a question of putting his foot down to post a score and see if the competition could match him. Birdies on 12 and 13 got him to 12 and a marvelous up and down save on 16 set up an opportunity for an heroic sprint to the finish line.

On the first of the finishing two par fives he needed his short game prowess once again to get a birdie and the lead. His length off the tee on the risk-reward finishing hole left him a conservative approach on the way to a two-putt birdie. Rory set the number to beat in the house at 14-under.

Birdie-Birdie on the final two leads to a vindicating dance

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It would have taken a holed approach from the fairway from Shane, Bjorn, or Luke to force a playoff and the golf gods apparently were going to have none of that. As Rory said in the post game, the guys ahead of him made enough mistakes to give him an opening and an opportunity to apply some magic and steal the most prized event on the European Tour for the first time.

Rory has the look of a man who got away clean

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Against the melancholy hovering above his personal life this win cast a beam of light into his sporting closet just in time for the second Major of the year at Pinehurst in three weeks time.

May, 2014

True Linkswear Lyt Dry

Posted on May 19, 2014 by moegolf

Being a True believer for over three years it will not surprise anyone that one of their latest editions, the Lyt Dry, is a top choice of our muppet lab crew. The shoe incorporates all the features that made their previous models such a hit with us and they are really “lyt as a feather” to boot.

True Linkswear Lyt Dry stylish and comfy.

Lyt Dry is stylish and comfy.

With the adds and deducts from the True Linkswear line this one takes the position as their top-of-the-line offering at $149 a pair. Over the last two years the emphasis seems to be the $99 price point that is obviously attractive to the more youthful audience. But that price point sacrifices features like the elastic cuff under the tongue that insures a snug fit and the 2-Year Waterproof Guarantee that is important to early dew sweepers.

The Lyt Dry has it all and then a little more. The “natural motion technology” of previous Trues still provides a snug heel fit, stable base, and plenty of piggly wiggly room that “allows the toes to fan out to achieve balance and ensure comfort”. For guys with foot issues there is plenty of room for an orthotic to replace the insert and still allow the natural movement to walk and swing freely.

Lyt Eva Comfort Sole is stable and durable.

The new wrinkle for 2014 is the Lyt Eva Comfort Outsole which is made from a superlight material that is durable enough to withstand the rigor of walking every round. When you open the box and pick up one of these you will not believe how light they are in your hand. Putting them to the turf in your first walking round you will be equally impressed by the stability and flexibility of a very thin outsole.

The premium leather upper on the Lyt Dry is stylish has the 360 Degree Waterproof with a 2-year guarantee. We have had an unseasonable wet spring here in the east and the toes have stayed dry in a couple of post-monsoon walks the last month. All the Trues I have owned have had this waterproof feature and it has performed admirably as long as I have had them in service.

The colors available in this model are Black/Dark Grey, Grey/Lime, White/Salmon, and Black/Royal and can be purchased through the True Linkswear website.

Superlight Lyt Breathe with breathable mesh upper.

There is an even lighter and more contemporary cousin called the Lyt Breathe that True Linkswear introduced at the same time to address the concern of those playing in extreme heat in the summer. This one weighs under 9 oz. and is their lightest shoe ever. The upper is made of a breathable mesh fabric with a sock-fit opening to cling to your foot. For me the fit was not the best but for those who are buying this type of styling in their running shoes it may makes sense. It is not waterproof but the rest of the functionality of the design is the same as the Lyt Dry. It is also a bit cheaper at $129.99.

These guys continue to innovate and expand both the functionality and look of the walking golf shoe genre. I wish more golf stores carried the full line of Trues but this is not happening in our area. For now it was the always specious internet retail experience for fulfilling this latest True urge.

(Click to see previous True Linkswear reviews of the original walking shoes and the Chukka Boot)

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May, 2014

Game Golf

Posted on May 12, 2014 by moegolf

As an admitted golf stat geek I was really excited a couple of years ago when these guys introduced this new GPS/RF approach to collecting personal golf stats on the course. I have been keeping golf stats for about 10 years in a database of my own using a custom scorecard to record the basics-Fairways Hit, Greens In Regulation, Bunker Up and Downs, PItch/Chip Up and Downs, Total Putts, Putts on GIRs, and putting success at distance ranges. What I have always been missing is shot distancing and waywardness of my shots.

