What it takes to make it to the NCAA Nationals - Decoding Ohio State Men’s Golf Team Performance

Ohio State Men’s Golf Team

Scoring

Ohio State have had a scoring average of +1.39 in all rounds played on their way to Nationals with recent Masters competitor Neal Shipley leading the way for the team with a scoring average of -1.33 per round, half a shot better than 2nd ranked played Maxwell Moldovan at -0.80.

Neal is the only player who has had a positive strokes gained in every round and leads in par 5 scoring at -0.54 per hole, gaining 0.26 strokes per hole vs the rest of the team.
Maxwell has been excellent on the par 4’s at -0.01 per hole being the only player to average these under par and gained 0.16 strokes vs the team.
As a team, Ohio state have struggled on the par 3’s with an average of +0.21 per hole and have also seen a high double or worse rate at 0.66 per round.
Round 2 has been the team’s best performing round with a strokes gained of -2.91, a third of a stroke better than R1 and 0.88 strokes better than R3.

Off The Tee

The team are strongest off the tee with five players having a positive strokes gained and a team average of -0.19 per round.

An overall solid driving distance of 293Y is supported by good accuracy finding 60% of fairways.
The team’s Major & Penalty miss is on the high side at 10%, but it is no surprise that 4 of the top 5 drivers are all better than the team average in this category.
Neal leads the way off the tee at +0.92 per round thanks to a driving distance of 307Y and 65% of fairways found whilst keeping his major miss low at 5.5%
Whilst Jacob ranked 11th in SG driving due to a distance of 271Y, he is actually the team’s 2nd most accurate with 52% of tee shots finishing inside a 25Y zone.

Approach

The team have a strokes gained average of -0.86 in approach play and average 60% of greens hit from all approach shots outside of 50Y.

The leading 6 players are all well ahead of this, with Maxwell being the strongest at +0.45 per round who tops the category in every distance range from the fairway
All bar one of the bottom 5 players in approach play have a high hard or penalty miss, meaning not only are they missing greens, but missing in difficult positions.
The team can look to find improvements across 100-200Y where they have lost a total of 0.76 strokes per round and gives a good indication as to why their par 3 scoring is high with many likely falling in this range.

Short Game

Despite seeing a number of hard shots around the green, 9% more than the team average, Jakob Tarney still manages to be the strongest player inside 50Y.

He gains an impressive +0.28 per shot from the easy shots and +0.07 from medium shot types.
Jackson Chandler is the best from the standard bunker shot, gaining 0.20 per shot vs the rest of the team.
Missing in the correct spots, and easy positions around the green shows its importance for the team as they gain an impressive +0.12 per shot.
Compare this to the hard shots where they lose an average of -0.25, a difference of 0.37 per shot. A player who has 3 hard short game shots in a round vs a player who has 3 easy shots will see a whole stroke difference just from this alone.

Putting

The team have averaged -1.16 per round on the greens and should be a key focal point for them moving forward.

Jacob tops the list at -0.44 per round despite being below team average from 3-5ft he makes up for it in every other range whilst Adam and Tyler are the only two players that have gained strokes from 5-10ft.
Speed control is usually the deciding factor from mid to long range and with Upgame pro’s unique ‘good putt metric’ it gives a clear indication how players pace control is. For Ohio state this is another area that the team can find an improvement on the greens, in particular from 40ft+ where as a team they average 55% of putts finishing within 8% of the start distance.
Combine this with a loss of -0.15 strokes per round from 3-5ft it creates a clear picture that the probability of 3 putts is quite high from long range.

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