WEBVTT - Mark Broadie 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:18.920 I mix a green for example, I'm already upset. When 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:21.040 I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. 0:00:21.120 --> 0:00:22.520 And when I find my ball in a. 0:00:22.840 --> 0:00:27.040 Egg Friday egg Frida egg fridagg Frida Eggrida egg Frida 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:29.320 egg bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:39.320 the golf course. Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome back to another 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:42.559 edition of the Friday Egg Podcast. Today, I'm joined by 0:00:42.640 --> 0:00:47.760 podcast regular Kyle Nathan and Columbia Business School professor, creator 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:52.640 of the Strokes Gain Statistics and author of Every Shot Counts, 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:53.720 Mark Brody. 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:54.960 Mark, welcome on. 0:00:56.640 --> 0:00:58.880 Thanks for having me on this Frida Egg podcast. 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:01.200 Guys, yeah, our pleasure. 0:01:01.520 --> 0:01:05.080 You know we're trying something new here with Kyle Kyle 0:01:05.200 --> 0:01:07.960 doing making a three man pod here. 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:10.480 Well, Mark, I know you're really busy this time of 0:01:10.520 --> 0:01:12.920 the year, so why don't we just kick it right off? 0:01:13.720 --> 0:01:15.800 Sure, fire away, all right. 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:18.840 The question Andy gets and I get a lot from 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:21.840 whether it's someone that's my you know, twenty handicapped friend 0:01:21.959 --> 0:01:25.759 or scratch golfer friend, is how to best explain strokes 0:01:25.800 --> 0:01:28.480 gain putting to a late person? How would you do that? 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:34.039 Okay, well, strokes gain putting, I think is h it 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:37.600 is pretty straightforward. The problem with counting putts is it 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:41.040 doesn't take into account the distance of the putts. So 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:44.120 a two putt from sixty feet is pretty good and 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:47.720 a two putt from three feet is pretty poor, so 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:50.720 they both count as as two putts. And the reason 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:53.680 that they are very different performances is they start from 0:01:54.160 --> 0:01:58.920 different distances. So if you measure putting instead of by 0:01:58.960 --> 0:02:04.320 counting putts by relative to the tour average, then you 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:07.560 get a much better measure of a putting performance. So 0:02:08.360 --> 0:02:12.679 from thirty three feet, the average number of putts to 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:15.880 hole out for a pro is two, So if you 0:02:15.960 --> 0:02:19.360 two putt from thirty three feet, you're neither gaining nor losing. 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:21.680 But a one putt will gain a stroke and a 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:25.679 three putt will lose a stroke. So that's pretty pretty straightforward. 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:28.720 But you can also apply this to all other distances. 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:33.040 So from eight feet, tour pros one put half the 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:35.160 time and they two put half the time. They almost 0:02:35.200 --> 0:02:38.799 never three putts, so the average strokes to hold out 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:42.639 from eight feet is one and a half. So one 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:44.799 put's going to gain a half stroke and a two 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:47.359 puts going to lose a half a stroke. So you 0:02:47.480 --> 0:02:51.519 really need to start thinking in terms of fractions of 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:53.640 a stroke. If you're a little bit better, a little 0:02:53.720 --> 0:02:57.040 shot is a little bit worse than tour average. But 0:02:57.160 --> 0:03:00.760 basically all strokes gain does is it measures putt performance 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:05.840 relative to the tour average from a given location, and 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:08.600 it then adds that up over the course of the 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:10.720 round to see in the case of putting, whether you're 0:03:10.720 --> 0:03:14.200 gaining or losing strokes on the green relative to the field. 0:03:14.600 --> 0:03:15.440 Does that make sense? 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:17.239 It does, Yeah, it does. 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:22.680 How does then the driving and approaching the green and 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:24.400 around the green conversely work? 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:30.840 It actually works in exactly the same way. So instead 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:33.320 of thinking about how many yards or how many feet 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:34.920 am I away from the hole? If you think of 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:37.920 how many strokes am I away from the hole. So 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:40.680 let's say you're on a pros playing a typical part 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:43.160 four and the average strokes to hole out is four, 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:49.080 So then an average drive will put the player three 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:51.800 strokes away from the hole after the t shot. So 0:03:53.000 --> 0:03:55.080 if the player hits at three hundred and fifty yards 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:56.840 into the fairway, that's going to be a better than 0:03:56.880 --> 0:04:01.120 average drive and maybe only has an average strokes the 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:03.600 hole out of two point seven. So if he's gone 0:04:03.640 --> 0:04:06.680 from four away from the hole to two point seven 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.680 strokes away from the hole, he picked up one point 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:13.560 three strokes, but he took one t shot to do it, 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:16.640 so he gained it was point three better than average. 