Speaker 1: The guys from Ping. They've kind of showed me how
Speaker 1: much the equipment matters.
Speaker 2: I just love that I can hit any shot I
Speaker 2: kind of want.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be able to tell some fun stories about
Speaker 1: what goes on here to help golfers play better golf.
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Pink Proven Grounds Podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Shane Bacon, joined us always by Marty Jerts and Marty.
Speaker 2: We are diving deep with a man that I know
Speaker 2: you work closely with this week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got Chris Brody here. Brody, as he goes
Speaker 1: by amongst our engineering group and our R and D group,
Speaker 1: has a background in mathematics and is the sun of
Speaker 1: one very famous statistician in the golf industry. So Brody,
Speaker 1: welcome to the pod man.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, Marian.
Speaker 2: Shane, Chris, what's like dinner talk like with Pops when
Speaker 2: you guys are just discussing golf? Can you have normal
Speaker 2: golf conversations or does it always lend down some avenue
Speaker 2: of analytics and like what's going on?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I feel like it gets pretty deep. There's been
Speaker 3: a lot of recent work he's done on world golf rankings,
Speaker 3: college golf rankings. So he's he's trying to figure it
Speaker 3: out and hopefully not get too much abuse from from
Speaker 3: PJ Tour pros. So it's it's it's fun to hear
Speaker 3: what's going on in his in his world of golf rankings.
Speaker 1: Brody before your dad got into the what he's kind
Speaker 1: of working on now, which is the world world golf rankings,
Speaker 1: the college side of things. Obviously, he he, you know,
Speaker 1: wrote the book Every Shot Counts, a kind of you know,
Speaker 1: golf's version of Moneyball is is I think the best
Speaker 1: analogy therefore, tell us about your kind of childhood and
Speaker 1: in some early days of you know, some of the
Speaker 1: work and background he was doing in the golf space.
Speaker 1: How did how did he get interested or involved in golf?
Speaker 1: And how did you you know, you and your brother,
Speaker 1: your family members there contribute to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, it's been it's been very fun to
Speaker 3: see the progression of early days of interest to writing
Speaker 3: a book getting adopted by PJ Tour. I think interestingly,
Speaker 3: for me, there's always been like golf and math floating
Speaker 3: around in the background. But for me, it start a
Speaker 3: lot with baseball. I remember playing Little League as like
Speaker 3: a seven eight year old and probably classically. My dad
Speaker 3: would start to record, not just like your typical like
Speaker 3: walk singles, but you record like where the ball was
Speaker 3: hit to what each player on the team was doing.
Speaker 3: So he started asking me, okay, like if you were
Speaker 3: to manage this team, like what would you do? How
Speaker 3: would you set the lineup for our little league baseball team?
Speaker 3: And he's like, one of the first questions like, okay,
Speaker 3: how many how many different combinations of lineups are there?
Speaker 3: And it's okay, So the first batter you can put
Speaker 3: there's nine different people who can choose from second bat
Speaker 3: is eight different people, and so you'd be okay. So
Speaker 3: the number of combinations you can think through is nine
Speaker 3: times eight times seven times six. And I was like this,
Speaker 3: this is kind of this kind of getting into like
Speaker 3: what the dinner dinner time my seven year old dinner
Speaker 3: time conversation.
Speaker 2: You're like, I just want to play baseball, man, you're
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 3: I loved it. It was like, okay, I think you might
Speaker 3: have set up like a custom simulation for me of
Speaker 3: like all right, we can put this player here, see
Speaker 3: a expected runs there are? And he was like, quickly,
Speaker 3: very quickly, you learn that, like you want to have
Speaker 3: your best player up first. It's like at the most
Speaker 3: possible at bats. And that was like very early like Moneyball,
Speaker 3: like same same conclusion. You want to have your highest
Speaker 3: on base sentage hitter going off first. Similarly, like we
Speaker 3: looked at like where the hits were in the field,
Speaker 3: and like, no little leaguer can keep up with a fastball,
Speaker 3: so they all hit it to the right side. So
Speaker 3: you put your best defensive guy at second base. Interesting,
Speaker 3: so the Nuggets were rolling in pretty quick. Another one
Speaker 3: we're going we're going probably too deep into baseball. But
Speaker 3: another one was he asked me, like, what what percent
Speaker 3: of time do you need to successfully steal second in
Speaker 3: order to make it worth it? So guy on first,
Speaker 3: no Out's like, when should you give the guy green
Speaker 3: light to steal? And I guess my first like initial
Speaker 3: thought is, okay, well what's the average success rate? Like
Speaker 3: if you can get over seven percent, then go ahead,
Speaker 3: And he's like no, no, there's like there's a better
Speaker 3: way of think through it, and so we end up
Speaker 3: breaking it down. It's okay, with a man on first,
Speaker 3: no outs, your expected runs is maybe point eight, but
Speaker 3: if you get that guy a second, it jumps up
Speaker 3: to one point zero. Now a single might score him,
Speaker 3: but then if he gets out, now you have nobody
Speaker 3: on and one out and you're down to like point
Speaker 3: two runs. And so say, okay, you just gotta look
Speaker 3: at the trade off of going point eight to one
Speaker 3: point zero or point eight down to point two, and
Speaker 3: to make it worthwhile steal you've got to have an
Speaker 3: over seventy five percent success rate. And it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: that's that's that's the pretty unid insight. And you can
Speaker 3: do that for what happens if this guy in first
Speaker 3: two outs and they can do the math again, it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: if it's zero point two with two outs and guy
Speaker 3: on first, make it cessful and a guy guy in
Speaker 3: scorem position, you have too point four. But then if
Speaker 3: you if you're unsuccessful, the aning's over and down to zero.
Speaker 3: But interesting thing there is, if it's point two verse
Speaker 3: point four, all you need is a figure sent success
Speaker 3: rate to make it worthwhile. And so it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: the incentive then is to send a lot of guys
Speaker 3: to try to steal second with two outs, think on first.
Speaker 3: So a lot of things end up like correlating well
Speaker 3: with golf, Like you don't want to just look at
Speaker 3: raw stolen base percentage, Like the metric that matters for
Speaker 3: baseball is run scored.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that translated over pretty quickly towards golf, Like
Speaker 3: you don't really want to care about what your farely
Speaker 3: hit percentage is, what your green hit percentage is. What
Speaker 3: really matters at the end of the day is how
Speaker 3: many shots that take you to get into the hole.
Speaker 3: And so you can hit a good drive that doesn't
Speaker 3: hit the fair way, but if it's three hundred and
Speaker 3: thirty yards down there, you might be in a pretty
Speaker 3: good spot.
Speaker 2: Marty. It's interesting, you know, as Chris talks about this,
Speaker 2: I think about in my life and we're similar raised
Speaker 2: to Marty, but in my life, like the real switch
Speaker 2: for analytics and golf to me personally, was the switch
Speaker 2: from how we play par fives. Yes, and I feel
Speaker 2: like it was probably fifteen twenty years ago, Matt. Maybe
Speaker 2: now was twenty five years ago, where the idea was
Speaker 2: layup to enough you can't get there into lay up
Speaker 2: to a number you're comfortable with. And you know, for
Speaker 2: me it was always ninety five to one hundred yards.
Speaker 2: I've lay up to that number or tried to and
Speaker 2: that gave you the best chance of making birdie. And
Speaker 2: then there was a flip I feel like in the
Speaker 2: early two thousands where numbers and data started to tell
Speaker 2: us no, no, no, no, no, send it as far up as
Speaker 2: you can ye with both both golf shots, because it's
Speaker 2: obviously the easiest place to get up and down make birdie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when when Brody was talking about the baseball in
Speaker 1: his work his dad was doing on the baseball side,
Speaker 1: my brain was on, okay, instead of should I steal second?
