The abundance of statistics and analytics is part of the elite game these days, the fine detail affording golfers and those who observe them an opportunity to delve into the play far beyond the scores on a card. The LPGA made news on this front during the summer when it announced the KPMG Performance Insights program, which will bring to the women’s tour the kind of statistical depth that has been available on the PGA Tour for two decades through its ShotLink system.
Anyone who pokes around golf history sees how much of the present is rooted in what happened a long time ago, as I was reminded recently when researching something from the early 20th century. Smart minds and technology are making today’s information possible, but efforts to quantify performance go way back.
In covering the second-round match between Jerome Travers and Francis Ouimet at the 1913 U.S. Amateur, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle offered a table of information to supplement its story of the defending champion’s 3-and-2 victory over the Massachusetts 20-year-old who presently would shock the sports world by winning the U.S. Open. (Travers went on to successfully defend his Amateur title.)
The gist of the table was to point out how Travers improved during the afternoon portion of the scheduled 36-hole match at Garden City Golf Club on Long Island. (Stats for the second 18 are followed by the match total in parenthesis.) Some of the categories, such as “Sliced brassies” and “Stymies laid by” speak to the era, yet others (“Three-putt greens”) wouldn’t be out of place 108 years later. “Wee putts missed” must have been the 1913 version of “Putts from inside five feet.” Nobody then or now would want to have an entry in “Flubbed and topped irons,” although Ouimet suffered one in his loss to Travers.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle table for Travers-Ouimet match in 1913.
More than 50 years later stats started appearing in golf coverage more regularly thanks to Charles Bartlett of the Chicago Tribune. Bartlett became the newspaper’s golf editor in 1931, and his first assignment was a doozy: the 144-hole U.S. Open at Inverness Club won by Billy Burke via a 72-hole playoff against George Von Elm. Bartlett’s later attention to statistical detail was foreshadowed by the mention in his game story of Burke’s $1,750 first prize. “Burke’s money,” Bartlett observed, “figures a little more than $12 per hole.”
A co-founder of the Golf Writers Association of America in 1946 and its longtime secretary, Bartlett was at the group’s Myrtle Beach, S.C., golf tournament in 1956 when, encouraged by fellow scribes Herb Graffis and Des Sullivan, he formalized his idea for a “Golf Box Score” similar to those for baseball. It debuted in the Tribune on April 7, 1956, breaking down the performance of the first-round leaders at the Masters in five areas plus their scores: Greens Hit in Par, Times in Rough, Times in Traps, One-putt Greens, Three-putt Greens.
Golf Box Score, Chicago Tribune, 1956 Masters.
Sometimes Bartlett added footnotes to the Golf Box Scores, such as these after the final round of the 1959 Chicago Open. He notes chip-ins and eagles, and also summarizes winner Ken Venturi’s week through stats.
Golf Box Score, Chicago Tribune, 1959 Chicago Open.
For the 1964 Western Open, Bartlett denoted putting attempts from 15 feet and in, a precursor to current “Proximity” stats. He also included some club choices and distances.
Golf Box Score, Chicago Tribune, 1964 Western Open
“It has been a lot of work digging these facts out of the players, but it’s been a lot of fun, too,” Bartlett wrote in 1961. Bartlett was a familiar and trusted face in the press room, always helpful to those new on the golf beat. He was the reporter who got an interview with Ben Hogan as he recuperated from devastating injuries sustained in a 1949 car-bus crash in Van Horn, Texas.
Bartlett modified one of the categories in the early 1960s at the suggestion of Hogan, whose analytical mind appreciated the Golf Box Score. The Hawk, reasoning that a player often could putt from the fringe, convinced Bartlett to change “Greens Hit in Par” (GHP) to “Putting Areas Hit in Par” (PHP). Around the same time, Bartlett took out “Traps” (T) and replaced it with “Bunkers” (BK) after Bobby Jones addressed the matter in his book Golf is My Game. “I regard the term ‘sand trap’ as an unacceptable Americanization,” Jones wrote. “Its use annoys me almost as much as hearing a golf club called a ‘stick.’ ”
Charles Bartlett (Illinois Golf Hall of Fame)
On the fall day in the fall of 1967 he was to travel to Mexico to cover golf’s World Cup, Bartlett died at age 62 of a heart attack, and his passing saddened peers and players alike. “He dispensed freely of information from his index-like mind,” the Associated Press reported. “He was so thorough and well-versed, it was like asking a computer.”
The GWAA paid tribute to his generosity by establishing the Charlie Bartlett Award in 1971 that is given to a playing professional for unselfish contributions to the betterment of society. The “Bartlett Lounge” honors him in the press building at Augusta National Golf Club.
In 1980, under Commissioner Deane Beman, the PGA Tour unveiled a statistical program relying on volunteers who gathered information on the course for every player. The information was handed in after the round and sent to a computer at tour headquarters where weekly standings in 10 categories were produced. By 2003, as ShotLink became a full-time fixture on the PGA Tour, volunteers with lasers were gathering information that produce hundreds of data points. In 2011, the tour adopted the “Strokes Gained” analytics developed by Columbia Business School professor and avid golfer Mark Broadie that give context to the numbers by describing how a player fares against the field.
Between pounding out golf stories on a manual typewriter, Charlie Bartlett was on to something.
Press credential of the week
Recalling the Henredon Classic, an LPGA event in High Point, N.C., held during the 1980s, is to be reminded of a handful of American golfers who were among the finest to play the sport in the years before the women’s tour became a global enterprise.
The first half dozen winners of the Henredon Classic (1981-86) were Sandra Haynie, JoAnne Carner, Patty Sheehan (twice), Nancy Lopez and Betsy King. That Hall of Fame group won a combined 202 LPGA titles, ranging from King’s 34 to Lopez’s 48.
Sheehan successfully defended in 1984 at Willow Creek Golf Club, the longtime base of talented amateur Dale Morey, an Indiana native who settled in the North Carolina Triad. It was a stormy week with weather delays during the second and fourth rounds. Sheehan came back from Sunday’s two-hour interruption on the final nine trying to hold off Carner to win for the 12th time in just under three years.
She got it done, by one stroke over Carner and Dot Germain from nearby Greensboro, thanks to a seven-foot birdie putt on No. 18 and an assist from Carner on the previous hole, a water-guarded par 3. After hitting her tee shot into the hazard, Sheehan was about to take an incorrect drop when Carner pointed out the mistake. Sheehan made a double bogey to fall out of the lead, but Carner’s sportsmanship allowed Sheehan to avoid a rules infraction and be able to win on the final hole.
The High Point stop became the Planters Pat Bradley Invitational in 1988 and was held a couple of years, the last time in 1990. Sheehan continued to be a winner on the LPGA Tour for another dozen years after her second win in High Point, claiming her sixth major and 35th career victory at the 1996 Nabisco Dinah Shore.