El mito de la importancia del juego corto

[irrorata]

hola claxh, si, creo que tienes razon, quizas he puesto un numero de aproch demasiado alto y pocos puts, una buena tarjeta podria ser entre 1,5 y 2 puts de media,
lo que yo queria exponer es que cada uno tendra que estudiar su tarjeta para ver su porcentaje de aciertos y errores en cada palo,,, ,en funcion de sus estadisticas pensar en que tipo de golpes tiene que entrenar,
Phill Mikelson, por ejemplo, es el tipo de jugador que da mucha importancia al juego corto alrededor de green, en el ranking no le va mal.
En cambio Rory da la sensacion que sus drives y golpes de calle son su juego mas solido.....
seguiremos......

[Parcheval]

Por definición empezamos desde el tee y vamos en dirección del green, por lo que naturalmente hay que dominar primero las salidas, luego el juego de calle, luego los approachs y luego el putt, y cada paso tiene un efecto sobre el siguiente...

Si alguien la mete siempre en calle y cerca de green en 2-3 golpes, puede concentrarse más en el juego corto.
Si alguien llega al mismo lugar con 4-5 golpes o más, deberia concentrarse más en mejorar su juego largo...

Estoy con Blade:

Lo digo pensando en la balística y la física que nos dice que un grado de golpe desviado por poner un ejemplo , produce una gran dispersión a medida que aumenta la distancia (subscrito por John Jacobs), con lo cual la ejecución ha de ser de muy buena a excelente.
(...)
y la estadística según se utilice o concluya con ella. (...)

Ejemplo: el 30% de los accidentes de circulación son debido a la influencia del alcohol. Por lo que el 70% de los accidentes se producen sin influencia del alcohol, es decir hay menos probabilidades de tener un accidento cuando se bebe que cuando no se bebe...

[Marky]

Yo creoq ue el golf es un deporte de sinergias. Cuando entras en uan sinergia positiva, sale todo bien y viceversa. A mi estado animico, salir con un rabo, una bola out o pegar un slice que acabe entre los arboles, me afecta mucho animicamente.

Saludines

[Hamete]

Sin juego corto y buen juego largo, hago una buena tarjeta.
con juego corto y buen juego largo, hago una tarjeta cojonuten
Con juego corto y sin juego largo, hago una tarjeta malilla
Sin juego corto y sin juego largo, megaforrada

Yo opino igual.
Tal y como dije:

En mi humilde opinión.....

- En las grandes forradas, interviene sobre todo el juego largo (OUTs, aguas, bunkers, hazzards...)
- En la no consecución de una buena tarjeta, influye sobre todo el juego corto (triputteos, malos chips, saltos de rana.... )

Verdad verdadera en versión larga y en versión resumida.

[Parcheval]

Golf Digest, Julio 2012, editorial de Oscar Maqueda, director:

(...)Porque si bien es cierto que el juego corto y el putt son fundamentales para realizar grandes vueltas, para los amateurs en particular, el semaforo previo de realizar un un aceptable primer golpe que nos facilite el camino a una meta decente se hace muy importante, sino vital.(...)

[Lebrijano]

Golf Digest, Julio 2012, editorial de Oscar Maqueda, director:

(...)Porque si bien es cierto que el juego corto y el putt son fundamentales para realizar grandes vueltas, para los amateurs en particular, el semaforo previo de realizar un un aceptable primer golpe que nos facilite el camino a una meta decente se hace muy importante, sino vital.(...)

Exacto... El domingo cogí 0 calles... 31 puntos... Si no tengo que recupera en los 18 hoyos, algún que otro golpe jugarlo para detrás e incluso tener que droparme por caerme la bola dentro de un agujero, salta la banca...

La sentencia de richi es esencial...

[glorin]

[ot user="Parcheval" post="1113270"]Por definición empezamos desde el tee y vamos en dirección del green, por lo que naturalmente hay que dominar primero las salidas, luego el juego de calle, luego los approachs y luego el putt, y cada paso tiene un efecto sobre el siguiente...

