Feel like strokes gained (or maybe just Arccos?) isn't helpful

[RCGA]

3 hours ago, iacas said:

 

I think tracking strokes gained is great for people who don't have a ton of time to practice, because you can focus your practice more precisely on the areas that need the most help.

 

I'm not a good long iron player, but I'm pretty good with the driver.

SG would say practice your long irons. Okay. But I only have 1-3 long iron shots a round vs 10-14 drivers a round. I'd rather maintain my good driving than practice something that hardly gets used and is a low percentage shot anyway. 

[Pnwpingi210]

Just now, RCGA said:

 

I'm not a good long iron player, but I'm pretty good with the driver.

SG would say practice your long irons. Okay. But I only have 1-3 long iron shots a round vs 10-14 drivers a round. I'd rather maintain my good driving than practice something that hardly gets used and is a low percentage shot anyway. 

Thats a fine maintenance strategy.

 

 

[iacas]

19 minutes ago, RCGA said:

SG would say practice your long irons.

 

Not necessarily. Part of the total strokes gained is the number of times you have those shots. You can't gain or lose many strokes if you don't have that shot very often. This is the "O" in my book (# of Opportunities per round) in our "SCOR" acronym. Roughly, the # of strokes gained or lost is multiplied by the # of times you have that shot.

 

As an example… if you're losing 1.5 strokes on your approach shots, and 1.2 of them are coming on three shots with long irons while the other 0.3 are coming on the other 12-15 holes where you have other approach shots… yeah, long irons are a weakness that cost you almost half a shot every time you have one, and 1.2 each round.

 

19 minutes ago, RCGA said:

I'd rather maintain my good driving than practice something that hardly gets used and is a low percentage shot anyway.

 

It's not always an either-or situation, and you have to weigh the (in my hypothetical) 1.2 strokes lost just from long irons against what you might lose with the driver. If you gain 0.6 with the long irons but lose only 0.3 with the driver… that's a win.

 

Edited December 27, 2024 by iacas
SCOR

[Ty_Webb]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

 

Not necessarily. Part of the total strokes gained is the number of times you have those shots. You can't gain or lose many strokes if you don't have that shot very often. This is the "O" in my book (# of Opportunities per round) in our "SCOR" acronym. Roughly, the # of strokes gained or lost is multiplied by the # of times you have that shot.

 

As an example… if you're losing 1.5 strokes on your approach shots, and 1.2 of them are coming on three shots with long irons while the other 0.3 are coming on the other 12-15 holes where you have other approach shots… yeah, long irons are a weakness that cost you almost half a shot every time you have one, and 1.2 each round.

 

 

It's not always an either-or situation, and you have to weigh the (in my hypothetical) 1.2 strokes lost just from long irons against what you might lose with the driver. If you gain 0.6 with the long irons but lose only 0.3 with the driver… that's a win.

 

 

This is also a good example of how strokes gained can be flawed if you're using it for something it's not really intended for. If you have two players, one of whom hits every green, their scrambling SG number is going to be 0 (assuming no par 5s where they're chipping on). So if you compare peak Tiger with someone who has a good short game, but doesn't hit many greens, his strokes gained around the green might look better than Tiger's, but that would be because he's getting twice as many goes at it. If both players shoot the same score on the same day, then their SG total number will be the same. Where it buckets that is going to depend on how many goes they have at each one. 

 

Put another way, it's far harder for Iron Byron to have a +4 SGP or SGAroundTG number than it is for a human, because he doesn't have the chance to hole many longer putts or chip a whole lot. That's fine though so long as you know that and can adjust for it - as @iacas is saying here

[Jtgavigan]

Poking around a little bit this afternoon, I found Clippd, which integrates with Arccos and it gives shot by shot data quality.

 

Here is a sample. This is pretty handy and could help. Now I see which shots would get penalized. It does have some strokes gained stuff, but also rates each shot on its own. 

 

 

 

 

[Pnwpingi210]

34 minutes ago, Jtgavigan said:

Poking around a little bit this afternoon, I found Clippd, which integrates with Arccos and it gives shot by shot data quality.

 

Here is a sample. This is pretty handy and could help. Now I see which shots would get penalized. It does have some strokes gained stuff, but also rates each shot on its own. 

 

 

 

 

Boom!