"How misguided course setups are holding back women’s golf"

I’m not sure about that headline to Beth Ann Nichol’s Golfweek look at the role of course setup on the LPGA Tour and how it could be impacting views of “the product.”

There is a lot to chew on in the piece and Nichols covered many bases for what is a tricky topic. I came away feeling for what the LPGA staff faces in trying to set up a course.

Because having seen the PGA Tour rule staff evolve and make so many adjustments off of ShotLink data, they’ve gotten so good at finding that balance between risk and reward. But without similar data, combined with pace and distance disparity matters greater than the PGA Tour, and the job the LPGA Tour staff faces preparing courses appears really tough.

On the data issue, Nichols writes:

The USGA used volunteers and paid caddies a stipend during the 2014 U.S. Open to collect over 50,000 data points to determine how players approached each hole on No. 2. On average, there was a 25-yard difference between the men and women in terms of approach shots.

They set out to create similar hole locations and green speeds for both championships. But green firmness was the biggest change from week to week, given that women, as Kirk noted, do not hit the golf ball as high or create as much spin.

And this part on information is particularly interesting but also discredits the headline’s “misguided” reference since much of the issue may be “misinformed” setup. This is a teaser with more at the link to consider:

It’s difficult to tell the story of an LPGA players’ game beyond the final score because only the most basic stats exist on the women’s tour, making the jobs of rules officials, broadcasters and players all the more difficult.

Santiago Carranza, a former software engineer who now makes a living in finance, started a detailed stats project out of necessity to help girlfriend Gaby Lopez look for areas of improvement. It has since turned into ABX Tour, a Golf Analytics system aimed at helping the entire tour.

Carranza, who doesn’t work with the tour but met with officials late last year, collects round-by-round data from dozens of players, including nine 2020 winners, to create a benchmark of standards so that players can put context to their own personal stats.