0:04:16.800 --> 0:04:18.719 And if he hit a short shot into the rough, 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:21.640 then maybe he only went from four strokes away from 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:25.000 the hole until maybe three point two strokes away from 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:28.880 the hole, and you know that would have lost two 0:04:28.920 --> 0:04:33.960 tenths of a stroke. So what strokes game does is 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:37.520 it measure shots not in units of yards or feet, 0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:40.599 but in terms of strokes, which is ultimately what everybody 0:04:40.680 --> 0:04:43.720 cares about. And so it breaks down a score into 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:46.320 how many strokes did you gain or lose on your 0:04:46.400 --> 0:04:49.440 drive when you're putting on your short game shots, and 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:50.960 it all adds up. 0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:53.599 You know, how did you start to think that the 0:04:53.720 --> 0:04:55.440 existing golf stats were bad? 0:04:55.440 --> 0:04:59.080 Were you a you know, a golf fan that just thought. 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:02.039 Hey, this is this is or were you just you know, 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:05.479 kind of how did you come across this inefficiency? 0:05:06.640 --> 0:05:11.040 So I wasn't looking to come up with a new 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:15.520 golf stat I'm an academic and my research is applying 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:19.400 math to solve business problems, and I thought you know, 0:05:19.480 --> 0:05:23.239 the same kind of tools and techniques I could apply 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:25.920 to you know, a sport that I loved, which was golf. 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:28.680 And so one of the questions that I wanted to 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:32.560 answer was where do the ten strokes come from that 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:34.760 separate a ninety golfer from an eighty golfer? 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:37.279 And I realized, in order. 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:40.880 To answer that question that just knowing fairways, greens and 0:05:40.880 --> 0:05:44.719 potts wasn't wasn't going to be enough, and there wasn't 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:48.119 good amateur data to analyze this. But what you really 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:51.080 needed is shot by shot data. Where do shots start 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:54.000 and where do they end? And so I developed a 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:59.120 system to collect shot data from amateurs and then later 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:03.960 got access to the PGA Tours shot linked data, And 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:07.159 in order to answer that question where are the shots 0:06:07.240 --> 0:06:10.359 that separate two amateurs or where are the shots that 0:06:10.400 --> 0:06:13.880 separate an amateur from a pro? I came up with 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:17.000 with strokes gained and that allowed sort of a unified 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:22.240 way to measure the quality of a shot and where 0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:25.640 are these you know, which parts of the game separate 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:29.880 players the most. And so it wasn't so much that 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:33.080 I was looking to create a new stat was I 0:06:33.120 --> 0:06:35.159 wanted to, you know, answer a question like, if you 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:38.440 hit a drive twenty yards further you have this magic 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:41.920 club and you can be twenty yards longer off the tee. 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:43.440 How much do you think your score is going to 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:46.200 go down? And again, there's no way to answer that 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:52.960 with traditional stats, but with shot shot level data and 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:57.120 strokes gain analysis, you can Is there a. 0:06:57.040 --> 0:07:01.680 Way for like the regular weekend war to use strokes 0:07:01.720 --> 0:07:04.400 gained and like figure out a way to use it 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:05.200 in their own game? 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:07.160 Oh? Absolutely. 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:11.640 So there's a number of apps out there, but I'll 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:16.240 mention mine because I developed this one. It's called golf Metrics, 0:07:16.400 --> 0:07:22.200 and it's on for iPhone and androids, Android phones. And 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:25.800 what you do is you record record your shots and 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:29.200 it's very easy to use. It's not GPS based, so 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:34.280 you don't have It works for putting and it works 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:35.320 for off green shots. 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:39.600 You just record how far away you are. 