Speaker 1: Should I go for the par five and two? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That was exactly Yeah, that was exactly where my head
Speaker 1: was at. So yeah, that's it's super cool Brody to
Speaker 1: hear those those early days of like your dad thinking
Speaker 1: about the probabilities. I mean, one of the other questions
Speaker 1: I always thought of Shane when I was in school
Speaker 1: for the listeners out there is is Brodie's background is
Speaker 1: in mathematics. His degrees in math, and I'm always like,
Speaker 1: what does a math major even do? So I think
Speaker 1: Brodie's a real life example here, Chris, tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit why you went that direction and some of
Speaker 1: the work you do, you know, like day to day,
Speaker 1: like what does a math major do in the working world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely didn't have much of a clue what I
Speaker 3: was gonna do. When I was in college. I was like,
Speaker 3: I know, I've always liked math. I've always enjoyed having
Speaker 3: these how can I apply data to different problems? And
Speaker 3: it was more it was more just like, Okay, I
Speaker 3: think if I do a math major, I'm gonna have
Speaker 3: some open something's gonna work out, like it might be consulting,
Speaker 3: it might be econ, but I'll keep my options open.
Speaker 3: And I definitely gravitated towards like applied math problems, probably
Speaker 3: stunning from when I was seven years old, and so
Speaker 3: it worked out pretty well with I think at the
Speaker 3: end of my college career, we're doing a lot of
Speaker 3: theoreical math. I was like, this is not quite clicking
Speaker 3: for me. I was very lucky to get to paying
Speaker 3: and they're like, oh, we got a whole lot of
Speaker 3: data and a whole lot of problems we want you
Speaker 3: to look at. And it was really fun, just like
Speaker 3: dive into a world of golf and math and continue
Speaker 3: with a lot of my growing up interests.
Speaker 2: Chris, can you give us an example of something once
Speaker 2: you came to Paying because your job at Paying fitting
Speaker 2: science manager, what like giving us an example of something
Speaker 2: somebody might come to you with a problem to find
Speaker 2: a solution, like anything that's popped up throughout your career pain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's been a lot of really fun
Speaker 3: different ones. One of the more fun ones was Travis Milman,
Speaker 3: one of our design engineers, was working on our G
Speaker 3: four to thirty Farawood line and he's like, hey, we
Speaker 3: have ten grams of discretionary mass. It's just kind of
Speaker 3: the gold currency for designers. And he was like, should
Speaker 3: we just keep on pushing MI we can probably get
Speaker 3: like a five to ten percent boost this Ferrywood or
Speaker 3: I can move around the mass, I can try to
Speaker 3: drop the CG location. And we kind of had a
Speaker 3: hunch that maybe, like if we canet a little bit
Speaker 3: higher launched, lower spin out of our out of our farrewoods,
Speaker 3: like it could be a pretty nice gain in terms
Speaker 3: of strokes gain in terms of performance. But it's a
Speaker 3: hard one from a design side, like he's not really
Speaker 3: sure how to tell that story, like what exactly do
Speaker 3: you gain from higher launch and lower spin? And so
Speaker 3: I was able to use some of my simulation background,
Speaker 3: use our vocal data where we know help people deliver
Speaker 3: fairy woods, and basically run a virtual test that Okay,
Speaker 3: if we use your default G four twenty five head
Speaker 3: shape with these mass properties versus a four point thirty
Speaker 3: with maybe your higher MLI pathway versus four thirty with
Speaker 3: your lower CG pathway, or the trade offs that you
Speaker 3: can see in terms of performance and kind of all
Speaker 3: the things that matter not just can your longest shot
Speaker 3: go further, but what happens on your full range of
Speaker 3: impacts and mishits. And that's where looking at through a
Speaker 3: stroke scand lens kind of helps you blend those things together.
Speaker 3: It's not just seeing the ball as far as possible
Speaker 3: every time, but it's getting that right blend of distance
Speaker 3: and accuracy. And so that was a fun one where
Speaker 3: I could tell him like, hey, this is unconventional, but
Speaker 3: you can drop the MI by a decent amount. But
Speaker 3: on that Elsie Farrowood, if you can lower your CG
Speaker 3: location by point one point two inches, you'll see a
Speaker 3: pretty big boost and performance.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Shane Brody's been a big part of the ability,
Speaker 1: as he talked about of connecting the dots on our
Speaker 1: modeling capabilities. So, like you know, ping, we've gone through
Speaker 1: this revolution where we used to always do like tons
Speaker 1: of robot tests, but those have their limitations because while
Speaker 1: sometimes you want to deliver the club perfectly the same
Speaker 1: every time, it's not what humans do. So then we
Speaker 1: have FOCAL. We spend some time in FOCAL. We talked
Speaker 1: to doctor Eric hendrickson on how that works. Chris is
Speaker 1: on the end of marrying those things together, running all
Speaker 1: these what if scenarios, these virtual simulations, so it saves
Speaker 1: us a lot of time and it helps us answer
Speaker 1: questions with a lot more clarity more quickly because we
Speaker 1: can run these things virtually, and then we can kind
Speaker 1: of validate a hypothesis. Then we make the physical prototypes,
Speaker 1: test them through our full suite of robot and human testing.
Speaker 1: So been able to fast track. So a lot of
Speaker 1: fun Chris working on that. Marty.
Speaker 2: I got a question for you, Marty in this, In
Speaker 2: this because I'm interested in this because Chris's point about
Speaker 2: bringing an idea to him and having to figure it out. Marty,
Speaker 2: I know you've been big in terms of you know,
Speaker 2: conceptualizing golf clubs and building golf clubs over the last
Speaker 2: couple decades at Ping, how many departments are you running
Speaker 2: things by when you're coming up with a new driver?
Speaker 2: I mean, are there ten departments you're going to and
Speaker 2: you're saying, you help us with this, you help us
Speaker 2: with this, because I don't think people at home think
Speaker 2: about building a golf club and they're thinking Ping's trying
Speaker 2: to make a golf club that goes as long as possible, right,
Speaker 2: or it goes as straight as possible. But obviously there's
Speaker 2: fifty one hundred and two hundred two thousand factors that
Speaker 2: go into a driver. So like, how many departments are
Speaker 2: you leaning on, Marty as you're coming up with the
Speaker 2: new age, the new Ping driver.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a great question, Shane. Like to get
Speaker 1: a driver to the market, it's very super cross functional,
Speaker 1: all right. So it's it's the designing it three D CAD,
Speaker 1: the joints, the mechanical design optimization. Then you're working with
Speaker 1: an innovation group and they're working on maybe materials like
Speaker 1: our carbon fly wrap and things of that nature and
Speaker 1: optimizing those kind of those are they're kind of baking
Speaker 1: them in the R and D world, right and getting
Speaker 1: them ready to be integrated to the design. Then you're
Speaker 1: working with kind of supply chain, manufacturing, sourcing, materials, components,
Speaker 1: project engineering, which is kind of all the detailed nitty
Speaker 1: gritty to kind of ramp it up and scale the
Speaker 1: manufacturing quality control to make sure we're bringing it for
Speaker 1: designing a new manufacturing process, we can make it consistently
Speaker 1: to meet our brand standards. Our testing group which make
Speaker 1: sure it's not going to break, it's durable. We validated
Speaker 1: the performance that we want. You know, we got you know,
Speaker 1: a USGA liaison in here. We got my team now,
Speaker 1: which is the fitting and performance group, which make sure
Speaker 1: we're getting the right launch conditions. You know. Then you
Speaker 1: got sales and marketing to kind of tell the worry
Speaker 1: of it on the on the back end. So yeah,
Speaker 1: cross functionally, I mean it's you know, over ten plus departments,
Speaker 1: and you know we have eighty plus engineers putting their
Speaker 1: fingerprints on it.
Speaker 2: And Chris is a part of your team, so I
Speaker 2: mean he's involved in so much of that kind of
Speaker 2: from start to finish process of how that golf club's
Speaker 2: going to look and perform and how it's going to
Speaker 2: perform the best, and how it's going to function the best.
