Caddie's Double-Dipping Right In Front Of Players.
What is the percentage of making a 22 foot left to right slider? We have no idea—just like the LPGA.
Until this week, all of us weekend hacks had access to the same data in our golf games that the greatest female players in the world had:
- Fairways in regulation
- Greens in regulation
- Number of putts per round
Grade school data entry that you and your buddy Forrest Gump could do right on the blank spaces on the scorecard.
Enter the KPMG Performance Insights being introduced this week at the Women’s PGA Championship
Firstly, this is not Shotlink, the gold standard data in golf data mining used on the PGA Tour:
- elaborate (and very pricey) program
- began with lasers, now incorporates cameras on every hole
- shows shape and distance of every shot by every player
- ShotLink data is immediately available
KPMG Performance Insights improves the pre-historic “scorecard tally” system, using a method similar to what’s used on the European Tour:
- caddies collect data throughout a round (e.g. yardages, club selection, lies)
- info collected in a pre-formatted template, entered into a central database by KPMG
- after processing, data is available to players, media and fans
Key metrics from the KPMG Performance Insights include:
- strokes gained stats (off the tee, to the green, putting)
- shot dispersion
- proximity to the hole from various distances
All you loopers out there, don’t fret.
In addition to all of your other booze-fueled duties on the course, caddies get an additional stipend for documenting the data. Just don’t ask to borrow anybody’s reading glasses because the writing is too small on the new template.