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:41.760 From the hole and whether you're on you know, the 0:07:41.760 --> 0:07:45.200 fair way, the rough, the sand, whether you're putting, and 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:47.760 at the end of the round, it'll give you a 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:51.320 strokes gained analysis not only in these four main categories, 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:55.720 but in subcategories, so you get strokes gained on how 0:07:55.720 --> 0:07:58.280 well you're doing on short puts, medium puts, long putts 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:04.520 on different distance categories of approach shots, and you know, 0:08:04.640 --> 0:08:07.200 quite a few amateurs are using it, college teams are 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:10.920 are using it, and you basically get the same strokes 0:08:10.920 --> 0:08:14.440 gained analysis that PGA Tour pros have access to. 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:19.440 That's really cool. Do you find that there's a would 0:08:19.440 --> 0:08:22.000 you say the difference between the stats on the PGA 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:25.120 Tour that guys need to pay attention to and the 0:08:25.160 --> 0:08:28.040 stats that you know, me or anybody that just plays 0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:30.800 casually would need to pay attention to are different. 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:33.439 No, I think I think they're the same, And I 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:38.160 think one of the advantages of amateurs recording their own 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:42.520 strokes gained status as many amateurs really don't have a 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:45.640 good sense of, you know, where they stack up to 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:50.640 other players or where is their biggest weakness. So if 0:08:50.679 --> 0:08:54.320 you end up playing with the same group of players 0:08:54.320 --> 0:08:57.319 every weekend, it's it's hard to measure yourself against you know, 0:08:57.400 --> 0:08:59.960 a player that's you know, five or ten strokes better 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:02.360 and trying to figure out, you know, where. 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:02.880 Your strengths and weakness. 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:05.000 I've had a bunch of people that said, oh, my 0:09:05.080 --> 0:09:08.840 putting is horrible, and they think it's horrible because you know, 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:13.600 they took thirty four putts, but they're counting to two 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:16.199 times that they putted from ten yards off the green. 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:18.360 And a putt is not when you have your putter 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:21.320 in the hand, it's a stroke on the green. And 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:24.760 so people have thought that they're worse putters than they 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:27.800 really are, and then conversely, there's people that think they're 0:09:27.840 --> 0:09:31.320 better in certain areas than they really are because it's 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:35.000 hard to remember all your shots and it's hard to 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:37.800 add up fractional gains gains or losses. 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:41.160 What is there anything that shocked you? I know, whenever 0:09:41.200 --> 0:09:45.079 I go I go through my trading stats at work, 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:46.960 I'm always shocked by one thing, like why am I 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:49.240 trading this thing? I'man lose money every time or something. 0:09:49.280 --> 0:09:51.000 But is there anything that shocked you? 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:52.640 Well? 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:58.360 I think that the importance of approach shots was quite 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:00.800 a surprise, and in hindsight, maybe it shouldn't have been 0:10:00.800 --> 0:10:04.559 a surprise because that's the hardest thing for traditional stats 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:11.520 to measure, and what probably came closest was greens and regulation. 0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:16.200 But greens and regulation is a mix of driving an 0:10:16.200 --> 0:10:22.160 approach play performance, and it doesn't differentiate when you miss 0:10:22.240 --> 0:10:24.400 the green on the fringe versus missing the green and 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:26.360 the sand or missing the green in the water. It 0:10:26.400 --> 0:10:29.640 doesn't give you extra credit if you hit a par 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:35.800 five in two. So greens and regulation is quite flawed, 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:38.040 and so there was not really a good measure of 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:42.000 approach play. And then what was really surprising was, you 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:45.360 know how dominant Tiger Woods was in his approach shots. 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:49.240 And he was so good that if he had been 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:52.640 an average driver the ball, average short game, and average putter, 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:56.280 just with his approach shots, he would have been inside 0:10:56.320 --> 0:10:58.720 the top ten on the PGA Tour a year after year. 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:01.080 He was that dominant with his approach shots. 