We live in a numbers-driven society and the world of professional golf is a part of the maze of statistical interpretations. Some 20 years ago, the various professional tours kept stats in areas such as driving distance, driving accuracy, greens in regulation, and putts per round. Then all of a sudden it occurred to people that often the best putters were the worst ball strikers. Pros such as Gary McCord led the PGA Tour in putting statistics, and yet McCord was consistently near the bottom of the list in the category of greens in regulation. McCord would miss the green, chip it close, and one-putt from a short distance.
The stats people decided to come up with an added category, namely putts taken after hitting the green in regulation. That led to a whole new list of statistics including scrambling statistics, accuracy from 150 yards, from 100 yards, and on and on. Most recently, the various worldwide tours have kept stats in categories under the umbrella of shots gained. For instance, two-time major champion Zach Johnson gains 1.157 shots per round on the rest of the field. Part of that number comes from his shots gained with his approach shots to the green. In that category, he is ranked 20th this season on the PGA Tour.
If you are scratching your head about all this numbers talk, here is a basic way to look at the shots gained statistical area. If you are playing in a foursome and you hit your tee shot up the middle while your three playing partners all hit their ball in the water, then you have gained one or perhaps even two shots on the rest of them because of your safe drive in the fairway. If one of your playing partners hits his iron shot to two feet from the cup while you hit your ball into the sand trap, then he has a better statistical number in shots gained on approach to the green. Once all four golfers are on the green, one of the members of the foursome sinks a 30-foot putt while another golfer happens to three-putt from 20 feet. As you can imagine, this leads to a statistical interpretation of shots gained putting.
Shots gained putting was never more in evidence that in the last two weeks on the American tour. Two weeks ago Patrick Reed made every putt of importance inside of eight feet during his final nine holes to win the Masters by one stroke. His closest pursuers climbing the leader board that Sunday afternoon, namely Rickie Fowler and Jordan Spieth, were also gaining on the rest of the field because of their putting prowess.
Last Sunday, the big boys of golf were at Harbour Town on the South Carolina coast competing in the RBC Heritage Open. Entering the final nine, it seemed as if it would be a runaway victory for Si Woo Kim, another talented 20-something who is the reigning Players champion on tour. However, Kim’s putting stroke got twitchy and he found a way to miss four putts inside of eight feet over the course of his final nine holes. His putting miscues put him into a tie after 72 holes with Japan Tour pro Satoshi Kodaira. Kodaira is also a talented 20-something who has had some big wins on his home tour, including the 2013 Japan Golf Tour Championship and the 2015 Japan Open. Because he is ranked within the world’s top 50, Kodaira was invited to the Masters and chose to extend his time in America by playing at Harbour Town. Kodaira made a long putt from just off the green to finally win the Heritage after a three-hole playoff. While you don’t need to look up stats to always figure thing out, it was decidedly apparent that the putter is the reason why Patrick Reed is currently wearing a Masters green jacket while Si Woo Kim is simply the runner-up in the RBC Heritage.
The bible of shots gained statistics is the book Every Shot Counts: Using the Revolutionary Strokes Gained Approach to Improve Your Golf Performance and Strategy by Mark Broadie, a statistics and business professor at Columbia. When Broadie’s book first came out, it was during the season of Rory McIlroy’s dominant eight-shot victory in the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island in 2012. In the case of McIlroy, his brilliant long iron play led to him hitting a greater number of par-5s, which led to more eagles and birdies. He was the tour’s top performer in strokes gained from more than 200 yards away.
Broadie has pages of charts, and the putting statistics he presents are profound and in many cases cumbersome. For instance, from the dreaded eight feet that Si Woo Kim kept missing his putts on Sunday, professional golfers statistically make that putt 50 percent of the time. In the case of a scratch amateur golfer, that very same 8-footer is made 41 percent of the time. Your typical bogey golfer will only make that very same putt 27 percent of the time.
Of course, in the case of Patrick Reed and Si Woo Kim, that 8-footer takes on a whole new meaning when you are coming down the stretch at a professional tournament with not only millions of dollars on the line, but also a chance to make lasting history by winning a major championship. Statistics can’t really measure how the golfer feels internally Thursday morning when they have that 8-footer in comparison to that very same putt four days later with the tournament on the line. When all is said and done, the winner of the Masters took one less stroke over the course of 72 holes while the runner-up in the RBC Heritage took one more stroke in a sudden-death playoff. It’s a thin line between winning and coming in second.
On a slightly different note, Doug Quinones of Hidden Valley Lake is arguably the best golfer to have come out of Lake County. Quinones, a graduate of Middletown High School’s class of 2008, played collegiate golf at Kansas University and has been a professional golfer since he graduated from KU. He has played mini-tour golf and for the past two years he has been the leading money winner on the Dakotas Tour. Quinones is very much ready to take the next big step in his career. He’ll try to Monday qualify into tourneys on the Web.com Tour, the AAA level of mini-tour golf.
Silverado Country Club in Napa is hosting a Doug Quinones Tournament on April 29 on its North Course, the annual site of the PGA Tour’s Safeway Classic. Proceeds from the Quinones Tournament will go to support Doug’s tournament, caddie, and travel fees for this season. Entry forms for the Quinones Tournament are available at Hidden Valley Lake Golf Course or by contacting the HVL pro shop at 987-3035.
