Strokes Gained: Aiming
Strokes Gained: Aiming
Ok, let’s try a little thought exercise.
I want you to look at my beautifully-illustrated, fictional par 3 and accept a few assumptions that we need to make for the purpose of this exercise.
First, I need you to accept that given the dimensions & firmness of this green, it is impossible to hit an approach shot at the flag that lands and stays in the section of the green in which the pin is located. There is just not enough room for the ball to bounce, roll, and stop in that section of the green, so any shot you hit at the pin will either come up short of the green in the bunker or bounce and roll over the back of the green into the bunker.
Second, I need you to accept that it is extremely difficult to make par (3) if you hit a shot at the flag and miss the green on this hole. Your shot from around the green will be short-sided, meaning you do not have much green to work with, and you will likely hit your sand shot well past the flag and make a bogey.
For the sake of operating with hard numbers, let’s say you will get up and down for par (3) about 20% of the time you miss the green with an aggressive approach shot, and you will make a bogey (4) the other 80% of the time. Thus, you are expected to take roughly 2.8 strokes once when you’ve missed the green on line with the flag. Now remember the first assumption: it’s impossible to hit the green from the tee box if you hit a shot at the flag. Therefore, if you hit your tee shot at the flag, your expected score on the hole is 3.8 ( 1 + 0.2*2 + 0.8*3 ).
Note: In the calculation in the parentheses, 1 represents the stroke you take on your tee shot, 0.2 represents the 20% chance you have of getting up and down from the short-sided location, and 0.8 represents the 80% chance you’ll end up taking three shots from the short-sided location.
Third and finally, I need you to accept that if you aim for the fat piece of the green to the right of the flag, you will successfully hit the green every single time. Also, the contours of the green are such that your lag putt is going to be very easy. You’ll never make your first putt, but the slopes of the green ensure that your first putt will always end up within a foot or two of the hole. Based on these assumptions, every time you aim for the fat part of the green, you’re making a three.
Did you keep track of all of that?
Trivia time! Suppose 100 professional golfers played this fictional hole. What would the scoring average on the hole be?
You might be saying to yourself, “Well the right thing for them to do is aim for the fat part of the green and they will always make a three. But if they aim anywhere else, they’ll never score better than three; therefore, the answer is that the scoring average will be three.” I love the way you think. And more professional golfers should think like you do. The correct answer, though, is that the average will be at least 3 and it will be somewhere between 3.0 and 3.8.
How much higher will the scoring average be than 3.0? That depends on how many golfers decide to hit the aggressive approach shot at the flag instead of hitting the optimal shot out to the fat part of the green. In other words, it depends on how many players deviate from the optimal strategy.
Say, for example, that 10 players attempt the aggressive approach shot. Based on the numbers I used above (an expected up-and-down rate of 20%), two of them will make par (3) and the other eight will make bogey (4). The other 90 golfers in the field take the optimal line and all of them make a par (3). Putting those numbers together, the scoring average for the day will be 3.08.
Accordingly, players can gain 0.08 strokes (3.08 - 3.0) simply by taking the optimal conservative line and reaping the benefits of their competitors’ suboptimal strategy. They’re gaining strokes on the field before they’ve even swung the club! In the box score, the 0.08 strokes they gain against the field will show up as Strokes Gained: Approach, but you can almost imagine this statistic being split up into Strokes Gained: Aiming and Strokes Gained: Execution. It’s virtually impossible to look at a player’s Strokes Gained: Approach numbers and decipher how much should be allocated to SG: Aiming versus SG: Execution, but I would not dismiss the significance of either component.
Ok, the illustrated example I laid out is oversimplified and extreme. No hole in professional golf looks or plays exactly like that hole. However, the point is that every hole in professional golf is some flavor of the hole above. Dimensions change, but the underlying principles do not. The longer distance a player must hit an approach shot, the more her shot will bounce & roll and the wider her dispersion will be. Consequently, the longer distance a player must hit an approach shot, the more conservative she must be with where she aims so that she avoids short-siding herself. Generally speaking, optimizing one’s score is more about finding the green and avoiding danger than trying to stick shots to three feet from 200+ yards away.
Enough hypothetical. Want to see a real-world example?
Here’s a shot I remember watching Tony Finau hit en route to winning the 2022 3M Open:
Does this hole look like the hole I created at the top of this newsletter? No, but the underlying concept is the same. From 211 yards, players could not hit a shot that had much of a chance of finishing within 10 feet of this hole. In fact, none of the 75 players who played the hole on that day hit a shot within 10 feet.
Coincidentally to my fictional example at the beginning of this post, the above hole at the 3M Open played to a scoring average of 3.08 during this round. By hitting an approach shot to 46 feet and making a fairly straight-forward two putt, Finau gained 0.08 strokes on the field on this hole.
