Reflecting on the PGA Tour’s First Month of 2022 and Previewing Riviera with Joseph LaMagna

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Speaker 3: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my.

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Speaker 4: Ball in a fried egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida egg, Frida egg, Frida egg brid Egg, Frida egg bride egg Lie.

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Speaker 3: I'm about ready to run off of the.

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Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Fridagg Podcast. Today I am joined by the excellent writer, statistician, you know, player consultant, Joseph LaMagna. Joseph came on earlier in the year to preview the season, so I figured it'd be good to catch up and talk about the first month plus of golf on the West Coast. So you guys can find more from Joseph. He's written a couple pieces on the Fried Egg. He's working on one this week about Riviera, but you can find all of his writing at Finding the Edge dot substack dot com. Finding the Edge it's a basically biweekly newsletter that people can subscribe to for free, so Joseph comes on to talk about some players that he's been impressed with.

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Speaker 2: Pointed with it.

00:03:01
Speaker 1: Just some general trends for the start of the golf season. All right, Joseph, welcome back. I know you're a big football fan of Slash. You know, I think you might dabble with some of your own capital in football. Any big takeaways from the Super Bowl.

00:03:24
Speaker 4: Well, I don't think it counts unless you said it. So it's lame to say that I had money on the rams without expressing that publicly. But I did do very well on the rams from a future that I placed back in September. I still had a really bad year betting on the NFL, So I'm excited about the way it ended, but still feeling shameful going into fall of twenty twenty two.

00:03:46
Speaker 2: A little bit sweet it was.

00:03:49
Speaker 1: It's an interesting game, you know, as always, I got I missed the start of it because of golf, which is you know, becoming an annual tradition. But you know, it's always hard when you get in you get into a game later, especially the Super Bowl, miss all the early ads and you know, I was watching it, but I you know, I had my my daughter bounced it around too, so it was a it was a little bit different Super Bowl than years past.

00:04:13
Speaker 4: I saw a couple of comments that the broadcast ended pretty flat, which I agree with in retrospect. But I enjoyed the game. I thought it was a great game.

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Speaker 2: Uh yeah, it was pretty good.

00:04:22
Speaker 1: I think the ending was a little anti climatic with that that handoff and everybody, I think everybody expected Burrow to do what he had did the previous two weeks and it just didn't didn't really come to fruition.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just nice.

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Speaker 1: One.

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Speaker 4: The critique isn't only on golf commentary, so get to see that in football too.

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Speaker 2: All right, speaking of golf, you uh he got me over there.

00:04:48
Speaker 1: I'd love you know, you're obviously our our residents stat uh stat expert here and uh and just in general sparta that I am. So I'd love just to hear a little bit about your takeaways really from the year. You know some players that you've really been impressed with.

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Speaker 4: Sure, well, I don't know if it's true that I'm smarter about this stuff, so hopefully I don't.

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Speaker 2: I'm an idiot, so.

00:05:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think generally I don't make too much of some of these events in that you know the way the leaderboards separate, and how demanding some of these shots are or aren't. I'm not putting a lot of stock in events like the American Express, like Waste Management honestly, or WM, but I've still been impressed with some players. I think that two of the biggest stories, which I'm sure maybe we'll get into, I'm seeing a lot from Justin Thomas. I think he's showing some real flashes of playing at an elite level, top one, two three player in the world. Also really intrigued with Dustin Johnson and potentially the equipment change with his driver could be a catalyst for strong perform and that I'm seeing that in the data and really small sample size, but it's something to be excited about if you're a Dustin Johnson fan.

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Speaker 2: I actually wanted to talk about JT.

00:06:09
Speaker 1: I was on a long flight today and I was kind of digging into JT, because you know, this week was extremely impressive from JT, given how poorly you putted. But then you kind of go back through really the last four or five years, and I think that's kind of been the story, is you look at his career, he's got fourteen PGA Tour wins, which is extraordinary for a player his age, but you know, eight of them came in a two year stretch where he putted above average, and since then, you know, pretty much every other year he's been a below average putter, and this year.

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Speaker 2: It's been very bad.

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Speaker 4: I agree. So the putting has been a consistent shortcoming for Justin for a while now. The positive is he knows what to work on, and that's the type of thing that can flip pretty quickly, even if it's been bad for quite some time. But I like to look at how somebody's putting across different distances, and Justin's been poor across different distances. So that's it's concerning that overall the putting performance has been bad.

