A Statistical Analysis of Tiger's Driving

THE BACKSTORY

A lot of debate had been centering around Tiger Woods’ ability as a ‘ballstriker.’ Mainly the crowd that was not in favor of putting Woods as an all time great ‘ballstriker’ pointed to his inaccuracy off the tee. The crowd in favor of Woods as one of the all time great ‘ballstrikers’ thought that was hogwash.

One poster over at GolfWRX.com forum pointed to this quote from a Tiger interview (http://www.publinksgolfer.net/articles/35/1/A-Tiger-CAN-Change-His-Stripes/Page1.html)

When everybody started going to longer shafts with graphite, and hotter balls, were they hitting it better? Yeah. Everyone was hitting it further. Were they missing more fairways? Everyone’s percentages on the fairways went down. The further you hit it, the fewer fairways you’re probably going to hit. That’s the trade off.

When I was going through all of my swing changes, I had a hard enough time hitting fairways. Why would I want to hit the ball 20 yards further when I can’t hit a ball on the face as it is? I had to feel comfortable with my technique before I could hit the ball 20 yards further. Once I did, I’ve gone to a longer graphite, went to a hotter driver and I’m hitting it further and also my techniques more sound so I can capitalize on it.

You know, it’s kind of funny - when I first came on TOUR, I was one of the longest hitters besides John Daly and we could maybe carry it 300 yards, now there must be 20 guys that can carry it over 300 yards with these conditions out here.

So it’s changed quite a bit and you can look at a lot of our fairway stats that have gone down because of it. But our scoring became better, because we’re closer to the greens, so it’s kind of a trade off and I wasn’t prepared for that trade off yet, but at the end of last year I started to feel more comfortable.

This gave the pro-Tiger crowd some support to stand on as they could say that Tiger could hit fairways if he wanted to, but because the game had changed to a bomb-n-gouge style of game, he was just adjusting to the changes.

THE QUESTION

Is Tiger’s claim valid? Mainly, did the rest of the TOUR start missing more fairways when they started going to graphite shafts and ‘hotter golf balls?’

THE METHOD

Tiger went from a steel shafted driver to a graphite shafted driver in 2004 (http://golf.about.com/cs/componentscustom/a/steelvsgraphite.htm). So let’s first take a look at Tiger’s driving accuracy stats over the years.

YEAR…………………FWY %

1997…………………….68.6%
1998…………………….67.9%
1999…………………….71.3%
2000…………………….71.2%
2001…………………….65.5%
2002…………………….67.5%
2003…………………….62.7%
2004…………………….56.1%
2005…………………….54.6%
2006…………………….60.7%
2007…………………….59.8%
2008…………………….57.9%

Let’s also look at Tiger’s driving distance during these years.

1997…………………....294.8
1998……………………296.3
1999……………………293.1
2000……………………298.0
2001……………………297.6
2002……………………293.3
2003……………………299.5
2004……………………301.9
2005……………………316.1
2006……………………306.4
2007……………………302.4
2008……………………294.3

What can we draw from this?

Tiger certainly got longer off the tee once he went to graphite. In ’04 (when he switched to graphite) he topped the 300 yard average drive for the first time. Then in ’05 his average drive was a whopping 316.1 yards, a 4.7% increase in distance. Before that, his biggest jump in average drive distance was from ’02 to ’03 where he only had a 2.1% increase in distance.Furthermore, Tiger started to miss more fairways as he got longer off the tee. In fact, when running a correlation coefficient between Tiger’s driving distance and percentage of fairways hit, the coefficient came out to -0.694, which means that there is a very strong indirect correlation. Meaning, that it’s very likely that the longer Tiger hits the ball of the tee, the more fairways he will miss.

So Tiger certainly became a ‘bomb-n-gouger’, but what about the rest of the TOUR?

The first thing I wanted to do was check the TOUR’s driving accuracy statistics. I wanted to get an overall picture of the TOUR's accuracy, so I looked at the TOUR's overall average driving accuracy. I also looked at the driving accuracy of the TOUR's top 20 most accurate drivers each year and the TOUR's top 20 *least* accurate drivers each year (from 1997-2008).

Tiger was right about how the driving accuracy on the TOUR has gone down.

In Tiger's first couple of years on the TOUR, the overall TOUR average of fairways hit was about 68.6%. In the past couple of years the TOUR average has been about 63.6%. That's an overall decrease of about -7.4%

Obviously the same applies for the top 20 and bottom 20 over the years in percentage of fairways hit as well. The top 20 has seen about a -5.4% decrease in fairways hit from 1997 until now and the bottom 20 has seen about a -9.0% decrease in fairways hit.

So, Tiger was right about the notion that the TOUR golfers are hitting less and less fairways. But, I wouldn't be so quick to give the pro-Tiger's ballstriking crowd the nod just yet.

CONCLUSION #1

While Tiger was correct about the TOUR's players hitting less and less fairways, Tiger is missing more fairways at a greater rate than the average TOUR player is. While the average TOUR player has seen his driving accuracy go down effectively about -5.8%, Tiger's driving accuracy has dipped about -15.8% from the early years on TOUR to the last few years on TOUR.

THE NEXT QUESTION

Just how much longer has the TOUR gotten off the tee over the years? And how much longer has the TOUR gotten off the tee in comparison to Tiger?

CONCLUSION #2

In the first few years Tiger was on TOUR, his average driving distance was 295.5 yards. In the past few years, not counting 2008 due to the knee injury, his average drive was 308.3 yards. That's a 4.8% increase. However, the TOUR average has gone up 6.6% from the first few years in Tiger's TOUR career to the past few years.

FINAL QUESTION

How does Tiger stack up to the rest of the 'bombers' over the years?

METHOD

Unfortunately, I do not have all of the time in the world to just punch up statistics, but I wanted to see how Tiger's driving accuracy compares to the top 20 in driving distance from 2004-2007. I don't include 2008 given Tiger's knee injury and Tiger's driving distance has hovered somewhere in the top 20 over the past few years.

CONCLUSION #3

From 2004 - 2007 Tiger Woods averaged hitting 57.8% of his fairways. During this time the 'bombers' (top 20 in driving distance) averaged hitting about 57.9% of their fairways.

SYNOPSIS

From a look at the statistics, Tiger is correct. The Tour did start getting longer off the tee and also started missing more fairways. And because of that, Tiger also got longer off the tee and missing more fairways as well. The 'bomb-n-gouge' was in full effect.


The difference was Tiger's adjustment to the 'bombing' part of the 'bomb-n-gouge' was not nearly as well executed as the rest of the Tour's transition. Tiger was hitting the ball further, but not at the same rate as the Tour average (4.8% increase for Tiger vs. 6.6% increase for the Tour). But the real kicker is that Tiger's loss of accuracy was much higher than the Tour's loss of accuracy (-15.8% drop by Tiger vs. -7.4% drop for the average tour player).

So essentially Tiger was becoming more of a bomber as well as the rest of the Tour. However, his ability to improve his 'bombing' skills was subpar compared to the tour average. For Tiger to keep up with the Tour's 'bombing' skills, he would have to average about 315 yards off the tee while hitting about 63.5% of his fairways.






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