I was hoping this would be a vehicle to upgrade my stat output as well as reduce the data collection toil. The requested commitment to the Game Golf Indiegogo crowd sourcing campaign seemed a worthy price to pay to become an early user when this thing got out of research and onto the playing field.

We got our units in February and I have been using it religiously since, determined to give this a full chance as a worthy replacement for my own stat program. After almost three months I have come to the conclusion that in spite of the rhetoric of their ads and their pro partners, this thing falls woefully short when it comes to providing worthwhile stats about golf performance that could help me improve my game.

Their first challenge was to come up with a technological platform for collecting on course information that did not intrude with the flow of play. They provide a GPS/RF Transponder that you clip on your belt and 18 screw on tokens that use RF to identify each of your clubs. Each shot is “marked” as you go with a touch to the transponder of the token screwed into the top of your grip. It is kind of a Fred Astaire Baton Dance move and this records the GPS location where you hit the shot. The marking of the subsequent shot allows calculation of the distance of the previous shot. This is done until you hit the last putt on each hole.

It took me a few rounds to get the Fred Astaire routine down and I found that once I got it built into my routine it was not that intrusive on full shots even though I still forgot to mark some shots or doubled marked a few in every round. On the putting green the extra routine seemed intrusive to me. Compared to my paper data collection, which only takes about 15 seconds to record during the walk from green to the next tee, the added work was a significant increase in effort on my part. I just rationalized it as the necessary price to pay to get the data collected.

At the end of the round syncing the transponder with provided communication software all the of marked shots for the round are downloaded to your personal account on their Game Golf website. Using the GPS they determine which course you played and plot all the shots on a Google Maps rendition of the course. There is editing of the round required so you must go through the downloaded information to correct any shots you marked more than once, shots you may have missed, penalty shots that need to be added, or simply marks where their GPS got it wrong. The accuracy of the GPS readings of full shots was about 95% in distance and maybe 90% in position which is within the statistically acceptable limit for me. The same cannot be said for putting information.

I found it took a solid 15 minutes to review and edit a round once it is downloaded. Compared to keypunching my custom scorecard results to my own database which takes only 2 minutes or less this download/review/edit component has significantly more overhead involved.

Stat calculation in Game Golf is done by processing the GPS markings collected to give you distances on each shot, Fairways Hit, Greens In Regulation, number of putts, average putts per hole, and scrambles (defined as any time you have one putt to save par or birdie on a hole you did not hit in regulation). There is no statistical rendition of the waywardness of shots other than your intuitive calculation of fairways and greens not hit. Once a number of rounds are downloaded you get similar stats across rounds including some club distance averaging.

There is a social media aspect to this where you can share and compare stats with your buddies or the Game Golf pro partners, Graeme McDowell, Lee Westwood, and Jim Furyk.

The greatest disappointment to me is that the accuracy of the GPS is not fine enough to get real measures on length and positions of putts. Without this all Game Golf can give you is the number of putts on each green, nothing meaningful as to your success rate in putts of various lengths. My database system tells me my putting success rates at bands of 1 to 4 feet, 5 to 10 feet, 11 to 20 feet, and 21 feet and beyond and this is some of the most valuable information I get round to round. As to taking the putting analysis a step further to Mark Broadie’s Strokes Gained Putting, Game Golf could never do this since it does not record your putting lengths or success to compare to peer averages at the same length.

Game Golf never actually marks the position of the cup on the green so there is no measurement of proximity of approach shots. Once again this is a basic statistic you need to understand which part of your approach game needs work. There is no statistical rendition of the bias of wayward direction of your misses so you can only infer from looking at where each shot ended up on their map as to what towardness swing issues you need to work on.

A number of other issues evolve from their use of a Google Maps rendition of the course you are playing. The Google Map of my home course is over three years old and the changes on our course of tee box and bunker positions is significant enough
that there are a number of times where my drive is emanating from a grove of trees that used to occupy the space of our current tee box or balls they say have landed on the edge of a green are actually in a reshaped green side bunker. They do not mark the perimeters of the bunkers on the Google Maps so Game Golf cannot tell you whether you played a bunker shot or provide any meaningful stats on bunker recovery performance.

The use of the pro Scrambling stat for recovery play around the green is hollow for most amateurs because we rarely save par or birdie on a green side shot. We do get up and down for bogies and doubles which are very meaningful to protecting our scorecard but these do not fit the profile of a scramble so there is no statistical feedback on this level of recovery shots.