Speaker 2: As he was mentioning kind of with that three wood example.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's left his fingerprint on especially the modeling side
Speaker 1: of things here when we're looking at you know, being
Speaker 1: able to do virtual player test, tying it not only
Speaker 1: to our focal data, but also are like baldnamic. You know,
Speaker 1: Chris and I have worked together and teamed up on
Speaker 1: being able to simulate what's going to happen. How does
Speaker 1: wind affect it in things of that nature as well
Speaker 1: as Shane. Wh's really fun and Chris I want to
Speaker 1: get into is learning from en course data. So I
Speaker 1: think one of the things we have access to now is,
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of millions of shots from from from
Speaker 1: Arcos and our partnership there where we got on course
Speaker 1: really precise GPS tracking data. Chris, tell us a little
Speaker 1: story of your first experience with that kind of again
Speaker 1: stepping back into your childhoodhood here of helping collect some
Speaker 1: data from en course play patterns, working with your dad
Speaker 1: when he was first getting into that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we definitely have jumped around a good amount, but yeah,
Speaker 3: definitely started. I think maybe now when I was ten,
Speaker 3: my dad's focus shifted into the golf arena and how
Speaker 3: can we do a better job understanding golf performance. There
Speaker 3: are a bunch of different avenues. I think shot link
Speaker 3: was starting to come into the fold, so he knew
Speaker 3: there's some really good PGA Tour data, but there was
Speaker 3: nothing on amateur data outside of some kind of fairly
Speaker 3: hit green hit.
Speaker 2: You were talking about you and your dad kind of
Speaker 2: transitioning from baseball to golf. What was the why did
Speaker 2: he want to get into the golf analytics side? Did
Speaker 2: he get into golf at that point in his life?
Speaker 2: Did he just see opportunity there?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think I think he saw opportunity. I think
Speaker 3: there's probably some frustration of trying to record golf stats
Speaker 3: and seeing like just some really obvious potential flaws in
Speaker 3: the stats. It was like there was, as I said,
Speaker 3: like faraoe hit percentage, green hit percentage, Like I think
Speaker 3: one of them was like putts per round, and it's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: the leader of that stat is not necessarily the best putter.
Speaker 3: It's the person who like misses the most screens and
Speaker 3: chips it.
Speaker 2: Up that's three feet totally totally.
Speaker 3: So he's just like that doesn't seem right. And then
Speaker 3: like every single stat you could just like poke some
Speaker 3: holes in it's like, I don't know, Tiger's hitting it
Speaker 3: miss He's missing like five percent more faraways than average,
Speaker 3: So it's like always he's a bad driver of the ball.
Speaker 3: I think that was a pretty like I've heard that
Speaker 3: narrative still like two thousand and six, he's spraying everywhere.
Speaker 3: Steven Aames probably bought into that too and lost nine
Speaker 3: to eight. But it's like you see on the surface, like, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: he's one eightieth and faaraow hit percentage, he has to
Speaker 3: be a bad golf driver of the golf ball, but
Speaker 3: just doesn't quite add up because you know, he's really
Speaker 3: doing very well in terments and.
Speaker 1: It was a weapon of him.
Speaker 3: Yeah he hit it.
Speaker 2: He might maybe sprayed a bit, but he had this
Speaker 2: distance that people couldn't keep up with at a time
Speaker 2: when that was transitioning into the game.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So I think the focus we in the quote unquote
Speaker 2: olden days in terms of statistics in golf, we were
Speaker 2: looking at these things is absolutes. Right, you hit fairways,
Speaker 2: that's great, You hit greens, that's great, But not every
Speaker 2: green regulation is the same, and not every fairway hit
Speaker 2: is the same, right, And I think that's something you
Speaker 2: guys have done an unbelievable job at breaking down.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think it was just like, how do we get
Speaker 3: this into a context that makes sense? I think even
Speaker 3: the laying up on par fives, it's like there's some
Speaker 3: psychological safety of Oh, I can really easily hit a
Speaker 3: seven iron two hundred yards and I'm gonna hit the green,
Speaker 3: so it's gonna look good from a status respective like
Speaker 3: hitting more greens regulation that it feels safe. And it's
Speaker 3: like if you do take out a threewood and plasted
Speaker 3: around the green, somewhere you might be underneath the tree
Speaker 3: and that it might be hard to get on the
Speaker 3: green and you might be throwing off just like you're
Speaker 3: clean round. But it was nicer. He could kind of
Speaker 3: start to say, Okay, well, how do we get beyond
Speaker 3: just these counting stats? And I think, I don't know.
Speaker 3: My dad did a phenomenal job of like getting into
Speaker 3: that simplest metric, which I think makes sense. Like a
Speaker 3: lot of other stats have moved in that direction as well.
Speaker 3: Expected goals now is in hockey and soccer, the runs
Speaker 3: is in baseball. So it's like it was a trend
Speaker 3: that was happening. I would say someone probably would have
Speaker 3: come up with it if my dad did not, but
Speaker 3: helped answer some of those questions where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: what is the most meaningful metric for golf? It's shots
Speaker 3: and if you start looking in that perspective, then everything
Speaker 3: makes sense. Tires a really good driver with the golf ball.
Speaker 3: He follows the same blueprint as Rory and Bryson and
Speaker 3: guys who a long way but just miss a couple
Speaker 3: more fairways, missing one fairway per round, and here you
Speaker 3: get twenty five yards past the field. Is actually a
Speaker 3: really really good formula for playing good high level golf.
Speaker 3: So yeah, definitely cool to see, and it was also
Speaker 3: really cool growing up to like see coaches and players
Speaker 3: start to adopt it. So I think Luke, Donald Duarte, Mollinari,
Speaker 3: Chris Como, Sean Foley, where a lot of a lot
Speaker 3: of guys to start to reach out and like see
Speaker 3: the insights of of what what looking at things from
Speaker 3: a strokes gain perspective could do. So yeah, really really
Speaker 3: fun to be involved with the Tangentially as a sixteen
Speaker 3: year old didn't know anything.
Speaker 1: Brody, Let's let's fast forward to now and how have
Speaker 1: you in our team here? Where we've answered some of
Speaker 1: these questions, like brought that to the club fitting world. Right,
Speaker 1: So you're going in for a club fitting and you
Speaker 1: might have these kind of legacy ideas maybe in your head,
Speaker 1: you know, like like I got to hit it straighter,
Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta find the middle of the face more.
Speaker 1: You know, I need to play a shorter driver because
Speaker 1: that's what the tour players are doing. So, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: just let's double click on that a little bit of
Speaker 1: how somebody can take some of these concepts and principles,
Speaker 1: maybe not that they're playing tournament golf in their lives
Speaker 1: on the line, but they're going have to get fit
Speaker 1: for a new driver. What are what are some ideas
Speaker 1: in in in quick math folks can bring to the
Speaker 1: table there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's a's a fundamental question of maybe
Speaker 3: a driver fitting is like what's better is it hitting
Speaker 3: as far as possible or hitting as straight as possible?
Speaker 3: And you can easily swing to the extremes you can.
Speaker 3: If you want hit as far as possible, you probably
Speaker 3: grab the longest blank driver you have, crank the loft
Speaker 3: down and hopefully hit the one really high launched, low
Speaker 3: spin nuke and if you want to hit as straight
Speaker 3: as possible, it's like, okay, let's grab a shorter shaft,
Speaker 3: let's dial back the swing speed, and I'll try his
Speaker 3: night fairies as possible. But as of the most things,
Speaker 3: the answer kind of lies in between there, and so
Speaker 3: again it's like, how do you how do you break
Speaker 3: down that trade off? How do you break down that
Speaker 3: distance versus acuity trade off? And as expected, the the
Speaker 3: way to look at is from strokes gained and try
Speaker 3: to see, yeah, what exactly is that distance versus acuracy
Speaker 3: trade off? And it was leaning on work than my
Speaker 3: dad did. Of Okay, if you could look at what's
Speaker 3: the benefit of gaining twenty yards, quantify that in terms
Speaker 3: of strokes versus what's the how much did it hurt
Speaker 3: you if you hit it, I don't know, ten feet
Speaker 3: more offline? And so which we wanted to make it
Speaker 3: as easy for fitters as possible to use this kind
Speaker 3: of strokes gained framework to analyze a driver fitting. And
Speaker 3: so the simple nuggets it's if you hit twenty yards further,
Speaker 3: it's a PGA Tour pro you are started to play
Speaker 3: one shot better per round, and so that's huge. That's
Speaker 3: exactly what kind of Bryson did and may Fitzpatrick did
Speaker 3: when they went through gaining length. And then the interesting
Speaker 3: thing is, though it's even more beneficial for amateur golfers.
