Oakland Hills: 2008 PGA vs. 1996 U.S. Open
In the post PGA coverage, Brett Avery offers a rather astounding chart in the Golf World stat package (PDF).
Now I'm in favor of the groove rule change because it has the potential to restore the importance of firm greens, but will only be meaningful if an increase in fairway width comes with it.
However, the USGA and R&A continue to contend that armed with V-grooves, the world's best will be forced to respect rough and therefore they will have to throttle back in an attempt to hit more fairways. In other words, it's a backdoor way of rolling back distance increases. I still believe it's pure fantasy, but hey, if it makes them happy and leads to other positives, so be it.
Yet no study has determined how much fairway narrowing has played a role in the driving accuracy decreases so regularly cited as the cause for regulating grooves.
So here we have Oakland Hills, host to the 1996 U.S. Open and on the cusp of the distance explosion, and again host to the 2008 PGA where a remodel narrowed fairways and rough was farmed and coifed.
The 2008 field median was 30 yards longer off the tee than in 1996 while the fairway's hit median dropped 8 fairways.
The governing bodies would like us to believe that these dramatic increases in distance and decreases in accuracy are a result of players finding themselves armed with U-grooves that persuades them to flog drives with reckless disregard for the awful fairway contours crafted to take driver out of their bag.
Seems in the case of Oakland Hills that the radically improved driver/ball combination (oh and of course, the increased athleticism!) along with a further reduction in width since 1996 was likely much more significant than the grooves in fostering such radical differences in distance and accuracy.
Friday, August 15, 2008 at 07:50 PM
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Reader Comments (11)
In other words, I believe you when you contend fairways are being set up more narrow--but does anyone know by how much?
Another thing that has to be considered is that increased distance magnifies directional error. Even with the same fairway widths, AND no bombing/flogging, longer driving would almost have to result in lower accuracy ratings.
Finally, the statistic the USGA is using to substantiate its hypothesis on bomb & gouge is a coefficient of correlation/regression type statistic. This shows correlation, but tells us nothing about causation. In other words, the correlation between driving accuracy and money earned is decreasing. This does NOT prove, however, that less accurate driving is the cause.
Finally, even if you accept their correlation stat, it's a very messy one. Correlating the ranks in driving distance and earnings is fraught with noise--it doesn't correct for number of tournaments played, for instance.
I, however, have a feeling that today's players, used to getting ideal spin for all types of shots, will freak when they start hitting flyers, and especially when they lose some control on greenside short shots. It wouldn't surprise me at all if after a year of two, you started seeing PGA Tour players requesting balls which spin more around the greens. There is very little distance pressure on modern players; I'm guessing they'd give up yards willingly if they had to to get more spin around the green.
In 2008, the winner took 108 putts, and only hit 41 greens.
So when they tightened/lengthened the course, great putting with average ball striking won. When the course was more open, great ball-striking with average putting won.
The picture I get is that Paddy played a much less consistent game. Missed a lot more fairways and greens. Made far more bogeys. But also took 13 less putts and made nearly twice as many birdies. No surprise, given the miraculous putting we saw him produce on the back nine Sunday.
As for who was hitting approach shots from closer, Jones' average off the tee was 20 yards less than Paddy. But Oakland Hills was some 250 to 300 yards shorter as well. Would be interesting to see exactly what clubs they hit on their approaches, but sounds to me like they were likely pretty similar.
Loft gets discussed quite a bit, but the more I think about it the more confused I get. Static loft measurement is just that, a static number. The club does many things dynamically through impact. Modern head designs have lower CG than typical 1970s design, so the dynamic loft at impact may be unchanged. Also, the interaction of ball and club, and the rotation of the head around vertically around the center of gravity during the hit affects spin (vertical gear effect), which also affects distance and trajectory.
In other words, you simply can't make a meaningful comparison of shots played with the same numbered iron across so many years. It just doesn't make sense. Nicklaus's 1971 5 iron is much different, in many, many ways, than the 5 iron used by a typical tour pro today; the only thing that's the same is the number. Even today's muscleback clubs are very different than '70s vintage blades, with different blade lengths, sole dimensions, etc.