Si alguien la mete siempre en calle y cerca de green en 2-3 golpes, puede concentrarse más en el juego corto.
Si alguien llega al mismo lugar con 4-5 golpes o más, deberia concentrarse más en mejorar su juego largo...

Estoy con Blade:

Lo digo pensando en la balística y la física que nos dice que un grado de golpe desviado por poner un ejemplo , produce una gran dispersión a medida que aumenta la distancia (subscrito por John Jacobs), con lo cual la ejecución ha de ser de muy buena a excelente.
(...)
y la estadística según se utilice o concluya con ella. (...)

Ejemplo: el 30% de los accidentes de circulación son debido a la influencia del alcohol. Por lo que el 70% de los accidentes se producen sin influencia del alcohol, es decir hay menos probabilidades de tener un accidento cuando se bebe que cuando no se bebe...[/ot]

VAYA TONTERIA!!!!!!!!

Sera que hay menos conductores que beben que no!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[JohnDoe]

Echando un vistazo esta tarde a Golfwrx he encontrado este interesante post (en la lengua del imperio, claro) e inmediatamente me he acordado de "nuestro" hilo. Me ha parecido curiosa la tesis del final sobre la importancia de la TV en la mitificación de la importancia del juego corto.

Al hacer el copia/pega se pierden las imágenes de la tablas de datos, así que pego también el link al artículo original por sí alguien tiene interés en ir a mirarlo.


The blind spot of PGA Tour players: Long-iron play

By Rich Hunt

GolfWRX Contributor

With the PGA Tour’s season winding down to the final tournament of the year, there will be a faction of golfers fighting to make the top 125 on the Money List in order to keep their Tour Card for 2013. I have personally worked with a few PGA Tour players, their caddies and instructors on understanding the game from a statistical standpoint.

When I started the 2012 season working with these clients there were a couple of parts of our initial interaction that surprised me:

1) Each player had made it their goal to be ‘one of the best wedge players on Tour.’
2) Each client initially did not buy into me telling them that in the grand scheme of things, full shot wedge play is not overly important. Particularly on the PGA Tour.

With the PGA Tour’s ShotLink data, the numbers are on display for statisticians like me to decipher the level of importance of each part of the game of golf. It’s very similar to the movie Moneyball and the approach Oakland A’s General Manager, Billy Beane, utilized to build his team based on the cold, hard numbers instead of traditional baseball axioms. But even better, there are far less "moving parts" in the game of golf, making the numbers more distinct and easier to see the correlation to success on Tour.

Despite that, there is still plenty of resistance to approaching the game of golf from a metrics standpoint and every year there are about 75 full time PGA Tour golfers wondering where their entire season went wrong.

***

My development into metrics and the game of golf actually started back when I was only five years old. I immediately took to the game of baseball and each week my dad would go to the local store and grab a few packs of baseball cards and give them to me where I would collect them. Eventually I would spend my entire time reading and studying each card. One of the fascinating parts of baseball is the amount of record keeping of statistics the sport has, dating back to the 19th century.

One of my favorite all-time baseball managers was Billy Martin as he would keep some data on how well certain batters performed against certain pitchers. In fact, in the 1977 American League Championship Series, Martin benched superstar Reggie Jackson because Kansas City’s starting pitcher was Paul Splittorff, who had owned Jackson each time they faced each other. Almost every baseball expert thought Martin was insane, but in the end the Yankees won the game 5-3 and went on to beat the Dodgers to win the World Series.

For better or for worse, statistics lends way to contrarian type of thinking. But if analyzed diligently and with an open mind, it can uncover truths that have eluded even the greatest experts for centuries.

In my own personal journey of golf, I had never understood what the golf term "scoring" exactly meant. Often times, hearing the words "I scored well’ left me with more questions than answers. Generally I would hear it referred to putting and chipping well, but I had plenty of rounds where I shot a low score and did not putt or chip all that well. In fact, one of my lowest rounds ever (64) came with a 4-putt.

