Aaron Goldberg: Welcome everyone to the PJ Players podcast.
Today we have our guest, Corey jz, founder of Tour iq.
Tour IQ helps PJ tour professionals use data to improve their games.
Uh, I met Corey out on tour working with players.
Uh, I've been super impressed with how he uses analytics not only to help guys
map out courses, but really understand their games and how they can get better.
Uh, he's the former director of analytics for the Utah Jazz
and Austin FC from the MLS.
Uh,
welcome Corey.
Thanks for being.
Cory Jez: Thanks very much for having me.
Excited to talk, uh, talk.
Shop a little bit, get
getting nerdy today.
Aaron Goldberg: Yeah, I, uh, I think I know numbers well, and then I talk to
you and I feel like a kindergartner.
So, uh, I appreciate your knowledge base here.
Um, let's, uh, you know, where I wanna start is kind of your past data
analytics life with, uh, in the NBA and MLS and then kinda your journey here
to, to golf and how that has helped.
Cory Jez: Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's been, um, you know, it's been kind of a very, kind of odd career
trajectory, career arc, if you will.
Um, you know, nobody's as, as, uh, the same.
But, you know, I graduated college back in 20 10, 20 11, and played a little bit
in school, not very much like I was the individ, I was the guy with the individual
asterisk by his name, uh, kind of a thing.
And, and so, um, always have loved golf, always played competitively
still, you know, like you try to, you make the mid am I try to make the mid
am every year, but, um, so I've always loved and been a competitive golfer.
Uh, but when I went out after graduation, started working as kind of a data
analyst, entry-level, data analyst, um, kind of cut my teeth in terms of
the skills the technologies ended up getting a master's degree, uh, all
that type of stuff, statistics, coding.
Um, kind of what has become analytics in a lot of industries, right?
It's relevant in a lot of places, not just sports, but, um, you know, my dad,
my dad was a college basketball coach.
I really loved basketball.
It was the other sport that I, you know, really, really tracked
and followed both college and pro.
And so I graduated college 2011, which is literally the year that
the movie Moneyball came out.
It's impossible to kind of tell my story without saying the word Moneyball.
I've
tried and it's just easier to explain it that way.
But, uh,
Aaron Goldberg: think anybody in analytics is gonna hear, hear Moneyball
related, whether good or bad, or whether
relevant or not.
Cory Jez: yeah, and, and you know, maybe, you know, the term analytics
can be certainly polarizing at times, but, um, you know, at the end of the
day we're trying to take, uh, a type of information, quantitative information,
use it to help people make decisions.
I mean, that's all, that's all we're really trying to do.
And so, uh, for me, the, you know, the movie came out and I started seeing
more and more in the space of like, Hey.
Linear regression and um, you know, data visualization, all these
types of things that I was doing professionally, albeit not in sports.
Early in my career I was starting to see happening in sport.
You know, obviously baseball first mover the NBA kind of, um, second
behind that and saying, well, that's the stuff I'm really interested in.
It's what I spend all my time reading about and watching and talking to
people about and seeing if there's a way I could kind of join those two up.
So I was very lucky, um, kind of five, six years into my career to
be able to kind of make that jump from industry into, into sports.
Um, and like you said, worked with, uh, Utah Jazz for four or five
seasons as their head of analytics.
Um, did and then spent about 18 months in the MLS with Austin FC as
well before I figured out a way to kind of, um, translate it into golf.
And obviously being a competitive golfer and being someone who's,
you know, played my whole life, that was like the ultimate, uh, the
ultimate kind of marriage for me.
Aaron Goldberg: Nice.
Yeah.
Did you always want to get back into golf or did you think, hey, I'm gonna see
where this takes me in sports and, you know, it was more of, I don't wanna say
an epiphany, but hey, as you've gotten in, saw how it worked in the NBA where it was
able to rise all the way to director of analytics there, uh, for the Utah Jazz.
Hey, I could actually see an
application for
this in golf.
Cory Jez: Yeah, I think the biggest, there probably was
actually an epiphany moment for me.
Um, I remember when I was doing my master's degree and I was trying to think
of what to do, uh, for my Master's thesis.
Um, just not want they gave, they would give you like corporate company
data sets and you could do something with that and work on a project on
behalf of like a, a corporate partner.
And that just wasn't very interesting to me.
Um, but I was able to scrape some shot link data from the old PGA tour website.
Uh, it's a little harder to get now.
Uh, and I was able to do, um.
Because able to write my Master's thesis based on, you know, shot link data.
And I, I still specifically remember this was, would've been like 2019, uh,
or 2020, but sending it to one of my buddies who I, I played golf with and
was like, oh man, like I can do this with this and like this, you know, what I'm
in grad school for and what I'm doing professionally and combined with, you
know, golf being the thing I, you know, I love to do more than anything else was,
uh, was really, really exciting to me.
And so did I know I was gonna be able to make it into a career or,
you know, beyond just a hobby.
Like, I was very lucky to, to get introduced to some guys who played,
you know, at different levels and, um, many tours and, and some of the, you
know, Korn Ferry, PGA tour Americas at the time, or Canada at the time, and
start figuring out what professional golfers wanted outta this information.
'cause I've always been very kind of, uh, application oriented, like, like.
Product oriented when it comes to analytics, there's, there's
a very academic side of it, which is foundational, right?
It's how you come up with things like strokes gained.
It's, you know, the, the people in academia are what are doing that kind
of the complex math work to build those metrics, but then you have
to take it to the consumer, right?
You have to take it to the person who's going to use it.
And so I've always been very focused on what are the questions
we can answer and what are the things that we can try to solve.
You know, we look at, like the NLCS is going on right
now, brewers versus Dodgers.
Uh, my brewers are down oh two as we speak.
And the, both those, both those groups have 30 plus people working in their like
technology and analytics groups, right?
And that's across data science and software engineering.
And, um, the coaches whose job it is to translate it to the bench
coach and, and all of those things.
And so, and, and I had similar experience obviously in the MBA.
And so how could I take that in translate and make it actually make it useful?
For a PGA tour player.
I think that's been the biggest, you know, area I've, you know, really
grown in and, and understood like, how do we actually apply this to them?
Because we can do fancy numbers and models and pretty pictures and visuals and make
it cool and make it work on your iPhone, but like if it doesn't answer and help you
intervene or do things specifically, it's just, you know, kind of data for data's
sake.
Aaron Goldberg: Yeah, that's what I've been really impressed with is it's,
you know, being able to peek behind the curtain a little bit with you.
The data's there to help reinforce the right things and give insight.
Uh, more than just, hey, the top level of like, Hey, here's what's
available on ShotLink, but then, hey, what does this actually mean?
But then putting it into a, we'll say consumer facing, but a player facing
platform that's easily understandable, easily digestible, where they can
actually do something with it.
And a, you know, again, not comparing you to anybody else, but just
any, any player that's going to treat their game like a business,
'cause that's really what they are.
You can't, you're not gonna employ a 30 man team of analytics like the MLB
teams are doing, or NBA teams are doing.
But to completely ignore it on the same level is you're doing
your business a disservice.
And so, again, trying to get players to think more around like CEO of
their own company, analytics needs to be part of that at some level.
Every player's gonna be a little bit different in how that's
incorporated, but I think at least.
Having these understandings of what's out there and how shot link data,
'cause that's gonna be obviously the most readily available data.
But then what, what is done with that?
