Moreyball, Death of the Draw, Variance and Skill, Digital Media
The Fried Egg Pod
I went on The Fried Egg Golf Podcast with Andy Johnson to discuss the start of the PGA Tour year. We covered a number of topics, including reasons we expect successful seasons from Dustin Johnson and Justin Thomas. Check it out!
Moreyball
Last June, the Philadelphia 76ers were eliminated by the Atlanta Hawks in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. This was a bad defeat. The Sixers were expected to win the series, but instead they lost, due in no small part to the lackluster play of young guard Ben Simmons.
Following the game, a reporter asked Sixers coach Doc Rivers if he thought Ben Simmons could be the point guard on a championship-winning team. He responded that he didn’t know the answer to that question…yikes.
Shortly thereafter, reports emerged that Ben Simmons wanted to leave Philadelphia. Citing mental health concerns and overall dissatisfaction with the franchise, Simmons asserted that he would never suit up in a 76ers jersey again.
So entering the season last October, what should the front office’s strategy have been? Ben Simmons is a very good player, and he is 25 years old. With Simmons and Joel Embiid on the floor, the 76ers are a borderline championship team, but Simmons wants to leave. And his public expression of discontent is not great leverage.
Well on Twitter dot com, the golden source of truth, the consensus seemed to be that the 76ers should just trade him for whatever they could salvage. Hurry up, Sixers! While Simmons sits out, you are wasting a season!! At least that’s what most Twitter eggs said.
However, “Just get whatever you can for him” is a bad mentality. “Just get whatever you can for him and do it right now” is even worse.
Daryl Morey, the analytics-friendly President of the 76ers Basketball Operations, did not succumb to the pressure:
Instead of trading his star for a couple draft picks and a player like Buddy Hield, Morey remained patient while Simmons stayed off the court. Morey looked for deals for months. He had a roster that is ready to contend for a championship right now, and he wanted to maximize his championship window. No thanks on future first round picks.
The process worked. On February 10th, Morey found a deal:
Noteworthy context: Daryl Morey was the GM in Houston when the Rockets traded for James Harden from Oklahoma City. He’s pretty pro-Harden (I recommend the YouTube video linked in Morey’s tweet below):
Many front office members, especially those more focused on job security than optimal decision making, would have caved to the scrutiny and dumped Ben Simmons for pennies on the dollar. Sharp decision makers like Daryl Morey trust the process, which doesn’t always include reading your mentions. I love Morey’s conviction.
It’s the same conviction that led Morey to tweet in support of Hong Kong in 2019 despite the inevitable backlash given the NBA’s entanglement with China.
And he kind of did it again last week:
Today, most people’s integrity seems to live at the intersection of belief and convenience. Not Daryl Morey’s.
I like seeing his conviction rewarded. Perhaps he’ll reap the ultimate reward in June. I don’t know though, some of the sharpest people I know seem to like the Nets…
Death of the Draw
I have some regrets about my golf career, which concluded unabruptly at the end of high school. I don’t regret the on-course antics. Let’s just say…uhh…if an opposing team wanted a game…they knew where to find it. And usually scorecards weren’t the only paper in our hands as we exchanged pleasantries on the 18th green. No regrets there. Disapproving looks from teammates’ parents. “Well tell Ryan to player better, Susan!” But good fun.
I do regret my off-the-tee dispersion pattern. Far too often, I swung driver and feared it could miss either wide right or wide left. That’s a problem. Where should I aim?
I believe the following to be one of the most important concepts in golf: As often as possible, make swings that can only miss in one direction. Tiger Woods seems to agree.
I also believe this to be more easily accomplished with a fade, a golf shot that curves left to right for a right-handed player. Part of the theory here is that often in the course of a swing, a right-handed player’s hands can get stuck behind her body, which results in a miss blocked out wide to the right.
So suppose I am aiming down the left side of a fairway with the intent of hitting a fade, and my hands get stuck so I launch a ball out right of my intended starting line. I’m probably finding the right side of the fairway or missing the fairway just a little bit to the right.
