Approach Factor

Ok, I lied when I said "no more Frankenstats".  Once the evil doctor has another brainstorm, it can be tough to make him stop digging in the graveyard after dark.

I've touched on this topic a couple of times but wanted to explore it in detail.  If a player rates well in GIR but not so well in Total Driving, it would seem that the player did a better than average job on her approach shots.  GIR includes performance at par-3s, of course, but we should still be able to use that number to help determine a player's ability on approach.  The tee shot at a par-3 is an approach of a slightly different kind, after all.

I lined up every player's ranking in both stats for 2008 and determined the positive or negative change.  Then I came up with a formula to level the field - otherwise, players who rated near the bottom of Total Driving would have the advantage of more room to move up than players who were much closer to the top of the TD chart.  In the interest of full disclosure, the formula is:  TD Rank minus GIR Rank plus 1, divided by TD Rank.  By default, the player who leads the Tour in GIR is going to lead in Approach Factor with a rating of 1.000 - hey, another stat for Ochoa to dominate! - but the rest of the results looked meaningful enough for me to share them with you.  Here are the Top 30 players for 2008:

For example, Paula Creamer was 27^th in Total Driving and 2^nd in GIR.  She rates ahead of Brandie Burton, who was 120^th in TD and 19^th in GIR even though Brandie moved up 101 positions - the most of anybody on Tour.  The five players who rated the worst were:

All five were in the top 11 of Total Driving but lost ground to the field in hitting the green in regulation.  Lucidi fell from #2 to #25, Park from #3 to #43, Stupples from #5 to #51, Sergas from #6 to #41 and Giquel from #11 to #77.

I would prefer that Approach Factor be based on the player's raw number in the two stats rather than her rank, but I feel that this is a good start.  If you'll please excuse me now - I think I hear an unruly mob pounding on my castle door.

2008 Approach Factor spreadsheet