How do you improve your game?
Where do you identify places in your game that can be improved?
What's the lowest hanging fruit?
Just because you have a weakness doesn't mean, hey, that's where I should spend
the most, the majority of my time.
And just 'cause you have a strength doesn't mean you ignore that or, you
know, only spend a little bit of time.
You know, again, we'll talk about that in a minute of how do we identify
the best places to be practicing?
Um, and then the whole course prep, uh, tournament prep.
How do we map out a course?
How do we make decisions that are data-driven as opposed to just feel,
what's the combination of the two?
Uh, using the data with your caddy so that the caddy can have an
understanding around these decisions.
There's a lot that goes into it.
And again, if I'm the, if I'm the player, I'm the CEO of my business
and the product is my play on the course, I want everything at my
fingertips to be able to make the best
decisions.
Cory Jez: For sure.
And you know, we, we will use the term analytics obviously throughout our
conversation, Aaron, but information is really, it's a form of information, right?
Just like how your body is feeling that day is a form of information
and how you are swinging the club is a form of information, right?
It's maybe it's a little more quantitative than it is qualitative,
but you know, the, these athletes, these golfers are, have been doing this
for so long and they do it every day.
So they're so finely attuned to when those things kind of
deviate off their, off their norm.
And so, you know, this type of information and then how we obviously apply it, which
we'll talk about is, is kind of what we're after here and we break it down.
You kind of alluded to it, but we break it down in three buckets.
So core strategy, which is admittedly probably like the sexiest part of it.
It's definitely the part I talk the most about, probably of, um, you know, what
are we doing at number four at Napa?
Or what are we doing at number five at Black Desert coming up next week?
Like.
There's a lot of really interesting holes in the PGA tour where you
see golfers do different things, you know, different players in the
field employ different strategies.
Um, so core strategy gets the majority, probably the conversation, but tournament
prep, you know, what is your, what does Monday through Wednesday look like?
What are you gonna spend your time doing?
Um, which is kind of an extension of the, what we call performance
analytics, which is kind of the player's skill, your skill profile.
Uh, where are you lacking,
how do I identify trends?
Is one week is two weeks, is four weeks.
Like, how do, how do I know when I need to change up?
How I'm practicing?
How should I practice, um, if I'm making a swing change, if I'm not, all of these
types of things, because we're constrained by time and kind of our physiology, right?
I cannot hit balls for eight hours straight.
I would've a huge diminishing return on the, you know, the
eighth hour of practice there.
Um, so how do I structure.
Uh, an off week, an on week, you know, an off week when I'm not playing the
following week versus an off week when I am playing the following week.
All of that type of stuff.
How do we, you know, dial that in to make it as efficient as possible?
And those are the types of things, you know, you hinted at, you know, the
golfers, the CEO of the company, this, and maybe maybe tennis being the other
one, is kind of the only sport where they show up to work every day and
do kind of whatever they want to do.
You know, an NBA player, an NFL player does, you know, obviously they've got
input with their coaches and, and those types of things, but by and large, if
you're an NBA player, you show up and do what the coach tells you to do that day.
Um, and you might be a role player who's gonna work on those specific
parts of hi, of the role that he's expected to do for the team.
And so, you know, that can be a really positive thing for a, a professional
golfer, an aspiring professional golfer.
Uh, but if you're not focused on it right, it can also be a detriment, or at least
something that, you know, you're not as efficient as you could be with your
time and, and with your prep and, and
with your practice.
Aaron Goldberg: Yeah, I
mean, I think back to, you know, the end of that, what you were saying there, and
we're fortunate enough to see some of the best players in the world and how they
operate and how they run their day to day.
And the best players clearly operate their day differently
than the rest of the guys on tour.
And especially as guys are learning what their rhythms are, what their
best practices are, how they should be setting up their standard day,
and everyone's gonna be different.
It doesn't mean you have to model it the same way as those top players,
but understanding like, Hey, what do I need to accomplish throughout a day?
What do I need to accomplish Monday through Wednesday?
What do I need to accomplish pre and post game on a Thursday through Sunday?
And then the off weeks, you know.
Is rest the accomplishment that day and recovery?
Or is it working on something that's, you know, identifying all those things and
having a clear plan is, is huge and it's, it's a better way, more efficient way to
have no wasted energy, no wasted time.
And as you all know, out on PJ Tour, your time is probably
your most precious commodity.
Like, you just don't have enough time in the day for everything.
And so understanding what's your highest and best use that
day, that hour, that minute
is
super important.
Cory Jez: It, it absolutely
Aaron Goldberg: uh,
Cory Jez: Yeah.
Aaron Goldberg: yeah, go.
Yeah,
if you wanna
expand on that, you can.
Um,
Cory Jez: you're, you're absolutely right.
The time is, you know, time is the, the big constraint that we have,
you know, the professional golfers have on themselves and, uh, again,
when you walk into an NFL or an NBA practice, every minute is scheduled out.
You know, 'cause they got 'em for maybe two hours on the quarter,
an hour and a half on the court.
Right.
You know, a Tuesday on the PGA tour is gonna be.
Some form of activation practice, probably nine holes.
Um, some practice after some physio work.
Maybe a lift, right?
A light lift or whatever, depending.
And that's like six, seven hours, you know?
Then you might have a corporate thing, you know, maybe you just wanna get
some rest 'cause you're going on three weeks in a row, whatever it might be.
And so building out that day really kind of ruthlessly efficiently
is, is very, very important.
'cause you're gonna do that 20, 25 times a year, um, maybe 30, 30 plus times a
year depending on who you're as a player.
And so, um, it's really important to be very efficient with those things.
And one of the things I have players do, this isn't analytical at all, but when
we start working together, say, sit down with a blank piece of paper or maybe
do it on a zoom call and write me out your perfect Monday through Wednesday.
What does it look like?
Like in, you know, in chunks, right?
How many times do you see in the golf course?
What, okay, I'm gonna go hit balls.
Is it just, is the purpose of that warming up?
Is it.
Working on a swing feel, is it, you know, what, what's the purpose
of hitting balls there and go through the entire three day period?
Um, you could do the same thing with, you know, pre-round for each
of your days, pre-round, right?
Um, there's great clips of guys like JJ Reddick and Dun Mitchell on
social media talking about their, you know, their off season program
or their pre round, their pre-game.
Um, and, you know, an NBA player's playing 82 games, it's about the
number of rounds a PGA tour player's gonna play in a year, right?
And so
Aaron Goldberg: Yep.
Cory Jez: it, it's knowing that and having that down and having the
things that you want to accomplish really clear is, is really,
really important for those guys.
Aaron Goldberg: Well, and I think one of the keys you said there, 'cause
I, I go through a similar practice, which is interesting, but is not just
what you're doing but the intention.
And I think sometimes it, what I see and what I've even talked to players about is.
Sometimes they forget why they're even doing that thing, or they're
going through the motion because they think they're supposed to
and they see other guys doing it.
But the intention isn't quite there, and it doesn't mean it's wasted time, but it
can be a lot more efficient, even just by identifying what that intention is.
Uh, it makes that time and practice and energy spent so much more worthwhile.
Cory Jez: Yeah, and I would break, I would break that into
kind of three buckets, right?
Uh, you know, we'll use hit hitting balls as an example, but there's
kind of three buckets of intention.
