Golf Statistics Expert Answers YOUR Questions | Ask The Expert

Hi, I'm Mark Brody, and one of my claims to fame is inventing the strokes gain stat that's used on the PGA Tour. Last week, lost shots, actually. Strokes gain, buddy. A second in strokes gain approach. And I'm here to answer your questions about how data and analytics can help you shoot lower scores. This question comes from Instagram. How do you explain strokes gained to people? I have a difficult time doing it. So the way I think about strokes gained is it's performance relative to a benchmark. So if you're at a par four, where the average strokes to hole out is four, and you hit a drive pretty far and in the fairway, where your average strokes to hole out is, let's say, 2.8. Then in one swing, you'd hope to go from four strokes away to the hole to three strokes away. If you go to 2.8, you've gained 0.2 strokes on your long and straight drive in the fairway. That's all strokes gained is. It's just subtracting two numbers. This question comes from Instagram. Where do tour pros typically make the biggest gains in their game? This is an easy one to answer. It's approach shots. And the reason it's so important is there's two factors in strokes gained. The first one is skill differences. When he gets his approach play going, he is a dangerous golfer. You need to have different levels of skill to make a difference. And the second factor is the number of shots. If you only have one shot every other round, there could be big skill differences and it doesn't matter. On the other hand, you could have 14 tap-ins from inside of two feet and there's a lot of those, but there aren't many skill differences. Approach shots matter because there's huge skill differences and there's a lot of those shots in a round. This question comes from Instagram. What is the biggest misconception golfers have? about shooting lower scores. It's the old adage, drive for show, putt for dough. I can guarantee you can't get from 90 to 80 by improving your putting. To get from 90 to 80, about two-thirds of the improvement would come from shots outside of 100 yards. That's about 6 1⁄2 strokes, and about 3 1⁄2 strokes from shots inside 100 yards. Putting may be the quickest, easiest way to drop one, two, or three shots from your score. You just can't drop 10 shots from your score. This question comes from X. Would the average golfer score better by hitting driver more or less often? The number one thing in the club selection and target selection process is not driver versus three wood versus hybrid. You need to respect the hazards. You need to minimize... The shots off the tee that you hit out of bounds, into penalties, into the woods, into recovery territory, that's where you can lose strokes. But if you can keep it in play, you should hit driver in almost all situations. This question comes from YouTube. What's the one shot golfers practice all the time that barely impacts their score? And I'm going to answer this slightly differently. It's not so much the one shot. It's that most golfers don't practice. Amateur golfers need to take a lesson. You need to have expert eyes on your swing in order to figure out what to work on. By the way, how many of you have ever had a putting lesson or a short game lesson? When you take a lesson, it shouldn't always be about hitting a driver or hitting a 7-iron. Think about having a lesson for your putting or short game also. This question is from X. What's the one shot golfers rarely practice that matters more than they think? Three to six foot putts. You can miss a lot of three, four, five, and six footers, and this makes a big difference in your score. So if you can make more of these short putts, you will three putt less often, you'll one putt more often, and you've got a ton of these three to six footers that matter. In a round, practicing your three, four, five, and six footers all the way around the hole is a great way to lower your score. This question comes from Instagram. At what distance does hitting the ball further stop being a meaningful advantage? Never. It never stops being a meaningful advantage. When Bryson DeChambeau won the US Open at Winged Foot, part of what he said was how big an advantage it was to hit it 20 yards further than his fellow competitors. And one of the questions he asked me was, well, if I hit it even 20 yards further than I am now, Will I have the same additional advantage and so I crunched the numbers and the answer was yes. Even if you're 20 yards longer than your fellow pros, another 20 yards longer buys you almost as much of the incremental advantage that the first 20 yards did. So keep trying to hit the ball further, it always helps. This question comes from Instagram. When Tiger was at his peak, what part of his game gave him the biggest edge? His approach shots. Tiger would have been ranked in the top 10 in the world just from his approach shots. Even if he was average at putting, average at short game, and average at driving. That's how good his approach game was. But because he was also great at driving and short game and approach shots and putting, that made him Tiger Woods. That made him ranked number one by far for a long period of time. This question comes from X, what's the biggest statistical difference between a scratch golfer and a PGA Tour player that most people wouldn't expect? Approach shots from 150 yards from the fairway or the tee. And