I think it's time for the Tour to change the Strokes Gained moniker for the good of golf everywhere.

[PedronNiall]

They need something that really gets the youth going. Imagine, instead of Jim Nantz welcoming his friends to The Masters, he comes out like:

 

 

and breaks into, "Did everyone see Scheffler's SICK GAINS over the field coming into this week?" Then he can bring back words like traj, reps, and fetch that should have never died to really let everyone know how golfers hold it down. Sick Gains off the tee is the new new; just imagine such scintillating phrasing attached to players like Fowler, Theegala, and Knapp kicking bubble gum & taking names. Let's make it happen.

 

I welcome all who would like to be a part of this coming age of awesome.

[bcjim]

I hate these metrics tbh. And I work in a data heavy field, so it not for lack of understanding. I just think they suck the life out of sports a bit.  And I wonder what you get comparing:

 

SG off the tee and approach

 

with

 

Total driving/fairway%/GIR

 

How much better does the former correlate with scoring/place/fedex points etc

[stinger_gc]

 

48 minutes ago, bcjim said:

I hate these metrics tbh. And I work in a data heavy field, so it not for lack of understanding. I just think they suck the life out of sports a bit.  And I wonder what you get comparing:

 

SG off the tee and approach

 

with

 

Total driving/fairway%/GIR

 

How much better does the former correlate with scoring/place/fedex points etc

https://www.golfwrx.com/524752/do-you-actually-understand-strokes-gained-stats-heres-a-breakdown/ 

Strokes gained is relative to the field average, while GIR/fairway % are just aggregated stats.

[GoGoErky]

1 hour ago, bcjim said:

I hate these metrics tbh. And I work in a data heavy field, so it not for lack of understanding. I just think they suck the life out of sports a bit.  And I wonder what you get comparing:

 

SG off the tee and approach

 

with

 

Total driving/fairway%/GIR

 

How much better does the former correlate with scoring/place/fedex points etc

It’s data that is used to determine strengths and weaknesses and what a player needs to get better at.

 

They show the data behind what some people knew and on top of showing strength and weakness it’s data to plan strategy.  

[PNWSlinger]

Theegala referenced the greens as “crusty” in his last walk and talk. Sounded like he was back in Malibu talking about surfing a gnarly set. If thats not new age idk what is. 

[aenemated]

1 hour ago, PNWSlinger said:

Theegala referenced the greens as “crusty” in his last walk and talk.

 

 

Nah, Sahith from the Valley 

 

(Just SGV instead of SFV 😂)

[PedronNiall]

2 hours ago, aenemated said:

 

 

Nah, Sahith from the Valley 

 

(Just SGV instead of SFV 😂)

 

So much profundity in that film. How it didn't get an Oscar nod I'll never know. 

 

[ingy]

also needs more "slappy cuts" references....

 

[dubbelbogey]

6 hours ago, bcjim said:

 

SG off the tee and approach

 

with

 

Total driving/fairway%/GIR

 

How much better does the former correlate with scoring/place/fedex points etc

 

Looks like it correlates rather strongly: 

 

 

[eddiebigeddie]

4 hours ago, aenemated said:

 

 

Nah, Sahith from the Valley 

 

(Just SGV instead of SFV 😂)

I haven’t lived in Cali in 32 yrs but love the reference as a guy from SGV 😬

[Hawkeye77]

No worries, soon …… Pars Is Fun!

Edited March 25 by Hawkeye77

[tatertot]

6 hours ago, PNWSlinger said:

Theegala referenced the greens as “crusty” in his last walk and talk. Sounded like he was back in Malibu talking about surfing a gnarly set. If thats not new age idk what is. 

Guys were calling greens "crusty" in the '70s when I started watching golf. I'm guessing they were doing it before then.