It's like you're going through your bag, you're getting loose, you're getting
warm, you're hitting shots, you're not really trying to like accomplish
a specific shot, but you're, you need to go through the bag once, right?
Um, then you kind of have, you know, what I would call like technical work.
And that is anything you are working on or trying to re ingrain, um,
this is where like block practice is totally, um, useful and acceptable.
And, you know, people talk about block versus random all the time.
Well, like I am trying to make with a mid iron, I'm trying to get a plus one path
with a zero face 'cause I wanna hit a baby draw or something like that, right?
You're trying to hit that number on the TrackMan.
You're working with your swing coach to try to hit a position, try
to have a, try to ingrain a feel.
You're using video, you're using TrackMan, right?
You're doing all those things.
And that's like a good percentage of your range session, right?
If you're gonna be out there for two hours, that, that may be an
hour of it, um, is working on those things at different parts of your
bag, whether it's wedges, mid irons, um, long irons, clubs, whatever.
Um, but then the last part and the one that is definitely, I think we see the
most variation among PGA tour players, um, in what I call like the execution
based part of part of the session, right?
Where, you know, we are gonna take what we are trying to ingrain and we
are gonna challenge you with it and we're gonna give you kind of a gamified
approach to executing on those things.
And we're gonna try to replicate what we'll see on the golf course.
Maybe not perfectly to a t, but based on what we're, depending on
what we're working on, where we've identified maybe the focus area of
your game, uh, or maybe what the golf course is gonna ask of us this week.
We're going to design protocols around that based on the statistics.
To help you to kind of put you, uh, in the fire a little bit and,
and make you go execute on that.
Some players I see do this religiously and do it really, really well.
Certainly it's something I'm a huge fan of.
Um, and then there are probably some players who straight up do not do this
ever on the driving range or on the putting green, which, you know, there's a
wide variety of personalities and people and no one thing is right for everybody.
Um, but, but I would argue kind of all of the literature and all the
research has showed us that these, you know, randomized games, and we can
get into some of the specifics here, Aaron, but like this randomization
giving you a win-loss criteria on, on a certain game, uh, will really kind
of cauterize what you're trying to learn and what you're, the skill you're
trying to acquire and make you better
for it long term.
Aaron Goldberg: Yeah, I think understanding, hey, we can't rep replicate
the pressure of a Sunday afternoon or Friday afternoon for some guys, or, you
know, the first tee shot on Thursday.
But if we can gamify and give that win-loss scenario for certain
practice parts of our game, it's the closest thing to the real thing.
And again, we're not trying to have the exact same, 'cause we, we know
we can't have that, but if we can get something close, it's gonna help
prepare for playing under pressure, nerves, whatever people want to call it.
Like, you feel slightly different under the gun.
And it, it's not a bad thing, it's.
It's a good thing and the best players in the world rise to
that occasion and channel that and learn how to channel that.
I don't think it's always a, hey, you can either do it or you can't.
I think it's practicing it and understanding how do I get better
under this type of scenario.
Uh, and so any sort of gamified approach like that, that, that has numbers behind
it where it's not just making it up out of thin air is gonna be a good thing.
But I even go back to like, when you're kids, like you wanna, you wanna beat
your buddy in a putting contest or a up and down contest or whatever it may be.
Like that's as close to the pressure you're gonna see on
the golf course as you can get.
How do we, you know, if we take it to the next level of like, I want to get
to tournament prep and co we'll get to course prep a little bit at the end, um,
and do kind of a sneak peek of that, you know, we'll do that on another episode.
But as far as taking, first, taking the sample size and the data that, you
know, all the PJ tour players have at their fingertips through Shot Lane.
Like if they're able to access that, what's the first step there of taking
a look at it, analyzing it, and then creating some sort of practice plan for,
you know, right now we're in the fall, so you're players are either in their
off season or about be, and they're, you know, three week off season that you guys
get, or you know, anything in between.
But how do we identify in a little bit of time to improve and work on things?
What's the best place to be spending our time and building a plan
around
that?
Cory Jez: Yeah.
So, you know, ShotLink is, is a, is a great resource, right?
The PGA tour has developed this incredible asset from a
data standpoint with ShotLink.
Um, they've obviously built it out over the last decade or two.
Um.
And it, there's so many different applications of it, right?
So what we're talking about here is a very specific application of ShotLink
and you know, again, analogizing it back to the baseball teams.
Like they've got dozens of people looking at it.
And, you know, part of the reason I think that I exist is 'cause I'm
taking this very, you know, trying to solve and answer these very specific
questions that are oriented towards the player and their coach and their team.
Whether it's for core strategy or in this case, you know, identifying, you
know, their performance analysis and what they need to do to try to get
better going into next year, going into their last few, um, events in the fall.
So the first thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna do some math
behind the scenes with it to one, make it really actionable, right?
Because shot link at at its core is just a list of shots.
It's all it is.
Um, and there's a bunch of random coordinates that you looked at.
The data file wouldn't mean anything to you, right?
But they mean something
relative to each other.
Um, so the first thing we wanna do
Aaron Goldberg: leave that
to the
experts to look at.
Cory Jez: Yeah.
Yeah, that's, that's where the coding part comes in is very, very helpful
to, we, we, we don't do it by hand, sir, but so the first thing that we
do, uh, with to IQ is, um, we take strokes gained, which is awesome.
Um, you know, mark Brody, Columbia Professor built Strokes gained,
gosh, probably 20 years ago.
Um, and it's a great way to kind of evaluate all shots
on a level playing field.
Um, but we need to make it a little more specific to the
player and to the situation.
Right.
So, Aaron, I know you and I could think of dozens of situations on tour
where maybe you have a chip green side and it's, you know, take PJ
National, uh, when they didn't oversee it down in, uh, uh, west Palm is an
example of this, like grainy Bermuda.
You're 10 feet below the green, you're going up over a hump and it's shortsighted
to a pin and it's just like nightmare fuel, especially for guys like you
and me, much less PGA tour players.
But like, you know, you've gotta hit it either in nippy 60 or a putt or a bump.
There's guys play that shot.
Different ways, right?
That's a really, really hard pitch shot.
It might be on paper, it's 20 yards from the fairway maybe, or 15 yards
from the fairway, and that's all that strokes gain would know about that shot.
But what, what we can do again, since we're trying to answer a very specific
question is use, well, hey, 50 or 60 guys might go down there over the
four days, over the course of a week.
So we've got a really good idea of how that actually placed all
the different pin locations.
And we go to that course every year and that course doesn't really change and
maybe, maybe one year they oversee it.
So we account for that.
But the course doesn't really change.
Most courses on tour relatively similar year over year.
And so we've now got maybe 200 guys who have been down there over the last four or
five years in that one spot on the hole.
So we can actually really, uh, accurately and precisely grade the difficulty of
every shot on tour because we've got this really rich data set of a bunch of other
people have generally been in that spot.
Before as well.
So we call it expected strokes, which is basically kind of like
just built on top of strokes gained.
Uh, but it gives us precision around each shot.
So you hear this all the time talking to especially short game coaches on tour,
like a, is he a bad shipper or does he always leave himself in tough spots, which
are two totally different things, right?
But this now allows us to kind of unlock the answer to that and say, well, you're
in really, really tough spots, which maybe is a problem with your iron play actually.
So, or your core strategy perhaps.
But if you're always leaving it in tough spots on the PGA
tours, like headline statistics, you'd show up as a bad chipper.