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Speaker 2: He's consistent at least.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that is true. But again, as everyone says, like you can get hot putting for one week, that's absolutely true. I think the way Justin's hitting the ball right now, he's somebody to watch this year, and if the putting just turned comes around a little bit, he's gonna be in contention all the time.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how I was thinking.

00:07:34
Speaker 1: You know, I picked him on the shotgun start for this week at Waste Management, and I think he's a really good pick at riv a plays that he almost won a few years ago just because of how well he's hitting the ball and eventually putts drop. But at the same time, I think, like where where we want to see Justin Thomas get to is kind of capped on him becoming just an average putter, which which seems you know, easy, but you know, we've seen so many players, whether it be you know, Adam Scott, Sergio Garcia come to mind as players that just simply have been hampered by their inability to make it just enough putts to win. Like obviously, you know, ball striking is what gets you in contention, and I think like nobody's arguing that to be a great player you need to be a great ball striker, but to win a lot and maybe win above expectation, you need to make a lot of putts.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it gets lost sometimes in the some of the modern talk about stats that people often diminish the role of putting. But puttings, whether you can predict it or not, as a different question from whether it's important or not, Like it's it's very rare that somebody wins a golf tournament without putting well, So I pushed back a little bit when people diminish the role of putting, because it makes up a lot of scoring.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think you look at j and he's kind of in that same bucket that Kyle morcalais in. Is like a week where he puts, well, he's he's probably gonna win and it's gonna look really easy. But you know, it just doesn't happen very often. So you know, I think that's the is just figuring out, you know, somehow what week they're gonna go down for the guy. What are you saying with Dustin Johnson, that's a it's a switch to the stealth, Is that is that? What's what's giving you all this confidence? The switch to the carbon age.

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Speaker 4: Well, it's more so when we did our original pod, I'd say, I think Dustin could be somebody who regresses. And he was third in the world at the time. He was hitting the ball arrantly off the tee pretty much all of twenty twenty one. That's concerning He said that he likes this new driver a lot more. He hit it very straight at Farmers. If Dustin Johnson is hitting the ball reasonably straight off the tee, he's very difficult to beat. He's made strip in his wedge play and he's actually become one of the best putters in the world. So I mean, if he's just hitting it reasonably straight, he hits it so far that that's a really tough guy to beat when there's no discernible weakness.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting with DJ because he's had these a little bit down years, which for a down DJ years is a very good year.

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Speaker 4: Absolutely, and I think the clear difference if you look at driving accuracy. However, you know, I'm not a huge fan of like fairway percentage or something like that, but at least in the rankings that I create.

00:10:31
Speaker 1: How do you how do you look at fairway accuracy? You know, in general terms if for a layman to understand if you're not looking at fairway's hit.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean we I have some tools written that are getting pretty precise about how you know the width of misses and things like that that are not necessarily easily replicable. But what's illuminating about looking through some of that data. Dustin John's and John ram are on totally different planets when it comes to driving accuracy. And I know, like there are people who will say Bryson d Chambeau once you control for length, like he's hitting it just as straight as the top golfers in the world. It's not true, like Bryson is right at the bottom in terms of how accurately he hits the ball once you've controlled for that. Dustin's pretty low and Rom is, you know, like a top forty most accurate driver in the world. So it's really rare that somebody's both accurate and long. Rom and you know, like a Hoveland are some of the exceptions to that. And if Dustin can get kind of into the middle of the tour, like somewhere around one hundredth he's really dangerous. So he'll still be less accurate than Ram I would expect.

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Speaker 1: So the concept, the concept you're kind of talking about is the guy that hits it. Let's just you know, I don't want to throw Brian Gay under the bus, but Brian Gay hitting it whatever percentage, say sixty two percent, and hitting it two eighty out there, that sixty two percent accuracy shouldn't be the same number as you know, Rom hitting it three twenty and hitting fifty five percent of fairways like those Those two things aren't generally equal right, correct, correct.

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Speaker 4: And then you can get ridiculous with some of the examples, which I think is worth it of saying, Hey, sometimes there's drivable par fours where the player's not even trying to hit the fairway right like ten at Riff, or you know, there might be a drivable par four we're going into a green side bunker is a really good location. Player leaves himself in there, oh for one, in terms of fairways hit, but it's in an advantageous spot. So you can't get carried away with driving accuracy, even though it might tell a decent picture over a long period of time. But you're right, I wouldn't treat a Brian Gay sixty two percent in the same way that I would treat a John rom sixty two percent. No offense to Kimberly.

