Welcome to my blog! I am excited to create this platform at the intersection of golf, physics, math, and statistics. This post marks the beginning of an attempt to regularly discuss subjects in the game of golf in an analytical, scientific way. Considering that PGA Tour’s Shotlink data records every shot at every PGA Tour event to within a yard, and every putt to within an inch, more statistics are available than ever before. Additionally, as the field of analytics has spread to other sports after the success of sabermetrics in baseball, and as broadcasting networks look to create more engaging and innovative telecasts, the average golfer’s exposure to statistics has dramatically increased.
It is wonderful that the game of golf is becoming more analytical. Instead of anecdotes and gut feelings, we can quantitatively determine the effects of weather, pressure, mechanics on scoring. However, the new analytical frontier has one significant caveat: with large data sets, people can make statistics say whatever they want the statistics to say. More specifically, with cleverly designed graphs and cherry-picked data, someone with an opinion about, for instance, swing mechanics or course management can make it look like his position is definitively true, when the data may actually be inconclusive or even support the opposite hypothesis. For the average golfer, it can be hard to distinguish between data analysis done well and data analysis done poorly.
I hope this blog will counteract some of the poor analysis by discussing these topics with rigor and detail. Instead of making flashy claims, I will approach topics with some restraint, discussing the limitations of what we know, and where maybe we don’t have conclusive answers either way. Good science involves not authoritative statements of truth, but rather detailed reporting of observations, so that even if I think a finding is definitive, you have the opportunity to come to your own conclusions. Hopefully these standards will result in analysis that is transparent and trustworthy.
Before we begin discussing what the best way to practice is, or whether to go for a par 5 in two, let me give you a bit about my background and why I love talking about golf, physics, math, and statistics.
About me
I have been playing golf since before I can remember. Even as a kid, I loved the challenge and the work required to perfect a specific shot, and I would spend hours at the range trying to move the ball both ways or hole out a flop shot.
I was not a child prodigy like most of the people you see on TV. I played in lots of junior tournaments, won a few, but mostly found myself in the middle of the leaderboard. When I tried out for high school golf in 9th grade, I was the second to last player to make the JV team.
Despite my lack of immediate success, I loved the challenge of figuring out how to get better. I started tracking my statistics for each round, and reviewed them to figure out where to focus my attention in practice. By the time I was a senior, I was a regular starter in varsity matches.
In the midst of all of this I began to develop a love for physics and math. I was first introduced to physics through a novel that had nothing to do with physics, but did describe the famous double slit experiment, which showed that very small particles could interfere with each other like waves, even when the experiment used only one particle a time! As I started taking physics classes in high school, I found it so amazing that I could write down a formula describing the speed of a ball rolling down a ramp, and the ball would follow my formula every time! The idea that reality could be described by mathematical rules was so compelling I knew I wanted to make it my field of study after high school.
I went to St. Olaf College – a small liberal arts school in Northfield, Minnesota – where I majored in physics and math. I also joined the golf team, which was one of the best experiences of my college career. St. Olaf plays in Division III of the NCAA, and while no one I competed against is heading for the PGA Tour, the competition among the top players was still very intense. Thanks to the improvements I made in high school I was able to be a starter on the team from Day 1.
I continued to search for ways to improve my game, and eventually I began applying the investigative scientific tools I was learning in my physics classes. For example, at the end of my freshman season I noticed that relative to par I was playing par 5s worse than par 4s, and par 4s worse than par 3s. This goes against conventional wisdom, which says that par 5s are the easiest because you usually have a short approach shot, while par 3s are the hardest because the approach shot is usually long. Why were my statistics reversed? I came to determine that it had to do with the consistency of my driver. Off the tee I was putting myself in places where I couldn’t hit the green, whereas on par 3s I always had a clear shot to the green. Par 5s were worse than par 4s because occasionally on par 4s I would hit a shorter club off the tee. I spent the winter working on improving my driver accuracy and my game got much better.
Eventually I found all the available options for keeping my statistics to be insufficient, so I wrote my own software to analyze my and my teammates’ rounds. On the way home from tournaments, we would pass my laptop around the van and each enter in our data, and then my program would let them know how they were doing in a wide variety of statistical categories. We could see whether specific clubs were causing us trouble, or if certain misses were worse than others. I learned that I played twice as well from the left rough than from the right rough. The reason, I realized, was that I hit a draw with my irons. Hitting from the left rough made me aim more right and draw, which was easy, while hitting from the right rough required me to aim left and fade, which was hard. I began aiming down the left-center of fairways to give myself more draw opportunities.
All of this analysis led me to improve even more over my 4 years in college than I did in high school. I was team captain my junior and senior years, and was the runner-up in my final conference championship. During my senior year I even cracked the top 20 in national rankings. One of my greatest golf accomplishments though came the year after I graduated, when I was the medalist in the local round of US Open qualifying.
Since then I continue to play in state and local tournaments, and I continue to try to find new ways to improve my game. I decided I wasn’t done learning physics, so I went to graduate school at the University of Minnesota. In 2017 I earned my Ph.D, using computational simulations to study liquid crystals, the strange material found in most phone and TV screens. I continue to find new ways to connect the tools and methods I use as a physicist to improve my golf game, and I still find these insights paying off.
About this blog
As I said at the top, I hope to make this blog a resource for credible, scientific analysis on subjects relating to the game of golf. I hope to explore conventional wisdom and determine when it is appropriate and when it needs updating. Over the last few years, I have investigated a number of topics – particularly relating to course management and optimizing practice – and I plan to present my results here as well. Hopefully you will find the results useful for your own game. Additionally, I hope these discussions encourage you to approach golf as a scientist – with a curious mind, healthy skepticism, and a willingness to experiment.
It is also important to mention what this blog is not:
- This is not an instructional blog. I am not a teaching pro, and have very little knowledge about swing mechanics beyond my own. It is possible that we will discuss how physics principles like energy and torque apply to the golf swing, but I will leave the details of your pronating elbow to the professionals.
- This is not an equipment blog. There is certainly a lot of physics involved with the manufacturing and fitting of clubs and balls, but it is not my main concern. The insights to be gained in analyzing the COR of various materials is important for engineers to explore, but I am more interested in learning about what I can do differently as a player to shoot lower scores.
- This blog isn’t (primarily) about reacting to the PGA Tour. There are lots of great writers reporting and reacting to the results of last week’s Tour event. While I certainly follow the PGA and LPGA Tours, and I may comment on the results when they highlight a particular concept, I will not be posting about my reaction to an amazing finish.
So thanks for checking out my blog! I hope you will find something here that makes you curious, makes you think, and maybe even makes you a better player.