But you may not actually be, you may be like closer to a tour average
chipper who's always in tough spots.
And if we don't get that part of the math right, we may go work on the wrong
things, you know, or you know, none of this is binary, but like we may spend a
little more time here than we should there when we should be spending the time like.
On our short iron or mid iron approach play.
'cause we're missing too many greens in those bad spots.
And so getting that math part right, which is like super not sexy and like
the nerdy part of all of this, but it's really important to get it right
because that's what's going to inform what we spend our time on, right?
And so if you are a, um, just to extend that shipping example, like if
you're someone who has been leaving it in tough spots, we can actually
say like, yeah, you're hitting your chips to 12 feet, but that's where
everyone hits those chips from.
You're actually about a tour average level chipper.
Like, yeah, we'd like to get that better, but where you're, where you're
hurting yourself is more your short iron, mid iron play because to left-sided
pins, you're always missing left.
You know, just as a generic example here.
Um, and that's when you tend to have most of those kind of really difficult,
above average difficulty shots.
Um, so we would actually say like, Hey, maybe we need to go work on
short mid iron, play two left pins and build some games around that
for, for that example.
Aaron Goldberg: That's great.
Yeah, I can see how just the raw data could just over generalize,
could be a little bit misleading.
I think there was always this thought that, hey, over the course
of a whole season, the extra hard shot and the extra easy shot are
gonna average each other out and.
Everyone's gonna kind of regress to the mean or be in the middle on all, you
know, if he's a, a better than average shipper or a worse than average shipper,
he's gonna have some easy chips, some hardships, it'll figure itself out.
But it's actually not true.
Like you need some context behind the data.
And it's not saying the data's wrong, it's just adding context to it.
It seems like, and to your point, it's not, hey, binary, we're, we're not
gonna practice chipping because actually we're a little bit better than we think.
But it's more, Hey, let's identify an issue of, hey, maybe our proximity to
hole in those, you know, 1 50, 1 75 isn't that bad, but to a short left pin or a
short right pin, we keep missing in the same spot and short sighting ourself and
having an above average difficulty chip, which is then leaving us a six to eight
footer as opposed to two to three footer.
So we're just.
By lot, like by the percentages, we're missing more of
those six to eight footers.
Now we start creeping into, hey, are we a bad putter?
Two are scrambling percentages going down.
I think there's all these extrapolations of players
understand, like the feel behind it.
Like, Hey, I don't feel like a bad chipper, but if the numbers say
I'm a hundred and 20th in chipping, then maybe I do need to work on it.
And now all of a sudden it's a confidence thing.
You know, I can, I don't wanna go down too far of the rabbit hole, but
I think that understanding context around the data and your guys', sorry,
you not, so stroke gain strokes game is from the tour and then yours is
on layered on top is what?
What is it
Cory Jez: we call it expected strokes.
Aaron Goldberg: Yeah.
So that expected strokes adds a ton of context for that.
And now, okay, now I'm a player.
I have this expected strokes.
You and I have taken a look at all the data and we've identified.
Let, let's use an example, like gimme an example of something you identified
with a player and were able to work on since let's say, tour championship
or the playoffs.
Cory Jez: Yeah, so calendar wise, right.
Uh, and I'll hit on one thing you said there, Aaron.
Another thing is important, you know, it, it's never, the data is right or wrong.
Like the data is just literally the location of the golf ball and whether
it was in the rough or the fairway, the conclusion we draw from it and the
intervention we take because of what we think it's telling us is, and again, not
right or wrong in a binary sense, but like gonna lead us down one path or, uh, have
us put more weight on one area or another.
And that's the thing we just wanna be really precise with when
we're making these recommendations and kind of designing these
interventions with players.
Because again.
Quarters of a shot matter out here.
You know, being a half a shot better is the difference between
being in the tour championship and missing the playoffs sometimes.
Like, you know, so over the course of a round, all these
margins really, really add up.
So, um, but you know, I'll, I'll give you an example.
A player we work with, uh, who came to us in the middle of this season,
um, and kind of knew his iron play was not up to standard, right?
He could look at a strokes gained approach number and be
like, it's negative, that's bad.
Like, and that's correct, obviously, but that's not enough to be like,
how do I make it not negative?
And, you know, play better is obviously like an easy, like very blunt force thing.
Like, yeah, you and your swing coach go like, hit irons better, but okay.
That, that's not really a recommendation or an intervention.
Everyone's always trying to do that.
Um, always trying to be more consistent, always trying to, you know, hit the
shapes they want to hit, hit the spots and the lines that they want to hit.
Um, and so everybody's, if everybody's doing that, like,
how do I really drill into.
Very specific situations and identify those places, um, in that player's game.
Right.
And so with approach plays specifically, obviously breaking it down by distance,
uh, we tend to only look at shots from the fairway, um, shots from the rough.
You're generally trying to find the green, you know, the way
the rough is on the PGA tour.
There's obviously certain weeks where you can be a little more aggressive, but you
get that Bermuda rough right late in the year like we had in Memphis or Atlanta.
And it's like, man, you're just trying to like pitch it front edge and
hope it stays, um, most of the time.
So, you know, we look at your shots from the fairway, um, we can break it
down by pin location, um, and obviously break it down by yardage bucket.
And we can also, you know, I think one thing that's important
here is like break it down.
We call it temporally, but across time, like you made the point Aaron,
of like, yes, over the course of a large enough sample that those strokes
gained and expected strokes numbers would kind of level out, right?
If you had.
A bazillion chip shots that you hit on tour.
Some would be hard, some would be easy, and they would kinda level out to being
a tour average difficulty chip shot.
Well, hey, guess what?
Like I got a tournament in three weeks, like I gotta decide what to do.
So I can't wait till the end of the year.
And, and sample size to figure itself out, like the question is coming up
of like, what have I done the last two or three weeks like that has ticked
out of, its like normal range and like where do I need to ho hone it back in?
Or where do you know I've been working on this thing?
Is it coming, you know, is it improving?
Is it coming up the way I would want it to?
Is it translating in tournaments?
And so we can't really wait for like lar the law of large
numbers to kick in essentially.
Right?
So, um, there was a player who came to us, uh, came to us middle of the
season, knew his approach play kind of was not, uh, where he wanted it to be.
We really picked out like 100 to 1 25.
So kind of full sandwich wedge, full gap wedge, and maybe some
feely pitching wedges in there.
Um.
For this player as his big area of focus.
And specifically for him, he had an issue with front right pins.
Um, just the nature of his ball flight, the nature of his shape.
Um, you know, if you're a player who moves the ball right to left, which a lot
of players tend to do with their irons, especially shorter irons, um, that can
be kind of a challenging whole location.
'cause it might mean you're starting it out outside the green.
Um, and it might mean if you be a little defensive, you're, you know, you're
gonna, you're miss, you know, if you're a little long, players tend to Ms.
Long left or short, right?
Unless you're a lefty.
But, um, long left or short, right?
Like it doesn't really work for that pin location.
At least for this player it wasn't.
So, you know, we identified that and we put a lot of times our interventions,
and I've used this term a couple times, intervention just means
like, what are we gonna do about it?
Um, is gonna be some form of a, of a game.
Um, and the game kinda has to have three principles.
It's gotta be gamified, so you've gotta be able to win or lose it.
We're not just gonna hit 20 shots and go, okay, cool.
Good job.
You've gotta be able to win or lose.
There's gotta be, you know, we talked about pressure.