Now suppose I am aiming down the right side of a fairway with the intent of hitting a draw (curve right to left), and my hands get stuck so I launch a ball out right of my intended starting line. Ok, this is trouble. This miss will be quite errant and result in a bad score.
For additional reasons not mentioned, a fade is generally easier to control than a draw.
I am not an expert on the golf swing, and I’m just presenting theory. But the data do seem to agree. To generate the data in the below table, I’ve removed left-handed players on the PGA Tour and Phil Mickelson.
I wish I could break the data out by draw versus fade, but it is impossible to know a player’s shot intent. Still, I think it is noteworthy that year over year, right-handed players miss wide right more often than they miss wide left.
Another point about ball flight, faded approach shots generally stop more quickly on a green than drawn approach shots. Stopping your ball quickly is an important skill on the PGA Tour (see Holes #1 and #4 at Riviera).
Hitting a fade tends to be an advantage, and I do wonder the extent to which equipment manufacturers are developing technology biased towards fades. Over the next decade, I would guess that at least 20 of the 25 best ball strikers favor hitting a fade. And probably closer to 25 than 20.
Variance and Skill - Hole 10
A few years ago, a couple guys had a high-stakes wager on a tennis match. I dug around unsuccessfully to refresh myself on the details, but I think Adam Levitan was involved. Well one player was a significant underdog, but he was allowed to pick the court. So he chose to play the match outdoors, at altitude, at a time of day when the sun would shine in a random player’s face at various points of the match. Why? As the clear underdog, he sought to create as much variance as possible.
Variance favors the underdog (sidebar: this is a relevant point about the Super Bowl, which historically has fewer penalties called than penalties called in regular season games).
With that in mind, one quick thought on Hole #10 at Riviera, which I’d written about for The Fried Egg last week. Three of the four rounds, Justin Thomas elected to lay back and leave himself a short wedge from the fairway. This was declared and echoed a mistake on Twitter by people who don’t know what they are talking about.
Optimal decisions vary based on players’ individual skill sets. But in addition to players’ skill sets mattering, unpredictability of one’s lie is a legitimate consideration. On Hole 10, nearly every player sends a tee shot left of the green on that hole. Left of the green = rough and trees. If a player gets a bad lie in the rough or finds himself directly behind a tree, tough luck!
Firing a shot left of the green is the “correct” play for most golfers, but a player who chooses this strategy is also subjecting himself to unpredictability in where the ball ends up. In laying back, a player is nearly guaranteeing himself a good lie in the fairway, which benefits the skilled player.
So if Justin Thomas, one of the best wedge players in the world, is confident in his ability to hit that delicate wedge shot to 12-15 feet consistently, I’d sign off on his strategy (to most pins). Historically, he’s done just fine on that hole.
Digital Media
In July of 2020, I read an interesting Stratechery piece on the evolution of digital media and the success of TikTok. I recommend reading it, but if you want the Sparknotes (shoutout Cam Newton), humans prefer video to pictures and prefer pictures to text, which feels odd to highlight in a newsletter. Anyway, TikTok curates a stream of video for users, and users have latched on.
So I have a challenge for the PGA Tour social media team. Post more videos of golf shots. On Sundays of a PGA Tour event, your Twitter feed should be a stream of relevant golf shots from the tournament.
During the final round at the Genesis Invitational on Sunday, the PGA Tour tweeted 13 shots over a six hour period. Multiple shots were from players out of contention. Two shots per hour is not enough. Post a bunch and post them quickly.
You should do this for two reasons:
You want people logging onto Twitter to engage with a cool shot they just saw on TV. If the shot does not exist on Twitter, they’ll stop trying. This is a massive part of engagement in other sports (like the NBA, NFL, UFC, etc.)
You will want to leverage the social media data down the road. What are the best 30 shots of Adam Scott’s career? It is simple to write a Twitter query such as “Show me every Adam Scott video with more than 2,000 likes.”
Overload us. If someone unfollows you because you are posting too much of your product, they weren’t your friend to begin with.
Feedback/Contact
Email: Joseph.LaMagnaGolf@gmail.com
Twitter: @JosephLaMagna
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