Speaker 3: And so, like my rough math would be a PGA
Speaker 3: Tour pro from two hundred yards might average like three
Speaker 3: point three shots and you bring them down to one
Speaker 3: hundred twenty yards and it's three point zero. So that
Speaker 3: eighty yard shift gained him point three shots. But for
Speaker 3: a ninety golfer, he might be moving from four point
Speaker 3: six at two hundred yards down to four point h
Speaker 3: at one twenty, so it's a point six shift, and
Speaker 3: so distance is even more valuable, Like what there's more
Speaker 3: to gain moving an amateur player just twenty yards close
Speaker 3: as a whole every time. And so that's what the
Speaker 3: math showed for a ninety golfer, gain twenty yards is
Speaker 3: worth two shots instead of that one point oh for
Speaker 3: a PJA Tour golfer. And so you kind of use
Speaker 3: these trayoffs to develop a pretty simple rule for our
Speaker 3: fitting department that if you can gain two yards of distance,
Speaker 3: that will be offset by one yard decrease in offline
Speaker 3: standard deviation. So you're if you're actually in if your
Speaker 3: offline dispersion goes up by a yard, that's offset by
Speaker 3: two yards for maybe a scratch golfer, oh I got
Speaker 3: that backwards three yards for a scratch golfer, of distance
Speaker 3: offsets one yard of accuracy loss. And then for a
Speaker 3: ninety golfer where distance is even more at a premium,
Speaker 3: it's you only need two yards offset one yard of
Speaker 3: accuracy loss. But the nice thing there is that we
Speaker 3: have a really clean rule of thumb that like someone
Speaker 3: can doesn't have to go to the extremes. They don't
Speaker 3: have to just maximize distance or maximize the accuracy. They
Speaker 3: can say, hey, you gain twenty yards, you only lost
Speaker 3: two yards of offline performance. So that's going to be
Speaker 3: a clear win for you. And we can have tools
Speaker 3: and copilot that we've mentioned a bunch of this podcast
Speaker 3: that says, Okay, you're expect to gain on course is
Speaker 3: one point four shots with that new driver. That'll be
Speaker 3: a really good tool for you at the end of fitting.
Speaker 2: And Chris, do you have those conversations with the fitters,
Speaker 2: I mean, is this something you guys are discussing, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of throughout the company to help people relay this
Speaker 2: information to consumers because I do think you know, like
Speaker 2: this year, Marty, Marty not played golf in January and
Speaker 2: he has the two driver system in his bag, and
Speaker 2: we've talked a lot about on the pod. But I mean,
Speaker 2: it's been one of the biggest changes in my game
Speaker 2: I've made in the last probably ten years, is the
Speaker 2: is adding a twelve degree driver. Every time I play
Speaker 2: golf with somebody to ask about it, they're always very
Speaker 2: interested in the link to the shaft and why we
Speaker 2: do it. And Marty obviously broke down the numbers, and
Speaker 2: you know, he has the math on it. We've talked
Speaker 2: about it on the pod. I mean, if you hit
Speaker 2: three wood, you know, if you hit three hundred yards,
Speaker 2: you hit three wood ninety ninety five percent of the
Speaker 2: time off the tee. Why not take a bigger head
Speaker 2: and lean on that. That's a simple thing for me
Speaker 2: to understand. How do you guys relay this information to
Speaker 2: the fitters where they can simplify it as much as
Speaker 2: possible to somebody that's looking at a driver, going, I
Speaker 2: do want to gain ten fifteen yards, But what that's
Speaker 2: going what's that going to do in terms of my accuracy?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think that's the magic of I
Speaker 3: guess communicating with math is you have to be able
Speaker 3: to understand kind of the deep nuanced science to be
Speaker 3: able to come up with new metrics and tools for fitters.
Speaker 3: But then the power is then turning into a very
Speaker 3: simple story that everyone can understand. And I think even
Speaker 3: that example of the of kind of that that driver
Speaker 3: the driver baby is like how many different pieces are
Speaker 3: are in play on the pink side of Like we
Speaker 3: are leveraging our Arcos database of one hundred plus million
Speaker 3: shots to understand when people use drivers through wood. We're
Speaker 3: leveraging our really cool I mean, that's even like manufacturing
Speaker 3: side of things, where we can build a a driver
Speaker 3: head the right weight to hit a through wood build
Speaker 3: and then we can also do testing. So now the
Speaker 3: testing or we ran that test of what happens if
Speaker 3: you hit a thriver off the tee versus three off
Speaker 3: the ta, and like that's the ultimate proof is like
Speaker 3: how much better is it? And that's one of the
Speaker 3: more like jaw dropping like clean winds I've ever seen
Speaker 3: in a player test, Like the thriver is just dominating
Speaker 3: and so and then you can plug it into and
Speaker 3: then we had one of the guys in our group,
Speaker 3: Max went in. He's like, I want to test out
Speaker 3: how does this build compare? And he went into Copilot
Speaker 3: and it was like, okay, let let's let's look at
Speaker 3: what's my distance gain, what's my accuracy gain. It's like, okay,
Speaker 3: it's the or just win the world for a driver.
Speaker 3: So kind of all those tools are like married together,
Speaker 3: and hopefully Copilot's kind of our avenue for fitters to
Speaker 3: get the simplest possible way to communicate to the to
Speaker 3: the everyday golfer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, change so Brody, I'll give him some props here.
Speaker 1: He's built all pretty much all the algorithms and logic
Speaker 1: behind pink Co Pilot right, all the fun cool math
Speaker 1: that happens there, and one of the most powerful fun
Speaker 1: tools allows you to explore club fitting with the nuance
Speaker 1: from a strokes gain lens if you want to write,
Speaker 1: if the fitter wants too, if the players kind of
Speaker 1: into it. Still a little kind of hard concept, I
Speaker 1: think for the everyday golfer to understand I'm going to
Speaker 1: gain two tenths of a shot, what does that mean
Speaker 1: to me? If? But you know, we're kind of on
Speaker 1: this spectrum of change in an evolution with every every
Speaker 1: day golfer. They're seeing these stats on TV. They're starting
Speaker 1: to understand it more. Now you can go in and
Speaker 1: with Pink co pilot and optimize your driver or your
Speaker 1: other clubs for which one's going to be the best
Speaker 1: from a strokes gain standpoint. So, and we teach our fitters. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna look at distance differences. We're gonna look at
Speaker 1: your offline standard deviation. That's kind of how big your
Speaker 1: left right dispersion is. Right, what does your shot pattern
Speaker 1: look like? And there's a way to quantify that on
Speaker 1: a launch monitor. Feed it in and you can help
Speaker 1: and say, hey, compared to your gamer driver, this one's
Speaker 1: gonna be so much better from a strokes gain standpoint.
Speaker 1: Let's try a longer driver versus a shorter length shaft
Speaker 1: and do that little ab comparison. So really fun to
Speaker 1: be able to pass this level of nuance which is
Speaker 1: kind of built into the strokes gain concept to the
Speaker 1: everyday golfer through copilot, which has been which has been
Speaker 1: tons of fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Brody, I mean you know I think about this.
