Pro minimum distance and maximum dispersion?

[barrybridges]

Does anyone know if there has ever been any research or stats which looks at the average dispersion vs distance for professional players?

E.g. the average professional can hit a 7i 155 yards with an average dispersion of 3.5 metres.

 

[Alex1975]

I am sure you could get that info if you hunt about a bit.


PS: Damn look at your handicap fall!!!

 

[One Planer]

E.g. the average professional can hit a 7i 155 yards with an average dispersion of 3.5 metres.

I would have thought a pro would be hitting a 7 iron alot further myself???

 

[StrangelyBrown]

Hi Baz,
Lots of stats here, although I can't find the exact one you're looking for

http://www.pgatour.com/r/stats/

Cheers
SB

 

[Smiffy]

E.g. the average professional can hit a 7i 155 yards with an average dispersion of 3.5 metres.

I would have thought a pro would be hitting a 7 iron alot further myself???

I guess that was just an example of the sort of stats he was looking for.
My estimate is that most pro's would be looking to hit a 7 iron at least 170 in ideal conditions.

 

[barrybridges]

E.g. the average professional can hit a 7i 155 yards with an average dispersion of 3.5 metres.

I would have thought a pro would be hitting a 7 iron alot further myself???

I guess that was just an example of the sort of stats he was looking for.
My estimate is that most pro's would be looking to hit a 7 iron at least 170 in ideal conditions.

Yep - sorry - was just making up an example. I'm sure they can hit it further!

What I was interested in was knowing how the dispersion rate alters by distance.

e.g. a pro on average hits a 9i to within 1.2m, a 3w to within 2.6m etc.

Or - thinking not in terms of clubs but in terms of pure distances - from 200 yards out a pro on average will hit it to 2.4m etc.

In an ideal stat-tastic world it would also be good to see the dispersion of the dispersion (no pun intended). E.g.

The worst tour player hits 200 yards to within 4.2m on average / the best hits 200 yards to within 0.6m on average.

Etc.

I've had a dig around but google isn't proving very friendly at the moment.

 

[One Planer]

Can I just ask Barry.

Why would you find this information useful?

I'm just curious?

 

[Philm]

Can I just ask Barry.

Why would you find this information useful?

I'm just curious?

What I was interested in was knowing how the dispersion rate alters by distance.

he seems just generally interested by what he has said.

interesting and useful are to seperate matters.

i suppose it would be sort of interesting to know how a pro consistancy changes with clubs/distance choices/changes.

Phil

 

[barrybridges]

Can I just ask Barry.

Why would you find this information useful?

I'm just curious?

No particular reason - just interested for comparison reasons!

It would be particularly interesting to see the dispersion of the dispersion too (no pun intended):

e.g. compare dispersion stats for the best tour and worst tour pros.

For example:

The best tour pro can hit from 200 yards to within 1.6m on average

The worst tour pro can hit from 200 yards to within 3.8m on average

It would then also be interesting to see how the average club golfer stacks up against that.

 

[barrybridges]

By the way - just continuing on with my answer to that question - the core reason for being interested in that is as a result of an observation I've made.

If you read this forum - or any of the golf mags - you'll see an obsession with distance (not to get into a debate on that), but I was just curious as to see why nobody compares dispersion stats which are surely just as - if not more - important.

Why do we - as golfers - record our distances so meticulously but fail to record our dispersion?

When you're about to hit a shot, for example, you make decisions based on how far you need to hit the shot, but you don't tend to think about your possible dispersion. You just 'assume' that you're going to hit it straight, right?

When I say 'assume' I mean you don't always consider the likelihood of it going wrong. You might think that might happen IF it goes wrong, but you don't consider the percentage chance of it going wrong.

Classic example:

You're 160 yards from the pin, guarded by bunkers to the right and left near the front.

The average club golfer thinks 'mmm...160 yards...no wind...for me I reckon that's a 6i so that's the shot I'll play...if I get it wrong then I'm probably in the bunker'

In that example, there was a decision to be made and that decision was 'what club should I play for the distance?'.

But actually, isn't there a second decision to be made which is 'What shot is going to % give me the best chance of getting on the green? Is a more relaxed 5i going to give me better dispersion chances than a 6i? What would a hard 7i do on my dispersion stats?'