why is this the biggest difference? Well think about if you had a putting competition with Rory McIlroy, you would actually have a chance if you were hitting two or three The 8 footers. Then think about hitting against Rory McIlroy hitting 150 yard shots from the fairway. He's going to beat you every time. But here's another way to look at it. Here are different golfer groups and this is their proximity. So think about that. The average pro versus a 90 golfer. The 90 golfer hits it twice as far away. That's a huge skill difference and you have a lot of these shots around. So the biggest difference is 150 yards that separates Amateurs from pros. This question comes from Instagram. What's the most important metric to track as a mid-handicapper? Well, since 150-yard shots are so important... I would track your median leave, your proximity from 150 yards. So how do you do that? Well you hit shots or record during your round shots from say 125 to 175 yards and you record how far away were you from the pin. Sort them from closest to furthest and you take the middle value And that's your median leave from 150 yards and then you compare it to a table of benchmarks and you want to see where do you rank compared to your comparison group. This question comes from YouTube. How would you use Strokes Gained to decide what to practice, how to practice, and whether it's working? So my dream is that golfers would record their shots in an app Shameless plug for Golf Metrics is one app where you can do this. You record your shots and it gives you a strokes gained report. And it will tell you a personalized report on where your strengths and weaknesses are. And I'd like you to take a report like this to your pro when you go for a lesson and decide what to work on based on what are your weakest areas and what are your strongest areas. And then after the lesson and after you practice and a couple weeks later, you're still recording your shots, you can then see, have you made measurable progress in that area? This question comes from YouTube. Do you see further potential to be more granular with strokes gained data? Absolutely. The benchmark can be more accurate than it currently is. So for putts, we know that an eight foot downhill right to left slider is more difficult than an eight foot straight uphill putt. And I've done calculations that show and quantify that difference. And so we can take into account Green contours, pin locations, up slopes, down slopes in coming up with more accurate strokes gained numbers. So that's coming. Stay tuned. This question comes from YouTube. What do stats say about getting close to a par 5 versus laying back? to a yardage you like. Nobody lays up anymore because it's a terrible strategy. Justin Thomas asked me once would he be better off with his actual par 5 scoring average or if he could start every par 5 in three shots from 10 feet away with a birdie putt. So he hits second shot to his favorite distance then he hits a great third shot to 10 feet. and has a birdie putt on every par-5. The answer is he'd be much better off with his par-5 scoring average because going for it in two is that much more of an advantage. This question comes from Instagram. How often is the winner of a tournament just the player who putted the best? Not that often. Ball striking is king, and the best ball strikers tend to rise to the top of the leaderboard, the back nine on Sunday, And the winner tends to be the best putter out of that group of the best ball strikers. So the way to think about golf is you've got to improve your ball striking, and when you also putt well, that's when you have a chance to win. This question comes from YouTube. What do you think is the most unbreakable record or streak in golf? Tiger Woods, 89 straight times beating the field. So what does it mean to beat the field? If you shoot a 69 and the average score of the field is 72.5, you beat the field. A streak is when you beat the field on Thursday, on Friday, on Saturday, and on Sunday, and you do it again and again. Tiger beat the field 89 straight times, which is better than Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak. Second on the list is Marco Mira, beating the field 33 straight times. The gap between first and second is enormous. Nobody is going to break this record in golf. This question comes from YouTube. Statistically speaking, what makes for the best foursome pairings? And I know you're probably looking for a more complicated answer, but it's simple. Put the best two players together, and that's your best foursomes pairing. This question comes from YouTube. What could golf learn from other sports in terms of stats and analytics? I would say it's the other way around. Golf has been ahead of other sports in stats and analytics. Golf had radar, TrackMan, force plates, 3D video, far before baseball and football and other sports. And in terms of strokes gained, strokes gained putting, is analogous to what came later which is expected goals in soccer which is one of the most important advanced stats in soccer expected goals in hockey and now football has expected points added they have rushing yards over expected so comparing performance against the benchmark which is what strokes gain does is now filtering into all other sports thanks so much for watching i hope you learned a little bit about data and analytics in golf and how strokes gained can make you a smarter