Speaker 2: You mentioned baseball earlier. I mean you think about the
Speaker 2: eye rolls that came through the moneyball era right with baseball,
Speaker 2: and it's like, oh, we don't need to worry about that.
Speaker 2: That didn't make any sense, Like what's their er, what's
Speaker 2: their batting average?
Speaker 1: Right? I mean, these are stats that.
Speaker 2: Mean something in baseball, and then slowly people started to
Speaker 2: understand what it means. I think one thing that golf
Speaker 2: is doing better over the last couple of years is
Speaker 2: trying to explain this stuff. I think at broadcast at
Speaker 2: times I try to dive a little deeper into the
Speaker 2: strokes gain stuff just to simply explain what I'm talking about,
Speaker 2: because sometimes you hear terms in a sport or in work,
Speaker 2: in society and life whatever, but you never really get
Speaker 2: explained what it is, and you just kind of take
Speaker 2: it for fact. And I think we're getting to a
Speaker 2: point now in golf where strokes gained is starting to
Speaker 2: make more sense to people at a macro level, which
Speaker 2: is huge because for somebody like you, you're leaning so
Speaker 2: heavily on it, you want people to understand it because
Speaker 2: you know it'll help them in terms of the way
Speaker 2: they play, in the way they think about golf.
Speaker 3: It's interesting, like the first thing I did when I
Speaker 3: got to ping is we had a competitive data set
Speaker 3: of driver tests that we looked at like different competitors,
Speaker 3: how they reformed. And my boss at the time, Eric Henderson,
Speaker 3: is like, how would you analyze this data? And I
Speaker 3: think he was like kind of winking as head of
Speaker 3: like I think he might look at this from a
Speaker 3: strokes gain perspective, But the way the data had been
Speaker 3: analyzed was all right, how far did those balls go?
Speaker 3: Like how many fairways did you hit? And he's like,
Speaker 3: how would you go about this? And I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I think there might be a way to apply apply
Speaker 3: some of the knowledge I have of strokes gain. And
Speaker 3: so yeah, it's been it's been cool too to be
Speaker 3: able to I mean even even in our vocabulary I
Speaker 3: think is as designers engineers, we've we've moved from uh,
Speaker 3: maybe stat areas and how far the ball went to
Speaker 3: kind of talking this language of overall performance in it
Speaker 3: from a strokes gained lens. So it definitely takes time.
Speaker 3: One other thing, what you were talking about baseball, It's
Speaker 3: like baseball maybe it was ahead in some respects with moneyball,
Speaker 3: but golf has actually been way ahead in terms of
Speaker 3: some of their advanced metrics, like we knew about angle
Speaker 3: attack and club betspeed tracking. I had more of an
Speaker 3: influence kind of on the on the coaching community. They
Speaker 3: understood some of these tools way before, like the kind
Speaker 3: of baseball analytics they like they're just starting to get
Speaker 3: get their head around like angle attack. I feel like
Speaker 3: there's some there's some funny things of like TV broadcasters
Speaker 3: being like, oh a launch angle swings like a big
Speaker 3: concept in baseball, Like they didn't quite have the terminology
Speaker 3: down for angle attack. But it's like that's been around
Speaker 3: the golf world for h I don't know, ten fifteen
Speaker 3: years now.
Speaker 1: That's a really good point Brody's speaking of angle of attack.
Speaker 1: I mean think one of the problems we've solved in
Speaker 1: our group, and you were instrumental in is helping understand
Speaker 1: like why golfers. And for me it was always Lee Westwood.
Speaker 1: He hit down on his driver and I was working
Speaker 1: on low spin drivers like the answer I fifteen, I twenty,
Speaker 1: and they never worked for him. They fell out of
Speaker 1: the air, He'd have to change his swing tip back.
Speaker 1: Nothing works, So he kept playing the G ten driver,
Speaker 1: which was you know, kind of moderate spinning, moderate slash
Speaker 1: high spinning driver at the time when he was number
Speaker 1: one player in the world, and we could never really
Speaker 1: answer that question of why that was. And you know,
Speaker 1: since then, I think you were a big part of
Speaker 1: doing a bunch of that modeling work to help us
Speaker 1: answer the question. Generate this really useful chart for all
Speaker 1: for some fitters out there that says, hey, if you
Speaker 1: do hit more down you not only can you spin
Speaker 1: it more, but you should to be optimal. So give
Speaker 1: us a little background on how all that research and
Speaker 1: analysis and modeling all came to be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think it definitely kind of goes back
Speaker 3: to my kind of first color projects at PAYING. So
Speaker 3: after kind of looking at some of that competitor data
Speaker 3: where it's kind of looking at applying strokes gain to
Speaker 3: some of our driver data, the next project I actually
Speaker 3: worked on was looking at ball flight laws. And so
Speaker 3: that's not just the kind of undepending there is. When
Speaker 3: you have a club path angle attack and a face angle,
Speaker 3: a big question is where's that ball going to launch?
Speaker 3: So that's really important for coaches if they're trying to
Speaker 3: tell a golfer how to hit a functional drawer fade.
Speaker 3: I think a very common piece of teaching was you
Speaker 3: want to have the face point where the ball ends
Speaker 3: up and the path goes where you want the ball
Speaker 3: to start. And that doesn't actually quite match what we
Speaker 3: see on the side of things, but it kind of
Speaker 3: gets your brain kind of thinking about what where should
Speaker 3: that path and face be. And so similarly on the
Speaker 3: kind of vertical side of things, it's if you have
Speaker 3: an angle attack and then a loft in the club,
Speaker 3: a big question is where's the ball going to launch?
Speaker 3: And so we have with our focal data a lot
Speaker 3: of really good information on how the club is delivered,
Speaker 3: what that path is, and where the face is pointed.
Speaker 3: And so one of my big projects goes, okay, what
Speaker 3: is that ratio? So if you have a path that
Speaker 3: is ten degrees right and the face is pointed right
Speaker 3: at the target, where will the ball launched? And it's
Speaker 3: roughly eighty percent, So the ball would launch two degrees
Speaker 3: to the right if your face is aimed right at
Speaker 3: the target and your path is ten degrees to the right,
Speaker 3: and we end up going through the whole whole club set.
Speaker 3: So a driver that numbers actually around eighty five percent,
Speaker 3: and then down to wedge that number is down to
Speaker 3: sev percent. So that's I mean, one one piece that
Speaker 3: kind of ties things together is like Joe Mayo's big
Speaker 3: on on ten down on a wedge, and so it's like,
Speaker 3: if you're ten down and you want to launch the
Speaker 3: ball at thirty degrees, you have to have a you
Speaker 3: have a four degree difference between your launch angle and
Speaker 3: your angle attack. So what spin loft do you need?
Speaker 3: You actually need a sixty degree spin loft. That forty
Speaker 3: kind of launch minus single attack number goes into that
Speaker 3: sixty loft minus single attack number to get your thirty
Speaker 3: degree launch angle. So it's kind of really important fundamental
Speaker 3: kind of physics things that that drive how your driver
Speaker 3: through wedge is perform. And we were like, okay, we
Speaker 3: probably apply us to to understanding that angle attack and
Speaker 3: driver launch didition in side of things as well. So
Speaker 3: kind of a similar kind of thought process I'll go
Speaker 3: through is what angle attack drives your launchicition on drivers. So,
Speaker 3: like a common target that I've heard thrown out is
Speaker 3: you want to hit like seventeen launch and seventeen hundred
Speaker 3: spin and from a ball flight model perspective, that ball
Speaker 3: goes very very far. That's that's basically that's that's where
Speaker 3: we would see like the peak of carry distance and
Speaker 3: total distance. But we know from PGA tour data that
Speaker 3: people are living a lot more in like that ten
Speaker 3: to eleven launch and twenty five hundred spin zones. It's
Speaker 3: like something's missing a little bit if we're going to
Speaker 3: say that seventeen and seventeen hundred goes as far as possible,
Speaker 3: but we don't really see that on tour. And so
Speaker 3: the kind of key kind of similar to that Lee
Speaker 3: West's story is that the key underpaining thing is that
Speaker 3: golfers PGA tour golfer's average angle attack is around zero.