With that, I decided to look into the ShotLink data and use my background in statistics to see if I could figure out the level of importance that certain parts of the game have on the success of PGA Tour golfers. In the process, I wound up uncovering a truth that has been long ignored by countless Tour players.

***

Before I go on, the wedge game does matter in the game of golf. In fact, every part of the game matters in the game of golf. If a golfer improves his fairway bunker play, that will lower their scores over a period of time. However, if a golfer improves their putting, that will have a bigger impact on lowering their scores than if they were to just improve their fairway bunker player. Thus, a metrics based approach to golf is about determining the level of importance that certain parts of the game have and then focusing on improving the parts of the game that have the highest level of importance in order to improve a golfer’s scores.

One of my first observations was that Tour players typically do not hit the ball well from every location with every type of club in the bag. The golfers considered to be top tier ballstrikers are usually good off the tee and then excel with certain irons like the mid-irons or the long irons or with their wedges. But to find a golfer who can hit it well off the tee and hit it well with each iron is quite rare.

I ended up splitting the game in different categories like Driving Effectiveness, Putts Gained and Short Game Play. But for the approach shots, I split them into the following categories:
Birdie Zone Play (shots from 75-125 yards)
Safe Zone Play (shots from 125-175 yards)
Danger Zone Play (shots from 175-225 yards)

What I uncovered was that Danger Zone Play has the strongest correlation to success on Tour than ANY other part of the game, including putting and driving effectiveness. And it has a far stronger correlation to success on Tour than Safe Zone Play and Birdie Zone Play. Despite that, these clients of mine on the PGA Tour would tell me how important it was for them to be one of the best wedge players on Tour.

While I was a little frustrated with their desires to be the best at a part of the game that was relatively unimportant to their success, I did understand where they were coming from. I had to remember that before I did this statistical research, I had the same ideas of good Tour players would almost always get up-and-in on any shot from inside 100 yards. And if a Tour player was unable to execute from that distance, they would not find themselves on Tour for very long. This led me to wondering where this faulty thinking came from.

***

Currently, the leader in Birdie Zone play is Steve Stricker, who has hit his Birdie Zone shots an average of 15.74 feet to the cup. The average Tour player from the Birdie Zone has hit his shots 20.35 feet to the cup.

The general misconception for golfers, including actual PGA Tour golfers, is that once a good Tour player gets a wedge in their hands they will hit it close and have a tap in putt. But as the data shows, that is far from the reality. The best player from 75-125 yards is averaging almost 16 feet left to the cup on shots from this range. The average Tour player is leaving it over 20 feet to the cup.

Furthermore, the Tour average putts made percentage from 15-20 feet is only 18.3 percent. From 20-25 feet the average make percentage on Tour is 11.7 percent. Therefore, Tour players are not having a lot of tap-ins when they get a full swing wedge in their hand, but also their odds of getting up-and-in with a full swing wedge in their hands are slim at best.

Still, we need to see what the correlation between Birdie Zone Play and success on Tour actually. To give a better idea, take a look at the top-10 Birdie Zone players in 2012 and their ranking on the Money List:



Here’s a list of the players in the bottom-10 of Birdie Zone Play and their Money Ranking:



Out of the players in both lists, the bottom-10 in the Birdie Zone actually have 6 players in the top-100 on the Money List versus the top-10 Birdie Zone players which only has 5 players in the top-100 on the Money List.

Let’s compare that to the best and the worst of the Danger Zone golfers. Here is the top-10 Danger Zone golfers and their rankings on the Money List:



Here’s the bottom-10 in Danger Zone play:



Every single player in the top-10 in the Danger Zone will be in the top-125 on the Money List in 2012, regardless of what happens at Disney. But even better, those who have finished in the top-10 in the Danger Zone have had resounding success on Tour this year. Whereas four of the top-10 Birdie Zone golfers (Mulroy, Taylor, Thatcher and O’Hern) will likely have to win at Disney in order to finish in the top-125 on the Money List.