No, we're never gonna replicate Sunday at the master's pressure on
the driving range in Mississippi, but we're gonna make it worth something
and we're gonna track it, right?
So, um, so it's gotta be gamified, it's gotta be representative.
So if we're building like a win loss, like a, working with this guy yesterday
and we were saying, okay, you're gonna drop a ball on the course and you've
gotta hit it for that range, for the 100 to one 20, you've gotta hit it
inside of 20 feet for it to be a win.
So tour average from one 10 is about 20 feet proximity.
So in the, in this, in this guy's case, 'cause we're trying to get him
back to average and then to above average in this area, we just want
him to beat to our average right now.
Um, and so he is gotta hit that shot inside of 20 feet to a tucked pin.
Can't do that to the middle of the green, but to a tucked pin.
Um, he's gotta hit that inside of 20 feet and it's gotta be periodized,
which I just hinted at, but.
Right now, you know, we're setting the, the ring basically at this
and he's gotta hit it inside there for the shot to be a win.
And we'll add up, you know, he's gotta do it five outta nine times.
If we do it in a nine hole session, um, he should get better at that over time.
We should shrink that ring over time.
So this concept of periodization the same thing.
The analogy I always make is weightlifting.
Like you don't go bench 1 35 your whole life.
Like you start benching 1 35 and hopefully at some point you get
stronger and you go to 180 5 and 2 25 and you know, big strong guys
like you, Aaron Bench 3 25, right?
So, um,
Aaron Goldberg: I was gonna say I'm still working
on 1 35, So, I don't know
about
that.
Cory Jez: So, but the game should evolve with the player over time, right?
So every two, three weeks.
So we set that win loss threshold for the whole game.
And if you beat it five times in a row, we're gonna shrink.
For, depending on what the game is, but we're gonna shrink the
ring or the number of reps that you have to complete the task.
Um, they're all, they can all be a little different, whether it's putting
or chipping or iron player driving.
Um, but that, that's the periodization.
So it's gamified, it's representative and it's periodized, right?
So you can win or lose.
It's based on your statistics, based on kind of like what
our goals are from the course.
And we're gonna track it over time.
And if you're continually crushing it, we're gonna make it tougher on you.
'cause we want you to continue to grow.
And if you're continually losing, we're gonna loosen the ring too.
That doesn't happen as much, but like we would loosen the ring up too.
And if a player's like really struggling in this area, we don't want
him like feeling, feeling like he's banging his head against the wall.
So all the literature shows us that you should win.
You know, with skill acquisition you should win between 50 and 75% of the time.
Somewhere in there is the sweet spot.
And that's actually really important to communicate the
players when you're designing these interventions with them because.
These guys are super competitive and there's certainly guys I work with
that will like lose a game and will be on the practice screen or the driving
range and they shoot me a look or, or maybe they use, you know, a, a
four letter word and which is good.
They're, they're competing, right?
Which is what we want out of them.
They care, um, that's gonna, you know, drive that improvement like by being super
focused and trying really hard to win.
Um, but yeah, it's, so it's got, it's gotta kind of meet all those,
uh, all of those criteria for us.
Um, with those parameters.
There's, there's one we do in shipping that's really fun.
So there's one we do in shipping where we set a bunch of shots around
a green, around a practice green.
You got multiple pins and you kind of walk around, you never hit.
Another principle here would be you never hit the same shot twice, ideally.
Um, and so.
Uh, so randomized would be another principle.
And so in this game you end up moving around the green to different
spots and hitting at different pins, hitting it inside of proximities.
And those are all the levers we pull on how hard we wanna make the game.
But what happens in the shipping game is you get further and further down the
line and it's like, okay, maybe you have three spots left and if you don't hit it
in the ring, you gotta walk all the way across the green to hit your next shot.
And if you don't hit that one in the ring, like you're down to two balls, you gotta
walk all the way back to that same ball.
Correct.
And we call it the walk shame, but it's even that little bit
of pressure that we're applying.
And because like these, again, I mean, if I'm took you out there right now
and do it like, and made you play this chipping game, Aaron, like, it gets
really frustrating and you really don't wanna walk across the green again.
And hopefully if you're someone who's taking it seriously, like that's gonna
make you focus, that's gonna make you lock in even 5% more than you would've on a,
you know, just a normal hit and giggle.
And that's gonna be some of it that helps it translate it and cauterize
it in our mind and kind of our.
The neuroplasticity in our, you know, neural neurological system
to lock in that, you know, that experience and that hopefully
improvement over time.
Aaron Goldberg: Yeah, I mean, uh, I'm laughing because I've seen you do that
game with some of your players and it just raises the level of focus in those times.
And what, again, one of the biggest things I notice between the top
players in the world and even like a top 50 player in the world.
Is the level of intention and focus on every single movement and shot
that's hit in a practice round.
I'm not even talking about the tournament rounds and to even to the level of,
I remember we were walking a practice round at the PGA championship and a
player's caddy dropped a ball next to it.
Uh, he had dropped a, a hole marker where a pin was going to be in the
tournament and he, the caddy dropped two balls for him to chip and the
player goes, no, move that ball.
I'll never hit it there.
And I kind of like looked and listened, kind of hear what he was gonna say.
He goes, I know we can't be past that pin.
He moved that ball two yards.
That's how specific he was with his chipping practice and intention,
because he was like, I'll never hit it there, but two yards from there.
Yes, I, I could hit it there.
And it was that specificity of like.
How focused they are on every movement matters and every practice shot
matters from an energy standpoint.
They're not gonna waste anything out there.
Um, so I, I love the parameters that you set with those three or four
principles around those practices.
And, you know, I can imagine whether it be wedge game and that a hundred to 125,
I would imagine you're gonna see results.
E everyone's gonna be different, but like fairly quickly if you're really
focusing on it because you're gonna be able to identify what the issue
is, whether it's just time spent on it, whether it's a technical issue,
whether it's a strategic issue.
Uh, obviously the longer, further away you are.
Now, maybe technical comes into it and there's more variance, but I think
everyone can, can agree if you're on PJ tour, like your wedges, you're gonna be
able to get close if you're going with the right strategy, have the right technique.
You know, and, and have the right numbers.
It, it's just a matter of focus and I shouldn't say focus, but of
intention on that, those shots.
And so if you're starting to see that periodization, so I didn't really know
what that meant until we talked about it.
Um, not, hey, over the whole season, but maybe the last three weeks, this
has gotten a little outta whack for me.
Maybe not compared to everybody else, but for me, this is a little outta whack.
I need to go back and, Hey, I know this course coming up.
There's a lot of shots between a hundred and 125.
I need to make sure I spend more time on this.
Gamify it, have it be based, you know, on what we're going to see.
What, maybe, talk to me a bit, a little bit about that in, I don't wanna get
like into full on like course mapping or prep mode, but like, how about just
identifying, hey, going into the rest of the fall, these guys have Utah.
You know, this is gonna come out probably the week of Utah, but Utah, Cabo, Bermuda,
RSM or guys are gonna go be going into the spring, into the, into January.
You got Century, which hopefully gets played.
We don't know where yet.
Um, but you got the three Palm Springs courses, you got the two courses at
Torry Pines, you got Riviera, you got Phoenix Open at TPC, Scottsdale,
like all different types of courses.
But how about just identifying, hey, this is a spot or an area of I'm
gonna have more than average amount of approach shots from this distance.
