Statistics are useful but it may be better to stick to the old horses-for-courses theory

I had a chance meeting with a Harvard professor when I was in New York a few years ago. The coincidence of meeting the mathematics guru was twofold. Firstly, he happened to be a friend of a friend and secondly, a statistician who had a huge influence on the player for whom I was working at the time.

I was beginning to get the feeling that the player had an unhealthy obsession with numbers and it was ultimately detrimental to his game and particularly his practice. Statistics can point you directly to your weak points. Who likes practising their weaknesses?

Statistics are useful but must be handled with care. These analytical numbers are invaluable to club manufacturers and television announcers who have so much time to fill that they welcome any points of discussion however irrelevant.

The professor is a keen golfer and came up with a statistic for putts gained per hole. I am going to give myself away here and confess to not really having a grasp at how the number was produced but the winning player each week was pretty high up on this latest order of merit. No kidding. Ask any player what he did when he won and if I can use a statistic here to prove my point, 100 per cent of the players I asked said they putted well.

I suppose what I am leading to here is that there are two stark schools of thought in the modern game of golf. The ever increasing school is a scientific one where there is a number to explain your every step of your day from hotel to golf course and back again; don't think, just look at the stats. Traditional school The more traditional school of thought would of course have more facile modes of analysis; slept well, got to the course in a relaxed fashion, hit the ball great, kept calm, and holed plenty of putts. This all happened because I am a talented golfer who can win when all of my abilities combine and compliment each other. That's why most players throw in a win or serious challenge every year or two.

What the statisticians of course are tracking are the rare ones who are multiple winners who are in our psyches as being winners and thus our expectations are extremely high for them. Both the general golfing public and particularly the player himself have high expectations of all his skills combining more frequently than the average player on tour.

So when I chatted with the professor I was a little shocked at his theory on Phil Mickelson. He suggested that the reason that Phil was such a prolific and consistent winner is that he hits the ball so well. This got my attention. Phil naturally is one of the all-time great golfers, of that there is no statistic which can refute this fact. He has been a consistent high achiever for two decades.

The Don was telling me he believes this is so because Phil hits the ball so well. What does that mean? He hits it such a long way, the Prof suggested. This is a different skill entirely to hitting the ball well. I would consider hitting the ball well meaning that marshals are not looking for your ball.

So talented I contested that the reason that Phil is such a good player is that he hits it so far and he is so talented that no matter where it ends up he can somehow, with exceptional dexterity, get his ball on or near the green.

There are golfers on tour who are the straightest hitters in the game. It is no coincidence that two of them battled out the US PGA Championship last week at Oak Hill. Jim Furyk and Jason Dufner statistically hit a lot of fairways and greens. I would say they have their ball on a piece of string. So when they get on courses as demanding as Oak Hill was off the tees, they have a decided advantage. Equally such masters as Tiger Woods and Phil Mickleson are at a decided disadvantage because accuracy off the tee is not their forte.

So when you read any more diatribe about how many more Majors Woods is going to win and if he is going to get really close to Jack Nicklaus’s record you have to look at the courses he will compete on over the next 20 Majors. More importantly, how they will be set up. Augusta will always lend itself to longer, wilder hitters like Woods and Mickleson. The traditional US Open’s will not, with its uncompromising rough. Phil hasn’t won a US Open and Tiger’s wins were on courses that did not have the traditional US rough set-up.

I respect people’s opinions, especially when I know they have put a lot of research and thought into forming them. But the most important theory in golf is ‘horses for courses’.