This is the blind spot for many PGA Tour players. They keep working doggedly on their wedge game whereas if they used their efforts towards the longer irons and hybrids, they would almost assuredly keep their card and get closer to nirvana, winning a PGA Tour event.

I think the cause of the ‘blind spot’ is television. Television producers are far more interested in shots that wind up close to the pin than the shots that actually have a greater impact of a golfer separating themselves from the rest of the field. That is why we see so much putting on televised rounds, those are the shots that golfers are most likely to make. When it comes to full swing shots, golfers are more likely to hit a wedge shot closer to the pin. And to make it even more visually appealing, wedge shots are more likely to get backspin as well.

Thus, the perception is that Tour players stick every wedge shot and get up-and-in with ease. That is what we usually see every week on TV. The reality is far different and that the more spectacular shot happens when a golfer hits a 190 yard shot to 15-feet with no back spin. But television ratings always take precedent over mundane facts.



http://www.golfwrx.com/forums/topic/745 ... iron-play/

[Claxh]

Muy interesante. Gracias John.

[PSANROQUE06]

Hola, si me permitis opinar , es tan dificil coger green desde mas de 150 m ( y no me refiero a esos greenes kilometros de los campos Usa ) que es por lo que el juego corto ha cogido tanta importancia , de hecho el juego de hierros no trae wedge por lo que en un principio de debería ni existir ...... , o eres un crack con los hierros o el juego corto suple la gran carencia de dominar los hierros del 4 al 6 , es decir de mas de 150 m .

[Parcheval]

Gran articulo.
Gran también es el post en general de casi 200 mensajes que sigue este articulo.

Aquí algunos extractos:

Absolutely correct. All we have here is a correlation between Danger Zone accuracy and money earned.
Here is the argument against causality:

1. Approach shots from this distance do not occur frequently. A quick look at PGA stats shows that an approach from 200-225 yards occurs approximately 1.2 times per round and an approach from 175 to 200 yards occurs about 2.3 times per round. This means that an average player only has about 3.5 opportunities from this distance.

2. Improving from average to best at hitting approaches from 175 to 200 yards moves you 5 feet closer to the hole, from 34 feet to 29 feet.
Improving from average to best at hitting approaches from 200 to 225 yards moves you 7 feet closer to the hole from 40 feet to 33 feet.

3. Looking at putting data: From 30 to 35 feet, the average pro makes 0.63% of putts. From more than 35 feet, the average pro makes 0.34% of putts. From 25 to 30 feet the average pro makes 0.81% of putts.

4. So improving your DZ approach shots from 40 feet to the hole down to 29 feet means that the golfer will make about 0.47% more putts. Multiply this by the 3.5 opportunities per round and the golfer saves about 0.017 strokes per round or about 0.068 strokes per tournament.

5. So, going from average DZ player to best DZ player improves scoring by less than 1 tenth of 1 stroke per tournament. One should conclude that the article's writer has not proven his hypothesis. There is no justification statistically for a PGA player to place his practice emphasis on Danger Zone approaches.

Nice article, and writing..but I'm not buying it.

Correlation is not Causality. In fact you've overlooked something far more basic.

You are not going score well in professional golf if you have difficulty keeping the ball in play, and hitting greens. Because if you can't do this---even if your wedge game is good, you are going to get lapped by someone who is just as good of a short game player, but is a better ball-striker than you are.

Your data has basically identified those players who are very long...and reasonably straight. Reasonably long...and VERY straight...or some balance of the two..as being very successful. As well as those players who are long...and very wild, or short-and-crooked as being unsucessful.

I looked up the stats for Driving Distance, Driving Accuracy and GIR for your "DZ" players....and here's what I found.