Speaker 3: So if they want to launch a ball at seventeen degrees,
Speaker 3: they if they use this eighty five percent number, they
Speaker 3: need to have a loft delivered an impact at twenty degrees,
Speaker 3: So that twenty degree loft difference turns into a seventeen
Speaker 3: degree launch difference. And the issue with having a twenty
Speaker 3: degree kind of spin loft number on a driver is
Speaker 3: it's going to spin a tremendous amount, So you're crazy, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you experience is gonna be five thousand. Yeah, So like yeah,
Speaker 3: it's definitely not the way you don't want a driver
Speaker 3: that's launching at seventeen to five thousand spin, and then
Speaker 3: on the other side of things like, hey, well what
Speaker 3: if we try to get down to seventeen hundred soon
Speaker 3: you know it's the knuckleball. It goes pretty far, and
Speaker 3: it's okay, probably divide those that loft number by three.
Speaker 3: Let's take that twenty degrees of loft down to seven,
Speaker 3: and now you're launching it at six degrees, so again
Speaker 3: that that ball flight loss knowledge really matters, and it's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: we're in a pickle here. You don't really want to
Speaker 3: launch it six degrees and seventeen hundred spin. You don't
Speaker 3: want launch it seventeen degrees and five thousand spin. There's
Speaker 3: some happy medium in between, and it's like, Okay, this
Speaker 3: is probably something that that some modeling can can help
Speaker 3: us out with here, and through the power of having
Speaker 3: a ball flight model, having an impact model developed by
Speaker 3: Eric Henrickson, you can kind of nicely toggle through all
Speaker 3: the different loft options and just plug in, Okay, which
Speaker 3: combination of loft and angle attack and club at speed
Speaker 3: produces the most carry distance, most total distance. And that's
Speaker 3: kind of the kind of thing what starts down this
Speaker 3: path of trying to develop an oft to launch a
Speaker 3: spin chart, and so I might be able to pull
Speaker 3: it up, but there's angle attack on the bottom ball
Speaker 3: speed going up like the y axis, and we can
Speaker 3: for each those combinations go into an impact model and
Speaker 3: figure out the loft that maximizes someone's distance, and there's
Speaker 3: some cool trends that show up. I think Marty was
Speaker 3: kind of hinting at it. But if you go look
Speaker 3: at the angle of attack, that is a really clear
Speaker 3: indicator of what your spin rate should be. So if
Speaker 3: you're four down, your optimal your optimal spin rate is
Speaker 3: three thousand. That's the spineraryates. Then they hit the ball
Speaker 3: as long as possible for you, and that's because if
Speaker 3: you had less spin than that, your launch angle of
Speaker 3: nine degrees goes down to six degrees and that ball
Speaker 3: is just going nowhere. And if you had if you
Speaker 3: try to get your launch up from eight or nine
Speaker 3: degrees up to twelve, your three thousand spin turns into
Speaker 3: four thousand. That ball is also going nowhere. So it's counterintuitive,
Speaker 3: but three thousand spin is the right number for someone
Speaker 3: who's four down. And then the other side of you
Speaker 3: can actually move up into plus four territory. Then you
Speaker 3: can get to some nicer sounding spin rate it's of
Speaker 3: twenty two hundred or something, and that will help you.
Speaker 3: That will be the new optal, so you can move
Speaker 3: along that angle attack kind of X access and see
Speaker 3: what your target spinarate should be. I think it's pretty
Speaker 3: eye opening for golfers.
Speaker 1: I think, Shane, what's fun here about what Brody just
Speaker 1: talked about is that it's a lot of numbers, a
Speaker 1: lot of angles. I'm always having to jot things down
Speaker 1: and do some trigonometry in my head, and that can
Speaker 1: go over a lot of the listeners' heads, no doubt.
Speaker 1: But what's fun is that we turned it into a practical,
Speaker 1: actionable fitting chart in a fitting tool that's helped golfers
Speaker 1: unluck distance right, super fun. It explains Lee Westwood four
Speaker 1: down three thousand spin, number one player in the world.
Speaker 1: It explains Cameron champ one ninety five ball speed. He
Speaker 1: hits down two degrees, and he launches it at like
Speaker 1: seven and a half eight, you know, and spins it
Speaker 1: twenty six twenty seven hundred, and that's perfect actually for him.
Speaker 1: Or it explains you know, like Bubba Watson. We used
Speaker 1: to is this high straight one. He'd hit up on it,
Speaker 1: He'd hit up like five or six, and he would
Speaker 1: launch it a fifteen to seventeen with you know, seventeen
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred spin when he went to go hit his
Speaker 1: high bomb where he straightened out the curve. So this
Speaker 1: chart explained finally we've cracked the code on explaining you
Speaker 1: know why angled attack is super duper important. And again, Brody,
Speaker 1: I think going back to baseball, it's just like a
Speaker 1: brand new thing in baseball. But here we are in golf,
Speaker 1: we've already cracked the code on this.
Speaker 2: You know, Brody, I wanted to ask you we are
Speaker 2: we are always kind of finding new tools and our bags.
Speaker 2: In terms of golf, it typically starts on the pro level.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think, you know, we were a few
Speaker 2: years ago it felt like everybody on the planet and
Speaker 2: professional golf had a crossover. Now it's moved a little
Speaker 2: bit more to the lofted wood world. I mean, I've
Speaker 2: got a seven one in the bag. I think Marty's
Speaker 2: got a seven more in the bag. I got a
Speaker 2: nine wood built for me a few months ago. I
Speaker 2: haven't put it in the bag yet, but I've messed
Speaker 2: around with it, and I like it. I never in
Speaker 2: my life I would take a driving iron out of
Speaker 2: the bag. That was kind of one of my like,
Speaker 2: my go to shot for so long. What's the next thing,
Speaker 2: in your opinion that we'll see over the next year
Speaker 2: or so in the professional golf world and maybe it'll
Speaker 2: move to uh, to the amateur golf world that will
Speaker 2: be popular amongst golfers. That's maybe not the most popular
Speaker 2: thing right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm definitely hoping that it's Thriver
Speaker 3: for the for the PGA Tour golf world. I'm trying.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to stir up, starve some fitting for myself
Speaker 3: to get it in play because I've had some three
Speaker 3: months that haven't cooperated in tournaments. So that's definitely on
Speaker 3: the top of my mind right now.
Speaker 2: Two drivers in the bag from from a lot of
Speaker 2: the time. I mean, I like, I mean, Marty did
Speaker 2: did Tony? Did Tony do this at Augusta this past year?
Speaker 2: Was that something he used during the tournament?
Speaker 1: Yeah? No, he did it at Augusta. And and what's
Speaker 1: unique about his his experience there and and you know
Speaker 1: better than than me having been around that golf course,
Speaker 1: a lot, and being on the telecast is uh that
Speaker 1: there's some specific holes you also need to draw it,
Speaker 1: which is rare, Which is rare for a PGA Tour event,
Speaker 1: you know, where you get to a course where it's
Speaker 1: mandatory at a player of his length not only hit
Speaker 1: it straighter, you're definitely going to hit off the tee
Speaker 1: never needs it as a second shot. If you make
Speaker 1: a mistake on yeah, thirteen to fifteen, you are laying
Speaker 1: up there right, because that's how you maximize your strokes
Speaker 1: gained on those particular holes. But yeah, Tony did it.
