What separates college and tour players?

MikkelGolf.com Newsletter #14

Last week we got to know Coach Schaloum and the GCU Men’s Golf Team. You can find that article HERE.

This week, we promised you a discussion and a look at some Clippd metrics for college golf averages. As a reminder, the central question that prompted this whole project for Coach Schaloum and I:

What separates college and tour players?

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“What separates college and tour players?” is a very hard question to answer firmly. As a PGA Tour caddy told us “This is such a huge question you have asked and I don’t have one answer for you… There are so many factors.” However, we (and everyone we’ve talked to) think it’s a really important question!

Here’s what a few people who are experience at both the collegiate and professional levels answered:

“Tee shots and putting” says Adrien Mork - Florida Atlantic Head Coach and former DP World Tour player. Eric Frazzetta, who is coaching at Cal Poly and is a former Tour caddy, lists lag putting, penalty shots, and shots around the green. PGA Tour caddy and former college coach, Brett Swedberg, mentions God-given talent, understanding one’s swing, mental fortitude, chipping, and putting. Logan Goulding, another current Tour caddy and former coach told us, “I’d say the biggest difference is their scrambling ability… they almost always miss in the correct spots and can get up and down very frequently.”

The answers from people who have experience with both professional and collegiate golf varies.

As college golfers and PGA Tour players play on different venues, the statistical comparison will never be perfectly apples to apples. Further, Shotlink records the PGA Tour data while college golf relies on player entry into various stats portals. The PGA Tour competes on the same courses every year in similar conditions, while college golfers are subject to anything from goat ranches to Major Championship courses. However, in an effort to distinguish what the biggest separators are, we can look at what data we have and make some assumptions…

The GCU team uses Clippd to analyze their performance. Clippd was generous enough to let us use whatever screenshots or other material we needed for this article. They also took the time to explain some of their metrics to us over a call. They got an awesome team and an interesting approach. Thank you, Clippd!

When our discussion started a couple of weeks ago, Coach Schaloum sent me screenshots of the average college golf “shot qualities.” “Shot quality” is a Clippd metric gauging what the name implies, the quality of your shot. When we look at college averages in the photos below, 100 index represents PGA Tour “shot quality.” Above 100 indexes are better than PGA Tour shots, and below 100 indexes reflect worse than PGA Tour shots. Clippd has used machine learning models with a host of different parameters from PGA Tour data. For example, they’ve used a weather API to add wind information to the Shotlink data. When the college golfer adds wind information to their approach shot in Clippd, the algorithm will compare that shot scenario to the thousands of PGA Tour shots with similar conditions.

Strokes gained is wonderful and super insightful. I use and evaluate strokes gained statistics with all of my players. However, it does have some flaws as it’s an aggregated calculation. For example, on the PGA Tour, the average score to hole out from 173 yards in the fairway is 3.00. Further, putting from 33 feet away averages 2.00 to hole out. So, if you hit your approach shot from 173 yards in the fairway to the green and 33 feet away, you’ve gained 0.00 strokes on approach for that hole as this is a PGA Tour average quality shot. However, not all 173 yard fairway shots are created equal. If the pin was tucked close to water and you had a stiff breeze into you, hitting it on the green and 33 feet away would be a fantastic shot. Clippd’s “shot quality” would capture that context and return an index of well above 100.

I really like the angle and thought process of shot quality. It captures an added layer of Golf-IQ. Pictured below are the Clippd shot qualities for one of the GCU players. You’ll see both their personal shot quality (top left in the screenshots) as well as the Male D1 College shot qualities (top right in the screenshots). These were the indexes Coach Schaloum first sent over:

If we focus on the college averages, we can see the biggest gap in shot quality between a PGA Tour player and a college golfer is Around the Green (as the college index is 86). Putting and Approach both have similar indexes (94 and 93 respectively), while Off The Tee has above 100 index for college golfers. In our meeting with Clippd, I asked about the Off The Tee shot quality as I don’t think it’s plausible that the average college golfer is better than a PGA Tour player Off The Tee. If you took the top 25 college players in the country, you could convince me of this as I know how long and straight the best college players are hitting their drivers these days. However, the average college golfer being better than the PGA Tour Off the Tee is probably not right.

It turns out the starting distance of each hole has a default yardage in Clippd, but can (and should be) adjusted on data entry by the player. It’s likely that this yardage often remains at the default setting. During tournament play, most courses end up being played shorter than on the scorecard, therefore giving the player artificially long drives. They likely enter the accurate approach numbers as this portion has no default yardage. So, for the average college golfer on aggregate, I think we can conclude we need to take the Off The Tee Shot Quality with a grain of salt due to data entry.

As shot quality around the green for the average college golfer has the lowest (worst) index, Coach Schaloum suggested the biggest gap between tour players and college golfers could be short-game. In addition to the numbers above, we saw last week how the GCU coaching staff has had a lot of success emphasizing and coaching short-game. In a text, he wrote to me:

“Clippd data on this is fascinating. The largest drop off by far is Around the Green. I think laying this out and then showing the strokes gained differential between chipping it to four feet (90% make rate) vs. eight feet (50% make rate) would be beneficial for players to see how to close the gap the fastest. I don’t see juniors practice chipping/pitching nearly enough and rarely if ever do they have a short-game instructor.”

I thought: “Interesting! Here’s a coach at a program that’s having success who has a different philosophy than myself.”

