Mark Broadie Interview: How To Use Strokes Gained Analysis to Lower Your Scores

Jon Sherman (0:00)

If you're a fan of The Sweet Spot, you know that we advocate for efficient practice methods. One question I constantly get asked from listeners is how to structure your practice sessions. I know many of you get bored and run out of ideas, which is why I'm such a big proponent of performance games and drills. My friend Shaheen Noqjavani, who's a renowned swing coach and has been a guest on The Sweet Spot multiple times, recently released a great practice app called Core Golf to help golfers have more fun and success during their range sessions.

I've tried it out and it's filled with tons of fun and engaging games that you can customize based on which part of your game needs the most work. You get detailed videos explaining how to perform each drill properly. Additionally, there are loads of great features that grade your performance, keep track of your discipline and hold you accountable. If you want to try it out, you can download it from the app store. There's a free trial. If you like it and want to try out their yearly subscription, we have a special discount code. Use promo code SWEETSPOT to get 15% off the annual subscription.

Once again, search for Core Golf on the Apple App Store and we'll also include a link in the show notes.

SPEAKER_2 (1:12)

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Jon Sherman (1:41)

Welcome back to another episode of The Sweet Spot Podcast. This is Jon Sherman from Prassical Golf, and as always, I'm joined by.

Adam Young (1:49)

Adam from adamyounggolf.com.

Jon Sherman (1:51)

So we've got a special guest on today that I'm very excited about. I think all of you know Mark Broadie at this point, but I keep referring to him and his research on this podcast on my website, and so does Adam so much that we figured we'd have him on. So Mark, thanks for taking time out of your day to speak with us.

Mark Broadie (2:09)

Thanks for having me on guys, Jon and Adam. Nice to meet you finally in person.

Jon Sherman (2:13)

Yeah, we actually, you and I have a one degree of separation. You are a professor at Columbia, and my former golf coach briefly in college at NYU was Rich Muller, who's now currently the golf coach of Columbia.

Mark Broadie (2:28)

I know Rich quite well.

Jon Sherman (2:30)

Yeah, so we had, I saw him a few years ago. I went up to the campus and we had lunch and he tells me to help you give those guys. But yeah, I played for about five minutes for Rich. He was forced to put me in a tournament my freshman year.

Luckily, I somehow pulled out the most ridiculous round of my life and finished second. That was the end of my college career there. So we still joke about it now, but I'm glad to see he's doing well at Columbia with you guys.

Mark Broadie (2:53)

Well, glad you had a good time with Rich. He's a good guy.

Jon Sherman (2:57)

So I'm pretty sure most people listening to this podcast know who you are, but why don't you just kind of briefly introduce yourself and give your background in golf and elsewhere?

Mark Broadie (3:06)

So I'm a professor at Columbia Business School. That's my day job. And then I moonlight doing golf analytics.

I write a monthly column for Golf Magazine and I do research and consulting with PGA Tour players and coaches, the PGA Tour, the USGA and others. So I'm basically interested in everything golf analytics and I've been doing this for quite a few years now. It started off as what I thought would be a one or two year project and just kept getting bigger and bigger.

Jon Sherman (3:40)

And correct me if I'm wrong, has it been 10 years since the PGA Tour adopted Strokes Gains?

Mark Broadie (3:46)

Yeah, so Strokes Gain putting came out in 2011, in May 2011 So it's been two years and 10 years since that. And I probably started working on sort of golf analytics almost 10 years before that. So it's been a long time for me, but really happy at the reception, which was far greater than I had ever imagined at the time.