Brad Faxon vs Scott Fawcett: Feel vs Data driven?

[jholz]

22 minutes ago, North Texas said:

 

Or you can believe that the chances of the ball going in the hole are 50/50. It either goes in or it doesn't 😉

 

I wish they were that good...

[bladehunter]

37 minutes ago, Ferguson said:

I am on the fence as to what is better at this point.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This thread or the retirement party for Dennis.

 

 

 

 

Oh it’s the party.   They have sheet cake. Especially if it’s white inside , and you can slip out the back door once you get your piece! 

[bladehunter]

1 hour ago, jholz said:

 

I'm never looking for excuses, certainly - but the more I tinker around the various practice greens the more I believe I need to take green quality into account - and adjust my thinking, technique, and approach a bit, depending. 

 

Sometimes you just have to jam the ball past all the idiosyncrasies and pray. Other times you just have to accept that the chances of the ball going in are very, very slim. 

Yep. I agree. I’m very quick to blame myself.  To my detriment in fact.  I’ve definitely played on greens where I know there’s no real chance you’ll make a putt - on purpose.  And that’s what really turns me off. I don’t want luck. Or accidental fate. I want to see a shot and execute the shot.  
 

I alwasy adjust my expectations on courses like that to practice. Simply practice ball striking and laugh at the putts. Otherwise it will make you crazy.  

[Ty_Webb]

Read about half the thread and something occurred to me so I'm going to say it rather than reading the rest of the thread.

 

I wonder if the difference between Faxon and Fawcett is really about semantics. Scott is saying that from 33' and out (for a PGA Tour player), they should center their shot pattern on the hole. Everyone hits putts in a bell curve distance wise. From 33', it sounds like the 95th percentiles are probably about 6-7' apart. If you center that on the hole, then 90% of the time you should wind up with a putt inside 3'. I bet if you took just about any player on tour over the past 30 years, they leave pretty close to 50% of their putts from 40'+ short of the hole. Pretty sure Faxon would too.

 

Brad would probably agree that it's sensible to have some portion of those putts left short. If you make that 95th percentile pattern start at the hole, then half your putts are going to be from over 3' away from the hole. That's going to result in lots of three putts and we all hate three putts. But, there are a couple of things that are driving that range. Partly it will be the speed that you present the putter at. No one can always hit a putt with exactly the same putter speed. Partly it will be how well you strike the putt. I could quite easily see Faxon "trying" to hit it a couple of feet by the hole to reflect the fact that from time to time he won't hit it precisely in the center of the putter. On a 40 foot putt, I could see that meaning that if your "good" putt (which for him would be struck dead center) is going 2 feet by the hole, then your "average" putt is going to end up around hole high. Therefore for him, his *intent* is to hit it 2 feet by, which is how the result of his bell curve is centered on the hole. If he leaves it short of the hole, it's at least partly probably because he didn't hit it quite right and consequently is not a good putt in his head.

 

So Scott is saying you should be trying to lay a putt from 40' dead at the hole and you need to make your speed right so that you center that shot pattern on the hole. Brad is saying that he needs to hit a putt with the intent that it goes a little by the hole so as to optimize his score. They're saying the same thing I suspect, just one from a feel perspective and one from a math perspective.

 

All that said, I think you need to be very good such that you know how far your perfectly struck putt goes. If you view how hard to hit it as how far a putt typically goes when you hit it at a certain speed, you'd want to focus on hole high from long range. For Brad who would likely dismiss any putt not hit perfectly from his brain bank of how hard to hit it, he wants to focus on a little bit by the hole.

 

Bladehunter - can you post a picture of one of these holes where his decision tree says to hit driver, but if you miss you're dead and conversely one where the decision tree says don't hit driver, but you think driver is the play? 

[bladehunter]

43 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

Read about half the thread and something occurred to me so I'm going to say it rather than reading the rest of the thread.

 

I wonder if the difference between Faxon and Fawcett is really about semantics. Scott is saying that from 33' and out (for a PGA Tour player), they should center their shot pattern on the hole. Everyone hits putts in a bell curve distance wise. From 33', it sounds like the 95th percentiles are probably about 6-7' apart. If you center that on the hole, then 90% of the time you should wind up with a putt inside 3'. I bet if you took just about any player on tour over the past 30 years, they leave pretty close to 50% of their putts from 40'+ short of the hole. Pretty sure Faxon would too.