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Speaker 1: She really outfits them well sidebar if anybody's read that article. But anyways, I you know one thing I did want to you know, I'm curious about either I think comes up now with especially with how many holes are becoming just you know, sure bet drive, you know, go for the green like seventeen. It's Scottsdale, tenant riv this week are examples where analytics have have everybody pushes.

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Speaker 2: It up by the green.

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Speaker 1: Now, how you know we've gotten to this point where we adjust, like where we say everybody's going for the green, but the reality is people aren't going for the green. They're going they're aiming right of seventeen to scotts Sale, aiming left of ten at Riviera. They're playing out, you know, they're they're hitting it the right distance, but they're in no.

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Speaker 2: Way going for the green.

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Speaker 1: How can we start to look at these parts are part fours and determine what is actually a real attempt at going for the green?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that opens the door to a lot of things you could discuss, right because first off, you might see a graphic on TV that says going for the green, you know, it has a much higher success rate versus laying up, and they're probably writing some definition like if player hit the ball more than two hundred and sixty yards, they were going for it. And the issue with that is like when Harold Varner topped his t shot on ten at Riviera a couple of years ago, if that gets classified as laying up, he wasn't right, And so that's.

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Speaker 2: One it's a great point.

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Speaker 4: It's one point it's important to make. There's another point that's important to make, which is that there is information contained in the fact that the player went for it. So what I mean by that is the players, let's say you have to be really accurate to go for a driveable part four. It's probably more of the accurate players are the ones going for that. So if you said to a player who laid back, you should be going for it because it's advantageous. Yet he sprays the ball, it might not be optimal for him to go for it right. So there is actually information baked into who was going for it and who wasn't. But to answer your original question, club selections. One way you can kind of do that if you know that a guy hit driver and he hits his driver typically like two hundred and ninety five yards and the hole is three hundred yards, and you might be able to infer like that was a true go for it attempt. But to get to your point of are they going at the flag or not? Or like how aggressive are they being, it's really difficult to do. You know, with computer code, I think you've got to be watching.

00:15:46
Speaker 1: It is almost to the point where golf would have so much more interest if that the micing situation, Like if every player was miked, that's how you could effectively do it eventually, is if every player was miked and you know, they said their club, they said their target, that's how you could start to determine this kind of stuff, correct, Yeah.

00:16:10
Speaker 4: Or you know, if you were as specific as asking players to input after the round whether they went for it or not, Like that's one way you could actually do it. I'm not sure that would be particularly insightful and the players probably wouldn't want to do that, So I'm not advocating for it, but I think regardless, as a general rule of thumb, if people are curious whether or not a player is going to go for it, there has to be a heck of a lot of trouble for them to not go for it. And the wedge has to be Whoerever you're gonna lay up to has to be a pretty easy shot, and so at Riviera you're not bringing on any true hazard risk by sending it up by the green, and that's an extremely difficult wedge if you lay back, So the guys just aren't gonna do it.

00:16:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, like at last week at Scottsdale is I was, you know, I was watching and Justin Thomas and can't lay hit it effectively in the same spot about thirty yards short of the flag right of the center bunker, like you know, and it was very it seemed to be very clear that that that's where they wanted to hit it, because then they hit a wedge into the upslope. You know, it was a very simple web shot and you know, when you push up to pin high there, you bring all kinds of other issues into into the mix and it becomes a much more difficult and it's like, but that gets categorized as going for it because it would have been you know, roughly you know, ten yards short of the green. But it's just like, you know, that's not going for it at all. That's a layup. And it's it's a really kind of almost become, especially with Ted at Rivieria, a disingenuous take that everybody's going for it because they're all aiming twenty five yards left and by verty and trying to push it up there about pin high, and that in itself is a layup.

00:18:08
Speaker 4: You know agree, And I actually think players fall victim to this too. Just an anecdote that I'll never forget Rory McElroy. I think twenty nineteen, someone can look this up. Before the event, they asked him about whole ten at Riviera and he said, well, the numbers say to go for it, therefore I'm going to be going for it. And I watched him on Thursday rip a three wood like directly over the flag and into a bunker and short sighted himself and then makes like a seven and a half footer for par It's like, that's bad advice. If you just reduce it down to should I go for it or not? You need to think about where you're leaving your ball and some courses it may not matter, but a number ten at Rivier it does matter.

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Speaker 2: It's a.

00:18:51
Speaker 1: It goes back to your point of sometimes, like you said, maybe Rory just needs a little bit better strategy.

00:19:00
Speaker 4: I do feel that way.

00:19:03
Speaker 2: Back to.

00:19:05
Speaker 1: Impressive players, you know, you get two big names. Is there anybody else that you've been particularly impressed with?