[tatertot]

8 hours ago, PedronNiall said:

They need something that really gets the youth going. Imagine, instead of Jim Nantz welcoming his friends to The Masters, he comes out like:

 

 

and breaks into, "Did everyone see Scheffler's SICK GAINS over the field coming into this week?" Then he can bring back words like traj, reps, and fetch that should have never died to really let everyone know how golfers hold it down. Sick Gains off the tee is the new new; just imagine such scintillating phrasing attached to players like Fowler, Theegala, and Knapp kicking bubble gum & taking names. Let's make it happen.

 

I welcome all who would like to be a part of this coming age of awesome.

Try watching baseball ... You get things like batting average with a man on first during day games under partially sunny skies with over 12,000 people in attendance and a facing a pitcher with 2 children and over 10 tattoos.

[m d g]

 

This was 'strokes gained' in 1976.

 

 

[Christen_The_Sloop]

21 minutes ago, m d g said:

 

This was 'strokes gained' in 1976.

 

 

Lead the world, I heard.

[smashdn]

On 3/24/2024 at 6:13 PM, dubbelbogey said:

 

Looks like it correlates rather strongly: 

 

 

 

Hmm.  Almost like if you are good at all phases of the game of golf you will be good at golf or something.

[Chunked]

Maybe add some talk about kicks and kits. 

[GoGoErky]

1 hour ago, smashdn said:

 

Hmm.  Almost like if you are good at all phases of the game of golf you will be good at golf or something.

So it’s more than just distance that makes the really good golfers really good then and that they actually have other skills?

Edited March 26 by GoGoErky

[ck800]

Rebranding Strokes Gained to Sick Gains is the best idea I've heard all year.

 

Just kidding.

 

Shrink the game

[dubbelbogey]

1 hour ago, smashdn said:

 

Hmm.  Almost like if you are good at all phases of the game of golf you will be good at golf or something.

Well, Aaron Rai leads Fairway %  and has missed three cuts, best is a T19. Rory leads Total Driving - who's had basically a mid-pack year so far (for those who've made the cut).

 

Scheffler's a poor-to-middling putter, at best. Aaron Baddeley (remember him?) leads SG putting. 

 

So, some skills matter more than others. Some traditional stats sorta suck.

 

 

Edited March 26 by dubbelbogey

[Pepperturbo]

By certain counts, data metrics is ruining TV golf for many viewers.  Wannabe amateurs that wish they knew nothing about strokes gained; makes them feel bad about themselves, boohoo.  In reality, this is what aggressively expanding golf means.  Water down the rules and make courses easier, make golf equipment easier to use, make it easier for them to pee-pee behind trees. 

 

Golf has been great for plenty of years, until youth — now.  They want golf world to replicate football or basketball galleries, and sound and look like wealthy street thugs, like alleged "sex trafficking & assault" pathetic, Sean "Diddy" Combs.  Golf is suddenly taking on the image of a failed pack of youthful whack nuts. 

 

Sorry, had a moment 🤔

Edited March 26 by Pepperturbo

[bscinstnct]

7 minutes ago, Pepperturbo said:

By certain counts, data metrics is ruining TV golf for many viewers.  Wannabe amateurs that wish they knew nothing about strokes gained; makes them feel bad about themselves, boohoo.  In reality, this is what aggressively expanding golf means.  Water down the rules and make courses easier, make golf equipment easier to use, make it easier to for them to pee-pee behind trees. 

 

Golf has been great for plenty of years, until youth — now.  They want golf world to replicate football or basketball galleries, and sound and look like wealthy street thugs, like alleged "sex trafficking & assault" pathetic, Sean "Diddy" Combs.  Golf is suddenly taking on the image of a failed pack of youthful whack nuts. 

 

Sorry, had a moment 🤔

 

“Sorry, had a moment 🤔”

 

Yeah, ya did. But that was dope!!

 

🤣🍻

 

 

[PedronNiall]

5 hours ago, Pepperturbo said:

By certain counts, data metrics is ruining TV golf for many viewers.  Wannabe amateurs that wish they knew nothing about strokes gained; makes them feel bad about themselves, boohoo.  In reality, this is what aggressively expanding golf means.  Water down the rules and make courses easier, make golf equipment easier to use, make it easier for them to pee-pee behind trees. 