Or, Hey, I know this course I'm gonna hit a lot more drivers, or
this course, I'm gonna hit a lot more
Cory Jez: Yep.
Aaron Goldberg: shots from 2 50, 2 75 off the T.
Um, how do you break that down and then, and then turn
that into that same systemized
practice, if you will.
Cory Jez: Yeah.
You know, you hit on something really, um, relevant at the beginning there,
Aaron, in talking about, you know, why we track this stuff over time.
You know, again, compare this to the player who maybe go hits 57 Aarons
in a row and then calls it a day and maybe feels like they hit a good, or
feels like they didn't hit a good.
This can help us identify when there's a technical flaw or
if there's a technical flaw.
Like if I take someone through the same, you know, or a similar like 100
to 1 25, like a full wedge combine every day for two weeks, right?
It's only 18 shots or so.
But, um, we did that every day for two weeks and we never passed it.
And we kept loosening parameters and we still like, weren't passing it.
And we were like losing, losing strokes compared to the tour
tour numbers and all of that.
Like we clearly at that point have a technical flaw.
You, you don't even need two weeks or three weeks to identify that.
Like you could probably identify it in, you know, a couple of sessions there.
And one of the nice things about TrackMan, if you use it appropriately,
is it's gonna give us like a much higher sample size of data than waiting
to go play a bunch of tournaments.
'cause you're, you might only hit three of those around in a tournament,
uh, or four, something like that.
You have 18 approach shots.
Um, and maybe a quarter of them are, you know, 100 to 1 25 or
one 50 depending on the course.
Toy Pines you'll have like none.
Um, and then we can, we can get that kind of signal a lot quicker, you know, bring
the swing coach in, talk about that.
You know, something they're probably already aware of, but like, boy,
we really need to figure out a three quarter pitching wedge.
We do not, we are really having trouble with that 1 28
number or whatever it might be.
Right.
Which is like a hammer gap, but.
It's a green that's gonna spin.
I can't hit a hammer gap, so I've gotta like hit a handsy pitch and
I just do, do not have that shot.
'cause every time it comes up in the combine, I lose a quarter of a stroke.
Right?
So you could by, by doing it in that standardized way, you can
identify that so much quicker, right?
Whether it's me looking at the reports afterwards, the player
just like, this is always coming up and I'm always getting a grade.
So I'm like, it's just, it's just resonating with them a lot quicker.
Um, and to your point, like we do see when it's not a technical flaw, so
sometimes it might be like, I need to add a new shot to my arsenal.
I'm gonna go work with my swing coach and try to add this shot to
like, I need to take 2000 RPM off a pitching wedge How am I do that?
I've never done that before, or whatever it might be.
gonna it's something that's just like, man, they've got all the skills,
they've got all the biomechanics for it, which obviously these guys are
uber talented, but they just don't have, you know, the reps or they
haven't tried to hit that shot a bunch and now we're asking 'em to hit it.
Yeah, we see that come up pretty quickly, right?
So this 100 to 125 example we've been talking about, you know, that
was at the end of the playoffs.
We kind of identified that.
Um, and at Napa and Sanderson, this player went out and I think at Napa he went
like seven-for-seven green in Reg from that yardage, um, with average proximity.
So he gained strokes 'cause he never missed a green,
never shortsighted himself.
Um, and had field average, you know, was average for the week in terms
of proximity from that yardage.
So he picked up some strokes, certainly compared to where he had been previously.
Then at Sanderson, he beat proximity by like five feet.
Um, and he had really good showings at both those events as well.
Um, Sanderson especially, uh, both, both those courses have, you know, a little
more bias towards the short irons.
They're not super, super long, um, golf courses and so we should
see, you know, those interventions pay off relatively quickly.
That is not a multi-month, you know, it's a, that's on a week by week basis.
We should see kind of like little step function increases.
Um, in those things.
So it, uh, that's worth pointing out.
Like it's really good to track this stuff because it allows you to see like,
boy, I just can't execute this thing.
Or if, if I can, like, I should see it kind of quickly get better.
And, you know, we, we see that all the time with players.
But on the, on the, on the preparation side, um, you know, really week to
week, you know, using the West Coast swing as the example there, I mean,
God, different types of grasses, different types of golf courses.
You go to Sony, which is a Seth Rainer old school dog legs, like you're moving
three woods and like two irons off the tees there and like trying to shape shots.
The Bermuda, depending on if it's three inches, like, can be
kind of gnarly, like Jumper City, trying to read Bermuda lies there.
And you go to, you know, Tory, which totally different grass, you know,
Riviera, which is, uh, kakuy obviously.
And um.
You know, really low, rough, typically very tough fairways to hit.
Obviously great green greenside surrounds there.
A lot of chipping happens at Riviera.
Um, relatively low green and regulation course.
So each week we're gonna kind of put together a package on the golf course.
And we do it from like, yeah, we do the individual holes, obviously the core
strategy about specific tee shots and specific pin locations and targets,
but also like the macroeconomic, like what is the course going to ask of us?
And so that tends to look like, you know, what are the approach yardages
plus or minus kind of a typical tour week, because again, a guy's still
gonna hit four irons Monday through Wednesday, but like, you know, we're
not gonna the Mexico open anymore.
But you go to the Mexico open, you're hitting four irons everywhere
around the golf course, right?
Or Tory Pines.
You're certainly gonna hit a lot more for irons than you would at probably, um, TPC
Scottsdale or uh, pebble Beach, certainly.
Right?
Um, and so, um, you know, on a relative basis, what is
it gonna ask from us from a.
From a yardage standpoint for our approach game, um, around
the greens, what types of shots?
So literally just breaking down like short and long fairway, uh, rough and bunker.
Um, you know, Tory Pines has a lot more rough chipping.
Uh, pebble has a lot of rough chipping.
Um, waste management is like Oversedated, you know, seated
obviously, um, because they're playing there so early in the year.
Um, so where's that distribution of shots fall?
So what should I be working on on the practice Green?
Um, obviously once we're on the course, we're looking at the
specific shots to the specific pin locations, those types of things.
And, and then the putting distribution as well.
So if you take a really, uh, high green and regulation golf course, um, like
we have this week coming up in Utah, I forget the number, it's, but it's well
into the seventies, maybe even close to 80% green and Reg for the field last year.
So like everyone's hitting the greens.
We got a lot of, like, it becomes a 15 to 25, 30 foot putting contest essentially.
Um, you, the fairways are very wide there.
If you, if.
You missed the fairway, you're pretty much taking a penalty
stroke 'cause it's desert.
But um, very high fairway rate.
Very high green and reg rate.
Um, so being able to make mid length long putts.
So we wanna work on like speed control for mid length, long, mid length, long
putts in our prep during the week.
And we also wanna get on the course.
We don't wanna grind over six footers like we would at Sawgrass.
'cause sawgrass you're gonna miss a bunch of greens and have
a bunch of six footers for par.
We want to hit like where are the kind of the common spots that I'm
gonna have that 20 to 25 footer for birdie to each of these pin
locations and try to drill those in.
'cause we may even see some, when, when we go out on the golf course,
we're looking for stuff like, boy this is kind of a common area I
could see myself having a putt from.
Or we can see that in the data explicitly.
And boy that putt does something totally different than I thought it would.
And I'm gonna put that in my book, right?
'cause the players are allowed to observe, you know, through their own eyes
and their own feet and what they see.