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:06.199 That's is that your best Tiger stat? 0:11:07.400 --> 0:11:09.959 Oh no, no, not by a long shot. I think 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:15.319 I think the best one is is this notion of 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:18.360 a streak. And most people know tigers, you know, one 0:11:18.440 --> 0:11:22.400 hundred and forty two make the cut streak. But I 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:28.400 think it's even more impressive the streak of consecutive rounds 0:11:28.400 --> 0:11:30.720 beating the field. And so what I mean by beating 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:34.080 the field is if a player shoots sixty nine and 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:37.760 the field averages seventy one point four, the player beat 0:11:37.800 --> 0:11:40.720 the field. And so an average player will beat the 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:44.000 field half the time, and so you can ask how 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:47.440 many times in a row does a player has a 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:51.200 player beat the field? And who owns the record for 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:54.360 the longest beat the field streak? And when I asked 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:57.640 a whole bunch of people how long do they think 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:01.160 the longest beat the field streak was? I would get 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:05.400 numbers of fifteen, twenty, twenty five, thirty, and maybe the 0:12:05.520 --> 0:12:09.440 largest I ever heard was, you know, thirty five or forty. 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:14.360 But in fact, you know, Tiger Tiger Woods beat the 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:19.360 field eighty nine times in a row in the nineteen 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:21.920 ninety nine two thousand time frame, which is just. 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:23.600 Oh my gosh, just just. 0:12:23.720 --> 0:12:28.640 Mind boggling and astounding and whatever superlatives you can you 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:32.800 can add there. I think it's better than Joe Demaje. 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:35.040 Joe's fifty six game hitting streak. 0:12:36.520 --> 0:12:37.640 What's the second best? 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:44.560 The second best, I believe is Marcomera at thirty two 0:12:44.640 --> 0:12:49.560 or thirty three. So yeah, the difference between number one 0:12:49.600 --> 0:12:52.520 and number two is also kind of a measure for 0:12:53.360 --> 0:12:56.560 how impressive a streak was. So Joe Demajo right at 0:12:56.600 --> 0:12:59.120 fifty six, Well, Pete Rose or somebody else had like 0:12:59.200 --> 0:12:59.800 forty two. 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:00.960 Yeah, that's. 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:05.160 Yeah, something like that. So there's a little bit of room, 0:13:05.200 --> 0:13:10.040 but the difference between thirty three and eighty nine is 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:14.120 just you know, it's almost three times longer than the 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:17.400 second longest streak, which is just otherworldly. 0:13:18.920 --> 0:13:19.680 That's insane. 0:13:20.000 --> 0:13:23.200 It's crazy that the amount of tiger stats and the 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:29.400 dominance is just unbelievable. And I'm curious since you created, 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:34.319 you know, this innovation, and I imagine and I think 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:37.960 there were a lot of people that doubted these statistics 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:42.560 because you were calling you know, the conventional wisdom into question, 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:46.360 is there do you have any great stories about, you know, 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:49.760 someone who just didn't get it and wouldn't believe that 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:51.840 strokes gained was a real thing. 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:59.000 I don't have stories like that, but I know there's 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:03.840 there's probably of players that just don't care about their stats. 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:09.400 So it's not so much that they disbelieve strokes gained 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:13.920 as much as they don't pay attention to stats at all. 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:19.600 And I think part of that stems from the fact 0:14:19.640 --> 0:14:22.240 that traditional stats just were not informative. And if you 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:25.280 grew up on fairways, greens, and putts, which are not 0:14:25.480 --> 0:14:28.720 very informative, then you can start discounting. 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:29.360 Golf stats forever. 0:14:30.640 --> 0:14:36.080 Whereas I think the younger generation of players have really 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:39.440 embraced it, and not just the younger players, but but 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:43.680 but more so the younger players coaches have really embraced 0:14:43.680 --> 0:14:47.720 and I think fans and writers. So I wish I 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:49.560 had a good story, but I think those those people 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:52.160 don't come to me to complain, So that's probably why 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:53.360 I don't hear those stories. 0:14:55.520 --> 0:14:55.880 All right. 0:14:56.000 --> 0:14:58.760 So I saw a tweet of yours from back in 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:01.480 April where you talk about who you expected to have 0:15:01.520 --> 0:15:05.760 a good rookie season on the tour. So how do 0:15:05.800 --> 0:15:09.360 you use your stats to kind of predict outcomes? 