Unfortunately our expectations for course data collection systems have been set very high by what we witness on the PGA Tour each week with their ShotLink data collection system. Since 2004 the level of detail of statistical output the PGA Tour gets is very impressive and useful. A key component of their system that augments the accuracy of the GPS on the greens is a stationary tripod mounted laser operated by a volunteer behind every green. From that they get accuracy of putting information and proximity of approach shots down to inches.

No one at Game Golf wants to admit this, and I have had extensive communications with their customer services reps, but the GPS inaccuracy around the greens is something they are not likely to be able to get over without the full cooperation of the National Security Administration.

For me this is a real deal breaker because it is the one thing that would allow me to collect more useable data than I currently collect with my paper driven system. The considerable effort (and $249 price tag) required to collect and process information with Game Golf to simply get FIRs, GIRs, and Putts Per Green is just not worth it to me.

For this stat geek, I am sticking to my homegrown system, it takes much less effort and I get equal or better statistical output.

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May, 2014

KO’ed

Posted on April 28, 2014 by moegolf

Who would have thunk they were referring to fisticuffs and not hemlines when they named this event? For four days a couple of world-class bantamweights (maybe 118 clothed and drenched) traded jabs and hooks in a classic toe-to-toe donnybrook at Lake Merced Golf Club outside San Francisco in the first LPGA Swinging Skirts Classic.

Any thing but Peace and Love at Lake Merced
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The young phenom Lydia Ko, who just turned 17 this week, vs the grizzled veteran Stacy Lewis in “take this, no you take this” as they never left each other’s sight over the four days of the event. It wasn’t decided until the last two phenomenal up-and-downs for birdie on the par five eighteenth. Ko prevailed by a shot, looked elated, and Stacy looked drained like Sponge Bob Square Pants after a week in the Mohave Desert with no canteen. This was golf competed at it’s highest level.

Playing together in the lingering marine layer on Thursday Lydia opened with 68 to Stacy’s 69. Chilly rains on Friday and Stacy answered with 69 to Lydia’s 71 to take a one shot lead. Saturday the weather improved and the two playing together again matched cards with a pair of 68’s to set up Sunday’s showdown with Stacy up one at 10-under par.

The skies were clear on Sunday and they treated the fans to a major-like struggle between two of the best in the game today. Lydia had a roller coaster front side with a bogey-bounce back birdie barrage over the last four holes to make the turn at 10-under. Stacy matched the scorecard with nine pars on the outward half and the two were tied as they headed to the 10th tee.

They both flinched with a bogey on 10 but stayed even through the 12th at 9-under par. At this point Lydia found another gear and birdied 13 and 14 to take what appeared to be a commanding three-shot lead as Stacy dropped a shot with a bogie on the 13th.

But as anyone who watches the LPGA Tour regularly knows Stacy Lewis never leaves the table until the counting is done. She throws down a pair of birdies on 15 and 16 and all of a sudden was within one again.

As always Stacy Lewis is all business
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What happens next is the stuff of lore. Lewis hits it within 20 feet on the difficult 17th and Ko is over the green with a very difficult downhill pitch from the heavy rough. Displaying a short game all week that would make Phil drool, Lydia delicately filters her pitch to gimme range to save par and Stacy cannot convert the birdie to tie. In the spirit of full disclosure Jenny Shin has quietly snuck her way into the mix at 10-under and one behind heading to the last tee.

The par five eighteenth has not yielded birdie to any of them all week but it is evident it will take just that to force or stave off a playoff. Three solid drives and both Jenny and Stacy lay up on Main Street about 100 yards from a tight front pin on the elevated green above. Lydia makes an unforced error and pulls her lay up into the heavy rough just off the fairway.

Lewis and Shin play a pair of remarkable pitches to strong birdie range and now it is obvious that Lydia needs match their deed with a ball she cannot spin and no green to work with. Perfect judgment and perfect execution, one bounce on the front collar and it trundles up to six feet. Lydia delivers the haymaker by slamming the birdie putt home leaving Stacy distraught and dismayed over a now meaningless birdie putt.

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Final putt splits the uprights
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The LPGA Tour suffers from a lack of TV viewership and the recognition that would bring but it does not lack for talent and competitive feistiness.The ladies’ game is in good hands, with or without Allstate, as was shown by the riveting, competitive display of these two champions over four days in the hills of northern California.

