Determinants of Scoring at Jackson Country Club

This analysis is based on scores and stats from individual rounds in the ten Tour events at Jackson Country Club: 4,217 rounds in total.

Section 1: Absolute Correlation Coefficients with Score

Key Points:

• SGApp's consistency: Approach shots consistently show higher correlations with score, reflecting the importance of approach play at Jackson Country Club.
• SGTee's varying importance: The impact of tee shots fluctuates across the years, indicating that driving is sometimes more critical than in other years.
• SGP (Putting) contribution: Strokes gained putting has a lower correlation, suggesting that ball striking is more significant for scoring at Jackson.

Key Points:

• Greens in Regulation (GIR) dominance: GIR consistently shows the highest correlation, underlining its importance for low scoring at Jackson.
• Scrambling's significant role: The ability to save par after missing greens is a crucial skill in certain years at Jackson.
• Driving Accuracy's moderate impact: Accuracy off the tee is less consistently correlated with score, although still relevant depending on the year.

Key Points:

• Par 4's critical influence: Par 4 performance has the highest impact on score, demonstrating their importance at Jackson.
• Par 5 variability: The correlation between score and Par 5s varies more, indicating its impact is less predictable year over year.
• Par 3's moderate impact: Par 3 performance is consistently correlated, but less influential compared to Par 4s.

Section 2: Importance of Each Metric in Determining Score

Random Forest Regressor and Feature Importance

Random Forest Regressor is an ensemble learning method that constructs multiple decision trees during training and outputs the average prediction. It combines the predictions of several models to improve accuracy and robustness.

Feature importance is a technique used to interpret a machine learning model. It refers to the score that quantifies the contribution of each feature to the prediction made by the model.

In a Random Forest, the importance of a feature is computed by looking at how much the feature decreases the impurity (e.g., variance for regression tasks) across all the trees in the forest. The more a feature decreases the impurity, the more important it is considered.

The calculated importance scores for all features are then normalized to give relative importance as a percentage. This shows the relative contribution of each feature to the prediction task.

Interpreting Feature Importance

Features with high relative importance percentages have a strong impact on the model's predictions. They are crucial for accurate predictions and indicate key areas where performance matters most.

Features with low relative importance have a minimal impact on the model's predictions. While they can still contribute, they are less critical.

Key Points:

• SGApp has a significantly higher importance (33.22%) compared to the PGA average (26.77%), highlighting the importance of approach shots at Jackson Country Club.
• SGP shows a much larger impact (40.73%) at Jackson than the PGA average (23.98%), indicating the importance of putting on this course.
• SGTee has a much lower impact (11.66%) at Jackson than the PGA average (24.82%), suggesting driving is less critical at this venue.

Relative Importance of Traditional Metrics on Score

Key Points:

• PPGIR is the most important factor at Jackson (43.74%) compared to the PGA average (30.13%), showing the high importance of putting.
• Scrambling is slightly more important at Jackson (28.16%) compared to the PGA average (27.02%), highlighting the need for recovery skills.
• Greens in Regulation (GIR) is less important (21.38%) than the PGA average (29.77%), indicating that simply hitting greens is less predictive of score here.

Relative Importance of Par Metrics on Score

Key Points:

• Par 4 holes remain critical at Jackson (59.12%), though their impact is lower than the PGA average (67.12%).
• Par 5 performance is more important at Jackson (25.23%) compared to the PGA average (15.56%), indicating the potential for scoring opportunities on these holes.
• Par 3 performance is relatively similar to the PGA average, with only a slight decrease in importance (15.65%).

Top 5 Ranked Players - 2024 Sanderson Farms Championship

The table below shows the top-5 ranked players and their average estimated scores from the different Random Forest models above.

Estimated scores for all players can be found here.