Even Michael Phelps was mesmerized


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Of course he remembers and greatness recognizes greatness and wants so bad for Tiger to return to his dominating days and especially the sports media because well you know........:-)
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He was laser-focused in the High Limit room of Lumiere on Saturday night as well.
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I've seen Michael Phelps about 5 times this summer at the Sprout's supermarket as he lives in the neighborhood I work and live in. He coaches swimming at ASU.
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Tiger was +3 after his first two holes Thur.


There's your final margin.
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When I played in college, I saw D2 golfers who hit their driver straighter and better than Tiger is now. He's below average on tour hitting his driver and off the tee. Probably should almost hit his stringer every time off the tee.
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Then he'd be hitting mid to long irons into almost every long par 4. He's better off rolling the dice off the tee.
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FWIW, he is 127th in strokes gained off the tee, losing an average of 0.055 shots per round to the field.

Ken Duke is first on tour in driving accuracy, hitting almost 78 percent of his fairways. He is 164th in strokes gained off the tee, losing -0.239 strokes per round to the field. His driving average is 271 yards.

So, if Tiger can hit his stinger 270 yards on average (he can't) and hit 80 percent of the fairways doing so, he'll actually end up losing strokes to the field.
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I'm for really large fairways, but with really gnarly rough. Punish if you miss, but give you the opportunity to bomb it if you can.

Crazy to think you ARE NOT better off if you hit 271 yards, yet hit 80% of fairways, compared to 35 yards further and 50% of the fairways. I know that plays better at muni courses without punishing rough or alot of OB, but on these difficult courses that surprises me. I would think that driving accuracy would be most helpful unless you are just a Corey Pavin hitter. When I think back to my best rounds, those are the ones I'm always in the fairway, not making big numbers and capitalizing when I can.

Wouldn't it be dependent on the course? I know "strokes gained" is a relatively new stat, but all golf courses and their set up are different (LDO), so wonder how accurate that currently is. Kind of like how in MLB they have park adjusted stats, does it account for that?
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Here is how the tour explains it, using Rickie Fowler's tee shot as an example.

Fowler hit his tee shot 330 yards on the 446-yard, par-4 before sticking his 116-yard approach shot 16 feet, 11 inches from the hole.

Tee shot: TPC Sawgrass' 18th hole is a 446-yard, par-4. The PGA TOUR's scoring average, or baseline, on a par-4 of that length is 4.100. Fowler hit his tee shot on No. 18 in the fairway, 116 yards from the hole. The TOUR scoring average from the fairway, 116 yards from the hole, is 2.825. He gained 0.275 strokes on his tee shot. Here's how:

Baseline for tee - Baseline for second shot - 1 = strokes gained: off-the-tee
4.100 - 2.825 = 1.275 - 1 = +0.275

One is subtracted from the difference between the two baselines to account for the shot that Fowler hit.


They measure the average to make from every distance in one inch increments from every type of lie. A player takes, on average, 3 shots to get down from 100 yards out in the rough compared to 3 shots on average from 170 in the fairway.

If you think about it from a risk reward perspective, hitting the ball that much farther doesn't really hurt you that much in the rough (of course, some rough *is* more penal than others), but you gain significant benefits if you hit it long in the fairway.
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I get that hitting the fairway is everybody's goal (duh), but how do they calculate "strokes gained off the tee", drive distance and accuracy turning a par-5 into a par-4, a par-4 into a par-3, so those would be "1 stroke gained"?
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It's literally explained in significant detail five posts down from the one you quoted.
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NM, I found it in post 215 of this thread.
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It's crazy, that in just 15-20 years the average PGA Tour drive has increased 20-25 yards.

I guess I need to buy new clubs? They had Pro V's back in 2002 and $500 drivers back then too. The USGA places a certain limit on clubs to even be legal, I figured back around 2000 that clubs & balls were maxing out at their technological limits.

What is the culprit for the increase in distance over the last 15-20 years?
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While equipment has helped some in 15-20 years, I think a big part of it is Trackman (and other launch monitors.) Players now know the optimal numbers needed to hit a maximum efficiency drive and they can tweak their equipment and swing to get that desired result.
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