All smiles, Lydia hoists the glass honorarium

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April, 2014

The Most Interesting Champion In The World

Posted on April 20, 2014 by moegolf

Making his Champions Tour debut at the Greater Gwennett Championship this week Miguel Angel Jimenez continued to build his resume as the golf guy in the Dos Equis commercials. He was always a someone who enjoyed fast cars, fine wines, and a bit of revelry but his golf of late is developing an eclectic reputation of it’s own.

This is a man who marches to his own drummer…., ”he gave his father ‘the talk’”. Witness the now famous Miguel on course warm up routine as recounted at the Open Championship by Mike Tirico and Paul Azinger.

The beginning of his pre-game warm-up

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No stranger to the winner’s circle Miguel has won 20 times on the European Tour over his 22-year career. He became the European Tour’s oldest winner in December when he won the Hong Kong Open in a playoff with Stuart Manley and Prom Meesawat. So far this year he is 8th in the Race to Dubai standings with over 670,000 Euros in winnings to his credit. Apparently, “Superman has pajamas with his logo”.

Just last week Jimenez, at age 50, was low European at The Masters. His Saturday 66 at Augusta National put him in contention and a solid 71 on Sunday got him to 4-under and earned him a 4th place finish behind winner Bubba, Jordan Spieth, and Jonas Blixt. He is currently 9th in the Ryder Cup European Points and has a good chance of being a veteran anchor for the European squad at Gleneagles this fall. Makes sense that “The Holy Grail is looking for him”.

After besting the youthful Rickie in the final round of The Masters

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Since he was in the Georgia neighborhood and just passed the age requirement, he decided to throw his pony tail and aviator shades into the mix at the Champion’s Tour Greater Gwennett Championship this week. Miguel came out of the gate on Friday shooting an unbelievable 7-under par 65 in on and off monsoon conditions. Freddie Couples, playing with him, said that he made it look easy, I guess this is expected from a guy who’s “lives vicariously through himself”.

A solid 70 on Saturday got him to 9-under and one ahead playing in the final group with two of the powerhouse icons of the Champions Tour, Bernhard Langer and Freddie Couples. This is a man who “has never waited 15 minutes after finishing a meal before returning to the pool”. After starting the day with five pars he made five birdies over the next eight holes to distance himself from the field at 14-under. He did not make a bogie in the last 32 holes of the tournament and his tight iron game down the stretch put him on cruise control to win by two. He is only the third man to win wire-to-wire in his Champion’s Tour debut.

The man has a bit of Jerry Garcia style for a senior

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Now Miguel has the luxury of deciding whether to spend the next five months on the home European Tour turf collecting more Ryder Cup Points or pursuing the low hanging fruit that is within his grasp competing with the round bellies on this side of the Atlantic.

Either way, I am sure his advice to Bernard, Freddie, Jay, Colin, and the others is:

“Stay thirsty my friends”.

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April, 2014

Every Shot Counts

Posted on April 16, 2014 by moegolf

If you have watched any golf TV broadcast in the last year in a conscious state then you know the PGA Tour has wrapped it’s arms around a new statistic for putting performance called Strokes Gained Putting. It has become the overnight standard for determining who is putting the best in any given Tour event.

The genius behind this concept is Mark Broadie professor and research maven at Columbia University and a single digit handicapper to boot. His background is in statistical analysis of financial performance dealing with unintelligible things like pricing of derivative securities, risk management, and qualitative decision-making under uncertainty. Sounds to me like a man who can get to the bottom of your putting woes.

Mark Broadie’s recent book “Every Shot Counts” is the professor’s exhaustive explanation of the Shots Gained statistical approach to performance in all aspects of the game of golf. With the help of the PGA Tour’s commitment since 2004 to collect exacting data on every shot and putt at PGA Tour events through their Shotlink system, Broadie has found the ocean of data to develop his theories and articulate how to explain much of what we see week-to-week on the tour.

He starts from an obvious premise that the benchmark statistics that have been used for years to measure golf performance, Fairways Hit, Greens In Regulation, Scrambling, Putts Per Round, and Putts Per Green In Regulation are too shallow to give any meaningful direction to the players on how to improve their performance vis-à-vis their peers.

From the stats he gleaned that PGA pros average 29 putts a round with an average score of 71. Tournament winners average 67.4 strokes per round so the differential between winning and the average is 3.7 strokes per round. Pertinent question is what part of their game contributes to the 3.7 strokes per round advantage of the winner over the field, their shots gained on the field.