Player--------------------------------------------------------DD----------------------------DA------------------------------GIR

Kevin Stadler-----------------------------------------------T63---------------------------T40------------------------------27
Rory McIlroy------------------------------------------------5-------------------------------155------------------------------56
Bo Van Pelt-------------------------------------------------T43----------------------------45-------------------------------39
Chad Campbell---------------------------------------------90-----------------------------116------------------------------43
Rober Garrigus---------------------------------------------3------------------------------159-------------------------------14
Tiger Woods------------------------------------------------35------------------------------53--------------------------------37
Steve Stricker-----------------------------------------------T140--------------------------58--------------------------------18
Graeme McDowell------------------------------------------139---------------------------6-----------------------------------65
Dustin Johnson---------------------------------------------4--------------------------------156------------------------------78
Louis Oosthuizen-------------------------------------------T23-----------------------------67--------------------------------15

...and your players that struggle in the DZ

Player---------------------------------------------------------DD-------------------------------DA-----------------------------GIR

Nick O'Hern-------------------------------------------------190--------------------------------62------------------------------146
Joe Ogilvie * * *
Derrick Lamely---------------------------------------------102--------------------------------186-----------------------------177
Sang Moon Bae--------------------------------------------97----------------------------------142-----------------------------181
Sung Kang--------------------------------------------------131---------------------------------148----------------------------185
John Rollins-------------------------------------------------41-----------------------------------50------------------------------T67
Edward Loar------------------------------------------------40------------------------------------163----------------------------172
Brian Gay---------------------------------------------------176----------------------------------T79----------------------------153
Daniel Chopra----------------------------------------------45-----------------------------------190-----------------------------184
Ted Potter, Jr.----------------------------------------------150----------------------------------51-------------------------------DNR?

To a man, all of your "DZ excellors" are either long, straight, or long-and-straight...and hit lots of greens in reg. Only Rory McIlroy and Dustin Johnson (two of the longest on tour) are outside the Top 50 in GIR.

Whereas all but ONE of your "DZ strugglers" are either short, crooked, or short-and-crooked...and are near the bottom of the tour rankings in GIR. Only Nick O'Hern (146th) and John Rollins (T67) are inside the Top 150 in GIR...and only Rollins is inside the Top 100.

...and if you look at the putting stats, Rollins is ranked only 103rd in strokes gained putting. So that is probably why he is not farther up the Money List than he is.

In my line of work, one of the first things they teach is that "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses.....not zebras"

The point is that common things are common. Uncommon things are uncommon...and rare things occur rarely. So the simplest, most commonly-occuring explanation for what it is that you are seeing is probably the correct explanation for it:

All other things being equal...better ball-strikers play better and earn more on Tour than those who are not....and controlled power is a huge advantage.

That being said... Taking practice time from Birdie Zone shots and putting it toward Danger Zone shots doesn't make a TON of sense. as stated before, improving your average distance to the hole from 20' to 15' will result in far more 1-putts than improving your Danger Zone average from 40' to 32'... UNLESS... your Danger Zone average is causing you to miss greens. If improving your Danger Zone average from 40' to 32' would help you hit 2-3 more greens per round, this could be a huge advantage... I'm sure that the odds of a 2 putt from 30'-35'are quite a bit higher than the odds of getting up-and-down from off the green. If this is the case, you could almost make the case that your extra Danger Zone practice time should not come from your Birdie Zone practice time, but from your short game practice time, as your increased accuracy from the Danger Zone would result in less use of your short game because you are hitting more greens.

a los cuales responde el autor del articulo:

The Danger Zone isn't a hypothesis. I've crunched the numbers over the last 11 seasons of the Tour. Furthermore, I did NOT run a correlation between Danger Zone play and Earnings to come up with this finding. I actually based it off of Danger Zone play and Adjusted Scoring Average. Earnings is not as accurate because different sets of players play in different tournaments with different purses. Adjusted Scoring Average does a good job of accounting for that. However, there is a fairly strong correlation between Adj. Scoring Average and Earnings. So, I used earnings in this case to prove a point. Plus, my experience to talking to Tour players about the metrics is that they don't care about Adj. Scoring Average that much and are more interested in cuts made, top-10's and potential for winning.