Personally, during my time as a college golf coach, my bias was always towards good ball-strikers. Ball-control was the number one skill I was looking for when recruiting. Junior players who struck it in the middle of the face and had command of their golf ball always got my attention. The reason being that I could see those players take their games to tougher course set-ups in college and beyond. I can’t deny that my preference is likely influenced by where I grew up. Hitting a ball into a net for half the year makes you work hard on your technique during your teens. The physical components are the main areas of focus during the long winter seasons. As a golfer, growing up in a Scandinavian country lends itself to being very knowledgeable about swing mechanics, TrackMan numbers, strength training, etc. I think this background helped me evaluate good ball-strikers in a sound way when recruiting.

However, my background and bias towards good ball-strikers definitely left me with a blind-spot in recruiting as well. I always had a hard time evaluating the gritty player who kind of sprayed it, but got up and down from everywhere. Because I grew up hitting into a net half the year, I probably undervalue the skill it takes to get it up-and-down out of soggy Bermuda grass with something on the line. Junior players growing up in Texas (or other southern states), play a ton of golf and stay in touch with scoring all year round. They likely understand the game better. At least the part about getting the ball in the hole. Maybe there’s something I could learn from Coach Schaloum and GCU here - a program that’s having success focusing on short-game.

There’s a Norwegian expression that’s loosely translated to “take it as good fish,” meaning “accept the idea or argument being presented” or “we trust you.” If we take Clippd’s college golf shot qualities as good fish, let’s see what truly is the biggest gap. As the shot qualities are on a per-shot basis, we need to make some assumptions on how many shots from each category the average college golfer would have per round.

Off the Tee | 14 tee shots x (103-100) = +42 index points vs PGA Tour

Approach | 17 approach shots x (93-100) = -119 index points vs PGA Tour

Around the Green | 9 short-game shots x (86-100) = -126 index points vs PGA Tour

Putting | 31 putts x (94-100) = -186 index points vs PGA Tour

After a few assumptions and with this logic, Putting is the biggest overall gap on a per-round basis. Around the Green is next, then Approach, and finally Off The Tee (which we know we need to take with a grain of salt).

This calculation is far from a perfect science. For example, in my original suggestion to Coach Schaloum, I started with 6 shots Around the Green per round. To include Around the Green shots on reachable par 4s and 5s and some other scenarios, he thought 10 shots per round would be more accurate as we’re talking about the average college golfer. That change in frequency of shots changes the total calculated gap quite a lot. There’s obviously room for some manipulation of the numbers here. However, the intention of breaking it down this way is to find a middle ground regarding the frequency of shots, and get an idea of the overall picture.

My (Mikkel’s) personal interpretation of the opinions we’ve received plus the shot quality exercise is this: From Mark Broadie’s work, we know that approach play is the biggest separator between tour players. Next comes Off The Tee, then Putting, and finally Around the Green. A big reason why Around the Green is the least separating skill on tour is the frequency of shots. Just based off of this, my personal opinion is that the order of importance most likely is true for college golfers as well. It’s hard to find solid ground for anything else, in my opinion. At least in the data. Although tour players and college golfers play on different venues, we play the same game. I therefore think the separators between the average college player and the average tour player are likely the same as amongst tour players. Further, the best college players turn into successful touring professionals right out of college without re-engineering their games. So if we’re boiling it down to the number one separator of the four areas, I say it’s approach play.

Here are Coach Schaloum’s take-aways in his words: I contend that while this may be true on Tour (the biggest separator being approach play), the biggest gap between the average collegiate player and someone who is pro-ready is the short game. Juniors should look at the Clippd data and recognize that in order to play college golf, you need to get off the tee well which means 300-yard drives with a one-way miss. Largely thanks to new technology, it is clear college golfers are close to professionals off the tee. However, young players should spend much more time lag putting and learning new chip shots rather than focusing on repetitions on the driving range. When on the range, practice course management by firing away from pins and eliminating one side of the green. Finally, we used 31 putts in our assumptions rather than the Tour Average of 29. You can save 2 strokes putting by chipping it closer and minimizing three putts. That said, by going through this process, I realize that my focus in recruiting should be finding good ball strikers.

We haven’t gotten to a unified answer as a result of this article. Coach Schaloum contents short-game is the biggest separator while I content it’s approach play. However, the back-and-forth has opened my eyes a bit to seeing that there’s a lot of value in what GCU is doing. If we go back to Coach Schaloum’s initial text to me, his idea was that it “would be beneficial for players to see how to close the gap the fastest.” I think he’s right. This might be the reason they’ve had so much success focusing on short-game. With good coaching, and an up-tick in practice quantities around the green, you can get better quickly.

The same is not true for ball-striking. Off the Tee and Approach skills are hard to build as the process takes time and is rarely straight forward. When a player has turned ball-striking into an asset though, the floor of their performance is elevated considerably.

Strokes gained putting has the most volatility day-to-day, making it the most important area for patience over time to decipher if you’re getting better or not. However, short-game might be the quickest area to see improvement. Especially if you’re a good ball-striker already. The gap in “shot quality” shown by Clippd for college golfers might be an indication of this. Further, the GCU Lopes is another indication that short-game focus can improve a team quickly. As Coach Schaloum texted me: “I don’t see juniors practice chipping/pitching nearly enough and rarely if ever do they have a short-game instructor.”

Thank you Coach Schaloum for contributing to these past two posts! Best of luck to the GCU Lopes this post-season!

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