Speaker 1: But I think what's fun about that concept is that
Speaker 1: not only are we looking at the PGA Tour player
Speaker 1: that hits it very far, but Brody tell Shane a
Speaker 1: little bit about some of the insights we've had for
Speaker 1: the everyday golfer from the Arcos data on where they
Speaker 1: are on the golf course and how that informs maybe
Speaker 1: some of our set configuration, set design, which is not
Speaker 1: just looking at the super far hitter, but what do
Speaker 1: we see on the opposite end, you know, the players
Speaker 1: that hit a little bit shorter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say, like a better answer to
Speaker 3: where we might be moving in the future is looking
Speaker 3: at where do people hit most of their golf shots from.
Speaker 3: So I think in our kind of gapping app logic,
Speaker 3: it's easy just default too, Okay, Well, even gaps across
Speaker 3: the bag. We want to have all of your irons
Speaker 3: be I don't know, twelve to fifteen yard gaps. We
Speaker 3: have our rule of thumb. Of your seven iron ballspet
Speaker 3: divide by ten is your target gap number. But I
Speaker 3: think what we can move towards when we have so
Speaker 3: much data is figure out, okay, for a particular golf course,
Speaker 3: what shots you're going to face. I think PGA tour
Speaker 3: pros know this. Okay, if I have a two hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty yard part three, it's like I'm going to
Speaker 3: need that high loft affair. Would that have a chance
Speaker 3: to hold that green? Trying to hit three ron into
Speaker 3: that green is probably almost impossible. And so we can
Speaker 3: probably start to provide that solution down to the everyday
Speaker 3: golfer of understanding. Okay, you on your home course, you're
Speaker 3: hitting a lot of t shots and that will be
Speaker 3: your driver. And then maybe you have a ton of
Speaker 3: your shots from eighty to one hundred and twenty yards,
Speaker 3: and so you might want to have a four wedge
Speaker 3: solution or five ledge solution that's really dialed in that range.
Speaker 3: I think, I don't know give away Marty's like secret
Speaker 3: for twenty twenty five, but he was mentioning he might
Speaker 3: go to a five edge setup and try to get
Speaker 3: super di although and he has some of these shorter
Speaker 3: Arizona courses the summer.
Speaker 1: If you say five five wedges, yeah, And so my
Speaker 1: my analysis on that, Shane is for Arizona Golf.
Speaker 3: Here we go on.
Speaker 2: Let's says, we gotta get it. This is Marty's twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five New Year's resolution. We're gonna get out there
Speaker 2: a few months early.
Speaker 1: We're going five wedges and it's love Arizona golf, right,
Speaker 1: it's for the uh, you know, the talking stick golf
Speaker 1: courses of the world where I am seventy to one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty five yards on every single approach shot
Speaker 1: on the park totally, totally, and I need tighter gaps.
Speaker 1: And then if I go a different course, I'll I'll
Speaker 1: go back to four wedges and mix it up at
Speaker 1: the top end of the back. No problem.
Speaker 2: What are we talking If we're talking five wedge set up,
Speaker 2: I mean because you're not. I mean, I know famously
Speaker 2: Phil did this back in the day. I mean, you're
Speaker 2: not the first person to go five wedges, but I'd
Speaker 2: say it went three to four and that was the
Speaker 2: big jump. And now obviously going four to five, do
Speaker 2: you have an idea of what it would look like?
Speaker 2: Do you have an idea of what that loft would
Speaker 2: look like in your bag?
Speaker 1: We haven't finished out, but in my head I want
Speaker 1: to have instead of like thirteen or fourteen yard gaps
Speaker 1: between wedges, I want to get them to nine or ten. Okay, right,
Speaker 1: So that's really what I want to do, as well
Speaker 1: as I need to improve my skill of being able
Speaker 1: to hit my wedges closer. But yeah, that's a little
Speaker 1: sneak preview. I think what Brody's getting at is, let's
Speaker 1: get super nuanced into how to build somebody's bag for
Speaker 1: their individual golf course patterns, playing conditions and things of
Speaker 1: that nature, right, right, Brody?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And there definitely were some kind of higher level
Speaker 3: of global insights that we got from Arcos data of
Speaker 3: where do people hit their golf shots from And it's
Speaker 3: not just a very even distribution from fifty to two
Speaker 3: hundred yards that it does tend to clump around one
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty five to one hundred and seventy five yards.
Speaker 3: An interesting takeaway we had from Arcos Stata was that
Speaker 3: it was almost irrespective of how far hit your driver,
Speaker 3: which is maybe people not teeing U from the right tees.
Speaker 3: But we looked at like, if you hit it one
Speaker 3: hundred and seventy five to two hundred yards of your driver,
Speaker 3: how far is your second shot distribution? And then for
Speaker 3: a guy who hits at two fifty to two seventy five,
Speaker 3: how far is your second shot distribution? And they like
Speaker 3: lined up perfectly where all their second shots are around
Speaker 3: that one hundred and twenty five two hundred and seventy
Speaker 3: five yard range, and we're like, okay, let's get some
Speaker 3: more clubs in the bag at that range. That was
Speaker 3: kind of our push with the g four to thirty
Speaker 3: line to add in kind of that fifty forty five
Speaker 3: forty one kind of wedge solution there to get some
Speaker 3: more clubs where people are hitting a lot of their
Speaker 3: golf shots. And so that's that's the global perspective, But
Speaker 3: then there's also maybe the iteration out of the line,
Speaker 3: so we can take in someone's own personal arcostata and say, hey,
Speaker 3: given how you play golf at your home course, this
Speaker 3: is actually the set that we'd recommend for you and Marty.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming, you know, when you guys dive into this
Speaker 2: arco stata, I'm assuming that an extremely high percentage of
Speaker 2: golfers play almost one hundred percent of their golf at
Speaker 2: the same golf yeps. I mean, you know, that's yeah,
Speaker 2: that's something I'm sure you guys can figure out. And
Speaker 2: I you know, like I think about my own golf, right,
Speaker 2: and I traveled decent amount for work, and you know,
Speaker 2: I get a chance to travel here and there. I'm
Speaker 2: still playing the majority of my golf at my club
Speaker 2: that I play at, right, So you want the bag
Speaker 2: to make the most sense, like the Thriver at my club.
Speaker 2: I've talked about this a lot with my friends. The
Speaker 2: Thriver my club, for three holes is a mandatory golf shot,
Speaker 2: and it would be a tough shot for me with
Speaker 2: three wood, to be frank. So it's important for me
Speaker 2: because again, if I'm playing my golf there, why not
Speaker 2: have a bag that makes the most sense for the
Speaker 2: course I'm playing the most.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, I think that's that's the future. It's super exciting.
Speaker 1: I think it's again kind of meets that heuristic Shane
Speaker 1: I like to have and we actually talked about on
Speaker 1: the a little bit earlier in our conversation, which is
Speaker 1: the tools that the tour player has access to. We
Speaker 1: want to try to build that and make it available
Speaker 1: to the everyday golfer. And it usually happens about a
Speaker 1: decade later, Like it was probably about ten years ago
Speaker 1: Chris was was mapping out bunkers on on on Google
Speaker 1: Earth right, and now now it's all automated and applified
Speaker 1: and you know, and things of that nature. So getting
Speaker 1: being able to build somebody's bag to how they play golf,
Speaker 1: how much do they travel, their specific things. I go
Speaker 1: back to our conversation we had with Sawhith where he
Speaker 1: was playing two clubs that went the same distance, one
Speaker 1: went higher and went lower. That's a way to gap
Speaker 1: your bag. You can gapping is not only yardage. You
Speaker 1: can have trajectory gapping right, vertical gapping. It's another way
Speaker 1: to kind of think about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Brody, can you watch golf and not think about data?
Speaker 2: Is it possible for you to just sit down on
Speaker 2: a Saturday afternoon and not. It's like I struggle with
Speaker 2: this in terms of the like the production broadcasting side right,
Speaker 2: because I've been involved in it for a number of years.