00:19:12
Speaker 4: I mean some of these are the same. I don't react to short term changes very much, so I think a lot of it would be similar to players that we had talked about in the original pod. But yes, I mean Sung j M has played well to start this year. Xalatoris I'm very high on. We saw what he could do at Farmers and that's one of the distance.

00:19:32
Speaker 2: The distance is.

00:19:33
Speaker 4: A really big deal and Xalatorus is one of those who knows the numbers, he knows the strategy. Him putting on distance is something people should pay attention to. And then he comes out almost wins at Farmers.

00:19:43
Speaker 1: So do you know offhand, like you know how much further he's hitting it, and can you put into kind of layman's terms what that means for his driving? You know, statistics like what what a what a leap you know he made from you know, twenty twenty one to where he's now hitting it. It seems seemingly fifteen to twenty yards longer at anecdotally when you look where he's hitting the ball, what does that mean statistically? And then you know, so if he picked up x amount of shots, then over the course of tournaments in a season, I'd.

00:20:19
Speaker 4: Say the short answer is to expect somewhere around like a two tenths of a shot increase.

00:20:25
Speaker 2: So almost a shot a tournament. He's saving himself.

00:20:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it depends on the course, It depends on how straight you hit the ball. But you know, one point I will always make about distance is that a lot of people focus on like, okay, what is five yards worth or what is ten yards worth? But where it really racks up is when you can start clearing hazards that other players can't clear, and then it's not a five yard difference. It's you cleared the bunker and player B didn't, so you picked up like thirty thirty five yards on that player after it's done rolling. So there was a Sean Martin article I believe, Whereasala Taurus calls this out explicitly, and that's the benefit of distance in my opinion, more so than just this incremental gain. But yeah, I would say somewhere around two tenths of a shot off the tea would be a reasonable expectation for Zalatorus.

00:21:16
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:21:16
Speaker 1: The analogy I always like to use is like a pitcher and baseball is in you know, a power pitcher, Like every day that eral of this chapman comes to the comes to the park, he's thrown a hundred, right, and a guy you know Cubs. This is two cubs. But Kyle Hendrix, a guy that you know, could barely touch ninety. Like if that singer ball is not sinking, he's got nothing but eral This Chapman every day has one hundred and and that is just you know, hard to hit. And obviously there are two different types of pictures. But it's the same kind of thing with with uh with golfers, it's like if you hit it three ten, three twenty every day you show up, you have one elite trait and it doesn't go anywhere. You know, no matter what, you still have that power. It's actually probably the only reliable thing in golf is distance, and it's showing up every day you come to the come to.

00:22:11
Speaker 2: The golf course.

00:22:12
Speaker 1: I I will say, the putter, the putter is no good. It is uh it's it's frightening on the weekend and I uh, I can't get it out of my head. It kind of makes me sad because he seems like such a good dude, and uh, I just that's my my concern with Zala Taurus is I think there's he's gonna be a cash machine. But I uh, you know, if if the arm if the harm block ever gets outlawed, that that would be a not fun thing to watch.

00:22:43
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think if the armlock factor could be something that really ends up derailing him. But in general, I don't see Zalatorus as quite as poor of a putters. I guess a lot of people do, especially from longer range. Uh, but I mean I have eyes, So watching him come down this stretch at Farmers was unsettling, but you never know, like that's the type of thing that can turn around pretty quickly.

00:23:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think like that's one of the things where I would love to see golf stats even get better. Is like, you know, I think we look at everything in apples as apples apples, but you know, back nine putting versus front nine on Thursday putting shouldn't be considered the same, you know. And that's where I think some more granular larity, because the sample size of these guys' careers becomes so big where you know, it would be great on coverage to start to see, hey, you know this is you know, his putting stats, but you know, on the on in the final rounds, this is what is putting stats, because we might see, we might learn things about players, both good and bad. You know that there are a lot of misconceptions about right.

00:23:53
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm careful about that, I guess, and I maybe don't believe in some of that quite as much. But I'm not saying there's nothing to be in clutch. I think where maybe that might be most insightful is players playing when it doesn't mean a whole lot. So if you're tied for fifty fifth place on Sunday on the back nine, like, maybe removing some of those putting numbers would add significance. So I think that is something that could be interesting. I don't know how hard Charlie Hoffin was grinding over his pots yesterday.

00:24:26
Speaker 1: I think he was just trying to get out of there. Ironic thing about when you're trying to get out of somewhere and trying to hurry your way out, and golf is usually play your worst to take the most shots, and that would take the most time.

