Useless “stats” (continued)

Let’s talk some golf…

First of all, a little background.  I grew up in Augusta.  When you grow up in Augusta (the “mecca” of golf) you play golf.  Actually I was introduced to the game by my grandfather in S. Illinois, but that’s a story for another day.  The net, net is that I’ve played golf and followed it closely since the age of 7.  The game fascinates me and I find the traditions, history, etc just as exciting today as ever.  In fact, I’m a big fan of Tim Finchim even if others are not.  I think he’s acting as a great caretaker for the “greatest game ever invented”.  I also think that the Masters is not only golf’s greatest spectacle, but probably the greatest spectacle in sports and certainly the hardest ticket in sports to acquire.  I’ve been fortunate enough to attend roughly 30 Masters golf tournaments and I still get the “goose bumps” up and down my body when I step on the premises.  For those of you who are wondering, I play once every 6 weeks or so, but still maintain a solid 12 index.

So yesterday was not only the conclusion of the English Premier League (which was completely crazy and awesome by the way), but it was also the final round of the players championship at the TPC Sawgrass.  Commonly known as golf’s “fifth major” and broadcast around the world just as a major, it is a great tournament to watch.

Just as I admire Mr. Finchim and his leadership of the PGA I absolutely hate to watch any tournament where Johnny Miller is commentating.  I have the pleasure to know several club pros and a few golf course superintendents and Johnny, NO the ball does not break “away from the setting sun”.  Maybe your early exit from the world of professional golf involved watching the setting sun and focusing on “grass” too much (“yips” anyone?).

Mr. Miller aside, today let’s talk about some of the “useless” stats related to golf.  Let’s start with one of Mr. Miller’s favorites is number of putts per round.  Golf is an easy game, you hit your drive to the fairway (on par 4s and 5s) hit one or two other shots, hit two putts (no more) and you’re going to shoot par or somewhere thereabouts.  On the par 3s you hit one shot, two putt and repeat.  Nonetheless, 36 putts for 18 holes is considered excessive (except maybe for a US Open) and anything around 20 putts is viewed as pretty good.  Now, why does this NOT make sense?  Let’s have a short story…

A few years ago I attended a friend’s wedding in Chicago.  It was bitterly cold, but he insisted on playing golf so out we went (with some liquid antifreeze in tow of course).  The “game” we were playing that day involved a deck of cards.  Essentially, if you one putt a green you got a card, two putts nothing and three or more putts you had to throw $5 into the kitty.  At the end of the round, you took the earned number of random cards from a standard deck and played straight poker for the money in the pot.  In our case it was around $200.

What I observed during this game is that the really good golfers would NOT play for the flag.  In fact, they would try to pick a nice landing surface just off the green, play to that, chip up close and try to make their one putt (for a card in the poker game).  Guys like me that were trying to hit to the center of the green and two putt ended up with only a couple of cards.

See my point?

Who cares how many putts you had?  You could have 18 putts, have missed every single green, some of those putts might’ve been for par, many might’ve been for bogey (or worse), but you had a great putts per round stat!  Johnny will love you if you average 18 putts per round!  (even if you shoot 82)

How about another short game statistic – greens in regulation (GIR).  My problem with GIR is that some of these greens are HUGE.  You could be just off the green and 10 ft. from the hole (collar) and NOT have a GIR or you could have a GIR but 70 feet from the hole on the wrong side of the green (a.k.a. three putt city).  GIR is supposed to be a metric to show how well a golfer is hitting his irons into the green.  In my opinion it is anything but.

I can say the same thing for driving distance.  Who cares?  If driving distance really mattered then Zach Johnson, Mike Weir and Fred Funk wouldn’t even be on tour!

Here’s two that I do like. (let’s try to end on a positive note)  I do like driving accuracy, you obviously need to hit the fairway to win tournaments (most of the time).  I also like how “putt feet” is starting to be analyzed to show how well someone is making putts.  (It’s taking the measurement of all the putts made and adding that number up over the round – obviously the higher the number the better the putter).  I’d like to see more of “average distance away from the hole for birdie” – that would be a pretty cool stat.

The surprising thing in all of this is that there are people doing golf broadcasts that I really like and who really know the game (Nick Faldo, Kelly Tilghman, Roger Maltbie, Gary Koch) – why don’t these guys think of this?  With systems like “shotlink” in existence it’s extremely easy to get the measurements of where the ball is all of the time.  Define where the ball “should be” on the different holes and measure how well the players hit those targets.

I’ll happily volunteer my services to help by the way!  Keep it in the short grass everyone!

Soccer (aka “Football”)

I’ve been thinking about writing a blog entry for football (yes, I’m going to call it football for the purposes of this blog) for some time now.  Previous to 2006 I never, ever watched soccer.  I know that my high school had a soccer team, but it was during track season (and prom season) and I just didn’t pay that much attention to it.  I also attended the gold medal match during the 1996 Olympic games, but I was really just there for the party (and it WAS a lot of fun).  But before 2006 I just really didn’t pay too much attention to football.  Why 2006?  That’s the year my son turned 5 and started playing.  Yes Virginia, you may have heard of “soccer moms”, but in 2006 I became a fully fledged “soccer dad”.