Speaker 2: As I watch golf and on honestly all the sports,
Speaker 2: I find myself noticing things right that would make sense
Speaker 2: in my industry. Do you do the same thing when
Speaker 2: you're just sitting around to casually watch, you know, the
Speaker 2: back nine on Sunday of a golf tournament.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was thinking that, Like you'd love to get
Speaker 3: invested in a major and you're like, oh man, that's
Speaker 3: super fun to watch. Maybe US Open briceless fields of pressure,
Speaker 3: like you just get immersed in that. And then I
Speaker 3: was like, well, in my hands, like man, there should
Speaker 3: be a really cool like strokes gained pressure stat that
Speaker 3: you come up with. So it doesn't take it doesn't
Speaker 3: take much for like the wheels to start spinning, so yeah,
Speaker 3: I probably don't get to to remove for it. You
Speaker 3: see someone miss of ten foot and you're like, A,
Speaker 3: that's point four shots. That's tough.
Speaker 1: I love that. I love that.
Speaker 2: You're like not, you're like jotting it down point four.
Speaker 2: There you go, he's out.
Speaker 1: He's out.
Speaker 2: Should have should have stole second.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just yeah, you gotta gotta get it better, better
Speaker 3: than that.
Speaker 1: Shane, I got a fun one. Brody helped me with you.
Speaker 1: You actually remember this, you you helped cover this event.
Speaker 1: It was the Top Golf Tour Championship. So me and
Speaker 1: me and my buddy qualified. Who are you playing with?
Speaker 1: Who'd you play with? Martin? My friend Chris O'Connor, one
Speaker 1: of my best that's striker. Uh you know, played at
Speaker 1: Arizona State. Walked on when and real quick.
Speaker 2: For people that don't have any idea what this was,
Speaker 2: this was a a two man golf tournament at Top Golf.
Speaker 2: And if you qualified, I think if you were one
Speaker 2: of the top two teams that all the top golfs
Speaker 2: around the country, you went to Vegas, YEP to to
Speaker 2: play in this in the Top Golf Tour Championship that
Speaker 2: we actually shot and cut together and put it up
Speaker 2: on YouTube. And I'm sure they're still out on YouTube
Speaker 2: to this day.
Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah, it was actually the top one team. So
Speaker 1: we was only one team from your local top Golf.
Speaker 1: So me and my buddy qualified two years in a row,
Speaker 1: and so had I had Brody. So we looked at
Speaker 1: the top. The layout of the top golf in Las
Speaker 1: Vegas was different than the one in Scottsdale where the
Speaker 1: targets are how big they were the end of the range,
Speaker 1: And so I knew the scoring and I was like, hey, Brody,
Speaker 1: I didn't know the right strategy. Should I go like
Speaker 1: try to make it all in all the short targets
Speaker 1: a lot of the time, or should we take more
Speaker 1: risk and go to the end ones and maybe run
Speaker 1: the risk and my dispersion wouldn't be as good. So
Speaker 1: I was like, hey, Brody, look at my data. Tell
Speaker 1: me what to do. So Chris tell Shane about how
Speaker 1: that how that little analysis.
Speaker 3: Went yeah, and like immediately triggered my kind of golf
Speaker 3: metrics thirteen year old days because I was on Google
Speaker 3: Earth trying to figure out how wide every target was.
Speaker 3: I literally was like or functioning Google Earth, You're like, Okay,
Speaker 3: that argaet is ten yards? Why that one's fifteen, that
Speaker 3: one's twenty. And then it was like, oh, well, we
Speaker 3: have player test data from Marty hitting pitching wedges seven irons,
Speaker 3: four irons. That's kind of what the different distances were.
Speaker 3: And so I was like, Okay, I can take Mary's
Speaker 3: player test data, map it on to those different targets,
Speaker 3: and I can figure out, like what his expected points
Speaker 3: are if he only hits pitching wedges or only hits
Speaker 3: seven irons, only hits four irons. And I gave him recommendation.
Speaker 3: I was like, hey, Marty, I think the second target
Speaker 3: is the way to go. That looks like your highest
Speaker 3: fected points. And I also gave him like what's your
Speaker 3: range of outcomes, like if you want to get aggressive
Speaker 3: or you need to get a ton of points to
Speaker 3: this set, like which one has the highest variance, So
Speaker 3: trying to get pretty nuanced. But then then I don't know,
Speaker 3: Marty can probably tell us. But the funny part to
Speaker 3: me about the story is I was like, pretty proud
Speaker 3: I did analysis for what Mary's stras should be. Maybe
Speaker 3: questionable to do it on work time. That's a different
Speaker 3: story also, And then Marty goes to Top Golf and
Speaker 3: completely throws out the entire analysis.
Speaker 1: We started with a couple of things. Shane, it was
Speaker 1: super windy, super windy, I remember that, yeah, And and
Speaker 1: actually the terrain there on the Vegas Top Golf is
Speaker 1: not flat, so everyone kept kind of the winds off
Speaker 1: the left, hitting these slicy foreurns over to the right,
Speaker 1: they'd hit this bank and it'd roll back in and
Speaker 1: get in the target for super high points. So I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, we didn't capture that in the analysis.
Speaker 1: Nothing wrong with the analysis, but you.
Speaker 2: Know, you know what, next year we should have flown
Speaker 2: Brody out like the space I got it all done.
Speaker 1: So that's so fun in the semi finals.
Speaker 3: I think you always have to be like, what could
Speaker 3: be wrong with your analysis when you're doing it, And
Speaker 3: I was like, I'll just treating everything like it's I
Speaker 3: don't know, like wherever it carries is where it goes.
Speaker 3: And I kind knew in the back of my head
Speaker 3: like balls can definitely bounce in and I was like,
Speaker 3: I don't know if I can capture that very well.
Speaker 3: But I ended up being like the reason why he
Speaker 3: ended up changing the strategy because he could aim for
Speaker 3: the far target. If it missed it, it bounce into
Speaker 3: the back wall. And it's like, all right, yeah, pretty good.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's better than I could have dreamed up.
Speaker 1: We needed the whole three D contour out.
Speaker 3: The yeah, yeah, weight model bouncing. We I messed up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it was fun, mart Marty.
Speaker 2: There's two guys listening to this right now that qualified
Speaker 2: like out of Myrtle Beach who are probably drinking like
Speaker 2: Miller lights the whole time going we shouldn't have flown
Speaker 2: in Vegas. This guy's got this guy handalyzing the targets
Speaker 2: and got guys, you know, the smartest guys in the
Speaker 2: room figured it out. Maybe I was in the wrong
Speaker 2: I was in the wrong fight.
Speaker 1: My whole data science team behind me there. You know,
Speaker 1: still didn't get it done. You still got to hit
Speaker 1: the shops.
Speaker 2: It was like it was like fifty k.
Speaker 1: I think it hurts man.
Speaker 3: I was over her a five percent. Coaches, I was,
Speaker 3: I was pushing.
Speaker 2: You know what, you got to negotiate on the front
Speaker 2: and this is the same thing. And like your dad,
Speaker 2: you had to get somebody in there to negotiate on
Speaker 2: the front end. It's actually two dollars an hour, Dad,
Speaker 2: That's what we're gonna do. Marty, got anything else for
Speaker 2: Brody before we before we let him get back to work.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, I think for the those listening out there
Speaker 1: with youngsters just going into college or high school and
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, how can I use math? And use
Speaker 1: it to apply it in sports. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: what's fun about Brody is like the real life example
Speaker 1: has made an enormous impact on the industry, combining you know, math, modeling,
Speaker 1: physics skills and really helping out a lot of golfers
Speaker 1: play better golf and improve clubfitters out there as well.
Speaker 1: So I just think it's very fun and exciting to
Speaker 1: have Brody here on her team and you know, kind
Speaker 1: of embody that combination of skills and how you can
Speaker 1: apply them in the golf industry. So, Brody, thanks for
Speaker 1: thanks for being on the pod.
Speaker 3: Brother Yeah, thank you so much, Marty, thanks so much.
Speaker 2: Sean, Absolutely that is Chris Brody. This is the Ping
Speaker 2: Proving Grounds Podcast.