Mark Broadie Every Shot Counts Pdf 31
Dimitri Rajawi
With the advent of modern technology and the shotlink database capturing all PGA tour strokes in the last 16 years, Broadie uses that data to dissect different elements of the game, applying the concept of strokes gained to all facets from putting, approach play, short game and off the tee.
Particularly fascinating is the way it helps give the everyday amateur like us, a better sense of expectations. Most amateur golfers will expect to hole 8 feet putts on a regular basis, or chastise themselves for 3 putting from off the green. The truth is, that a PGA pro only holes 50% of 8ft putts (and these are the best players on the planet), and from 33 feet, they are just as likely to 3 putt as they are to hole it! 2 putts from that distance is right on the average!
Broadie also breaks down the long game to look at strategy, which has been further evolved with thanks to Lou Stagner again and Scott Fawcett with their work on DECADE golf. On our podcast (episode 47), Lou talks about that, again reiterating the importance of expectation management for the modern golfer, and when you look at the long game, it shows how the real key is simply taking aim for an area that accounts for dispersion, and will ensure your drives do not end up OOB, or in a hazard.
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.
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--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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm looking for input on a spreadsheet that broadens an earlier attempt to analyze strokes gained putting. Some may have seen it, but here's a copy (sorry, Mac only--> =0. Excel version someday later hopefully).
I've found many people talking about creating their own spreadsheet to analyze their own games, but I haven't found any samples. Broadie mentions his team working on an app that I haven't found released yet, and it would certainly make a spreadsheet obsolete, but then again, they'll probably charge, and at least this "poor man's" attempt would be free.
You fill out every shot with the yardage to the pin with a code after it (t- tee, f- fairway, r-rough, p- penalty, x- recovery shot, s- sand, g- green). Apps like Game Golf will be able to get this from GPS. You also need to enter the par for each hole. But that's it.
Basically, it adds a column next to your input column, and it looks up from the starting distance and lie how many shots a PGA player would take to hole out from that position. For example, on the first hole, the data shows a PGA player takes 3.99 shots from 400yds off the tee. From 200yds in the rough, the PGA player takes 3.42 strokes. For that hole, this player took 3 shots, but only got 0.57 strokes "closer," so the player gets "-2.43" for that drive in strokes gained (0.57 - 3). Obviously, that "p" hurt- probably an OB tee there.
The lower section shows for that hole how the player "gained" or "lost" strokes for various types of shots. The colors match the shots above, so you can visualize which shots resulted in those "strokes gained."
Broadie seems to want to calculate strokes gained for recovery shots separately, but I prefer to lump recovery shots with the bad shot that preceded it. On hole #2 above, for example, it makes sense to say that because of his lousy driving, it took 2 shots to get to 200yds in the fairway. That should all count against your tee shot Strokes Gained, since that was the ultimate cause. Maybe that's a logic error, but it makes sense. Ditto for penalties- lump that in with the preceding shot that caused the penalty, as you see on Hole #1. The penalty is charged to the tee shot. Does that make sense?
Any other cool ideas with this? Other links? Are there apps that calculate strokes gained yet? Broadie was mentioning in "Every Shot Counts" link above that a great app was forthcoming. But I've seen nothing.
Strokes gained for the average golfer is a pretty light field. I've heard from a few people lately that the shotbyshot.com guy has orders of magnitude more data than Broadie has for amateur golfers, and Broadie may have even "borrowed" some of his concepts and ideas.
That's not the guy's chart. It's just Broadie's from his book. He has all of his charts and graphs online. It's actually a bit disingenuous. The guy basically seems to have stolen credit for the chart. The original version I will send to you in a PM.
Good info- your link to the real source was helpful. I don't recall if he was claiming credit for it, but I was unsure about its source from the way his post was written. Makes sense now, because it was lining up exactly with the graphs in the Broadie paper, even though his paper did not specifically include that data chart that I could find.
Yah, I used to participate with "Swing by Swing" as a beta user in their development process, and I discussed with them a ton of ideas about user interface with their data collection. "Strokes gained" was not then anywhere on their radar, as I recall. I was just starting out with golf again, and I loved the idea of tracking all the stats possible through these GPS apps. Club tracking was the big thing then. Over time, I learned that for me, golf was actually more fun when I was unencumbered by a smartphone. I actually knew how I was playing from my own gut, and the stats didn't often reveal much I hadn't known already intuitively. It turns out I also knew my club distances pretty much already!
It took me a while to figure out I should stop using the apps, because you probably tell, I'm a bit of a nut for data analysis. But I was glad I spent the time diving into the data collection and analysis- as I learned much about what is possible and feasible with collection and what is not. Last season, I went to paper and pencil, and it was total freedom. Golf is a bit more relaxing when you forget about the tools that can intrude.
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