Before diving into the actual stats, a little context.
The Quota system was designed for balance: The aim was that half the league would reach or surpass their quota and the other half would not. Same would hold true for an individual over the course of a season. So if you add up all the quota points you were supposed to get and compare it to how many points you actually got, you should be pretty close. Let’s use an example from 2021 and El Commish himself.
Over the course of 2021, Chris was supposed to get 196 points over the 18 weeks. Chris actually went out and got 192 quota points. Some weeks Chris was -4, -5 vs. quota, other weeks Chris was +3, +2 vs. quota. So when you look across the whole season, Chris got 98% of the points he was supposed to get. Again, balance between good weeks and bad weeks.
So if the target is balance, that means most golfers should be between 95% and 105% of the quotas. If you plotted that out on a graph, you’d see most golfers clustered around the center with select players outside that cluster due to great or shitty play. Here’s what the final graph looked like for 2021.
What you can see is that Flight 1 was nearly completely in the center. Somewhat expected given that they are the more consistent golfers. Flight 2 was a little skewed left, but most of those 7 golfers in the 85-95% range were at 93%, 94%. While Flight 3 wasn’t as clustered in the middle, it was still pretty balanced when looking at the over/under performers. What would cause someone to be outside that range? Either really good play or really shitty play.
Which brings us to 2022. When you look at that same graph from above for 2022, you see Flight 1 performing well, Flight 2 staying in line with its historic performance, but FLIGHT 3….wow, Flight 3 is stinking up the joint. Half the flight is below 85% with two golfers only in the 50’s!! The best golfer in Flight 3 in terms of quota performance is Bobby Z at 98.5% (65 points needed, 64 points earned)
What could be the cause of this? Why is it that Flight 3 is doing so poorly when compared to the rest of the league? When you dive deeper, there’s a few explanations deep in the numbers:
- Flight 3 Golfers are scoring less Par’s, Bogey’s and getting more ‘No Point’ holes and Double Par’s
- With typically lower quotas, 1 point can often represent 15-20% of a Flight 3 Golfers quota. Thus, the impact of either not scoring or getting double par is amplified
A prime example of this is none other than the Jaguar Steele himself, Joseph Donegan. Take a look at Joe’s 2021 compared to his 2022. The big shift for Joe is he’s getting 17% less bogeys (which is one-fifth of his weekly quota), but getting 15% more ‘no-point’ holes and nearly 4% more double pars.
| Eagle % | Birdie % | Par % | Bogey % | No Pts % | Dble Par % | Avg Quota | ||
| 2022 Joe Donegan | 0.0% | 0.0% | 16.7% | 25.9% | 57.4% | 14.8% | 6.7 | 5.0 |
| 2021 Joe Donegan | 0.0% | 1.5% | 13.3% | 43.0% | 42.2% | 11.1% | 7.8 | 5.3 |
| Change | 0.0% | -1.5% | 3.3% | -17.0% | 15.2% | 3.7% | -1.1 | -0.3 |
So is there any hope for these Flight 3 golfers? Is it always going to be this bad? Are they destined to be the ninth hole pond scum of TBO golf? Not so fast, my friend….
Over the course of the year and across all flights, the league does get better. We see the averages, by flight, steadily decrease as the year goes on. Where is that improvement most pronounced? That’s right, Flight 3. When does that improvement really start to accelerate? Right around the mid-point.
Therefore, the IT Nerd says to you Flight 3 golfers: History is with you that you will all get better, but it still on you all to go out there and execute!
