Still waiting

Again, there will never be truly statistically significant data to show that a specific INDIVIDUAL is clutch. However, NXT agrees that some players are chokers. The opposite question I’m faced with is one he should answer then, WHO SPECIFICALLY is choking?

Think for a second.

The data shows that free throw shooters run below average when in a tight game in the final minute. This shows that there is in fact choking going on. But if you tried to analyze INDIVIDUAL players based on the same data and criteria their INDIVIDUAL samples will be too low to say they are the ones choking. This leaves us with choking, but nobody is choking. Wait, what?

Make sense guys? The collective data shows there is choking going on, but we can't pin point who it is. The opposite, IMH-experienced-O is that yes, some players are clutch and although it can't be proven who specifically is, somebody (Tiger) is.

So what is my *hunch* based on? Nearly 4,000 golf shots over 54 events where he closed out leads at a 93% clip shows me that *something* is going on. This to me is what taking a solid understanding of stats and being able to apply the finding (whatever they are) into some sort of action. Just like 3 years ago when I said it’s Drive for Dough and NXT said that’s wrong. Now he has the biggest golf stat boner possible (so far as making a LOLhorrific site) that is all EXACTLY AS I TOLD HIM YEARS AGO. It simply burns his ass and he can’t recover from it.

sorry pal, didn't want to wall of text you guys again so split it up. Good now?

Really, please show your work. I certainly never once mentioned it.

maaaaaaayyyyybe you are both right?

Imagine Golfer A and a 10 foot putt. He makes 53% of his 10 foot putts as his TRUE EXPECTATION, which is the sum of all possible 10 foot putts (dead straight, 90* breaking, on the practice green, for a $10 Nassau, to win the Masters, everything in between). Let's say those factors can make his TRUE EXPECTATION for a given putt range from 39% to 67%.

Now Golfer B makes 51% of his 10 foot putts as his TRUE EXPECTATION, but his range only goes from 45% to 55%.

Golfer B has the smaller standard deviation, which could appear to manifest itself as avoiding choking or being clutch, whereas Golfer A's larger deviation could lend itself to being seen as a choker or not clutch.

So neither golfer is summoning up some AMAZING CLUTCHNESS to exceed their TRUE EXPECTATION, however different factors affect their specific situation TRUE EXPECTATION differently, which then are averaged into their overall TRUE EXPECTATION.

It doesn't have to be pressure, there are all kinds of factors which may impact someone's specific chances of success. I think I will hit less fairways when someone screams in my backswing. Other golfers tune it out. But the tune it out guy may be considerably more impacted than I am when needing to hit a fairway on 18 when 1 down in the match. Those all add up to our overall fairway likelihoods, but he will appear clutch when people yell in the backswing and I may appear clutch when driving on 18 trailing by 1. Si? No?

The NBA research states the following
There is your answer to who is choking, the guys who are worse at free throws.

I'm confused how you can use a statistical paper as proof that "choking" exists and then extrapolate that into the theory that "clutch" exists, but then turn around and discount a paper the proves "clutch" doesn't exist. Can you explain this for me?

Here we go again with 4,000 golf shots over 54 events. LOLOLOLOL. That is not how it works. The 4,000 shots are already cooked into his closing %.

Yes *something* is going on. Tiger is illustrating his skill advantage over the other players, likely in the ball park of his "expected" closing % but the sample is to small to be to confident as to what the truly is.

It's actually the exact opposite. The key here is to determine if you "finding" is even remotely significant before applying it to some sort of action.

Also, what exactly have you found? That Tiger's "real" or "expected" win % when closing majors is 93%?. Haha.

Sick burn about a website I put together in a day. I only did it as a way to share a spreadsheet that users of this site requested without losing complete control of the sheet. Bravo.

I'm starting to think some people would benefit from a couple days away from their keyboard.

Nxt, I believe you stated that tour players are better at sinking short putts for birdie than par? (Or perhaps vice versa? )

You guys are ~100% to ruin whatever thread you are participating in by arguing over things where you don't even agree ahead of time what you're arguing about, and typically only marginally related to the subject of the thread. I'd say that's pretty clutch.

Grunching a little, but I'd like to hear your logic behind relegating a guy with 28 wins and 3 majors into the bums category.

Caught up now, and have to say that despite the fact that I have tremendous respect for ship and even some for Bo when it comes to golf, both of y'all are getting owned by NXT.

Also, did anyone ever consider that maybe majors won are the exact wrong way to measure greatness at golf? Like totally 100% wrong? Because some of the data posted itt seem to suggest that it is. Ponder that for a bit and I'll post my thoughts later.

It's the opposite and that's explained away by the fact the par putts are often second putts or putts that have already seen a line on a chip too.

Just a quick question. What impact do you think the pressure of having to win a golf tournament has on a player?

For example, on the web.com tour yesterday, a guy had a one stroke lead and a 15-footer for birdie on #18. He three-putted.

Now, from a purely statistical standpoint, that three-putt will get thrown into the mixer with all the other thousands of putts that he has attempted over his career, thus rendering it virtually meaningless.

Yet, that one three-putt has a tremendous impact on his life. He ended up in a playoff which he lost. So instead of being virtually assured of moving up to the PGA tour next year, he now has to keep scratching and clawing each week for that promotion.

So please explain to me how data ITT could reflect something like this, because I haven't seen it.

“However, the choking estimates for players on winning teams may be biased slightly downward, as the shooters in those situations are slightly better than average (see Table 1) and we have evidence that better shooters are less likely to choke”

No, you’ve simply shown the obvious that half the population is better than the other half, and that on average a winning team is comprised of better players and ahead late in games. Shocking.

I want a specific single name that is choking. Since you clearly know that choking is going on, tell me who. All you’ve shown me here is that the losing team and overall losing teams shoot lower %’s down the stretch in tight games, again, shocking.

Unless the standings at the end of every season are the same I bet some of this can be explained away via…wait for it…VARIANCE! YAY!

I have 3 times already, you’ve even quoted it. I don’t discount that paper with regards to free throw shooting, I simply say the same data can’t point to an INDIVIDUAL player that is choking because the subsets of individual data is too small.

That’s fine if you want to take no initiative toward finding new ideas, I on the other hand enjoy tackling hard concepts to solve for new ideas. We agree (at least I assume you do since you simply dodge the question) that there will never be enough data points for a specific player to determine if they are the ones choking or are potentially clutch. Thus you choose to sit around and simply think that the odds will just play out and take no action. I choose to try to solve the playing mindset and psychology behind those who exhibit traits of clutch.

You do what you want, and I’ll do what I want. Maybe I’m wasting my time, or maybe you’ll have to say “I was wrong” again in a couple years.

You have no control over the spreadsheet anyway, it’s not like it is your IP.

This.

I truly don’t see how I’m getting owned. We agree that there is not enough data at the minute to be considered significant, I’ve never once said this is iron clad fact (aside from the fact that low limit online poker is not the hardest game in poker). I however like to try to think of potential implications of the data we have (since it’s all we have) and ponder if my intuition could help myself or my player(s).

NXT then offered up some great MSNL expectations and somehow that derailed to; ship cares how NXT makes money, ship doesn’t understand that 10 tabling lower limits can yield more than playing live higher, and so on.

Where we differ is that instead of discounting it and not even considering the implications I choose to think about strategies for improving a player’s mental game.

So far that deep contemplation by me has yielded positive results for my stable of two…myself and Will.

I’ve got a few golf related projects I’m working on and trust me, they are somewhat game changing for the golf learning curve. There is some speculation based on my experience though so I doubt some of you will enjoy it.

But some will argue that PGA Tour players 3 putt from 15' roughly 1% of the time so this is simply the averages playing out.

I on the other hand would say that simply performing to your normal abilities in the face of massive pressure would be ideal, perhaps even clutch.

A luxury he can only afford because he is a poor tipper.

But is playing under pressure the be all and end all of great golf? To me, the object of golf is to complete a course in as few strokes as possible, period. Adding in tournaments and championships and pressure and all that is fun to do, but it's all tertiary to the main skill of getting the ball in the hole.

See, one of my favourite sportsmen is Ronnie O'Sullivan, who is an absolute genius at his sport -- snooker. I bring it up because he has stated that the biggest and richest tournament of the year -- the world championship, basically snooker's lone 'major' -- is actually his least favourite from a 'pure snooker' point of view, because the pressure takes away from the quality of play. He also suggests that winning regular season events is actually harder because more players compete to their highest level in those than they do at the WC.

So that prompts me to wonder, if you happen to be a strong golfer under pressure, does that make majors actually easier to win, because so much of the field is beaten before they even tee up, and/or because many of the others don't perform up to their standard coming down the stretch? Great example, does Greg Norman hang that 5-iron out to the right in '86 if they're pleasing the Kemper Open (or even just a friendly Sunday round, to take it to the extreme), as opposed to the Masters? I'm pretty sure Nicklaus has said something to that effect before. And other experienced golfers have even in this forum stated that it's actually harder to win web.com events than PGA events because so many guys are in contention every week.

So yeah maybe to measure golf greatness you have to take all that other stuff out and focus only on the actual objective of golf, which is shooting the fewest strokes (even Moe Norman's legendary ball striking doesn't get to count, because he wasn't that great of a putter). This is especially worth considering when you examine depth of fields. I mean, if I play six tournaments a year and win them all, but my scoring average was 84, does that make me 'better' than say ship-this who may play in the same number of tournaments and win none, but his scoring average is 70? I hardly think so.

So then if Nicklaus won 18 majors with a scoring average of whatever, 71 just to say something, would you necessarily say he's a 'better' golfer than someone who won 14 tournaments with a scoring average of 68? I mean, I'm not sure how you could. How is golfing 'just good enough to win' a measure of greatness?

So with all of that said, maybe the best way to measure GOATness isn't majors or lifetime wins but rather who simply plays better golf. If that's the case then the only stat that matters is lifetime scoring average, because that is exactly golf's proposition.

Thoughts?

People want to see how the best perform under pressure. It's more entertaining. Performance without pressure is boring. If you just want to see the lowest rounds of golf, go watch Tiger practice at Isleworth, it won't be anywhere near as exciting for the average fan.

If the audience didn't care about pressure, they'd tune in to watch on Tuesday instead of Sunday.

Don't think Tiger has practiced at Isleworth for a couple of years now.

But I disagree about watching top notch golf, are you trying to tell me you would have yawned at watching when Tiger shot 59 at Isleworth many years back?

Great golf is great golf.

BO

Great golf is great golf, but people watch the PGA Tour primarily for the competition.

The above is a prime example of choking. Not variance.

Explain how you know. What do you think the %chance that guy 3putts generally from 15 feet is? It isn't 0.0. So you can't say just because he 3 putted in this situation it is a choke. If I have a box with 98 black marbles and 2 white ones, and I reach in and pull out a white one, did I choke? What if I get $1,000,000 if I get a black one, and nothing for a white, but still pull a white, did I choke? What if I get $1,000,000 for a white one, and I pull one, was I clutch?

How can you be so sure after witnessing a sample size of exactly 1?

Nobody is going to 1 or 2 putt from 15 feet 100% of the time. So how, after witnessing 1 event can you be so sure it's a choke and not variance?

Edit: late pony, black aces gets "it".

It wouldn't make you a choker -- just racist

I would think a choke would be defined as the player increasing the number of white marbles in the box. So maybe you think there were only two white marbles in there and the guy just got unlucky. But maybe the crushing pressure of the situation meant there were a whole lot more white marbles waiting to be plucked.

By the way, are you being serious? Do you really think that pressure has no bearing on someone's performance on the golf course? Because that would just amaze me.