00:24:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, Or I mean, if you want more granularity strokes gain, dropping your ball could be interesting to look at too.

00:24:46
Speaker 1: He's uh, he's just got to be protected, protected by the roles. So you know, we're putting out the spot here. Small samples. Thanks you know you don't like, are there are there anybody? Is there anybody that you've been disappointed by?

00:25:01
Speaker 4: I think I need to bring up your boy, and I'm just curious for your thoughts.

00:25:04
Speaker 2: But it's a little bit of a tough start to the year.

00:25:07
Speaker 4: For Sam Burns and part of what we hadn't talked about that I wanted to bring up with you. I think part of the reason I was just slightly bearish on Burns coming into this year. I haven't watched him in person for a time. I've walked with this group before, but it does seem like a lot of his shots are kind of these stock PGA tour shots, right, like a really high long drive, like a lot of shots similar trajectory. I mean, I could be wrong. This is anecdotal, and I do wonder how when you get into demanding setups like a major championship, sometimes you need to have some different shots. He hasn't done particularly well in majors and part of what was boosting the world ranking or wins like at Sanderson valspar you know some of these setups that aren't quite as demanding. So that's just I don't want to knock on his game too much. But that's kind of where I'm coming from and seeing, is Sam Burns a top ten player in the world.

00:26:04
Speaker 1: We haven't gotten to Bermuda season a. You know, he's playing out on the West coast. You got Louisiana boy out there on the West coast. But I think that there's validity do to that because you know, where where you grow up, what type of golf you play matters, right, And we see that like Sahithagala is a good example, Like I'm really curious to see how he plays because we haven't, you know, really seen it. We haven't seen him play a full PGA tour schedule, like you know, he just was playing on the West Coast where we see players, certain players that love playing that play well there regularly, Like it is a you know, the greens lead to some distinct differences then you see statistically across the year, and likewise, when we come to Florida in a week, you see guys that pop on on Bermuda all the time. Kevin Kissner perfect example, guy you know is does nothing and then all sudden you get to Bermuda and he's a factor again. And I think Burns probably will fall into that because you just listed off courses that he's played well at. They're all Bermuda Bermuda courses. And you know, grasses matter in playing in different climates. Everybody has been there that's played you know a lot of golf across the country is there's certain places that you just play better golf at for whatever reason. And I think that's the that's the thing with Burns obviously, I think there is some credence to that, and we've seen so little of them in major championships and on demanding setups because he's a relative newcomer to this, you know, upper echelon of golf that that's something that will be very interesting to watch over the year. And you start to then look like I think like when I think about what you said and you start to look down the world rankings right now, it's like you look at the top ten and I don't think there is a spot where Sam Burns fits in above any of the ten guys there.

00:28:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, and again to go back to major championships, those do drive the world rankings in that they have really strong fields. It's just something I've been increasingly watching and it kind of transitions to John Rahm is if I have two players who hit the ball about the same distance and about the same accuracy, if one hits it way higher than the other one, I mean, I'm thinking about what that looks like in the wind. And that's why everyone's optimistic about John Rohm. But he is a machine and I love the way he hits that controlled cut. He can flight his ball. There's not a setup in the world where I expect him to struggle, and I don't think the same is true of somebody like a Sam Burns or take it to an extreme, Bryce and d Chambeau.

00:28:44
Speaker 1: Well, that's the thing with Rom too, is that you know that if you watch John rom play golf, especially in person, you know that there's a lot more in the tank then what goes out there on a daily basis in terms of how far he's the drive. Like he's a guy that is. I think one of the things, like with with golf, and it's interesting with this Bryson experiment, because we've kind of seen all ends of the spectrum of it and in the last year and a half where you think, oh my god, this is totally the way to moments like recently where like this doesn't necessarily seem like the smartest course a path, but the guy. I think one of the things with most golfer that play really well is they're extremely comfortable with who they are as a golfer. And I think since the moment that John Rahm has come on the PGA Tour, he's known who he is and he's been, you know, just working on making himself the best golfer he could be without looking at others. And I think that's something really valuable, because he's somebody that, like Rory Fell, victim to looking at at and feed out, similarly looking at what Bryson was doing and going after it. But like rom you know, he's never done that. He just he's just, like you said, a machine.

00:30:01
Speaker 4: Yeah. And I think something else for people to pay attention to with John Rahm is we've just gone through some events that really don't have a lot of separation on the leader board.

00:30:11
Speaker 1: Which goes to it like them, I.