 

Brad would probably agree that it's sensible to have some portion of those putts left short. If you make that 95th percentile pattern start at the hole, then half your putts are going to be from over 3' away from the hole. That's going to result in lots of three putts and we all hate three putts. But, there are a couple of things that are driving that range. Partly it will be the speed that you present the putter at. No one can always hit a putt with exactly the same putter speed. Partly it will be how well you strike the putt. I could quite easily see Faxon "trying" to hit it a couple of feet by the hole to reflect the fact that from time to time he won't hit it precisely in the center of the putter. On a 40 foot putt, I could see that meaning that if your "good" putt (which for him would be struck dead center) is going 2 feet by the hole, then your "average" putt is going to end up around hole high. Therefore for him, his *intent* is to hit it 2 feet by, which is how the result of his bell curve is centered on the hole. If he leaves it short of the hole, it's at least partly probably because he didn't hit it quite right and consequently is not a good putt in his head.

 

So Scott is saying you should be trying to lay a putt from 40' dead at the hole and you need to make your speed right so that you center that shot pattern on the hole. Brad is saying that he needs to hit a putt with the intent that it goes a little by the hole so as to optimize his score. They're saying the same thing I suspect, just one from a feel perspective and one from a math perspective.

 

All that said, I think you need to be very good such that you know how far your perfectly struck putt goes. If you view how hard to hit it as how far a putt typically goes when you hit it at a certain speed, you'd want to focus on hole high from long range. For Brad who would likely dismiss any putt not hit perfectly from his brain bank of how hard to hit it, he wants to focus on a little bit by the hole.

 

Bladehunter - can you post a picture of one of these holes where his decision tree says to hit driver, but if you miss you're dead and conversely one where the decision tree says don't hit driver, but you think driver is the play? 

It’s always been semantics.  Always.  He’s just trying to quantify what good players do. And that’s fine. Until you introduce the idea that you should aim to be short , or to miss on approach. .  That’s where he loses my interest.  Tracking that happening is one thing.  I don’t want to intend to do it.  I intend to hole it. Or I intend to leave it in a spot on approach or on an actual lag intended putt.  Sometimes long is that intent. Sometimes short.  Some people fear sand , I don’t , so you’d adjust accordingly in my opinion until the deficiency is taken care of.  I hate long uphill putts and have a well above average shortgame. So I am looking to hit it close and don’t really fear many misses at all  . 
 

yes I can post those holes.   break I take I will dig them up.  Maybe 30 min or so. 

[Mcgeeno]

31 minutes ago, bladehunter said:

It’s always been semantics.  Always.  He’s just trying to quantify what good players do. And that’s fine. Until you introduce the idea that you should aim to be short , or to miss on approach. .  That’s where he loses my interest.  Tracking that happening is one thing.  I don’t want to intend to do it.  I intend to hole it. Or I intend to leave it in a spot on approach or on an actual lag intended putt.  Sometimes long is that intent. Sometimes short.  Some people fear sand , I don’t , so you’d adjust accordingly in my opinion until the deficiency is taken care of.  I hate long uphill putts and have a well above average shortgame. So I am looking to hit it close and don’t really fear many misses at all  . 
 

yes I can post those holes.   break I take I will dig them up.  Maybe 30 min or so. 

You intend to hole every shot?

 

I mean that’s the premium idea on PGA tour 2k video games but it’s not realistic or smart on a course. 

 

I think DECADE is exactly what you should be researching.

 

 

[bladehunter]

33 minutes ago, Mcgeeno said:

You intend to hole every shot?

 

I mean that’s the premium idea on PGA tour 2k video games but it’s not realistic or smart on a course. 

 

I think DECADE is exactly what you should be researching.

 

 

 

 

no. I didn’t say every shot. 🤦‍♂️.  Re-read. Until…

 

that one small sentence was referring to putts.  And behind that sentence is an “or”.  Meaning either or.  

