I don't understand how someone can play better than their average/skill level without running good? Golf scores are pretty well normally distributed.

Also for the record, last year the average tournament winner gained ~15 shots on the field for the tournament. According to my data it ranged from 9.5 total SG for Xander Shauffele at the Tour Champ to 20.5 total SG for Kopeka as the US Open.

The absolute best players on Tour nowadays gain at most a little over 2 shots/rd. Nobody today playing their average/C game is winning any tournaments.

It was possible for Tiger in his prime when he was gaining over 3 shots/rd. His average event was therefore like 12-14 shots better than the field which would could potentially win a decent amount of events.

12 shots better than the field wins roughly 11% of the time

14 shots better than the field wins about 35% of the time.

Missing a putt like this would be due to either lining up wrong, having a poor stroke, or getting a bounce that throws the ball offline or slows it down. The first two would be you playing badly and the last one would be you getting unlucky and running badly.

When I hit a pull hook 60 yards offline its not me running bad, its me playing bad. When I hit a drive right down the middle its not me running good, its me swinging well and making proper contact.

I can play like complete **** one one shot/hole/day and play pretty well (relative to my skill level) on the next shot/hole/day. These aren't simply a matter of me running good or bad, but rather me actually playing better or worse due to my alignment, swing, etc.

You are underestimating how much luck/variance there is in golf.

You cannot do anything better than you typically do without some sort of run good.

What is your explanation for a 40% career 3 pt shooter who goes 6 of 10 in a game?

Or a career .275 hitter who goes 4/4 in baseball?

Why don't they just do that all the time?

When Steve Nash misses 1 free throw out of 10 it's not because he was a less skilled free throw shooter for a brief moment in time. It's because he ran bad in some way that caused him to throw the ball suboptimally.

going 6/10 could be luck in that they might have gotten better shots than they usually do due to defensive scheme or other things out of their control. 4/4 could be something to do with the pitches they saw (luck) or tons of other things that are skill based.

Its because on that shot he had different mechanics which caused him to miss. Its not luck that his mechanics are substantially similar 9/10 times. That's the whole skill of it. The skill is in how often you can repeat the action. When you fail it is a breakdown of that skill not bad luck.

Doing it suboptimally is not unlucky even though it it normal to have a range of outcomes.

When you hit a 150 yard shot from the fairway super fat or super thin do you think "I just got unlucky there" or do you think you put a bad swing on it? I certainly think the latter.

When I only hit one shot from the fairway super fat or super thin in a round I think "Wow, I played abnormally well today due to reasons I don't fully understand. I ran good!"

When you're "in a groove" or "feeling it" or "on it" that day it doesn't mean you're more skilled that day and therefore not running good.

But this conversation is no longer interesting. You can choose to have your own definition of running good.

No, not even close. Maybe 1 out of 100. Maybe.

And I'm not really sure how this thread this got derailed in record time.

lol... so you're saying only 1 in 100 athletic guys can get close to tour level (say within 0.5 strokes gained of the bottom quartile) with way more practice than the tour guys have ever put in. you're basically saying even a 20th percentile tour player is a one in a million putting prodigy. that's hilarious.

they're exceptional because they're fantastic ball strikers. it's not the putting.

Pretty isnane take when talking about putting.

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If a player shows up and bangs a bunch of balls OB, runs his putts by 15 feet, and hits their chips terrible.. That's that player having a bad day. We all know we have good days and bad days in golf. That's not about random variance of wind affecting ball flight, kicks off of sprinkler heads, unlucky lies, etc.. So ya, if DJ goes out and hits every shot perfect.. He still had a good day (for him) because there are still days he hits bad shots. He's running above expectation in terms of his own variation of play from day to day. So, since he's playing perfect, and he's way better than everyone except a few players, he doesn't need any luck out on the course, he can actually be a bit unlucky..

Apologies for my part in attracting the world's dimmest golf minds into this thread.

You think players go for a year without winning, finishing out of the top ten, etc, and then the next year they're winning left and right, etc, because of ball flight variance?

And, since we're talking math and statistics, if you want to define 'dim' on the bell curve, and whether on not I fall in that region of the curve, we might have potential for a wager. Let me know.

They're exceptional because they are exceptional across the board.

Most have no idea just how good tour players are even in less important areas. Or what it takes to get to that level.

this is correct

A quote from that post

"He's running above expectation in terms of his own variation of play from day to day"

The definition of Luck(noun):
1. success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.