Note for the golf stats people: From a categorization standpoint, the PGA Tour will credit most of Finau’s 0.08 strokes gained to his first putt. In my database, he actually gains most of the 0.08 on the approach shot, but that’s probably a conversation for another day…
Other players, like in the graphic below, took more aggressive targets.
This player made a bogey. He also hit his shot closer to the hole (43 feet) than Tony Finau (46 feet), which is yet another reason you need to be very careful when referencing Average Proximity numbers but I digress…
Did Finau gain 0.08 strokes on the hole solely because he took a conservative strategy? No, it isn’t that simple. He’s exceptional at executing the shot that was required. The point, though, is that winning at the highest level demands the intersection of proper strategy and elite execution. If you are lacking in either category, you will lose to somebody who is not, at least over the long run.
As you watch golf this year, I’d encourage you to think about Strokes Gained: Aiming. Watch how a smart course manager like Scottie Scheffler strategizes his way around golf courses. In last year’s PGA Tour season, Scheffler gained 2.6 strokes per round against his competitors with his ball striking. Nobody else on tour gained a full two strokes per round.
Is Scottie Scheffler amazing at hitting a golf ball? Absolutely. But he’s also intelligent about where he aims his shots, which has a significant impact on scoring too. He tends to be pretty conservative with his targets on long irons and more aggressive with his targets on short irons. Outstanding execution coupled with intelligent strategy is a lethal combination.
This year, try to observe the difference in Scheffler’s playing style versus styles like Justin Thomas’ and Rory McIlroy’s. In my opinion, both Thomas and McIlroy have a propensity to attempt overly-aggressive shots that bring risks into play more often than they result in rewards.
You should notice two things in the screenshot above of Justin Thomas’ fifth hole during the final round at The American Express…
To be clear, I am drastically oversimplifying this concept. Painting in Broad Strokes Gained is going to be the title of my memoir. On the whole, though, the broad strokes are instructive.
Over the long run, the strategically-sound player who chooses intelligent targets and fully commits to those targets will outperform a player of the same skill level who does not.
There is only so much that is within your control. Appreciating and leveraging what you cannot control is far more valuable than fighting against it.
BetMGM Unless You Know How to Bet
As gambling continues to be legalized and crammed down your throat promoted in more and more areas of the United States, American-based sports leagues have embraced sportsbooks like DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, PointsBet, and others as business partners.
With the increased prevalence in many people destroying their lives gambling, I think it’s extremely important to understand the ways in which those sportsbooks operate. Specifically, people need to be aware of some of the (highly unethical) tactics sportsbooks employ to suck every dollar out of their customer base.
Sportsbooks are not legally required to take your bets. I’ve written about this before, but if a sportsbook identifies that one of their customers consistently places intelligent bets, they’ll swiftly place limits on that customer’s account. A recreational bettor might be able to bet $5,000 on a golf head-to-head matchup while a person who actually knows what they’re doing will be limited to placing a maximum bet of like $50. Advertise to everyone; impose limits on the small percentage of people who actually win. Quite the business model!
Well, BetMGM may have produced my favorite gambling commercial of all time last week:
I am confident that the people responsible for making this advertisement have no clue why this video received the attention it did, but it’s the rare ad that says the quiet part out loud. Nearly every sportsbook just wants your action if you are a losing customer; only BetMGM will say it outright.
For what it’s worth, I’m very in favor of destigmatizing and legalizing gambling. At the same time, the ways in which most gambling companies make their money should be scrutinized, especially as those companies spread their tentacles into the pockets of fans in every major sport. At the very least, the people responsible for making these partnerships should be familiar with how most sportsbooks operate.
Thank you to BetMGM for raising awareness!
Contact/Feedback
Email: Joseph.LaMagnaGolf@gmail.com
Other Recent Content
This year I’ll be regularly co-hosting the early week episodes of The Fried Egg Golf Podcast. Listen to the newest episode here which focuses on the career and potential comeback(?) of Anthony Kim (Apple, Spotify). The latest episode pairs especially nicely with this edition of the newsletter.
Incredible video from a recent San Antonio Spurs game:
There’s been an explosion of scoring in the NBA this season. Before you say “Well that’s because nobody plays defense,” keep posts like this one in mind:
Related, I am eager to bet against the Phoenix Suns in the NBA Playoffs. You can throw this back in my face if they win the Western Conference:
Following a loss a couple of weeks ago, University of Texas basketball coach Rodney Terry complained about the opposing team making the hand gesture known as “Horns Down.” This past weekend, BYU asked its student section to remove shirts that spelled out “Horns Down” as they played against Texas. The BYU coach apologized after the game as well:
By no means do I consider myself the authority on this, but as a University of Texas graduate, I’d just like to say that I do not at all understand getting upset about Horns Down. It’s not offensive. It’s fun! Let it fly.
Anyway, thank you for reading, and enjoy the rest of your week.
And as we Cleeks fans like to say, Iron Heads Down!