 

Golf has been great for plenty of years, until youth — now.  They want golf world to replicate football or basketball galleries, and sound and look like wealthy street thugs, like alleged "sex trafficking & assault" pathetic, Sean "Diddy" Combs.  Golf is suddenly taking on the image of a failed pack of youthful whack nuts. 

 

Sorry, had a moment 🤔

 

[smashdn]

18 hours ago, GoGoErky said:

So it’s more than just distance that makes the really good golfers really good then and that they actually have other skills?

 

The good ones.

 

Whoever argued it was just distance?

[smashdn]

17 hours ago, dubbelbogey said:

Well, Aaron Rai leads Fairway %  and has missed three cuts, best is a T19. Rory leads Total Driving - who's had basically a mid-pack year so far (for those who've made the cut).

 

Scheffler's a poor-to-middling putter, at best. Aaron Baddeley (remember him?) leads SG putting. 

 

So what you are saying is if you aren't good at more than one aspect, and the one aspect you are really good in is not relatively important as the ones you are not so good in, you probably aren't near the top?  Absolutely groundbreaking.

 

17 hours ago, dubbelbogey said:

So, some skills matter more than others. Some traditional stats sorta suck.

 

Always has.  And it has changed as the way modern golf is played has changed.

 

The traditional stats were likely come up with from the limited data that one could see with their own eyes.  Fairways hit, greens hit in regulation, scrambling, etc.  They were limited by the technology and resources at the time they were created.  Believe it or not, there was a time when shotlink did not exist to provide this mountain of data and there was golf and were golf stats before there were computers to compute algorithms to sift through that mountain of data.

 

y=X₁+X₂+X₃+X...

 

Maybe not basic statistics, but fairly easily understood regression analysis.  It isn't hard math, it just takes time to plow through it, unless you jam it into a computer and let the computer do the work.

 

"The top six are: SG/approach the green, SG/off-the-tee, scoring average, SG/total, SG/around the green, and SG/tee-to-green. Again, this all stands to reason and functions as good quality control."

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/golf-stats-that-matter-most-which-skills-correlate-to-success-on-the-pga-tour

 

So hit it close to the hole with your approach, drive the ball both far and in the fairway, when you miss the green hit it close to the with your recovery shot and you have golf licked.  We should be on here debating if you are the next Tiger in six months or less.  When your game goes to crap we'll start a thread asking if you can beat a 4 cap.

[dubbelbogey]

1 hour ago, smashdn said:

 

So hit it close to the hole with your approach, drive the ball both far and in the fairway, when you miss the green hit it close to the with your recovery shot and you have golf licked.  We should be on here debating if you are the next Tiger in six months or less.  When your game goes to crap we'll start a thread asking if you can beat a 4 cap.

 

Well - that devolved quickly. We went from discussing whether or not modern stats are interesting, relevant and improved over old stats, to whether my game is the next coming of Tiger. Quite the jump there, bud. 

 

I'm just coming at this from a fan's perspective. Whether or not I even play golf is basically irrelevant. Same for you, I don't care whether you play well, play poorly or don't play at all - it just doesn't matter here.

 

Some of the traditional stats that announcers long and commonly used were plainly poor indicators of how good a golfer was. And no, this isn't rocket science (it's simple math, as you say), but what was often used before was pseudoscience, at best. SG is, by far, not perfect, but it's pretty clear to me it's at least a step in the correct direction.

[smashdn]

1 hour ago, dubbelbogey said:

 

Well - that devolved quickly. We went from discussing whether or not modern stats are interesting, relevant and improved over old stats, to whether my game is the next coming of Tiger. Quite the jump there, bud. 

 

Collective you.

 

1 hour ago, dubbelbogey said:

Some of the traditional stats that announcers long and commonly used were plainly poor indicators of how good a golfer was. And no, this isn't rocket science (it's simple math, as you say), but what was often used before was pseudoscience, at best. SG is, by far, not perfect, but it's pretty clear to me it's at least a step in the correct direction.

