November 13, 2024
I hope that everyone had fun this season during the Tuesday League! Additionally, I hope that you were able to improve your golf game at a level commensurate with your physical abilities, time commitment, and desire to improve. The off-season is a great time to set goals for the next year and it can be helpful to have some benchmarks to compare against when setting these goals. With that in mind, here are some statistics from the Tuesday League for how we did as a group and as individuals (see the note at the end of this email for how this data was collected and calculated).
Season Statistics (growth over 2023): Tourney Rounds 1,215 (11.9%), no. of payouts 800 (16.6%), pct. of players paid 65.8% (4.2%), player purse fee $21,105 (12%), Club contribution $8,745 (12.4%), Club percentage 29.2% (o.3%), total payout $29,850 (12.1%), honey pot $8,470 (15.7%), Jackson Park Sum $72,178 (estimated greens fees plus total payouts) (8.1%).
As a group, in our GHIN-postable non-team events (e.g., Field Days), we averaged 41.6 players with 32.3 players playing from the white tees, 3.3 players choosing the gold tees, and 5.3 players choosing the blue tees. This was an increase of about 1 extra player per tournament compared to last year, which wasn’t bad considering the amount of rain that we had on Tuesdays at the beginning of the season. Hopefully it is unsurprising that NET scores from the different tee sets were quite close (within 2 strokes of each other) (see the table below). Somewhat surprisingly, the GROSS scores were actually lower from the blue tees as compared to the white or gold tees. The reason for this is probably that a disproportionate number of our lower handicappers selected the blue tees.
| white | gold | blue | total | |
| avg num | 32.3 | 3.3 | 5.3 | 41.6 |
| avg net | 76.5 | 77.4 | 74.8 | 75.1 |
| avg gross | 90.0 | 91.5 | 84.2 | 87.9 |
Take-aways from the group data are that we (as a group) generally average around bogey golf (gross) with an average net score of about +5 over par. Additionally, the tee set can be selected to optimize fun since it doesn’t appear to have a big impact on net scores.
Moving on to individual statistics, our top-5 lowest (average) gross scorers are:
| Place | Player | avg gross | rounds |
| 1 | Mark Ohrenschall | 74.6 | 15 |
| 2 | Tim Rowe | 76.6 | 7 |
| 3 | Andy Graham | 77.4 | 18 |
| 4 | Dylan Fitzgerald | 77.6 | 25 |
| 5 | Steve Brady | 78.5 | 13 |
Note that I am only including players who played at least five rounds in the Tuesday League among the individual statistical leaders. Within the low gross scorers, Mark played many of his rounds from the blue tees and Andy played virtually all of his rounds from the blue tees! Our top-5 lowest (average) net scorers are:
| Place | Player | avg net | rounds |
| 1 | Jay Clark | 70.5 | 6 |
| 2 | Tim Rowe | 71.0 | 7 |
| 3 | Ed Celentano | 71.6 | 13 |
| 4 | Mike Mardesich | 72.7 | 24 |
| 5 | Mitch Lewis | 72.7 | 7 |
Our lowest average net score dropped this year from 73.0 last year. The lowest finishing handicap indexes for the League are:
| Place | Player | Last Index | Rounds |
| 1 | Justin Kim | 3.0 | 11 |
| 2 | Mark Ohrenschall | 4.9 | 15 |
| 3 | Andy Graham | 6.1 | 18 |
| 4 | Dylan Fitzgerald | 6.7 | 25 |
| 5 | Steve Brady | 7.2 | 13 |
While the table above focuses on the lowest handicaps in the League, the distribution of handicaps in the League ranges from 3.0 to 43.9 with an average handicap of 16.6. Given that our average handicap is 16.6, it also makes sense that our average gross round is around bogey golf on field days.
There are many different ways that could be used to measure the most improved player. USGA, WA Golf, and Golf Genius use an “improvement factor” that is calculated as (beginning handicap index + 12) / (ending handicap index +12). This factor, in theory, makes comparisons between higher and lower handicaps more valid than just comparing a reduction in strokes between a high and low handicap, for example. The beginning handicap for our league was sampled from the later of the Monday prior to the first Tuesday tournament or when the player joined the League, and the ending handicap was sampled on the Monday prior to the Tuesday Cup Final. The top 5 most improved players for 2024 are:
| Place | Player | 1st Index | Last Index | Improvement Factor | Rounds |
| 1 | Gino Nathan | 11.7 | 8.9 | 1.134 | 21 |
| 2 | Justin Kim | 4.9 | 3.0 | 1.127 | 11 |
| 3 | Walt Dickhoff | 21.7 | 18.1 | 1.120 | 29 |
| 4 | Trevor Parish | 13.8 | 11.3 | 1.107 | 6 |
| 5 | Dan Fabela | 16.0 | 13.7 | 1.089 | 23 |
Our top-5 points’ winners are:
| Place | Player | Total Points | rounds |
| 1 | Jeff Williams | 1126.00 | 29 |
| 2 | Dylan Fitzgerald | 1077.07 | 25 |
| 3 | Walt Dickhoff | 1050.17 | 29 |
| 4 | Robert Cameron | 884.00 | 25 |
| 5 | Mel Wattula | 883.17 | 26 |
To the best of my knowledge, this was a record year for the most points earned by a player. The points are funded with our tournament entry fees and our annual dues to the JPMGC. Finally, our top-5 purse (honey pot) winners are:
| Place | Player | Ttl Purse | rounds |
| 1 | Jeff Williams | 415.00 | 29 |
| 2 | Jeff Schoening | 363.00 | 29 |
| 3 | Dylan Fitzgerald | 332.82 | 25 |
| 4 | Walt Dickhoff | 326.50 | 29 |
| 5 | Andy Graham | 272.50 | 18 |
Congratulations to everyone that made one of the top-5 lists above! Additionally, congratulations to everyone that improved their golf game this year. I hope the League helped you to improve.
Note that most of the data for these statistics came from the “standings” tab in the League Portal. I encourage you to browse this area of the portal for yourself so that you can gather your own data. However, if you look at this section of the Portal, you’ll notice that the results I list here are somewhat different than what is on the portal. The reason for that is that 1) I separated out individual (eligible for posting to GHIN) events, from 2-man events, and from individual (NOT eligible for posting to GHIN) events; and 2) I excluded players that played in less than 5 Tuesday events from the individual stats listed above. Please let me know if you would like any help finding this information and/or comparing your statistics to the League statistics.
Best,
Karl