Advanced metrics in sports have become a way of life these days. Led by the Sabermetricians in baseball who developed such arcana as WAR, OPS, WAPO and other indecipherable metrics (honk if you know what the acronym SABR represents), the science of advanced stats has now extended into all sports.
In baseball, WAR (which stands for “Wins Above Replacement”, which stands for “A single number that presents the number of wins the player added to the team above what a replacement player would add.” This value includes defensive support and includes additional value for high leverage situations.) is being used by many of baseball’s Hall of Fame voters to compare candidates on the same basis as traditional factors such as home runs, wins and strikeouts. For example, 300 wins used to be the benchmark for entrance into the Hall for pitchers. Now, since there are no candidates with 300 wins nor will there be for the very foreseeable future , due to varying factors, the most significant being laser-like focus on protecting a pitchers’ arms (moving them to the DL at the drop of a hat or pitch velocity, the acceptance of Tommy John surgery as commonplace which removes a pitcher from the active roster for at least one season if not two, and, of course, the five-man rotation) pundits are using metrics like WAR to boost the candidacy of pitchers such as Mike Mussina and Curt Schilling, both of whim fell substantially short of 300 wins. (Nine of the 13 full-time starting pitchers from the modern era 9post-1960) selected to the Hall since 1989 accumulated 300 wins; all but 2 had WARs above the average for HOF pitchers, according to Baseball Reference.com. On the other hand, Phil Niekro and Bert Blyleven posted career WARs higher than those of Pedro Martinez, Steve Carlton and Nolan Ryan. Go figure.)
The advanced metrics phenomenon has extended to statistics in the NFL, NBA and NHL. (Google “Pythagorean Expectation” along with the professional sport of your choice; the resulting information would dazzle the ol’ Greek philosopher himself.)
Advanced statistics have even managed to infiltrate the game of golf. There are many interesting categories, none of which will ever be used to foster the candidacy of a candidate to election in the WGHOF. That’s because there is one overarching metric in professional golf, which is not a team sport: tournament victories.
But there is one, potentially fascinating metric for pro golfers I can’t find anywhere in the official stat universe: time of round played. (An informal study by Peter Kostis for Golf.com was quite revealing. Check it out here.here
In a related development, the game of golf has a problem. In a word, its popularity is plummeting. A Washington Post article in 2016 analyzed data from the National Golf Foundation and found that:
Years of declining participation have
damaged the sport’s future and mired its top businesses in
sand traps. The number of U.S. golfers who played at least
one round a year has dropped from 30 million in 2005 to 24
million last year, the lowest level since the mid-1990s, data from the National
Golf Foundation show.
Even worse: Participation by young golfers,
ages 18 to 34, has plunged 30
percent over the past 20 years. An NGF survey found
that 57 percent of American kids and teens thought negatively of the
game; the top response was that it was “boring.”
Ben Everill on PGATOUR.COM reported on January 3, 2017, that “Golf is looking for ways to speed up, but Jason Day will be slowing down in 2017.” Day blamed his performance during his long winless run on the tour last year on playing faster than usual. “I think there were a couple things that I didn't do as well the second half in the season. I wasn't as deliberate going into a golf shot. Gathering the information, I wasn't as deliberate,” Day said.
Day went on to talk about the pace of play in tournament golf. "Obviously that's a big subject in golf, to speed up the game. In my opinion, I don't care so much about speeding up my game. I've got to get back to what makes me good. If that means I have to back off five times, then I'm going to back off five times before I have to actually hit the shot.”
Everill quoted Day as saying: “Obviously, everyone wants to speed up the game. Obviously, that's a big subject in golf, to speed up the game. But in my opinion, I don't care so much about speeding up my game. I've got to get back to what makes me good.”
Joel Beall of Golf Digest reported that Day said at his press conference that:
"Because for recreational golf, I understand. But for golfers that are trying to win and that one shot that could take you out of a playoff, that's important, and you need to make sure that you get everything correct. Because we're driven by results; we want to be the best and we want to do everything, but like the Average Joe just doesn't get it. I think that was just one of the things that I wasn't as deliberate that I should have been, and that's what I've got to try and do a lot more, is be a little bit more deliberate going into a shot and make sure I do everything correctly."
Oh boy. Just when we need. A pro telling amateur golfers to play slower.
The original golf parody band, Jake Trout and the Flounders (pro golfers Peter Jacobsen, the late Payne Stewart and Mark Lye) bemoaned this topic years ago in their epic take on Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine” entitled “Slow Play’. Listen here and enjoy.
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| We Miss You, Payne |
Years ago I played the Old Course at Ballybunion in Ireland. As you approached the 12th tee there was a sign that read “You should have teed off one hour and twenty minutes ago.” There were no electric carts allowed on the course at that time (except for the one brought over by Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, another story for another time). Everyone walked, carrying or pulling their clubs. Imagine that. Would that this admonishment were posted on every 12th tee box in America. Help the Game of Golf be great again – PLAY FASTER!
Copyright (C) R.E. Kelly 2012 - 2017
AMDG
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