Who Is Godot?

When Godot Doesn’t Show

In a web article titled Why most golf statistics whiff and how to fix them, Michael Agger describes the work of Mark Broadie, a professor at the Graduate School of Business at Columbia. Dr. Broadie concludes that golf statistics are faulty because they don't factor in the concept of shot value. In his schemata he calculates how many strokes it takes a scratch player to hole out from any particular position on the golf course. So instead of painting 150 yards on the sprinkler head it might read 2.3 meaning that the benchmark is two strokes plus the fraction. If you were on the tee box of a long hard par 4 the shot value might read 4.9, while the three foot putt might be at 1.

Your job is to maneuver the golf ball around the golf course so that you maximize your fractions i.e. you don't have to be perfect just fractionally better, so that over a round, a year, or a career, your fractions cumulate into advantage.  

The knack of scoring means maximizing your fractional advantages on each swing, a general pattern of play characteristic of players who have learned ‘it’ – – how to get the ball in the hole. These players have stored the pattern in their subconscious through experience yet this skill is so hard to identify that those who have ‘it’ don’t even know what they have. Jack Nicklaus gave his sons everything they needed (lessons, equipment, money etc.) but he could not give them ‘it’.

When a dominant player like David Duval or Ian Baker Finch looses ‘it’ [i.e. knack of scoring] they are bewildered and invariably look to their swing as the problem. They look at their stats, and conclude that their swing needs to be more perfect, so they find a new teacher then wait. They are in effect “Waiting for Godot’ – and sometimes Godot doesn’t show.