Turkish Airlines Open<\/a>, which had moved venue this year from the Regnum Carya to the neighboring National course, where there is no historic data to lean on.<\/p>\n\u201cThat\u2019s when the live data becomes even more handy,\u201d he explains. \u201cIf you play in the afternoon and you didn\u2019t know whether to hit a driver or 3-wood and lay-up short at the first hole, then if you see all the guys that played in the morning with that wind direction and those conditions, they scored in a certain way with a certain play. You still take into account players\u2019 skills and patterns, but most of the time the optimal play is the same for the whole field.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis morning, with today\u2019s wind direction, the best strategy on the second hole was to hit the driver or to lay up to a certain number. The up-and-down from the bunker today was impossible. You\u2019re better off missing it somewhere else. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s things that usually you try to work out in the practice rounds. But I feel like if you get a text or someone telling you half an hour before you go out to make sure that on the second hole you carry the front bunker, then it\u2019s much more powerful because it\u2019s based on real data and not just gut feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is not a stretch to say that Molinari is driving transformation in the elite game. Analytics have long been informing practice sessions and what a player puts in the bag, ranges now littered not only with entourages but gizmos firing out myriad numbers for each dig into the dirt. Yet the real-time strategic guidance Molinari is offering his clientele on the course feels different.<\/p>\n
Revolutionary? Perhaps.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not saying I\u2019m leading a revolution,\u201d the humble Molinari dismisses, \u201cbut there\u2019s a few things that I do that I don\u2019t think anyone else does. I don\u2019t want to give away too much, but I would say any time a player comes from another company or they just enquire and see the differences, out of 10 new players, nine of them at least are blown away. \u2018I didn\u2019t even think that this was possible.\u2019 That tells me that I\u2019m quite advanced in what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n
One could only speculate how Molinari and others may have fared had this information been so readily available in bygone eras. \u201cI would have felt I have a massive advantage for sure, and that\u2019s most of the feedback I get from the players I work with,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t want to publish it too much or talk about it too much, because I feel like we have a big edge here. I try not to advertise it at all. I never go out to players and talk to them. Most of the time they hear from someone or sometimes they hear a conversation between a player and a caddie on the course and it\u2019s like, \u2018How do they know this?\u2019 Eventually they reach out, but I try to keep it very low-key.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is a paradox between Molinari maintaining this bespoke service and stemming growth in a burgeoning business. \u201cThere\u2019s always a middle ground there,\u201d he says. \u201cI could still grow it a bit and make it a bit bigger, but the thing is I\u2019m still playing. If you have too many players, then it\u2019s difficult to have conversations with them. Sometimes they ask questions and they want to have a quick answer, which I do right now. But obviously if I have 100 players, then it becomes difficult. So either I quit playing or until I stop playing full-time, I think it\u2019s quite tricky to grow it even more.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I can see a day where I decide I\u2019ve had enough of playing and then you can expand it a bit more. I would like to play another few years. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever play a senior tour. I\u2019d like to stay at home and grow the stats business. And if they want me involved in the Ryder Cup again, I\u2019ll happily do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cBefore it was a lot of work for me. I still have a few people doing it, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-660850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}