And they can write that in their book.
They obviously can't use.
Any external implements or green reading tools nowadays, but we can go say,
Hey, here's the common spots, and when you see something from a common spot
so we know it's got a high likelihood of coming up that really like breaks
in a way that's different than you'd expect, like that should probably
make it into you in your Caddy's book.
Everyone's got a little bit of a
different process there.
Aaron Goldberg: Yeah, I think just even understanding going into a, a
week, like let's say I'm reviewing this, I'm the player, I'm reviewing
this Thursday, Friday, the week before, you know, it's the off week.
Utah's gonna be next week.
And so I'm reviewing all right, this is, and you know, ideally, actually
you should probably be reviewing this two or three weeks ahead of time so
that you're spending the whole week leading up to it, practicing this.
Um, but even just going into mapping out what my practice round's gonna be like
knowing, hey, I need to be hitting a lot of putts from the middle of the greens.
Understanding where those, you know, we have.
Last year's pins, we know where these are gonna go and being
able to make some of those notes.
And, um, I think one thing I've seen, and you know, correct me if I'm wrong or
gimme insight, but it seems like this has helped, this will help some of the younger
players shorten their learning curve of getting out on tour and learning new
courses, but also learning, playing the same course 10 years in a row, something
like that, that these veterans have.
But at the same time, I've also seen where veterans being able to use this data and
the analytics of it to put numbers and, and kind of quantify some of their fields
where, hey, I know like this course is gonna have a lot of longer approach shots,
but they don't quite have the, the actual numbers behind it where this analysis
can say, Hey, yeah, you, you're correct.
And the numbers you need to be working on is one 90 to two 10 or one 90 to two 15
as opposed to like, Hey, I think I hit a lot more like six, seven, and five irons.
You know?
Well that's great, but like, why not dig even deeper and actually
know what those numbers are.
Um, when I first got into business, I read a book called Measure What Matters, and
it's just all about like, if you want to improve, it's measuring what you what and
quantifying what you're trying to improve on, and then constantly assessing that.
Cory Jez: Yeah.
Aaron Goldberg: And I think that the same applies if, if not even more So
when it comes to sports analytics, whether it be basketball, soccer, you
know, obviously in golf this data can, there's then an abundance of data at
this point and now it's figuring out
how, what's
the best way to use it to improve.
Cory Jez: Yeah, you're, you're spot on.
Like the early, in the early knots, the problem was like
collecting this information, right?
Or if you're a college team right now, your problem is
collecting this information.
Um, but at the PGA tour level, it's what, what do I do with this information?
How do I, again, I'm gonna go out there on Tuesday, I'm gonna be at
the course for about six hours, you know, what are we doing?
And so, using Utah as an example, I just pulled their stuff up.
Um.
Inside of one 50.
So, you know, approach starts at 50 yards.
Everything inside of 50 is scrambling, but so from 50 to one 50 is, is de-emphasized
At Utah, I mean, you, you only have 24 30, you know, about 30% of your shots are
gonna come inside of one 50, 30% of your approach shots compared to 28% of your
approach shots are gonna come from one 50 to 1 75 at um, at Black Desert Resort.
And that's 8% higher than tour average.
So a normal tour week is like one in five shots come from there.
And this week it's gonna be about one in four, almost like one in three
shots coming from one 50 to 1 75.
And then so one 50 to 2 25 are all higher than to our average this week.
So like, what are we gonna do on Tuesday?
We're gonna work through one 50 to 2 25.
Like yeah, we're gonna work through our bag.
Yeah, we're gonna work on the feels and the general things we're working on.
We're not taking away from what we're doing with our coach.
We're not taking away from where we're trying to get our swing to be.
But then, okay, we've done each of those from like 30 or 45 minutes.
What are we spending the last 30 or 45 minutes on the range?
We're spending it in that, like, in those distance buckets,
uh, you know, at those times.
And if it's a course with really firm greens, we might say, Hey, like, how do
we take, you know, get some extra apex on these and, and practice bringing
these down a little bit softer, right?
If it's really soft greens, like talking about how am I gonna get to
back pins with soft greens, right?
Which is a really challenging thing, uh, for these guys who generate so much
spin, obviously with, with the golf ball.
Um, and so whether that be a, you know, sometimes that's a TrackMan combine
we make specific to the yardages.
I mean, you know, again, we're sitting on top of all the data.
Aaron, we pretty much know how far you're gonna have in every green.
Like yeah, tweak it up and down for wind, tweak it up and down for firmness.
Like we know how far you hit it off the t We know how far
the field hits into this green.
Like we know that, you know, on certain holes nobody hits driver.
So.
You know, we don't just take the distance, the hole and subtract 300
to get your approach charges, right?
Like we know very, very specifically where you're gonna hit from.
And so we tailor that preparation that way, um, to again, like, you're gonna
spend time doing something, let's do the thing that's gonna be most
impactful and kind of give you the most R-O-A-R-O-I, uh, for your time.
So, and then obviously all that still trickles into what do we
do when we actually get on the course, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday?
How are we gonna make that time efficient?
Um, and some of those things.
So yeah, all, all of that, you know, again, these little margins matter so,
so much over the course of the year.
You know, go pull up PGA tour.com.
Strokes gained, and the difference between 30 and 51 is,
you know, really, really big.
And now, you know, we have this kind of extra benchmark with, you know, top 50,
um, getting, getting a lot of, uh, a lot of spoils, um, at the end of the year.
Aaron Goldberg: Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean the whole theme of, you know, us having these conversations is
how do players create and convert their talent into value and.
If we're just relying on talent alone, then, you know,
we're leaving a lot out there.
You know, I'm, again, not trying to compare myself by any means, but I
look back at my fledgling pro golf career, career, you know, 15 years ago,
and to have this type of direction to practice around, like, I look back and
I had no clue what I was practicing.
You know, I thought I did, I thought I was practicing efficiently, but it was
like, yeah, I'm gonna, my quantification was how much time was I spending?
Uh, and which is a bad barometer.
Um, obviously you can't be lazy, but that's a bad barometer.
You said, you mentioned one thing about, uh, like a college, like availability
of data, like a college team or player, you know, to some extent I would imagine
the Korn Ferry tour players as well.
Like I'm a Korn Ferry tour player moving up to the PGA tour, like obviously
there's, there's some shot linked data.
I'm not sure you know how that's compar.
But let's even go a step further, like a college player.
What's the best way for them to try to look at analytics, you know, at at a, at
a high level to even start this process?
Is it, is it shot?
Like shot?
Uh, sorry.
Um,
Cory Jez: Kinda shot track.
Aaron Goldberg: I'm Thank you.
Shot tracker.
Is it track man?
Like what, what type of data can they get their hands on?
Like, they're probably, they're not gonna be able to get on course data from, uh,
a college event or something like that.
But is it going through combines on a track man?
Like, what's, what's a good way for them to get even started
down this
road of analytics?
Cory Jez: Yeah, I, I think, um, it, it's a different application, but, but still a
lot of the same principles really apply.
Um, you know, your core strategy is gonna be very different, right?
Your core strategy, just by definition, unless you happen to be playing an
event, uh, at a place that's held a PGA tour event, you're not gonna have
that very specific, um, course hole shot level data, you know, down to
the inch of wherever your golf ball's been, and then what the proximity
was from those spots, and da da dah.