Even though I would go to the weekend soccer games and cheer on my son I still didn’t consider myself a “fan” and certainly not a student of the game.  That all changed a couple of years ago during a Saturday with nothing to look forward except yard work and a “honey do” list a mile long.  The Super Bowl was two weeks in the past and the doldrums of spring and summer were upon me with the prospect of no football.

While sulking and channel surfing past the bowling, figure skating, basket weaving, etc I ran across an EPL match.  I don’t even recall what the match was, but it was riveting.  That 110 minutes or so was enlightening, a football fan was born….  Finally!  A sport that I could watch in the long (American) football off-season that was just as intense and just as intriguing to follow!  My wife was overjoyed that I had found a sport that glued myself to the TV for the remaining 6 months of the year.

The “long and short of it” is really that even though I didn’t grow up around the sport I have become a great fan of the game.

So today I would like to discuss two of the metrics that I see that seem to be at the heart of most discussions for football.  Just as Kirwin pointed out in his book (“Take Your Eye Off The Ball”) I’d like to ask soccer fans everywhere to pull their attention away from these useless stats that they’ve always been fed and ask the most important question of all (So WHAT?!?!).

First, distance run.  Well, where to start?  For those of you that aren’t familiar with the concept, several companies in the past few years have developed technology that allows the physical tracking of players as they move around the field.  This feeds x/y coordinates of the players on the field, their average speed and the total distance (typically reported in kilometers or meters) that the player has covered during the course of the game.  It’s really fascinating stuff.

So what?

What does distance covered really tell you about the performance of a player during the game?  Absolutely nothing.  A couple of years ago at the sports analytics conference in Boston one of the EPL staff members using this technology actually lamented the meaningless data it produced.  In this particular case a keeper was augmenting his “distance run” metric (after being cajoled by some coaches) by running back and forth across the box while the ball was on the other end of the pitch.  Not making any plays, not doing anything productive for the outcome of the game and certainly not doing anything to help his team (aside from some extra conditioning), just trying to get that particular STAT better and get the coaches off his back.

I won’t even go into why I think average speed is idiotic.  Based on what I’ve just said I think it’s obvious…

#2, passing %.  Basically Player A passes the ball to Player B X number of times.  Y number of times the pass was successfully received by Player B, therefore the percentage is simply Y divided by X.  Now you ask, what fault could I find in a perfectly good statistic that represents teamwork between two players on the same team?  Well, football is definitely a team sport.  It’s definitely helpful to have your players working together.  But, it’s also a sport of speed and continuity.  If Player A passes to Player B while in a full run about to blow by a flat-footed defender and Player B has to completely halt all of his momentum to go back and get the ball (because bone head Player A didn’t lead him enough) then it is considered a successful pass and counts in the Y column.

Really?  There was an opportunity for a breakthrough on the defense, possibly a good, quality shot on goal, but the pass was poor.  But wait!  Even though the pass was poor and completely killed the opportunity, the pass was “received” and therefore it counts in this statistic.

(One of the many reasons I hate dumb, automated statistics like these.)

Neither of these pass the “So What?” test.

Look at statistics like this and ask yourself “So What?”.  Who cares how much distance a guy ran?  Maybe he was having a horrible day and giving up the ball every chance he got and spent his 8 km chasing the guy who just stole the ball from him?  As an example, Messi’s distance stat during a game is not impressive – have you ever watched a game and really focused on him?  He puts himself in the right place at the right time and he’s fresh for the entire 90 minutes.  (see this article from a couple of years ago, sorry Bleacher Report, but you guys were WAY off on this one).  You don’t get that running 10 or 12 km per game, you get that by playing SMART.  The same can be said for Rooney – who’s always back there heckling the keeper to hurry up his kicks?  Why is he back there?  He typically sets himself up just onside - you hardly ever see this guy on the defensive half of the pitch…

The same for passing accuracy.  If the pass isn’t a quality pass and actually prevents the receiving player from doing something “good” then it shouldn’t be counted as a positive event in the course of the game!

Those x/y coordinates produced by these technologies are good for one thing though.  You can “virtualize” the game where all of the players on the field are represented by circles and squares.  It’s really cool to watch all of those little shapes move around the field, it’s almost like WATCHING THE GAME.  A huge amount of money is spent on these technologies and all they’re getting for that money is something that I spend $12/month to receive (no, this isn’t a DirecTV commercial).

The bottom line?  You are smart, you’re on the internet and you’re reading a blog.  Question these stats and demand more.  Ask the “So What?” question as often as possible and don’t stop until you’re satisfied with the answer.  If you want to know more about what I think are “real” metrics that measure the “real” performance of these fantastic athletes, let me know.