00:30:17
Speaker 4: Mean exactly, and he's still performing well. Take him to Mierfield Village, take him to some of these other setups where you actually can separate yourself a bit more, and you'll see what he does. Which is also an important point about thinking about something like strokes gained in general, like if the leaderboard is really condensed and it's harder to separate yourself. That's also reflected in your strokes gained, So you can't take it as gospel without any context around it.

00:30:44
Speaker 1: So if you want to, if there was some like say the FedEx cup was a bone, or say the pip, we'll just take the pip. If the pip was bonused out to players based off their strokes gained as opposed to their like meltwater mentions and popularity, whatever the hell that formula is, if it was if it was based off of strokes gained and strokes gained total. So if you were advising a player, you would tell them, like a good player, you'd tell them to go to the hardest setups where it's easiest to separate in order to do.

00:31:19
Speaker 4: That right basically, So it depends on who the player is. Right, if you are extremely accurate off the tee and you're an extremely good ball striker, I want to make sure you're playing your field village. So that's absolutely true, and maybe you'd avoid a setup like waste management where it is harder to separate yourself, especially if you're an elite player.

00:31:40
Speaker 2: All you have to do is hit it farther right.

00:31:43
Speaker 4: You pretty much have to avoid driving. Accuracy is actually pretty strongly favored at waste, but it's not. You just have to avoid the cactuses and some of these holes sprang one out of bounds like whole five is a good example to look at of why certain players do well at waste management. You just got to avoid some of these really bad spots, especially when greens don't have severe contouring, plus their short grass around the greens, it's going to be difficult to separate yourself with iron play, and so you might gain a little bit off the tee with Rom's accuracy, but it's hard to separate a good iron shot from a bad iron shot.

00:32:18
Speaker 1: So with what you said about short grass around the greens, where it's severe, say a concession last year where it was really severe, then you see iron play really come to the forefront. But when it's less severe, it keeps everybody in it.

00:32:37
Speaker 4: It has to be really severe for short grass to provide much of a test on somebody's chipping, which is unfortunate because I like to see some of the short grass set up sometimes, but these guys spin the ball so much, and when the lie is predictable, they're able to get up and down effectively when they're short grass. So that's something to watch for at Genesis this week. Not all always the trickiest to get up and down, though the bunkers can be pretty penal.

00:33:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, So with riv this week, it you know, obviously it's one of the courses that correlates the least to driving accuracy.

00:33:13
Speaker 2: I'm curious your take on that.

00:33:15
Speaker 1: And then also I saw people talking about how important short game was here because of how hard it is to hit the greens.

00:33:25
Speaker 4: So I see it very similarly from a driving accuracy perspective. That definitely not somewhere you have to be particularly accurate off the tea. And this kind of goes back to why Dustin Johnson generally does very well here. It's his favorite course on the planet, I believe he has said. So I see that. And if you want an example, one that I usually look at is Whole fifteen here. I know you know the golf course I'm sure far better than I do.

00:33:52
Speaker 2: But that one's part four.

00:33:55
Speaker 1: And the green kind of opens from the left side, big deep bunker front right, really really tough green too, a great hole and then a bunker that protects the inside of the.

00:34:06
Speaker 2: Dog like kind of yep.

00:34:07
Speaker 4: And that's generally pretty highly correlated with distance and not as much accuracy. If you go onto last year's leaderboard and you look at where Dustin Johnson hit his four drives, they are all over the place, miles apart from one another, and I think he made three pars and a birdie on that hole. It's when there's short grass and you're not really introducing a hazard, you can you have some room to miss the ball. At Riv it's not a huge difference between being in the fairway and in the short rouf on a lot of these whole locations, and then you can trast that with something like Tory or a better example would be Mirefield Village, where if you're in the rough it's a huge difference from if you're in the farewell.

00:34:47
Speaker 1: Obviously different grasses, you know, Riv, the rough is so short there for these weeks, you know, I think back to, like what Mike Clayton always says, which I'm always my ideology thinks about, is really difficult shots from perfect lies are far more interesting than pretty media easy shots with a difficult lie if that makes.

00:35:12
Speaker 4: Sense, Yeah, I would agree. If I had a gripe with RIV, I think sometimes missing the green can result in some easier up and downs, then I would probably like to see. But again, these guys just spin the ball so much that if you're gonna have short grass, it's almost a necessary evil to put it that way. I was curious what you think about this. I think Whistling Straits is actually like a sort of reasonable comparison for RIV. I mean, they're totally different, but in terms of the skill sets that they test and finding a green side bunker being challenging. Similarly, hitting driver a lot, you have a little bit of room to miss off of the tea.

00:35:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could actually see that. I mean they're both.

