Early yesterday morning (how he writes by night and works by day is beyond me!), The Constructivist posted this interesting item at Mostly Harmless.  He begins by pondering the credentials that might prompt a player to have a go at the LPGA but winds up raising questions about how we classify players and whether those classifications tell us a complete story.  Rather than respond by composing the longest comment ever recorded in the annals of Blogspot, I decided to ramble on about it here.

The three categories of players that TC mentioned - Bombers, Straight Shooters and Precision Players - have obvious differences but they are all aiming for the same goal.  I'm not talking about "Get In The Hole".  These categories refer primarily to off-the-tee performance and secondarily to reaching the green.  Until somebody perfects those hole-out shots from over 100 yards, a goal of Getting In The Hole is lunacy.  The actual goal from the tee box or with an approach is to attain the best possible position for the next shot while taking into account the estimated risk of the attempt.  Anybody playing from the rough or sand risks making improper contact with the ball.  The Bombers risk an inaccurate shot with their faster clubhead speeds and the Precision Players risk an overly long subsequent shot with their slower speeds.  The Straight Shooters are the interesting ones as they probably get to make strategic decisions more often because of their versatility.  I've often wondered how many Straight Shooters are actually Bombers who rarely use the driver and how many Bombers are actually Straight Shooters who use the driver every chance they get.

This line by TC might illicit a "Duh!" from many of you, but it bears repeating:

to be successful on the LPGA, ... you need to be more accurate the shorter a hitter you are and longer the less accurate a ball striker you are.

This concept is so simple and universally understood by those who follow or play the game that it is easy to misplace it amongst the other dozens of golfy concepts.  But in the realm of determining success versus failure, it may be the most important concept of all.  What may not be as well known about it is the fact that distance and accuracy aren't equal parts of the formula for success.  I've documented the difference between the number of successful long players and the number of successful accurate ones, the fact that difference holds up from year-to-year, and the fact that it ain't even close.  I made distance vs. accuracy the foundation of my Total Driving statistic but only until I weighed it significantly in favor of distance did it correlate even remotely with a player's success.  After studying the numbers over the last several years, I can tell you that a Top 20 player usually falls into one of these definitions:

1) She ranks in the Top 20 of Driving Distance

2) She ranks in the Top 50 of Driving Distance and in the Top 40 of Driving Accuracy

3) She ranks in the Top 100 of Driving Distance and in the Top 20 of Driving Accuracy

Every year, there are one or two Top 20 players omitted from these three categories - last year they were Eun-Hee Ji and Anna Nordqvist (both barely missed the Distance Top 100 but were Top 20 in Accuracy).  My point here is that there is a definite distance threshold that a player must consistently exceed to be successful - it seems to be about 245 yards but it could be whatever number is enough to finish among the Top 100 or so in a particular season - but the accuracy threshold appears to be so low that it might as well not exist.  For if Michelle Wie can hit the fairway only 58% of the time and still register as a Top 10 player, who's to say somebody couldn't connect as little as 45% of the time and be a great player so long as she averaged 300 yards a pop?  In case you're wondering - that mythical player would have a Total Driving rating of 72.50, which would have ranked #40 in 2009.  And plenty of players have ranked 40^th or worse in TD and registered Top 20 seasons.

So should somebody consciously attempt it?  Should Wie or some other Bomber ignore what countless advisors (myself included, from afar) have been telling her about hitting the fairway more to become a better player?  I don't know how many times last year Michelle took a lesser club off the tee in an effort to avoid the rough but if it was a significant percentage (30%?  50%?),  it sure didn't result in a good Accuracy rating.  Why not accept an even lower fairway percentage if it means an extra 20 yards per drive?  If Wie did average 290 yards and only hit 50% of the fairways, her Total Driving number would be - coincidentally enough - 72.50.  Which would be an improvement over her 70.95 of 2009.  As Ruthless Mike pointed out in a comment yesterday, players like Wie who play from the rough so often yet still reach GIR at a high rate are displaying a talent.  Given that talent, perhaps those players should damn the torpedoes and take driver at every opportunity.  Wait a minute - that's Bomb-And-Gouge, isn't it?  Well, if that strategy has been good enough for El Tigre and many other male players over the last dozen years, maybe it's not so crazy after all. 

The other end of the spectrum is very different.  Without exception, all successful players who average less than 250 yards a drive are among the very best at hitting the fairway.  Paula Creamer, Mi Hyun Kim, Morgan Pressel and now Anna Nordqvist are among those who must be accurate with a driver in their hands or the rest of their game falls apart.  It helps if these players are also accomplished with their iron play.  If not, they had better be lights out with the putter or nobody will consider them a successful player for very long.  There are of course strategic options these players do have like on which side of the fairway they need to land or when a layup shot isn't in their best interests.  But any player standing in the tee box who is absolutely required to hit driver and be accurate with it every time has relatively no options compared to the long hitters.

If you made it through my babbling this far, congratulations!  I won't press my luck any further with your attention span today, but you never know when this subject might creep up again.  Thank God we only have to wait two more weeks before we can actually start watching the LPGA rather than just analyzing it!