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:15.920 Well, the easiest thing to do is take a look 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:19.120 at score, because I mean you can look at putting 0:15:19.240 --> 0:15:22.040 and approach shots and other things. But the first thing 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:23.880 I think you want to look at is score, but 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:28.160 properly adjusted. And by properly adjusted, I mean you've got 0:15:28.160 --> 0:15:33.040 to not use raw scoring average. When pros are playing 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:36.560 at some easy course in the desert where the winning 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:39.520 score is twenty nine under par, and compare that to 0:15:40.520 --> 0:15:42.880 players at the US Open, where the winning score might 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:46.280 be three under par. So you can't just look at score. 0:15:46.320 --> 0:15:49.280 You have to adjust for you know, how difficult is 0:15:49.280 --> 0:15:52.400 the course and then even better is taking into account 0:15:52.760 --> 0:15:56.760 the strength of the field. So there's a number of 0:15:56.760 --> 0:15:59.840 ways to do it. But when I talk about total strokes, 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:04.920 and it's basically scoring average relative to the field, adjusting 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:06.920 for the difficulty of the course. And that's the first 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:11.200 thing that I'd want to look at is total strokes gained. 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:12.720 And when you. 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:16.880 When you look at totals total stroke strokes gained for 0:16:16.880 --> 0:16:20.080 the season, you can see that the players that you 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:22.840 know average one, one and a half, two or two 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:25.040 and a half strokes better in the field, they win more. 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:28.840 The better your total strokes gain, the more you win, 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:32.560 the more top tens, the more money, the more world 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:36.200 ranking points. And so that's sort of the the easiest 0:16:36.200 --> 0:16:39.280 way to predict who's going to have a good rookie season. 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:42.160 And part of the reason it's tough for rookies is 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:47.320 you need to compare play on different tours, and the 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:49.800 the scoring average leader on the web dot Com Tour, 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:55.080 you know, the top ten, they shoot about two strokes 0:16:55.120 --> 0:16:58.560 lower than on the PGA Tour, So you just can't 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:02.040 look at look at scoring average, and it turns out 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:06.159 that you need to adjust by around two strokes to 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:10.560 compare fairly compare PGA Tour scores with web dot Com 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:15.800 tour scores because their courses are easier. But when you 0:17:15.840 --> 0:17:18.919 again with with total strokes gain and this proper comparison 0:17:18.960 --> 0:17:23.840 across tours, you can you can make reasonably good predictions 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:28.439 about you know, who might have a great rookie season 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:32.120 or Another article that I wrote was predicting who would 0:17:32.160 --> 0:17:36.840 rise in the official World Golf rankings, And that's a 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:39.560 little bit different problem, but it has a similarity of people, 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:42.359 you know, playing on all sorts of different tours and 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:47.520 different parts of the world and different time periods, different. 0:17:47.200 --> 0:17:49.000 Weeks, and. 0:17:50.440 --> 0:17:52.560 Some of the ones that you know that turned out 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:55.560 to be good predictions. I thought Pat Perez would would 0:17:55.640 --> 0:17:57.560 rise in the rankings, and when I made the prediction, 0:17:57.640 --> 0:18:01.560 he was sixty seventh in the world, and uh, thirty 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:03.879 five weeks later, he's nineteenth in the world. 0:18:04.920 --> 0:18:07.800 I saw that his scrambling was unreal, wasn't it wasn't. 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:10.240 That the yeah he is he was leading leading the 0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:14.560 tour in what I have his strokes gains scrambling, but yeah, 0:18:14.600 --> 0:18:17.560 his wedge play and putting was just superiors. It's like 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:21.360 a late career resurgence of of Pat Perez and then 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:24.400 you know somebody that you know had my eye on 0:18:24.560 --> 0:18:27.160 for a long long time. Well, when he was outside 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:33.399 the top two hundred was John Rahm and uh and Fay. Yeah, 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:36.280 he I mean he had he had made this incredible rise, 0:18:36.320 --> 0:18:38.879 and then even when he was twenty fifth in the world, 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:42.040 I did the same analysis and it predicted that he 0:18:42.160 --> 0:18:44.120 was still going to rise and he's now number four 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:49.080 in the world. So he's just uh had this incredible 0:18:49.119 --> 0:18:51.720 trajectory in the last year or two. 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:54.119 When you looked at what he did as like a 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:58.439 you know, when he got his card as a you know, 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:02.040 playing on sponsors exemption, is like his strokes gained to 0:19:02.440 --> 0:19:06.320 you know, point to your method was like overall was 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:08.960 second to Jason Day, who was number one in the world. 