I've ran the metrics and there is no real correlation between driving distance and Danger Zone play. Plus, I would think a better metric to look at is clubhead speed because clubhead speed tends to give a better representation of how far a golfer can hit their irons because with the driver, you can generate less clubhead speed and hit up and hit it much further. There's actually no real correlation between clubhead speed and DZ play either. But, here's a look at the current bottom-10 in DZ play and their ranking in clubhead speed:



180. Ted Potter, Jr. – 157th
181. Daniel Chopra – 38th
182. Brian Gay – 188th
183. Edward Loar – 30th
184. John Rollins – 89th
185. Sung Kang -153rd
186. Sang-Moon Bae -78th
187. Derek Lamely – 48th
188. Joe Ogilvie – (no 2012 info, ranked 123rd in 2011)
189. Nick O’Hern – 187th



5 of the bottom 10 have clubhead speeds above the Tour average.

Guess who ranked #1 in DZ play last year?

David Toms. And he's currently ranked last in clubhead speed this year (and 34th in DZ play *this* year).

There are plenty of short hitting, low clubhead speed players that consistently, year after year, rank extremely well in DZ play on Tour. These players include Jim Furyk, Zach Johnson, Matt Kuchar, Heath Slocum, David Toms, etc. And there are high clubhead speed players that hit it poorly from the DZ each year. Those guys don't stick around for very long.

Lastly, there are some ways to 'fool the system.' I will probably go into that in my next column. But regardless if a Tour player hits it long or short or somewhere in between, DZ play has a great impact on their level of success.

y sobre todo:

The problem that the regular amateur will have is that unless they are playing 7,000 yard courses, their 'Danger Zone' won't be 175-225 yards. Also, this applies to Tour players. The higher the handicap, the more important driving becomes for the player to lower their score dramatically and permanently. That's something I will discuss for another time.

For those looking for their own Danger Zone, I would probably look at the yardage of the par-3's you typically play for a handful of different courses, come up with an average and then gauge from there. I would say if you're typically playing 6,400 to 6,700 yard courses, the Danger Zone will be more like 160-210 yards. 6,000 to 6,400 yards is more like 150-200 yards.

But even still, higher the handicap, more important driving becomes and less important DZ play becomes.

[MrRayas]

Gran artículo John. Gracias.

[walka]

Supongo que en 29 páginas se ha hablado de todo, así que igual lo que voy a decir ya se ha dicho, pero la verdad que no tengo ganas de leerme 29 páginas, pido disculpas por ello.

Yo creo que cuando se habla de la importancia del juego corto hay que explicar para quién. Es decir, si eres un hitter que coges muchas calles y te queda, habitualmente, un wedge o un h8 o h9 para coger GIR, entonces el juego corto es muy importante para ti, has de manejar los wedges con maestría y poder dejar la bola cerquita de bandera, y luego patear bien, claro.

Pero si no es ese el caso, y lo que te queda para coger green habitualmente es un h6 h5 o peor aún, es que sencillamente, el juego corto es inexistente en tu caso, porque lo que necesitas es dominar el juego largo. Lo más probable es que los wedges los uses siempre para hacer un chip facilito, y eso sí, lo que necesitas es patear bien, pero eso como todos.

Si eso se entiende como juego corto, pues ok, es vital para todos, pero no es lo mismo en un caso que en otro. Sin embargo, el pegarle bien desde el tee y el coger calles es algo por lo que pasamos todos, y ahí es donde no se puede/debe fallar nadie.

[JohnDoe]

Gran articulo.
Gran también es el post en general de casi 200 mensajes que sigue este articulo.

Cierto. Golfwrx es un foro enorme y tiene mucha paja, pero también tiene discusiones muy interesantes y enriquecedoras ...

Qué os parecido lo de la TV? Lo veis como un factor que de verdad ha contribuido?

[angel v]

Gran artículo el de Richie Hunt, cuyos argumentos básicamente he copiado yo en este hilo; un autor de cabecera, vamos, que me habéis desvelado la fuente, jeje.