Edited January 17 by bladehunter

[bladehunter]

@Ty_Webb 

 

here’s screen shots.  I don’t recall if you can measure by them or not. It seems Google earth has changed since i last used it a year or two ago.  I can’t for  the life of me figure out how to draw lines to measure distance on it. 
 

its 3,4,16,17 of village greens golf club , Gramling sc.  

 

and the pics are winter. So the trees aren’t visible half the time. Nor is the slope in my opinion. But I can draw on the screen shots to show you where slope makes usable fairway much smaller.  All 4 relatively short par 4s.  A 2d and a 3d pic of each. Should be in order.       I’m open to your opinion. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 18 by bladehunter

[Ty_Webb]

On the first one there, at 800 feet (267 yards), which is what I use for me, it's 215 feet from the hazard to the treeline (72 yards). That distance is just over the bunker by about 20 yards. That would suggest driver, if everything is flat. From the 3D view though it looks like the dark area there is actually pretty heftily sloped down to the hazard. If the effective edge of the hazard is actually 15-20 yards closer to the fairway than the edge, then that's where you'd measure and that hole would be lay it back from the bunker. Also while it's about 45 yards from the bunker to the treeline those trees look like death so personally I'd probably hit an iron there since that's still leaving a wedge. It might be 3 wood though if 3 wood doesn't reach the hazard on the right. I'd call that one pretty borderline and may vary based on wind and other factors. 

 

Second one looks like driver. At 800 feet it's 250 feet wide fairway. Only reason to hold back from driver is if you can hit it longer than me and can reach where the water cuts back in again. Then it's whatever club lays you up to that point.

 

Third one looks like driver all day to me if you can clear the water and if those trees aren't squeezing you right. I can't really see where the tee is there, but driver favoring the left hand side of the fairway (at the bridge) seems the right play to me. Looks like about 250 to clear the water safely.

 

Fourth one looks pretty tight. It depends on what those trees between the two holes there are like on the right side. Widest point looks like at the bunker. I'd probably lean towards hitting something to lay up to the bunker, but fairly close to it. Depending on the wind it looks like 4 iron - wedge or hybrid - wedge. 

 

I think the decision tree is a fairly blunt instrument and there are cases where it doesn't really work quite right. I've played courses where I look on google maps and it looks like driver obviously, but then you get there on the day and there's a big tree that blocks out the line you'd have to hit driver on. Then it's back to the drawing board. It's a pretty good starting point though and he explains in one of his videos about how to adjust for slopes and the like.

[golfortennis]

On 1/16/2024 at 11:41 AM, aus10KC said:

 

In regards to the college teams using Decade, I think it's more of the mindset they need to have a stat program to stay competitive. 

 

Curious if coaches require players to use it for decision making or if it's more to understand your stats to see strengths and weaknesses in game for either practice purposes or course management. 

 

College coaches in general across all sports are far from the optimal decision makers, in large part because they are working with, for lack of a better term, genetic freaks.  They'll make anything look good.  The kinds of golfers especially at D1 will make any "system" look good, just like the types of football players who get into Penn State will make circuit training look like a good strength training plan.

 

Half the time it seems that coaches, like executives in companies, are looking to arm themselves with a mountain of data so that if something goes south, they can point to all of the data that said they should go ahead with something, so don't fire me, the data told me. 

[Shilgy]

On 1/16/2024 at 6:20 AM, Rearviewmirror said:

 

I also think that carries over into better "feel" for speed control on all putts regardless of length - from slippery downhill putts to very long lags.

 

A few observations having read this whole thread, and as possibly the ideal candidate for this discussion (a 15hcp chasing single digits who is currently losing 5-6 strokes putting every round due to poor lag putting).

 

Green condition - I think this is a massive component of this discussion as many amateurs are playing either on absolutely awful condition or very low speed greens. The ball breaks more at slower speeds - given that many amateurs are playing on municipal greens with a texture more like fifteen year old velcro, it stands to reason that the goal of getting the ball past the hole is paramount to have any shot of holing the ball. I recently played a course with extremely aggressively sanded greens and you literally had to hammer the ball dead at the hole to have any hope of making putts. This is an extreme example (the greens were likely rolling at a 6/7 stimp) but it is illustrative - the penalty for excessive pace on slow greens is often only 4-6 feet past the hole even if you absolutely hammer hands it. On fast greens if you even slightly misread grain, slope, or break, a slightly misjudged putt can end up 7-8 feet from the hole due to a slight miscalculation. It stands to reason that if most golfers are playing non-A+ greens they should be trying to at least get the ball to the hole to maintain line on a bumpy surface, and also overcome the donut effect around the hole.

