BOGEYBREAKERS ^TM

If you have not yet started following the PGA Tour by watching the Gross Positive
Score (GPS) it is time you do. Of course you will either have to let Colonel
Bogey calculate it for you or do it yourself. You won’t find it in your local
newspaper or even in the numerous statistics kept by the PGA Tour. Remember
the GPS is the total number of strokes over par that a player has in a tournament.
Put together with the Gross Negative Score (GNS) gives you the number you see
in your newspaper, namely how the player finished against par for the tournament.

Every week produces many dramatic examples and the Sony Open in Hawaii was
no exception.

Ernie Els had a GNS of -23 and a GPS of +7 and Aaron Baddeley had a GNS of
-21 and a GPS of +5. As you know, they tied for 1st at the end of 72 holes at
-16 and Els won the playoff. What you probably didn’t notice was that seven
other players had GNS’s of -20 or better and they finished from tied for fourth
place (Jerrry Kelly) to tied for 50th place (Brian Gay). Believe it or not,
on their under par holes Els was 23 under and took home $810,000, while Gay
was 20 under and took home only $10,770. Clearly, what Brian Gay needs is fewer
bogeys, or worse, (his GPS was +17) not more birdies or eagles. For example,
Robert Allenby had 17 birdies and no eagles (GNS -17) but he also had only 5
bogeys (GPS +5) and took home $198,000.

Here are a few more examples listed in order of GPS. We have included driving
distance (DD) which also gets a lot more attention than it deserves:

Study the above list for a few minutes and you will quickly see that the most
important column in determining finish and thus dollars is the GPS score, not
driving distance or birdies/eagles. Steve Lowery tied Ernie Els for the most
number of birdies in the tournament, namely 21. Ernie also had one eagle. But
clearly that one eagle does not explain the almost $800,000 difference in their
paychecks.

You are not playing on the PGA Tour but chances are you will find that it is
your scores over bogey that are keeping you from scoring in the range you would
like to be. If you watched the Sony tournament you could easily get the impression
that Ernie won because of his prodigious drives. But from the above statistics
you can see that Ernie won because he played smart and avoided bogeys and worse.
Young Aaron Baddley did the same so do not be surprised if you see him competeting
for wins in a lot of tournaments in 2003.

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