Earlier this year I introduced Total Driving at my old blog site.  Even though I've linked to that post here at Hound Dog LPGA for about three months now (and I'm sure all of you have checked it out...yeah, right), I thought I should re-introduce it now that the season is over.  If your eyes gloss over at the mention of algebra, bear with me - the numbers themselves aren't as important as the resulting rankings.

Total Driving combines a player's average Driving Distance and her Driving Accuracy percentage into one number.  It favors longer players to a certain degree - much like the game itself favors longer players - but still requires a reasonable amount of accuracy to rate well.  The formula for Total Driving is (X*Y)+X/6, where X is the distance and Y is the accuracy.  By using the raw numbers instead of the player's rank in each stat, the resulting number doesn't get influenced by how well other players do and is a better measure of a player's driving ability from year-to-year.  If a player could average 300 yards a drive and bat 1.000 on the fairways, she would score 100 in Total Driving.

You won't be surprised by who ranks #1 but some of the other players in this Top 40 list may surprise you.  Remember - I'm only measuring a player's ability to drive the ball effectively and not looking at any other facet of her game.  The players who finished in my final LPGA Top 30 are in bold:

As you can see, most of these players are long hitters but not all.  Sophie Giquel is a little on the short side (243.0 T102) but her great accuracy more than compensates.  Meena Lee led the Tour in accuracy but she gives up so much distance (237.0 T140) that she barely makes the Top 40.

Only 13 of my Top 30 rank in the top quarter of Total Driving.  Ji-Yai Shin and Stacy Lewis are not listed in the LPGA stats because they were not members in 2008.  For what it's worth, all nine LPGA members in my final Top 10 made the Total Driving Top 40.  The rest of the Top 30 rank as such:

As I look at players and try to determine what their strengths and weaknesses are, Total Driving gives me a solid base to start.  For example, I'm sure Becky Lucidi at #2 is a surprise for most of you.  She ends up there because for as far as she hits the ball (fifth in distance at 267.7), the only likewise-long players who approach her accuracy (.672 T88) are Ochoa, Pettersen, Hee Young Park and Stupples.  So if Lucidi gets off the tee (on par-4s and 5s anyway) as one of the five best players in the game, where does her advantage disappear?  She loses a little on approach to the green, falling to T25 in GIR but the real culprit is her putting.  Becky was T119 in PPGIR and 151^st in putting average this season.  FYI - combining those two numbers into a Total Putting stat will be my next attempted unholy creation.

Conversely, you might be wondering how Katherine Hull could have played so well ranking in the bottom quarter off the tee.  Taking into account that Katherine's driving accuracy improved significantly during the year (as I documented a couple of months ago), she would certainly rank higher than #125 if I only used the data from July onward.  Using the complete data, Hull managed to reach the green in regulation about 66% of the time (38^th on Tour) despite her poor average starting position.  Her putting numbers rank about the same as her GIR (T23 in PPGIR, T45 in putting average) so I would say Katherine's success this year should be attributed to excellent iron play, either in approaches or par-3 tee shots or both.

Does that make sense?  It does to me but then I'm the one making this stuff up.  My original Total Driving piece might help fill in any gaps.  Let me know in the comments if there is an area that needs more clarification or better yet, if you have any ideas on how to help me approach the Total Putting question.