Using 4' in isolation was purely to make the math/point clean. I'm not sure if I phrased it this way or not on the podcast, but how I normally phrase this, because I say it quite often when working with new players, "I get it that he's also 1-2% worse in almost all of the buckets inside 10' so this problem does multiply, but it also isn't the end of the world as long as when you do miss those putts, and you will, you MOVE ON and don't let it impact your full game by pressing or getting pissed." The way I view putting is obviously we want to be as positive SGP as possible, but as long as you are roughly -.25 and better you'll have enough positive events each year to win or come close to winning. It gets distorted when looking at the absolute number of "he ranks 178th from 4' because it just seems like that would have to be abysmal and it simply isn't as long as there is some range you gain shots which he does by being 72nd in 3-putt avoidance even while being below average from 4-8' which illustrates his speed control. He also has nice make rates from outside 15', again because of his excellent speed control and making the hole as big as possible and tapping in a whole bunch.

You got it. If I do play Q School, probably 50/50 game time decision, I'll try to find some time for an AMA here.

It would have been sooooo funny if he grabbed his 60* to go try. That ball is going backwards 100% of the time. He should have left it sitting where it was, it was inside the hazard so he could have, and then hit it afterwards. He would have obviously had to know he was going to win though otherwise that would have been odd!

I thought this interview was pretty interesting.

https://www.dmagazine.com/sports/202...-always-right/

I agree looking at a subset (4-8 feet) and drawing conclusions is not very constructive. The fact Will is +Strokes Gained Putting overall (0.012), while not substantial is materially more important than his deficiencies at a given subset. And from a positive POV perspective, there is no reason to dwell on it as any player could cherry-pick a deficiency and promote it beyond reason.

But I am fairly convinced that measuring top players against other players that are clearly not in their league does not yield strong results. Maybe it does not sound fair, and it does reduce the data set but the tour is obviously stratified to some degree. If one is trying to infer a relationship between general success vs. failure, then sure using the entire tour would make sense.

I really like this article.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.gol...brad-faxon/amp

Sounds like Will Z does not talk to Scott anymore. Honestly, I feel horrible the moment was stolen from him. All in some disturbed attempt to feed an ego.

I sometimes forget the rules on this forum. Is it allowed to say shut the **** up to someone that doesn’t have clue one about a situation. I don’t want to see anybody in trouble, asking for a friend.

lol, because of a mandatory press release? Got it. I feel horrible about it too, not sure how this was a disturbed need to feed an ego unless you're referring to Faxon. If you're going to have an opinion it's important you watch this video. Faxon has been trying to cancel me for years. This was nothing more than his attempt to do it again and that fact matters. OBVIOUSLY I was out of line and went too far, but the truth that it was a shitty joke does matter. Not sure if YouTube links work, but my pinned tweet is also a link to this video illustrating what Faxon has been up to for LITERALLY YEARS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI-6i2h78qk

This one was brutal. Tim is obviously a buddy who I played poker with years ago. He asked me to do an interview and I was thinking it would be to write an article. He said he liked the interview so he just posted the transcript. I thought I was just having a conversation with a buddy who was going to then write a reasonable article. I about **** when I saw what he did and he refused to take it down. At least he did take out all of the superfluous cuss words after my demanding it.

What a week of learning experiences.

If you're going to compare top players to top players the only fair/constructive way to is in total strokes gained since everyone has their good and bad subsets.

Perhaps, but if I am a player I would like to know where I am deficient compared to my peers to at least give me a basis for progression of my overall game.

Yeah, Faxon is way out of line with his attacks on Scott. This idea of players not keeping stats is just plain dumb. It is only a few more data points, and I get how players don't want their confidence shaken but improvement comes with focused effort, not guessing about where improvement is needed.

I can see letting the caddie keep the stats during a tournament, to let the player focus perhaps.

Nice job with this video. Hard to dispute the facts you present.

I don't think it was bad at all. If anything, it gave some interesting background to the situation. And I thought presenting it in a q and a format made it much more readable.

As far as the video and the situation as a whole, I wouldn't sweat it. You didn't kill anyone. You didn't flip out on some waitress for forgetting to hold the mayo. You went on a twitter rant. It's not a huge deal, and it shows how somewhat soulless high level golf is that so many people freaked out when someone exhibited the least bit of behavior that could be considered controversial.

What's funny to me is the pearl clutching over you using an expletive, when the reality is that if you go to any lower tier event that doesn't have cameras all over the place, it's just one long series of f bombs being tossed around.

The only think that seemed a bit weird to me was not waiving the following group thru when Scott stepped on a nail. As presented that is a serious medical situation. I'm happy to hear he came out of it ok.

It was good to see Bob McIntyre give Scott and Decade a mention in his victory interview on winning the Italian Open. He claimed following Decade has really improved his results.

Will collects $5 million in PIP bonus. Does not suck.

add that to $9.4M in prize money and he had a pretty tidy year, didn't he
has anyone heard an update on how his back rehab is coming along?

He should be good to go to start the year. Don't forget to add the roughly $6M off the course...what a year!!!

Scott- thought of you when I saw Bent Tree on the list of US Open Sectional Qualifiers this year.

While I'm thinking about it, quick DECADE question: do you find that setting yearly or seasonal goals is helpful for good players?

I'm setting a scoring average goal and then trying to reverse-engineer what needs to happen from a strokes gained perspective to get me there. Led me to break it down into sub-goals like "decrease par 5 bogeys per round from x to y."

NICE! I haven't looked yet, but need to check it out. I have a shoulder MRI Friday that will dictate how I spend my year leading into turning 50. I was SUPER BUMMED to miss the US Am qualifier there this year after tearing rib muscles getting drunk with Charles Barkley, Romo, and the kid this thread is all about! Who would have thought this thread would be the jumping off point of that story!

I'm really not a goal setting guy which I know is weird. I just think you should put the work in and the results are the results. I am somewhat changing my opinion on that though, but that is how I personally have always felt. I'm trying to think more about what I want my retirement to look like and when so that's the reason I'm rethinking my view. I've always just worked hard, but now I think I might need to know what my finish line is better than I have before. The reason I'm a bit conflicted is I don't think that's goal setting as much as just planning if that makes sense.

I don't consume a ton of Fore Play Golf stuff but I do watch some of the Breaking 100/90 with Trent and this newer series with Frankie seems like some of their better content (I find Riggs mostly unbearable). Frankie from FPG did some on course DECADE stuff with him: