Creating this for posting your thoughts, commentary, memes in response to the live blog.
I’ll start:
On a similar note, I always chuckle thinking about hiring a strategy guy to calculate all these fractional shots I can gain and then proceeding to hit my first tee shot off the planet.
This is my golf game. Arccos is always like “have you considered not losing 4.5 strokes per round in penalties?”
Are the old skill slopes available? The 1.80 Oakmont is currently producing is crazy high even on such a small sample…
Matt, why is it not favouring accurate players if there is such a big missed-fairway penalty?
I think this is because the “scrubs” who are this tournament tend to be longer than more accurate. Qualifying favors different skill sets and they tend to be younger guys. PGA is the opposite. The Bridgecore Trust Account guys tend to be shorter.
Possible. Forgot that we had a bunch of “scrubs” this week (not as scrubby as the PGA though). Will see how much they are affecting the live insights.
Anyone with a skill below -2 is already getting dropped (left over code from PGA). Might refine the sample a bit more, but basically they aren’t affecting things currently.
Smart. Maybe just small sample size then.
@matt_courchene very clear on television the intermediate is long enough for “good” and “bad” lies. Players having to judge their lie too. It looks about as long as the rough was in Houston.
The course has changed a lot from Monday morning. The greens were running much slower (like 12 vs 16 as a rough guess) and the rough seems much more saturated now. The fairways are also way dryer, they got a ton of rain the weeks prior. Think the green speed progression might have to do with using the sub air system installed with the recent renovation.
Course should play very long tomorrow and fairways should be much easier to hit. And somehow the rough will be even more brutal.
Scoring average will drop just because the field is better now but it’s still going to be brutal. Also, mud balls.
I am curious how players were categorized in this visual:
I am assuming it was a SD cutoff?
I have a background in psychometrics where anything between -1 and 1 SD would be considered average.
Now it probably would not be useful to categorize the 16th and 84th percentile in DD as average, you would lose a lot of context. Just moreso curious as to what these ranges and cutoffs were and how they were chosen so I can better understand
Blockquote Strokes-gained numbers by category will be very far off this week. I won’t call them meaningless, but the Tour avg. baselines are quite different than at Oakmont.
There is a different version of this which is people are trying to say there is a lot more luck in SG this week. I think that’s probably right. Chipping in from this rough is probably mostly about catching a good lie or the cup getting in the way.
Looking at you Victor hovland.
It’s early but putting and driving have been notably less important so far today relative to irons and short game. This logically makes sense in a very wet course too.
Re: Stroke Gained
From what I understand, SG does not account for short-sided misses etc… Coupled with the larger penalty of the greenside rough, SG APP does not represent ‘good’ and ‘bad’ shots as well as on an average PGA Tour setup.
A GREAT shot left short-sided isn’t always a great shot. The more players are forced to play away from the hole due to the green complexes, the less useful the SG data will be in general.
early but putting and driving have been notably less important so far today relative to irons and short game. This logically makes sense in a very wet course too.
If you hit the fairway today, the shot isn’t running 30+ yards down the fairway, so the next shot is farther from the hole. This would make driving look less important.
The greens are running slower today, balls are stopping in places they wouldn’t earlier in the week. Start lines are closer to what players are used to seeing week-to-week, which should result in more putts made (or less putts missed), especially inside ~8 feet.
Yes. And functionally the fairway are probably about 3-4 yards wider today.
As far as I understand, SG does not differentiate downhill vs. uphill approach shots. On a course like Oakmont where 16 of 18 holes play either up or downhill, SG won’t capture the full value of uphill approaches and vice versa.
I would guess we run into the same issues on most (British) Open venues.
I think Will just eyeballed it.
Almost half the guys are through 9 and it’s playing a shot and a half easier than yesterday. Could see a decent wave split if the wind picks up.
Almost half the guys are through 9 and it’s playing a shot and a half easier than yesterday. Could see a decent wave split if the wind picks up.
It looks to me like the greens are running much quicker than early morning. I have a feeling this is the USGA flexing the SubAir system by pulling moisture out of the greens as the day goes on. The wind also helps.
I don’t believe they run subair during the rounds.