 

For the most part I am in agreement.  SG is definitely a better indicator.  Five of the top six stats from that article I linked were SG of some flavor.  As a whole it is better than the old stuff.

 

What I will say and come to the old head announcers' defense to an extent here is, these former players, these old dude talking heads, probably either A) don't understand/appreciate the math or B), if they were players in a certain era, sort of resent this stuff as pseudoscience as you say, because they somehow found a way to play the game and self-reflect on their play without it. So I think I understand why they may not be jumping on-board with both feet or pumping the SG tires as full or as fast as one may think necessary. 

 

"Some men you just can't reach."

Edited March 27 by smashdn

[golfortennis]

1 hour ago, dubbelbogey said:

 

Well - that devolved quickly. We went from discussing whether or not modern stats are interesting, relevant and improved over old stats, to whether my game is the next coming of Tiger. Quite the jump there, bud. 

 

I'm just coming at this from a fan's perspective. Whether or not I even play golf is basically irrelevant. Same for you, I don't care whether you play well, play poorly or don't play at all - it just doesn't matter here.

 

Some of the traditional stats that announcers long and commonly used were plainly poor indicators of how good a golfer was. And no, this isn't rocket science (it's simple math, as you say), but what was often used before was pseudoscience, at best. SG is, by far, not perfect, but it's pretty clear to me it's at least a step in the correct direction.

 

Exactly.  Saying someone had 25 putts!! this round without any context is useless.  How close to the hole was the first putt?  Is it from a GIR?  

 

And work your out..  This guy hit the green, and so did that guy.  OK.  Whoopee.  This guy was consistently closer to the pin on approach shots, now we are talking about something useful.

 

Saying you want to get rid of strokes gained makes it sound like you want to be able to make a statement without having to actually back it up with anything, except maybe an announcer's cliche. 

[golfortennis]

3 minutes ago, smashdn said:

What I will say and come to the old head announcers' defense to an extent here is, these former players, these old dude talking heads, probably either A) don't understand/appreciate the math or B), if they were players in a certain era, sort of resent this stuff as pseudoscience as you say, because they somehow found a way to play the game and self-reflect on their play without it. So I think I understand why they may not be jumping on-board with both feet or pumping the SG tires as full or as fast as one may think necessary. 

 

The other part of that is how it has made people look at obvious things.  For example, the saying was always "drive for show, putt for dough."  And that kind of mentality filtered down to ams and high handicappers.  "Work on your putting, work on your putting."  "Short game, short game, short game."  Ok, yes these need to be worked on.  But the problem is, as Broadie asks, when is the last time you hit a putt out of bounds?  The reason putting is so important in the professional game is because they are rarely putting for bogey/double bogey.  They are hitting the green in reg, or are very close to it.  Relative to their competitors, from a "eye test" type of view, putting is the only place they can really make a difference.

 

What it has brought about in modern times to us hacks, is that you do need to work on your long game, because lo and behold, putting better from 20 feet carries only so much value when you are hitting every other tee shot out of bounds.  The data has also shown that while pros are better putters, it's not because they will sink more 30 footers out of say 100 attempts, it's because a)they will finish closer to the hole on those putts, but more importantly, their first putt is closer to the hole.   *Everyone* is a better putter closer to the hole than from further away, but too many people allowed the traditional stat to warp their thinking and treat all putts as equal.

 

I'd hazard a guess that some of these guys actually were told this by someone back in the day, didn't take the advice, and while they had success, have figured out they could have had more, and don't really want to admit it, so it's easier to just pooh-pooh the stats mentality instead. 

[smashdn]

So to the OP's ask or intent, I would offer up "The Way."  Similar in power and simplicity to "The Force," "The Wizard," and "The Big Aristotle," I think we just call it "The Way."

 

Golf announcer can instead of saying, "Strokes Gained data says...," they can just say, "The Way is...," or "The Way dictates...," and be done with it.  It is "The Way."  The only way and the best way.  Everything before the way was not the way.