Pro Trackman Stats

[ballplayer002003]

A friend of mine sent this to me the other day.  I thought it was interesting to see.  Trackman compiled their data on PGA and LPGA players and found their averages for every club.  When watching the events on TV, the commentators make the players out to be untouchable.  Don't get me wrong, they can all hit a ball, but their fairways are tight and firm so the ball gets a lot of roll.  Anyway, take a look at the numbers and make what you want out of it!  My numbers are almost identical to the PGA players, however my consistency is definitely not!!!

[MattF]

Would you look at that, I should be on the LPGA Tour! 

[DiscipleofPenick]

This is interesting. It's not so much the 350 yard drives that the commentators talk about that always stand out to me. It's the 190 yard 8 iron or the 240 yard 5 iron. Obviously they don't talk about length and loft, but I just think most of the time the announcers have no idea what iron a player is hitting.

Take Dead Aim

[TR1PTIK]

I've seen these numbers floating around for a few years. There are definitely players on both tours who can knock it out there, but also plenty who can't which is how you reach an average like that. I do think distance is exaggerated on the PGA Tour. Aside from tight, hard fairways, I think the announcers are often working off scorecard yardage or something else rather than a straight line yardage like what you might get using GPS or a laser rangefinder. Of course, they do occasionally post shot tracer with LM numbers, but unless there's something there to indicate what LM they're using, I'm not sure how much stock to put in that. I do know that if a tour pro played my home course, they'd struggle to see similar distances. They'd beat me by a mile no doubt, but they wouldn't have the same numbers they see on tour.

[ballplayer002003]

17 minutes ago, TR1PTIK said:

I do know that if a tour pro played my home course, they'd struggle to see similar distances. They'd beat me by a mile no doubt, but they wouldn't have the same numbers they see on tour.

Agreed, on my course they are not going to hit a 340 yard bomb, because my fairways are typically on the softer side (course doesn't drain the best) and they are not cut every day like the ones on tour.  The biggest thing that I was impressed with was the smash factor.  They are hitting the center of the club almost every damn time.  Guess that's what I could expect if I hit 1,000 balls a day.  haha

[Smellis745]

1 hour ago, Tsmithjr9 said:

This is interesting. It's not so much the 350 yard drives that the commentators talk about that always stand out to me. It's the 190 yard 8 iron or the 240 yard 5 iron. Obviously they don't talk about length and loft, but I just think most of the time the announcers have no idea what iron a player is hitting.

Take Dead Aim
 

I was at the Tour Championship a few years ago and was sitting on the tee of 15.  I can't remember the exact player, but I watched the guy pull a 6 iron out of his bag.  Later on, when watching the broadcast at home, the commentators said he used an 8 iron.  I think they do that a lot more often than people think.

[cnosil]

My comments to this are:

The numbers are averages across all players not just the bombers we typically hear about.

Measuring at tournaments for the PGA will be more accurate than for the LPGA tour. They measure distances for all shots using shotlink. On the LPGA distances are only measured for tee shots on 2 holes and they don’t have shotlink. Players during tournaments change the loft and dynamics of a club to get different results. Just hitting balls on a trackman to measure distance will probably make the numbers more “normal” as they are not taking roll and bounce into consideration as they would during a tournament.

The announcers do occasionally use GPS, rangefinder, or walk off distances when they are broadcasting.

Club selection is communicated to the announcers by the caddie using a finger system. For example 3 fingers up is a 3 iron and 3 fingers down would be 8 iron. How accurately the caddie is reporting is up to the caddie.

[RickyBobby_PR]

1 hour ago, Tsmithjr9 said:

This is interesting. It's not so much the 350 yard drives that the commentators talk about that always stand out to me. It's the 190 yard 8 iron or the 240 yard 5 iron. Obviously they don't talk about length and loft, but I just think most of the time the announcers have no idea what iron a player is hitting.

Take Dead Aim
 

Tour players do a great job at delofting their irons and varying distances thru swing length, tempo and where they grip on the club. Their ev speed plus this type of control allows them to actually hit those types of numbers.

1 hour ago, TR1PTIK said:

I've seen these numbers floating around for a few years. There are definitely players on both tours who can knock it out there, but also plenty who can't which is how you reach an average like that. I do think distance is exaggerated on the PGA Tour. Aside from tight, hard fairways, I think the announcers are often working off scorecard yardage or something else rather than a straight line yardage like what you might get using GPS or a laser rangefinder. Of course, they do occasionally post shot tracer with LM numbers, but unless there's something there to indicate what LM they're using, I'm not sure how much stock to put in that. I do know that if a tour pro played my home course, they'd struggle to see similar distances. They'd beat me by a mile no doubt, but they wouldn't have the same numbers they see on tour.

They use trackman on tour and also shotlink. Many times the distances the announcer gets is fed to them from the truck where the shotlink numbers are sent to. The tournaments ive been to and volunteered at there was a shotlink in the fairway and another in the tower on the hole. Most holes had a shotlink setup 

[TR1PTIK]

57 minutes ago, ballplayer002003 said:

Agreed, on my course they are not going to hit a 340 yard bomb, because my fairways are typically on the softer side (course doesn't drain the best) and they are not cut every day like the ones on tour.  The biggest thing that I was impressed with was the smash factor.  They are hitting the center of the club almost every damn time.  Guess that's what I could expect if I hit 1,000 balls a day.  haha

Absolutely! Shows us mere mortals what it really means to be consistent.

[TR1PTIK]

5 minutes ago, RickyBobby_PR said:

They use trackman on tour and also shotlink. Many times the distances the announcer gets is fed to them from the truck where the shotlink numbers are sent to. The tournaments ive been to and volunteered at there was a shotlink in the fairway and another in the tower on the hole. Most holes had a shotlink setup 

I have noticed that they've started using Track Man on the practice range for some tournaments (they had it setup at the PGA Championship in St. Louis when I went), but I wasn't sure about actual play. Do you have first hand experience with Shotlink? I'm curious how that works and how accurate those numbers are - I'd expect they should be very accurate, but I really don't know too much about how it all works. Good point on the announcers getting info from the truck where the data is collected. I hadn't considered that.

[RickyBobby_PR]

5 minutes ago, TR1PTIK said:

I have noticed that they've started using Track Man on the practice range for some tournaments (they had it setup at the PGA Championship in St. Louis when I went), but I wasn't sure about actual play. Do you have first hand experience with Shotlink? I'm curious how that works and how accurate those numbers are - I'd expect they should be very accurate, but I really don't know too much about how it all works. Good point on the announcers getting info from the truck where the data is collected. I hadn't considered that.

I don’t have training on it but when I volunteered at tigers even when it was still at@t National I was talking to the tower operator and it’s accuracy is within 1 yard he said. They crew comes to calibrate it every round. There is communication from the tee to the team in the landing area and the tower for each group and from my understanding the data is feed live into the shotlink truck for each shot. There were 3/4 people working on the landing area device. 

[cnosil]

I have noticed that they've started using Track Man on the practice range for some tournaments (they had it setup at the PGA Championship in St. Louis when I went), but I wasn't sure about actual play. Do you have first hand experience with Shotlink? I'm curious how that works and how accurate those numbers are - I'd expect they should be very accurate, but I really don't know too much about how it all works. Good point on the announcers getting info from the truck where the data is collected. I hadn't considered that.

Shotlink as mentioned is calibrated to within a yard. The operator points the shotlink device at the ball and basically presses a button that calculates the distance to the hole. Pretty much a point and shoot system.