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:12.040 So it seemed like it was a no brainer. 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:16.359 With the world rankings, a lot of people always are 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:19.800 complaining about the world rankings. What do you think about 0:19:19.840 --> 0:19:23.840 the way they, you know, do their ranking and if 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:28.480 you how would you implement a system to rank players 0:19:28.480 --> 0:19:29.240 across the world? 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:37.879 Well, I think it's probably the the word. There's pretty 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:41.920 universal agreement that the official World Golf rankings are flawed, 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:46.080 and I don't think they're flawed so much at the 0:19:46.119 --> 0:19:48.840 top end, and you know, the top ten or twenty 0:19:49.119 --> 0:19:53.760 or thirty as much as from forty on on out 0:19:53.920 --> 0:19:59.080 that there's a huge bias against PGA Tour players. And 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:02.320 I don't think it's necessarily a conscious thing. I think 0:20:02.359 --> 0:20:07.439 it just sort of was this heuristic made up system 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:12.720 that evolved and there is never any sort of sound 0:20:12.800 --> 0:20:16.400 mathematical analysis of how it's constructed. And it turns out 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:22.760 that if you play in some NONPGA Tour events, you know, 0:20:22.800 --> 0:20:25.760 you could win or come in the top five and 0:20:26.240 --> 0:20:30.399 in some event that most people haven't heard of, and 0:20:30.400 --> 0:20:33.480 that would give you as many ranking points as coming 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:39.879 intent in the Masters. It just makes sort of zero sense. 0:20:40.960 --> 0:20:42.760 And like I said, where it sort of matters is 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:46.440 around top round fifty because that will get you into 0:20:46.920 --> 0:20:52.040 Majors and World Golf Championships, and also top one hundred 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:55.880 to get into the PGA Championships. So it has sort 0:20:55.920 --> 0:20:59.560 of major, major repercussions. And there's basically a trade off. 0:20:59.560 --> 0:21:02.560 If you play on the best tour, the PGA Tour, 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:06.199 against the best competition, well there's more money and and 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:09.040 all sorts of perks that go with that. But world 0:21:09.080 --> 0:21:11.280 ranking points is not one of them. You get penalized 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:14.400 for playing on the PGA Tour in terms of world 0:21:14.480 --> 0:21:15.240 ranking points. 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:20.160 So another system that I think could probably be redefined 0:21:20.240 --> 0:21:25.280 with statistics is the handicap system. Do you have any 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:27.680 that's a question we got from Graham Stevens. Do you 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:30.919 have any idea how you would use data or stats 0:21:30.960 --> 0:21:35.280 to redefine the system? 0:21:35.520 --> 0:21:38.439 Yeah, I mean, you know, theoretically it's not it's not 0:21:38.520 --> 0:21:41.959 a tough problem, but practically it's it's a lot harder 0:21:41.960 --> 0:21:43.359 than you might imagine. 0:21:43.400 --> 0:21:44.040 And that's. 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:51.159 That's because just the lack of what we take is 0:21:52.040 --> 0:21:57.439 as obvious technology having having access to computers is just 0:21:57.480 --> 0:21:59.800 not available in all all parts of the world. So 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:03.399 the USGA is working with the other golf associations to 0:22:03.440 --> 0:22:08.720 come up with a world unified world handicapping system, and 0:22:09.040 --> 0:22:12.280 that's got to be sort of simple enough that it 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:15.679 can be used, it can be used everywhere. And so 0:22:15.800 --> 0:22:18.600 I think that, you know, there's a difference between coming 0:22:18.680 --> 0:22:23.919 up with a system that's reasonable, reasonably accurate and easy 0:22:23.920 --> 0:22:27.280 to use versus you know, the ideal, which may be 0:22:28.440 --> 0:22:31.040 you know, ten or twenty percent better, but is just 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:33.960 much harder to understand and much harder to implement. So, 0:22:34.560 --> 0:22:39.080 for example, if you would like if you were playing 0:22:39.080 --> 0:22:42.440 in around that, if it's a thirty mile an hour wind, 0:22:43.720 --> 0:22:47.360 that and your score goes up by five shots, then 0:22:47.880 --> 0:22:50.359 you know over your average and you post that score 0:22:50.600 --> 0:22:52.600 and your handicap goes up, Well, it wasn't because you 0:22:52.640 --> 0:22:56.000 played bad, it's because the conditions were tough. So how 0:22:56.040 --> 0:22:59.640 do you take that into account properly? Well, you either 0:22:59.680 --> 0:23:01.560 need a lot of people playing on the course of 0:23:01.560 --> 0:23:04.160 that day to figure out that the course conditions were tough, 0:23:04.160 --> 0:23:07.479 where you need weather reports or something, or what happens 0:23:07.520 --> 0:23:09.399 if the wind was blowing in the morning but not 0:23:09.480 --> 0:23:11.600 in the afternoon, or vice versa. 0:23:12.240 --> 0:23:13.960 So those kind of things make it hard. 0:23:14.000 --> 0:23:17.439 And it's also hard when you turn in a score 0:23:17.440 --> 0:23:19.480 and you say you know your handicap is going to 0:23:19.480 --> 0:23:21.440 go up or down, and then you wait till other 0:23:21.480 --> 0:23:24.280 people play and then you've got to readjust that. So 0:23:24.720 --> 0:23:26.720 there's all sorts of different ways that you can do it. 0:23:26.760 --> 0:23:32.359 And I think actually that the current handicapping system, while 0:23:32.400 --> 0:23:37.320 it certainly is flawed, is reasonable. I think it does 0:23:37.560 --> 0:23:41.600 a reasonably good job. But it's hard to ask a 0:23:41.640 --> 0:23:47.680