Solver Golf

Data is good.

By aggregating and leveraging data, we glean insights about player performance and how golf courses play. Perhaps the biggest downside to the availability of data is the way those insights inform and homogenize play.

This phenomenon is not unique to golf. Chess and poker, most notably, have been significantly impacted by the prevalence of data. People train models to analyze vast amounts of chess and poker data to determine optimal play. These programs are called “solvers.” Painting in broad strokes, solvers determine optimal play. The general idea is that the further one deviates from optimal play, the more she is lowering her expected value and/or win probability. Solvers reduce the creativity of these crafts, converting more decisions from an art to a science.

Here are two dominant strategy concepts from “solving” golf:

• Players should generally hit stock shot shapes with driver
• Players should choose targets that eliminate water hazards from their range of outcomes

The concept is not that finding the fairway does not matter. Finding the fairway is valuable. The insight is that by selecting proper targets away from hazards, players will still find the fairway at a reasonably high rate while minimizing the chance of incurring large penalties. Some players think about their shot intention as a line; smarter players think about their shots as a scatter chart, striving to reduce the overlap between their dispersion patterns and hazards. To summarize the bullet points above, minimize your dispersion pattern and keep it away from penalty areas.

Bay Hill is solver golf.

A flat golf course with water hazards and/or out of bounds lining one side of many holes, Bay Hill rewards players who adhere to the two concepts above. Players may deviate from optimal strategy, hitting shots close to hazards, but eventually the penalties associated with finding those hazards will eat into the marginal reward of playing near those hazards.

Data-driven players like Viktor Hovland and defending champion Scottie Scheffler should look forward to the Arnold Palmer Invitational every year. They’ll stick to their dominant strategies while players make mistakes around them.

Check out how Viktor Hovland played No. 6 in his Saturday round:

I’d recommend clicking through his shot trails from Thursday and Friday except that you’d be wasting your time. Each graphic looks similar to the one above. He does not challenge the water to gain a better angle to the flag or to shorten the hole. It’s not worth the risk.

Or check out how Scottie Scheffler played No. 11 in his Friday round:

He played No. 11 the same way he plays No. 11 every time. Deviations from Scheffler’s and Hovland’s strategies will underperform over the long run. I’ll also mention that Tiger Woods is one of the players who has understood these concepts as well as anyone in the history of the sport. He won at Bay Hill eight times.

Bay Hill is firmly in the running for my least favorite course in professional golf, and its facilitation of homogenized strategy plays a significant role in forming my opinion.

Fans may laud the notion that this golf course is a grind and “requires every shot in the bag.” But Bay Hill fails to engage the most compelling club—the brain.

We decided to bring you this Monday Club TFE post a bit early, just in case you’re watching the final-round action at Bay Hill today.