If I knew that I could hit it 200 yards to within 10 yards or 100 yards to within 2 yards, I would probably make different decisions on the course than I do. As it is, I'm in the camp that just hits it in blind faith that it's going to go straight, before getting angry when I find my ball in a bunker (even though it's entirely predictable).

Does that make sense?

I do think it's important and not just something to consider 'out of interest', because it's a critical part of assessing how well you play. In my lessons so far I don't think my instructor has ever mentioned dispersion; the talk is all about yards and metres which seems odd.

 

[Deleted member 1147]

Interesting point Barry,
I was reading a competitor magazine the other day, mainly because my coach is a TG teaching pro.
They did a big bit about the various drivers on the market and measured average distance & average dispersion for a variety of different golfers, and gave top 5's for each.
I suppose the best driver for each player is probably the one which is closest to the top of both sections.

 

[barrybridges]

Interesting point Barry,
I was reading a competitor magazine the other day, mainly because my coach is a TG teaching pro.
They did a big bit about the various drivers on the market and measured average distance & average dispersion for a variety of different golfers, and gave top 5's for each.
I suppose the best driver for each player is probably the one which is closest to the top of both sections.

Exactly! But knowing what the 'average' stats are (e.g. distance AND dispersion) would be a massive help to knowing where your game needs improvement.

Ignoring the short game for a moment, how can you tell how 'accurate' you are? As in, what metrics do you judge your performance by?

GIR is one. It tells you if your distance is 'ok', but also you need to be reasonably accurate with your second shot (or 3rd) to hit GIR positively.

A green can be 20 yards wide though, which could be the difference between a 1 putt or a 3 putt (reasonably) so in that sense GIR is not very useful because you could have a good GIR or a bad GIR (if that makes sense).

Putts per GIR is another 'non-useful' stat. It doesn't indicate how long your putts are, but it also excludes inaccurate approach shots (where you might chip on and putt closer than you would than had you hit GIR with your approach).

Being able to know your dispersion stat not only affects your choice of shot, but also gives you an idea of your stats around the green. If I can hit a 9i to within 3m rather than 6m, I would bet that'll save me 3 shots (putts, to be specific) a round.

But we don't measure dispersion...

In the age-old debate we often ask 'would you rather be accurate or long' and the answer is, of course, 'both'. We know our distances but who honestly knows their dispersion?

Some examples of why I think it's key:

I know that I'm crap at getting out of greenside bunkers.

I'm 180 yards out from the aforementioned green I detailed above.

180 yards with no wind for me would probably be a 4 or 5 iron. I'd know I can hit my 4i to within 10 metres but I also know I can hit my 6i to within 2 metres.

I'd think to myself, the 10 metres gives me a very narrow margin for error - I'm quite likely to get it in the bunker if I get it wrong. Statistically, I'd be better laying up with the 6i where I can't get it wrong, then LW and putt which will probably score me better than a 4i >> Bunker >> SW >> 2 putt.

Maybe I'm not the norm though!

 

[USER1999]

They do at a custom fit session.

 

[One Planer]

I agree with what you're saying Barry and you make several excellent points.

However

As has been said many times on here. For us mortals, hitting the perfect shot into a green isn't guaranteed no matter what stats you have. Take the situation you describe:

"I'm 180 yards out from the aforementioned green I detailed above.

180 yards with no wind for me would probably be a 4 or 5 iron. I'd know I can hit my 4i to within 10 metres but I also know I can hit my 6i to within 2 metres.

I'd think to myself, the 10 metres gives me a very narrow margin for error - I'm quite likely to get it in the bunker if I get it wrong. Statistically, I'd be better laying up with the 6i where I can't get it wrong, then LW and putt which will probably score me better than a 4i >> Bunker >> SW >> 2 putt"

Isn't this a case of course management?

Yes, we know how far we hit a specific club and conditions may be near perfect, but this still doesn't guarantee a crisp ball contact. You could hit it fat, thin, slice it, hook it or even uncork the shot of your life and send it screaming through the green. If you do fat the strike and the ball travells 30 yards nearer the green, you have the same calculations to run through again.

You also may know what your dispersion is per club, but you have no way to predict what it will be per shot.

