THE bare figures on a scorecard often fail to tell the true story.
There is the tale, for example, of the club player at Coombe Wood,
Surrey, whose errant approach to the sixteenth green fell down the
vertical exhaust of a tractor. A few moments later, after compression
built up, the ball shot back out like a rocket and came to rest close to
the pin.
The figure 3 on the card, if that is indeed what it was, is a very
poor official record of that incident.
In the professional game, there has long been recognition that the
bare scores per hole are insufficient for those in search of the
absolute truth. So we have weekly outpourings of stroke averages (leader
Colin Montgomerie 70.00), driving accuracy (John Bland 93.75% fairways
hit), sand saves (Peter Fowler 55.64%), birdies (Costantino Rocca 278),
eagles (Peter Baker, Peter Mitchell, Darren Clarke 12), and so on.
Interestingly, there has been a recent change in the putting stats.
Previously, listings were in putts per round, but as that tended to
throw up leaders who had low ratings in the greens-in-regulation
category, and therefore were always more likely to have their first
putts from much closer range, the European Tour have changed that aspect
to ''putts per green in regulation.''
Those at the top, who before would have had figures of around 28 per
round, now have averages to three decimal points (Michael Campbell top
on 1.716 per green).
Great stuff -- if you like stats.
How, then, can we club golfers analyse our scores? In a roundabout way
-- as a result of so far fruitless attempts to discover the precise
difference between 90 and 100 compression balls -- a copy of ''Golf: the
Scientific Way,'' edited by Alastair Cochran, has come into my
possession.
The complicated data on ball performances discouraged any further
research into compression, but an article by American golf analyst, Dr
Lucius Riccio, entitled ''What it takes to break 80,'' caught the
attention instead.
Isn't that, after all, the realistic ambition of the majority of club
golfers?
Having analysed the scores of 100 golfers of widely ranging ability
averaging eight rounds each -- a total of some 60,000 shots -- he has
come up with a formula which he calls, after himself, ''Riccio's Rule.''
This rule states: score equals 95 minus two times the number of greens
hit in regulation (GIR). Therefore, you must have eight GIRs to break 80
(95 minus two times eight equals 79). One might imagine that this
formula would vary according to standard scratch score, but he does not
say so, and I am frightened to ask.
GIR, though, he found, had the highest correlation with score. With
1.0 a perfect match GIR tallied 0.93, followed by distance the ball is
hit (0.64), number of badly-hit shots (0.63), iron-club accuracy (0.54),
and putting (also 0.54).
Riccio notes that the often-used excuse for a poor score, putting, is
an illusion: ''This study indicates that if a professional did the
putting for a golfer who shoots 90, his score would almost never go
below 80. At most, he may pick up four strokes, most likely one to
three.''
Accepting, then, that Riccio's Rule is correct -- and the European
Tour change in relating putting to GIR hints that it might be -- the
position is thus: If you have more GIRs than required for your score
then your short game needs attention -- unless there were a lot of fluke
shots via a tractor exhaust; if less, then your full swing is worse than
it should be for your scoring ability.
Something, perhaps, to mull over next time you step into a bath to
replay your last round in your head. Just think, 13 GIRs equals a score
of 69, but let's not get carried away.
On the other hand, you may prefer to head for the bar, forget all
about it, and tell Riccio what he can do with his rule.
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