I would define a players variation from day to day relative to their actual skill level as "luck" as it is not something they can control. A typical PGA Tour player has a standard deviation of ~2.5 shots per round, meaning 2/3rds of their round will fall within a range of 2.5 shots better than average and 2.5 shots worse than average. There's nothing anybody on Tour can do to reduce this variance. If they could, then why wouldn't they just play above expectation every day? If you don't like "luck" then "good variance" will suffice.

Anybody shooting a score better than their skill would indicate they should on average has experienced net positive "good variance". Nobody right now is anywhere near good enough relative to the field to win an event without a substantial amount of net positive "good variance" on a given week.

The success is brought through one's own actions when someone plays well though. The simple fact that they aren't 100% replicable doesn't mean they are outside of the control of the player it simply means they aren't good enough to consistently replicate the higher level of play.

Playing variance is a completely different idea than outside variance imparted by weather, bounces, spike marks, divots in the fairway, whether you roll up against a tree on an errant tee shot.

There are certainly two forms of variance at play, but one is player controlled and the other isn't. The player controlled one is one you need to be on the good side of in order to win. The factors outside of the player's control are ones a good player can overcome negative variance or luck and win in spite of that.

How are they not? A player does not have control of them. They have SOME control over them (their overall skill level, say DJ gaining 2 strokes vs the avg. tour player who gains 0) but not ALL of them (which leads to the variance around that overall skill level, almost always in the ball park of a std dev of 2.5 shots/rd regardless of skill level).

Bumping this because I heard Scott mention it on a pod. It all seems so obvious 10 years after.

Also, I'm sure it is a surprise to precisely no one, that Arod's Cousin (aka ARC) was perfectly wrong in the posts of his I read itt.

LOL I forgot about that nit!

Looking back at this thread I was pleasantly surprised to see Stan Utley mentioned. I read a couple of his short game books a few years back, but never brought him up or heard anyone speak of him until looking through this thread.

If I could putt well I would break 80. Actually last year if I had made par on 18 on me day I would have shot 77 on par 68. This would have been my best 18 holes by a large margin. But I 4 putt for triple from 20 feet.

Kind of grunching this thread

I know that personally if I put it in play to the point where I have a clean shot at the green on basically every hole, it's very hard for me to shoot over par on most golf courses. My putting is not always great, but my speed control is consistent so I don't 3 putt much, and my wedge/iron game is usually decent. My putter can get stupid hot every once in a while, but sadly more often on days when I hit it like crap.

At higher handicaps, ball striking improvements, and general short game improvements will make way bigger inroads into breaking 90, 80, par, whatever, than rolling it marginally better. Start hitting 10+ greens a round, and learn not to make double from off the edge of the green, and watch your scores plummet.

Obviously at high level competition the winners usually have a good week putting, but it's pretty random. My first ever round under par in my life I shot 1 under in a tournament when I was like 16, and had 20 putts. Think I hit about 5 greens in regulation, and probably made 150 feet of par putts.

I shot a 67 last time out on a par 72 and don't think I made a putt over 7 feet (greens are early season bumpy), but hit it as well as I have in a veeery long time.


I'll also say that on most golf courses, even nice private clubs, the greens on an average day are not gonna be super conducive to making a ton of putts. If you give me double cut/rolled tournament greens, I'll probably gain a lot more strokes on average. Putt on aerated greens or something and the difference between a good and a bad putter becomes condensed.

for advice for higher handicappers (without thinking much about it at all):
#1: reduce penalty strokes off the tee
#2: reduce penalty strokes from approach shots
#3: reduce three putts from any situation
#4: short game, short game, short game
#5: short game
#6: sand saves
#7: short game

the reason i put reduce three putts that high on the list is there's almost nothing more disheartening for a higher handicapper than stringing together a good drive with a good approach, only to three putt for bogey (the three putt par would be the most disheartening).

The short game thing in general is just kind of learning not to shank, skull, or lay the sod over half your short game shots. Once you learn to use the bounce/loft and can find a little more consistency with your strike, it's much easier to leave yourself some sort of par putt on most greens. I see lots of like 12 handicaps burn 6 shots a round leaving it in bunkers, or skulling ot over the green, and similar shots, far more than wasted putts. They might 3 putt 1-3x, but you really can't mess up on the greens relative to knocking it OB or hitting a bunker shot 3x, 3rd time into the water.

What's funny is my fiancee can't hit the ball very well, and certainly can't chip, but she makes tons of putts. Get her on the green she's like a 10 handicap.

3 putting sucks though. I'd be lying if I said I don't take/give pretty long putts if I'm out just playing a casual round. No need to grind on those all the time.