And so, um, and this is the same for, you know, a guy playing many tours
or even KornFerry, it's pretty much analogous to, to a Korn Ferry player,
you know, the information they have, obviously a little bit of data capture.
Um, at the whole level on the Korn Ferry tour, but, but not getting
that same, um, granular detail.
And so what we say to, you know, from a core strategy standpoint and the college
teams that I work with, um, we're really having players build custom dis what I
call a custom dispersion profile, right?
So you're, you're going through some combines on track, man, you're hitting
shots in a game like context, but we're basically doing it as data capture and
doing it to understand like, because if you're an elite four iron player, long
iron player, and a kind of a mediocre wedge player relative to your skill,
um, that should in kind of inform your targeting strategies, right?
Um, and the thing to get a little mathy, the thing that people
need to understand is dispersion.
Although we always see it on like TrackMan reports as a ring, right?
It looks something like that.
Or maybe a little tilted, something like that.
It, it, that ring implies a uniform distribution, like an even chance of
ending up somewhere, you know, plus or minus 10 yards of your target.
But what we all know intuitively is the ball does not have
an even chance of ending up.
You know, uniformly in that window, it's gonna take a, what we call a Gaussian or a
bell curve or a normal distribution shape.
And so, 'cause if I have a col, even a college player, if I have them hit
a 207 irons in enough sample size and I plot where they all finish, I
will eventually end up with a bell curve centered around their target.
Or maybe, you know, a yard or two right?
Or a yard or two left, depending on what their small bias is around that target.
And so you actually want to know, again, getting a little mathy, but you actually
wanna know the width of that bell curve.
That is what's informing your targeting strategy.
Um, because you can know what is one and two standard deviations off of your mean.
And that can basically tell you like, Hey, when I hit a good shot,
how often do I kind of miss aby?
Is it three yards, four yards, five yards, six yards?
And then when I hit, like most of my shots, uh, how far do I miss buy?
Is it.
7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 yards, right?
Or what does that number look like?
So one in two standard deviations of your, you know, dispersion
profile can pretty much inform you.
'cause then you need just need to understand is the up and down really
difficult or is the up and down really easy, or is it a hazard?
Right?
'cause if it's a hazard, I basically need 0% chance that I'm gonna go in there.
Uh, if it's a, you know, very kind of stock, like I think I'm gonna chip
this in pretty easy, up and down green light, then I can probably just aim
one standard deviation off the target.
Uh, which I know, but that is 'cause I've done a bunch of work on track
man, and like, you know, you and I, Aaron are similar level golfers,
but we have different parts of our game that we're good at, right?
So you and I should not have the same targeting parameters necessarily,
uh, when we go play competitive golf.
And so building in all of that specific to the player, because we've got
all the resources in college, right?
You, you, you've got the track man, you've got obviously the
hitting bays and, and most of these programs now having, you know, a.
a course themselves for better part of a day and, and all these types of things.
So you can do, I actually think the team setting's really interesting.
You know, you get a little bit more kind of freedom and economies of scale
to work on this stuff more broadly.
You know, it's very hard in a Tuesday practice around to go out and like
fire a bunch of wedges at tucked back, left pins in a course setting, right?
Like it doesn't really work on the PGA tour, but a college team, like if you're,
if your coach is kind of dialed into this stuff, you totally could spend time
working on those types of things, right?
Um, so I think from a core strategy standpoint, it's just creating that
player specificity through dispersion, profiling, um, and then applying that to
the specific golf course kind of through what you read in the practice rounds.
And again, that's like having a checklist in the practice round, looking
at the four corners of the green, looking at historical pin locations.
Like, like these college coaches, I, I don't, I, I assume they're
saving last year's pin sheets 'cause they're gonna go back to the same
tournaments and save the pin sheets so you know where they were last year.
Throw those cups down.
I mean, we take it for granted on the PGA.
But stuff like that, that can move the needle really far.
And then, you know, the training side of it's very similar, right?
You don't have the shot link data again to give you like your
strokes gained or your expected strokes in tournaments necessarily.
Although you can do some manual shot tracking.
There's plenty of good applications that do that.
But with the track man and with the combines, again, you should be able
to get that kind of information and act on it pretty darn quickly.
Um, you know, my kind of working theory, and I'm not a college coach so
I don't wanna speak for college coaches here, but pretty much every player's
competing in D one, certainly at a high level, has their swing coach, right?
The college coaches, you, they can be a second set of eyes.
They can help reinforce some things.
Swing coach is obviously not always there.
Like they're on the PGA tour, they're usually back home where the kid's from,
but their job is much more of that, of a, of a performance coach, right?
Like more similar to a lot of the stuff that we've been talking about,
at least in my opinion, of, you know, how are we gonna design our day?
How are we gonna design these drills, um, to, to allow these players to
go get the most out of their games.
Um, depending on, you know, what this next tournament's gonna ask
of us where each player kind of needs to work on their stuff.
Uh, you know, I I would actually say in the team setting, you've got a lot of
opportunity to, um, affect that really nicely because you've got a locker room
and you can put, you know, you know, one of the things we, we talk about
with, uh, teams that I work with is like having like TrackMan leaderboards, right?
And we've got a whiteboard up and we've got a standardized com, you know, a wedge
combine that everybody does once a week.
And like we know who the, like what the all time score is, and we know who's
got the best score in the last month.
And like, it creates this competition.
It's, it's really healthy.
It's really good.
Um, so I think the team setting has a lot of opportunities to, to
leverage data and analytics, you know, information, um, in ways to help
the teams get better, even though it looks different than the PGA tour.
Aaron Goldberg: Yeah, I mean, talk about gamifying.
Like I, I can't think of anything more competitive than your college
team, and I don't care if the guy's not traveling, like how bad you wanted
to beat your roommate or the guy on your team every single day like that.
You didn't care about anybody else.
You want to be that guy on your team.
And like the raising the level and raising the bar together, I
think is a, is a huge opportunity.
But I, I think that's interesting.
I mean, that's not necessarily what this is centered around, but, um, I
think sometimes the assumption is, Hey, we don't have that shot linked data.
Like, there's not really a whole lot we can do.
And I think that's incorrect.
I think it's, there's a lot you can do, especially with TrackMan and, and
providing, uh, data sets that way.
And then obvi, it'll come out really quickly on the course in a tournament.
Like, is there another weakness or is there another strength that like,
isn't getting captured by this data?
But for the most part, it's gonna give you, give the players a, a
pretty good sense of where they're at.
And then as with everything in golf, it's, it's an adjustment
and an ongoing adjustment.
So, um, all great.
I man, we, I could go another two hours probably on this, um, and continue to
deep dive on it, but I wanna make sure that, uh, we save some for next time.
Uh, probably get a little bit more into course specific analytics and mapping
a course and, and how, how that's done.
Uh, but appreciate your time, Corey, appreciate your insight,
what you do with your players.
Uh, it's been really fun to watch, uh, both behind the scenes and
then see the results come out.
Uh, appreciate you sharing, uh, a little bit sneak peek behind the
scenes for the people listening and hopefully, hopefully this helps 'em.
Uh, I'll put your website in the show notes and kind of your
handles so people can follow you, uh, and reach out that way.
Um, but thanks for listening everybody.
Uh, we'll be back soon with another, uh, episode of the PGA
Players
podcast.
Thanks, Corey.
Cory Jez: Thanks, Aaron.
Thanks so
much.
Great chatting to you.