To that end he says, “The final score on a hole typically results from the accumulation of fractional gains and losses on each stroke.” “The quality of a golf shot is measured by progress to the goal of getting the ball in the hole in the fewest possible strokes”. “Strokes gained [was developed] to measure a player’s shot outcome against a peer performance benchmark for the same shot.” “Strokes gained measures [a player’s] progress to the hole in terms of the average number of strokes to hole out.”

A similar conundrum has existed in baseball for a century. Broadie says, “In baseball batting average was long the main stat used to measure proficiency at the plate……the sabermetrics revolution in baseball stats….. show that another stat, the on-base plus slugging percentage is a better predictor of a batter’s contribution to runs scored.”

With the help of the Shotlink data available to him Broadie sketched out how strokes gained putting could prove a more accurate measure of putting performance for the professionals. The average strokes gained putting for all golfers in a PGA event gives the ponderous among us a simple and reliable measure of the players relative putting proficiency that week. If Luke Donald is 15 feet from the hole and makes the putt and the average number of putts a pro takes from 15 feet is 1.78 then Luke has .78 strokes gained putting for that effort. If Vijay is five feet from the hole, where the average pro takes 1.23 strokes to hole out, and two-putts then he has a -.23 strokes gained putting on this hole. The sum of the strokes gained putting for the 18 holes based on their first putt is the player’s strokes gained putting for the round.

Below is a Broadie chart that shows the top 50 putters on the PGA Tour from 2004 to 2012 using Strokes Gained Putting (SGP) as the measure of relative performance. Not surprising Luke and Tiger are in the top five but so are Aaron Baddeley and Greg Chalmers. Some surprise in the names not in the top 20.

Broadie has moved on to trying to convince the Tour on using a similar statistical method on evaluating tee shots, approach shots (over 100 yards), and short game shots. It measures how much a person gains on a shot he has played by measuring the decrease he has accomplished during this shot in the average number of strokes to hole out minus one to account for the shot played. Simply stated a shot that is better than Tour average will have positive strokes gained and a shot worse than average has negative strokes gained.

Using this method the strokes gained can be used to compare driving, approach shots, short game shots, and putting because the proficiency of all the shots are measured by a common unit of strokes gained.

After applying this to the Shotlink data Broadie concludes that for the top 40 golfers from 2004 to 2012, putting only contributes 15% to their scoring advantage over the field while driving contributes 28% to their scoring advantage.

He asserts that an extra 20 yards of driving distance, without regard to accuracy, is worth about .75 strokes gained per round. This extra distance gives them a shorter approach shot, with a lower average shots left to hole out, and that translates into strokes gained. So it is more important to drive it long on the Tour than hit fairways in terms of gaining strokes on the competition.

When it comes to hitting approach shots it is all about proximity to the flag to improve one’s strokes gained. This has been Tiger’s secret in dominating the game the last decade and a half. The closer Tiger’s shot from 175 yards out gets to the flag versus the average Tour player the more strokes gained he has on the field.

This chart shows Strokes Gained Approach (SGA) and you can see that Tiger’s SGA of 1.28 is .73 better than the average top 40 player. When Broadie breaks it down further you can see that on meat and potato approach shots from 100 to 150 yards and 150 to 200 yards Tiger is hitting it considerably closer to the hole than his peers and that is where he gains his shots on the field.

The only problem with all of this is that it relies on the inundated accurate data collection of every shot a pro plays in a tournament round. No such data collection vehicle exists for the average player to use or even for researchers to use to compile strokes gained benchmarks for the common golfer. This is a huge case of having the cart before the horse when it comes to helping you and me.

This review just scratches the surface of what Broadie reveals in this readable and informative treatise on this Shots Gained Method for analyzing golf stats. He dispels many of the myths and certitudes we have held dear for years about golf performance. You can pitch “Drive for show and putt for dough” right over the embankment along with a bunch of others.

Broadie devotes an entire chapter to the relative difficulty of uphill versus downhill putts, importance of break on putts, and what distances actually separate good putters from average putters. He even includes practice drills that can help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of your game around the greens and work on the things that will make a difference in gaining strokes on your buds.

He presents the book in a very readable format with lots of substantiating charts and graphs to help you comprehend what he has concluded. Like all good college text books he has reiterative summaries at the end of each chapter that make prepping for the exams much easier.

This is not a fast read but it is a worthwhile intellectual indulgence for the inebriated golf fan. The shelf in your golf library is yearning for this one.

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Every Shot Counts

Mark Broadie (2014)

April, 2014

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