00:35:55
Speaker 1: They're both like very strategic, like they the golf courses makes sense from like the angles that draw back like they're very like you know, Pete Dive built golf courses like Golden Age architects texted with angles and strategy like George Thomas did or RIV.

00:36:12
Speaker 2: So it makes like sense.

00:36:13
Speaker 1: And I think like where I would push back is like sometimes a good courses it's it's better to miss the green in the right spot than it is to hit the green and be in the wrong spot with it. When you get especially severely sloped greens like we see at RIF, like where you can be on the green and be totally screwed and saying, uh, I don't you know if I hit a really great putt, I'm going to be five feet away. And you know, if you if you leave yourself in the right spot chipping, you know, you you've got a very easy, straightforward up and down.

00:36:49
Speaker 4: It have to be really severe contouring. You just generally don't see when someone misses the green having however, you want to put it lower expected value as technical of a term is, as you want to put on it. They'd have to have a really difficult putt and a really straightforward ship for that to be possible. But I'm not saying it's it can never happen.

00:37:08
Speaker 1: I mean last year, last year doing right before the wind delay, they're about the hardest potts in the world.

00:37:14
Speaker 4: Yeah, ask Kegan Bradley about that.

00:37:17
Speaker 1: That's I mean, the fact that that happened last year is one of the most ridiculous things.

00:37:24
Speaker 4: I mean, that's all the type of things you have to think about with stats right, Like, what is uh, you know, did Keegan Bradley make a mistake going for it will put one from thirty feet off the green?

00:37:34
Speaker 1: Like?

00:37:34
Speaker 4: How is that represented in the stats?

00:37:39
Speaker 1: Scoring has been a I think a little bit of a hot topic. I think it blends with the tour tweeting out all their preferred lie announcements, and then obviously there's I feel like it's been a very docile year in terms of wind, and a lot of courses has been wet, but the scores have been just insane, just anecdotally as an observer watching. Is that true from a statistical standpoint?

00:38:08
Speaker 4: Barely? I mean, yes, the scoring is a little lower than so far so far in twenty twenty two. If you look at identical courses compared to twenty twenty one, scoring is a little bit lower. I think of the rounds so far, maybe like fifty five fifty eight percent of them are lower than comparing to a year ago. I would attribute this almost entirely to wind, some easier whole setups, especially at Sony, but in general we haven't had difficult conditions very much this year. And when you don't have wind a century at Kapalua, they're gonna tear it up, so I'm not making too much of it, And in general, I know this is something the fried Egg generally agrees with. I think people get carried away with scoring. I don't care if it's a you know, if you're two under or four under. I want to see how demanding the shots are, and so far this year shots have not been demanding.

00:38:59
Speaker 1: Its sake that you say, you know, the scoring from top to bottom isn't that much different, but the scoring at the top seems a lot different with with how low it's been comparatively.

00:39:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean Cam Smith and John Rahm took it really low at Kapalalua, so uh, I mean that's something. And if you if you're comparing to a year ago, the field is also stronger this year because more guys got in with COVID in the previous year at Kapelua, so I don't see a whole lot there. If people are upset with it, I would attribute it to wind. I mean it's we've had been nine conditions for almost every round so far in twenty twenty two.

00:39:40
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts on the Saudi Arabia situation. I mean, it'd be remiss to not talk about that a little bit, given you know, we're talking about the first five weeks of the year.

00:39:53
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of ambiguity around. I'm not sure I have a great sense of who actually might be leaving. And like, let's say Dustin Johnson were to leave, how different would the PGA Tour season be than in twenty twenty one when he was He doesn't play that often anyway. If he's he's gonna play riv I'd imagine he's still playing the big tournaments like Memorial Players, all the majors. Does the texture of the tour change that much if it depends who leaves? But I haven't heard of too many young stars that are rumored to leave.

00:40:25
Speaker 2: That's it.

00:40:25
Speaker 1: That's an interesting way to look at it that I hadn't really thought of, is like if if you lose a DJ and a Bryson, let's just say they don't play that much anyway.

00:40:37
Speaker 4: They're still gonna play the main events that I think you care about watching them in.

00:40:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's like if they're if they play ten events over there, and they play eight events between the majors and bigger events, they play the same amount of Golf, and you don't you know, nobody's like colaboring for Bryson at the Rock and Mortgage, you know, like I I you know, that's that event stinks with him or without him, right.