In my honest opinion managing the course correctly (taking the safe option) and selecting the right option for the conditions makes more sense. I'd rather keep it simple as golfs complicated enough as it is

 

[barrybridges]

I agree with what you're saying Barry and you make several excellent points.

However

As has been said many times on here. For us mortals, hitting the perfect shot into a green isn't guaranteed no matter what stats you have. Take the situation you describe:

"I'm 180 yards out from the aforementioned green I detailed above.

180 yards with no wind for me would probably be a 4 or 5 iron. I'd know I can hit my 4i to within 10 metres but I also know I can hit my 6i to within 2 metres.

I'd think to myself, the 10 metres gives me a very narrow margin for error - I'm quite likely to get it in the bunker if I get it wrong. Statistically, I'd be better laying up with the 6i where I can't get it wrong, then LW and putt which will probably score me better than a 4i >> Bunker >> SW >> 2 putt"

Isn't this a case of course management?

Yes, we know how far we hit a specific club and conditions may be near perfect, but this still doesn't guarantee a crisp ball contact. You could hit it fat, thin, slice it, hook it or even uncork the shot of your life and send it screaming through the green. If you do fat the strike and the ball travells 30 yards nearer the green, you have the same calculations to run through again.

You also may know what your dispersion is per club, but you have no way to predict what it will be per shot.

In my honest opinion managing the course correctly (taking the safe option) and selecting the right option for the conditions makes more sense. I'd rather keep it simple as golfs complicated enough as it is

Agree with all of the above, but I guess my point was to flag up something key: you're talking about symptoms and I'm talking about cause.

How do YOU know that your shot-making is improving unless you know your dispersion statistics?

Assuming you don't fat/thin/duff the ball (which for me is a big assumption!) how do you know whether the 6 irons you're hitting on the range in August are better than the 6 irons you're hitting in February? How do you know that your lessons are working?

Sure, lower scores is the key one. But accuracy is a cause of lower scores. Do you measure accuracy?

I'd like to, to gauge how I'm doing and whether the swing changes that I'm learning are making a difference.

Do you see what I'm saying? We all take about improvements in terms of distance, but never in terms of accuracy. Course management is key, but course management covers both distance AND accuracy. But we only know 1 of the 2 variables needed for course management.
I'll stop waffling now

 

[One Planer]

I understand what you're getting at Barry and it makes alot of sense.

Measuring accuracy, for me, would come in the FIR and GIR bracket. Simply because if My %FIR and %GIR is increasing, then I'm becomming more accurate and more importantly more consistant.

To me dispersion only really matters when you're getting custom fitted (as Murph eluded). So that the clubs you are fitted for are the most accurate for you swing characteristics.

 

[timgolfy]

Barry I understand exactly where you're coming from. That why I think a more useful stat to keep for my own game is not GIR, FIR, Putts, but "how close to the target area did the ball land, for each club/shot". So a 7i appraoch finished just on the fring is probably within 8% of target. A 20 chip finishing 10 yards short is 50% of target.

I don't think think it matters so much to compare to other amateurs, but it would be damn useful to compare to pros as a target.

 

[EZprophet]

This isnt particularly useful but I saw this little report thingy about Luke Donald trying to work out his best lay up yardage for par 5's or short Par 4's.

I cant remember the exact numbers but he hit a number of shots from distances between something like 60-130 yards in ten yards increments. The distance the ball finished from the flag was measured on each shot and averaged out from each distance, giving him an "average distance from flag" from each yardage.

Again I cant remember the yardages exactly but I remember being amazed by how close they all were to each other. From every single yardage he was somewhere between 3 and 5 yards away on average.

The distance that ended up being the best for him was 110 yards and he had an average distance to the pin of 3.1 yards. This was obviously just Luke though and I remember the report saying that his averages were better than most other pros, as this is a particularly strong part of his game.

I dont know if this is the kind of thing you were looking for but thought it was fairly interesting anyway!

 

[north5]

How are you going to get the dispersion figure from open play? How do you know where the pro was aiming in order to measure how far he missed by?

FIR and GIR would give you some idea of disparity between woods and irons I guess, but is about as close as you'd come without having one pro sit down and do a measured exercise as luke did above for each club.

 

[CrapHacker]

I've seen plenty of pros totally miss the green with PW and short irons, if that helps.