 

Speed vs line - I think this is some of the crux of this discussion and is tightly related to the above. You have to putt either die speed or an aggressive roll on a ball based on the line of the putt. For example - if I'm putting severely across a left to right slope with a 10ft putt, the only appropriate speed is one in which the ball will die into the hole at 8-11 o'clock. If I play aggressive speed to try to "jar" the ball in such a way that it hits 6 or 7 o'clock it'll likely roll 5-7 feet past the hole depending on whether I miss high or low. Statistics tell me that means I've gone from a 85%+ make on the following putt to more like 50-65%. Over time that difference adds up. To me the key phrase here is speed appropriate for the break. This also applies to very downhill vs very uphill putts. Leaving a putt exceedingly short on multi-tier uphill putt will often leave the ball back at your feet again. However, doing the same in the opposite direction is opening yourself up to de-greening the ball. 

 

Mentals - I think putting is possibly the most mentally challenging aspect of the game, as there is simply no "recovery shot" from a missed putt inside 5 feet. You can fluff your drive on a par 5, or spin your ball off the grin on an approach shot of a par 4 and still make par - if you miss your first putt so badly that the comebacker is 8+ feet or miss a 2ft putt you have gained a stroke.  My current pet theory as to why bad putters/amateurs putt better on fast greens is that because the penalty for a bad read is so much higher, they stay more engaged mentally on the read, and as a result are less likely to totally oopsie the line or pace. A lot of bad things happen in golf when you make uncommitted strokes - and so I think putting similarly is about getting to a routine, stroke, read, and overall philosophy that you feel rock solid in. 

 

I definitely err more on the stats side of "you should have an equal distribution of putts left long and short" but I believe the most important part of putting is developing feel for distance control and situational awareness. I think it's really easy to get into auto-hit mode and spend inadequate effort reading the green and thinking about the influence of grain, slope, and pace. I do think putting shares one other thing with DECADE writ large which is thinking about what the good miss is for a given putt. 

 

I recently read "Bulletproof Putting" and enjoyed McTeigue's idea of "slam dunk, drillable, drainable, and lag" as the different types of putting orientations you can take when over the ball. Slam dunk = complete certainty and ability to impart high pace at the center of the hole, drillable = short enough with so little break that you can putt with pace and not give up the hole, drainable = requires careful calibration of speed to line in combination, lag = pace is king and your goal is more 3 putt avoidance.

Did I read that correctly?  You stated early that the “ball breaks more at slow speeds”.  Maybe I’m having a bad day but I’ve read that section now a few times and am trying to figure out if you meant the ball breaks more on slow greens or fast.  
IMO there is no question the player needs to play more break on fast greens.  Which is why it’s easier to play slow greens….to a point.  If they are too slow they will also likely be bumpy and erratic …but even then it’s difficult to ever three putt as you can hit evert putt firmly and still have a short combacker if you miss.

[Rearviewmirror]

34 minutes ago, Shilgy said:

Did I read that correctly?  You stated early that the “ball breaks more at slow speeds”.  Maybe I’m having a bad day but I’ve read that section now a few times and am trying to figure out if you meant the ball breaks more on slow greens or fast.  
IMO there is no question the player needs to play more break on fast greens.  Which is why it’s easier to play slow greens….to a point.  If they are too slow they will also likely be bumpy and erratic …but even then it’s difficult to ever three putt as you can hit evert putt firmly and still have a short combacker if you miss.

 

 

Apologies - that was poorly written - the underlying thought was "the ball breaks more as it slows down". My intention there was to suggest that if a high handicap player is playing on really slow greens, and does not give the ball adequate juice to get hole high, the ball is likely to end up both short of the hole and also low side - compounding the error of not getting the ball there. So if they got it to the hole and under-read break by 2-3ft they are only 2-3ft from the hole. If they fail to get the ball hole high (say 3ft short of the hole) and then also miss low side, that quickly turns into a 6ft putt.