Do substitutions in college golf work? 🔄

Mikkelgolf.com Newsletter #11

In the 2023 Men’s Division 1 Regional- and National Championships, there were 27 substitutions. I charted all of these substitutions in an effort to figure out: Do subs really work?

You might be thinking, “Wait?? Subs in golf, is that a real thing?” If you’re not up-to-date with all of the college golf rules, I don’t blame you. To boil it down to a simple explanation: Texas’ Beau Hossler famously tore his labrum during the Semifinal match of the NCAA Championship in 2016, which was covered live on the Golf Channel. Texas had no option to substitute in a healthy player at the time. I believe substitutions in college golf had been discussed prior to 2016, but this incident really got the ball rolling. Changes were made, and substitutions are now allowed in NCAA post-season. In addition, most conferences allow substitutions during their Conference Championships as well.

How it works? Coaches can bring an extra player to the tournament. The substitute plays the practice round in normal fashion, but doesn’t play the first round. It is up to the coach to substitute of their liking. The coaches have up until 10 minutes before the substituted tee time to inform officials of the substitution. The sub can be made for any reason - injury or not.

As most substitutions are not injury-related, they are made in hope of the sub shooting a lower score and thereby helping the team score. As a coach, a substitution is a very hard decision. If one of your players is struggling with their game, there is no guarantee that the sub will come in and shoot a lower score. How much should you value the course knowledge that the initial player has built up during the first round or two? How fresh has your substitute stayed by not competing? There are countless questions with imperfect information asked by coaches debating substitutions.

So let’s see if it actually works:

As we can see, in 2023 NCAA Division 1 Men’s Golf Post-Season, there were 27 substitutions made. A few of these were “back-and-forth substitutions,” meaning player 1 was subbed out to player 2 following the first round, and then subbed back in for the third round.

I’ve made one column for the average score of the player being subbed out. I deemed it a successful substitution if the first round score of the subbed-in player was lower than the average of the subbed-out player. The result: 17 successful substitutions. That gives us a “success-rate” of 63%.

When aggregating the scores, we find that the average scores of the subbed-out player is 77.05, while the average of the subbed-in player is 74.81.

When we break it down by what round the substation was made, the sample sizes get quite small. But we can see an emerging trend, the later in the tournament the substitution happens, the more likely it is to be a “successful” sub. At first glance, this might be counter-intuitive as the subbed-in player is further removed from their practice round. However, the increased “success-rate” makes sense because the coaches have more information later on in a tournament. If a player struggles during their first round, some of that could be variance (bad luck). But if the player struggles over two rounds, some of that variance is washed out. The player is simply not playing their best, and the player on the sideline is likely more equipped for the challenge.

From the coaching side, I find substitutions interesting to look into as it’s a direct impact you can have as a coach. I will definitely keep looking into substitutions by following what happens across Men’s and Women’s golf, and across the divisions. I want to look into larger sample sizes in order to get even better answers.

How does this “success-rate” of substitutions compare to to what you thought?

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Have a great week!

Best,

Mikkel Bjech-Andresen

Golf Coach & Analyst

Oslo, Norway