I just had a great conversation with my favorite professional golfer (my brother) about sports analytics in golf. We talked about how, in golf, you don’t just need player data but also course data.
So, I took a look at PGA tour data not just by player but also by course. Many golfers know courses vary in their difficulty in different areas – some courses have narrower fairways, some courses have more bunkers around the greens, some courses have notoriously tough greens. It was interesting to see how strokes gained in different areas varied by course and over time. But things can get even more specific! With technological advances and apps you don’t just have access to information about a course but to every hole on a course. It will be interesting to see how analytics progresses in golf (for both pros and amateurs) and how it meets the unique needs of each sport.
Check out the full report on my GitHub breaking down each course by difficulty in putting, around the green, on the approach, off the tee, and overall. Plus, some visualizations and analyses of player-level data, including how predictive performance in different areas was of making tournament cuts and overall position.
Sam Freis 