00:41:00
Speaker 4: Tim Tucker might be clamoring for him at the Rocket Mortgage. But besides that, yeah, probably not too much. No, that's kind of the way I'm looking at it. I don't it depends who leaves. It definitely depends who leaves, But I don't think the tour product changes that much if a small percentage of those guys are playing fewer events. Again, Memorial, Genesis, the Majors. As long as they're there, I think the product's pretty similar.

00:41:27
Speaker 1: We haven't talked about Charlie Hoffin yet though, and if he leaves, like, well, what the tour loses.

00:41:35
Speaker 4: I don't know what the drop zone policies are like in Saudi Arabia, but they could be even more penal.

00:41:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's uh, it could be could be real tough for him if he takes a bad drop there, especially if he speaks out about it. All Right, So looking forward, we've got we've got riv in the Florida Swing. Do you have do you have anything anything you want to float out there as a potential development we could see on tour, whether it's a player scoring, you know, whatever it may be. Is there something that you're particularly looking forward to in the next month.

00:42:10
Speaker 4: I'm really into this idea of how high guys are hitting their drives and how that interacts with golf courses. So I think categorizing courses as looking at the width of misses and how that impacts scoring. So Augusta being an example where you have some room out there, but if you really spray it, you're in trees versus somewhere like Tory Pines, where a small miss is actually pretty similar to a big miss, it's not that different of a penalty. And thinking about how that interacts with skill sets like Bryson d. Chambeau's, That's kind of what I'm most focused on right now. So I think we'll have some examples of that, like at TPC Sawgrass and Yeah, Honda at Augusta. How do these guys who hit it really high and errantly perform in those set up versus somewhere like toy that That's kind of what I think about it every week, But there are some extreme examples coming up in Sawgrass and Augusta mainly.

00:43:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, the the change over to Florida when you get like Honda and Api with the weather that you get there. You know, the wind in Florida and South Florida and Florida in general at this time of year is just brutal.

00:43:24
Speaker 2: It's awful.

00:43:26
Speaker 1: And you know, it's like such a drastic change from the desert in California that these guys have been playing for a couple couple of months. It's it's it's an interesting wrinkle to the schedule, right.

00:43:39
Speaker 4: And I guess one more point of things I'm looking forward to. I think one of the biggest storylines of the year is you got Jon Rahm. Maybe you can make an argument that calmore Kaw was sort of there too, but who else is able to ascend to where they're playing close to that week in and week out At this point, I would say that player is probably Justin Thomas.

00:44:01
Speaker 1: I would agree with that. It's just that putter, and I think like that's the thing. He could be that level consistency even as a bad putter.

00:44:12
Speaker 2: Yep.

00:44:12
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And I do think it's easy to get carried away with narratives. I think having bones on the bag will be valuable.

00:44:19
Speaker 1: Man just throwing Jimmy Johnson under the bus.

00:44:24
Speaker 4: I don't have any opinion on Jimmy Johnson's ability to caddy, but I gotta imagine that, especially somewhere like Augusta, having bones on the bag will be useful.

00:44:33
Speaker 1: The puttigs but seems particularly bad this year. He is heavy heavy Green's book guy. Could that be anything? Have we seen anything with Greens Books?

00:44:43
Speaker 4: I haven't seen much on that. I mean, Bryson's still putting very well. I haven't seen a whole lot to the Greens book impact. But I would not attribute Justin Thomas's putting to the Greens Books because he put pretty poorly for all of twenty twenty one.

00:45:00
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Well.

00:45:01
Speaker 1: People can find your work at Finding the Edge dot substack dot com. Wonderful newsletter. They can find you on Twitter. What's your handle?

00:45:11
Speaker 4: It's at Joseph Lamanna L A M A G n as how you spell my last name?

00:45:17
Speaker 1: The substacks free. It's highly recommend it. I almost recommend it more than the Friday newsletter. You know, can't can't get all the way there, but it's it's right there, So go over there and we'll talk to you probably sometime before the Masters.

00:45:34
Speaker 4: Sounds good. Well, thanks for having me on Enjoy Riviera this week and maybe we'll see Dustin Johnson.

00:45:38
Speaker 1: On Sunday with the trophy. Thank you for listening to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. As a quick reminder, it is a wonderful way to support the Fridaygg podcast is by going to the pro Shop and getting some Frida Egg gear. Golf season is closed again, I mean we're halfway through February.

00:46:11
Speaker 2: We're almost there.

00:46:12
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00:46:19
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00:46:21
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00:46:34
Speaker 2: Oh one last thing.

00:46:37
Speaker 1: This podcast was edited by the wonderful Meg Atkins. I'd hate to not include that she does a great job, and thank you Meg.