Quote:
Originally Posted by BWillie
I'm for really large fairways, but with really gnarly rough. Punish if you miss, but give you the opportunity to bomb it if you can.
Crazy to think you ARE NOT better off if you hit 271 yards, yet hit 80% of fairways, compared to 35 yards further and 50% of the fairways. I know that plays better at muni courses without punishing rough or alot of OB, but on these difficult courses that surprises me. I would think that driving accuracy would be most helpful unless you are just a Corey Pavin hitter. When I think back to my best rounds, those are the ones I'm always in the fairway, not making big numbers and capitalizing when I can.
Wouldn't it be dependent on the course? I know "strokes gained" is a relatively new stat, but all golf courses and their set up are different (LDO), so wonder how accurate that currently is. Kind of like how in MLB they have park adjusted stats, does it account for that?
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Here is how the tour explains it, using Rickie Fowler's tee shot as an example.
Fowler hit his tee shot 330 yards on the 446-yard, par-4 before sticking his 116-yard approach shot 16 feet, 11 inches from the hole.
Tee shot: TPC Sawgrass' 18th hole is a 446-yard, par-4. The PGA TOUR's scoring average, or baseline, on a par-4 of that length is 4.100. Fowler hit his tee shot on No. 18 in the fairway, 116 yards from the hole. The TOUR scoring average from the fairway, 116 yards from the hole, is 2.825. He gained 0.275 strokes on his tee shot. Here's how:
Baseline for tee - Baseline for second shot - 1 = strokes gained: off-the-tee
4.100 - 2.825 = 1.275 - 1 = +0.275
One is subtracted from the difference between the two baselines to account for the shot that Fowler hit.
They measure the average to make from every distance in one inch increments from every type of lie. A player takes, on average, 3 shots to get down from 100 yards out in the rough compared to 3 shots on average from 170 in the fairway.
If you think about it from a risk reward perspective, hitting the ball that much farther doesn't really hurt you that much in the rough (of course, some rough *is* more penal than others), but you gain significant benefits if you hit it long in the fairway.