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Welcome, welcome to Wharton Moneyball. Welcome to a full hour of sports analytics here on the Wharton podcast
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network. This is Kade Massie hosting this week with the whole crew. I'm looking at all my longtime buddies and
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collaborators here on Wharton Moneyball. Shane Jensen is here from his living room. Not his living room, his office.
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Eric Bradlo from his home office. Audi Winer, the only one of us being a responsible Wharton faculty member on
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campus this afternoon. I'm coming. I'm coming to you meetings here all day.
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That's >> good. Good for you, Odd. Good work. Good work. >> Appreciate you sliding in here.
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Everybody's sliding in here late in the afternoon on Tuesday as we usually are.
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The show will go up first thing on Wednesday. We're going to flip it today. We're usually guest in the first half
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hour. This week, we're going to go open lines in the first half hour. And all
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goes according to plan. and we'll have a guest slide in here about halfway through the hour. Gentlemen, uh a lively
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lively moment in the sports calendar, I would say. We've got base basketball and
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hockey wrapping up about to kick over to the postseason. I mean, right now we're
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in transition. We just came through the best golf event of the year, at least in
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non-Riter Cup years. Um Audi has excuses to think about nothing but the Yankees 23 and a half
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hours a day. So full full-blown um why don't we just open it up for why don't
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we first start with the Masters. Let's give the Masters its due. Um it's one of
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the majors, but it's kind of the major. Um it feels like the official It is the
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official kickoff to the major season in golf. Um we had a pretty good go this weekend. Observations coming out of
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Augusta. >> Couple things. Um, first I was a little surprised that first let's start with
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the first 36 holes. I was surprised actually that Rory Maroyy's six shot lead was the highest ever after 36
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holes. I just would have thought that somebody would have gone out and shot, you know, low 60s in maybe both rounds.
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Maybe there would have been a larger lead. So that was the first thing that surprised me. Um, for the last two
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rounds, something happened. Forget that. We'll get to the winner in a second,
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which was Mroy. Um, Scotty Sheffller was the first person in 84 years to not have
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a bogey on the weekend of the Masters. >> Isn't that amazing? >> Which was incredible, which is partly
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why he caught up 11 strokes. He needed to catch up 12. >> Yeah. >> But he caught up 11 strokes over the
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weekend. >> Um, so that's pretty impressive as well. Um, that's actually kind of cool that we
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now have kind of an empirical measure for like how much you can that's that you can like move that far just playing
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bogey free golf specifically. >> Well, he also had 11 birdies obviously, but no eagles, but I'm just saying
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>> the 11 birdies help as well. Um, but yes, that was impressive. >> But the thing I thought about and this
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is what I put in the rundown. So, we look, I can't take back what I said in history. There was probably no
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athlete I've been more critical over the last 10 or 11 years for his accomplishments
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between majors in this case. I mean, I just could not believe it. And Roy Rory Maroy won something like 20 something
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tournaments, including the players multiple times, which is, you know, the fifth major they
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like to call it, player of the year honors, and hadn't won a major in 11 years. Now,
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everything about his career narrative has to change. I mean, let's start with
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the fact that he's only the fourth player ever to win backto back at the Masters. Nicholas, then Faldo, then
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Tiger. It's not bad company. Number two, last year, of course, he completed the
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career grand slam. Very few people have completed this the career grand slam. I think it's I mean Nicholas obviously
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Woods player I forget if it's Sneeed or Sarzen somebody like that but I mean
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name a lot Tom Watson doesn't have a career grand slam lot of players don't
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have career grand slams. Um he now has six majors which ties him for the most by any European player ever. That's Nick
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Faldo. Faldo has three masters and three British. Um it ties him with Phil Mickelson, Lee Trobino. So, I'm starting
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to ask myself like whose career would you take right now? Would you take Mroy or Faldos or Mickelson or Trovos?
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And if he wins one more, he'll have the same as Arnold Palmer. That's not too
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bad. Um, he'll have the same Well, Bobby Jones didn't play a full career, but I'm
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just commenting that, you know, he's starting to get, you have to call him now in one of the top 10 maybe golfers
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of all time. And if he wins two more, then he'll pass all the seven people. He'll tie Tom Watson. And but Tom Watson
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doesn't have the career grand slam either. I don't know. He's getting up
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there. That's >> And then I want I have a separate you guys, which I I put some thoughts in the
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rundown, but >> Well, hold on, Eric. Hold on. Stop there for a second because there's a lot to
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you've given us a lot to react to. Um on the on the small, I was a little surprised that only four guys have
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repeated as champions. is that that there must be a statistical property there that I don't have a good intuition
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for because and they're and they're pretty well spaced as well. I mean Nicholas in the 70s, Faldo in the '90s,
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Tiger was pretty quick after Faldo, but it's been 25 years since anybody or 24
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or something like that. So, it's really more rare than I would have expected.
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Well, so that I love the question because you know Audi could probably speak about this better than any of us
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or Shane, which would be you know what are the statistical properties of performance that would lead to that. So
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one is obviously not huge mean differences or mean differences that don't persist over time.
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>> You mean between player between golfers? >> Yeah, for one single player or between
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players. Second is that um there's a huge amount of variation and so there could be mean differences but you know
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randomness over 72 holes dominates and so it's pretty hard to be good in two
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consecutive years. A third is that a year is a long time frame in golf that would be like if you played the Masters
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again next week if that was the way the Masters worked in successive weeks instead of successive years my guess is
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it wouldn't take 25 years at all to get a repeat champion. talked about this
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locked in factor. So, I love the question because it allows you to think about the properties of performance that
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would lead to something that on the surface seems how is that possible? >> That's great. That's great. I think you
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named three very important properties there. I know those things about golf. >> I would love to kind of norm it like by
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like just for tournaments in general golf tournaments. How many times do you see back-to back winners? I mean,
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thinking about like I feel like the Masters almost should have among among golf tournaments more backto back
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winners because it's a smaller field though a very competitive one. It's the
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same course every year. Yeah. >> So something like the British or US Open,
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>> especially the US Open, it moves around so much stylistically. I feel like year
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to year that would presumably induce like you like I could almost expect less backto-back winners of the US Open than
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the Masters. And I I don't know if we could kind of get more of a sense of what that distribution of back-to-back
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winners looks like in golf in general from looking at other tournaments. I feel like the Masters should be kind of
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on the higher backtoback side of >> I want a second second ch I think S's
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exactly right in these two qualities. Well, it's the smallest field. One of the things one of the for years one of
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the reasons we thought that the PGA got fewer famous champions was because they have the biggest field and the Masters
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has the smallest field of the major. So that's just matters more than you might
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than you might think. >> Shane, I'll give you your answer right here. So the Masters we know the last
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time was Tiger in 2001 2002. >> In the PGA it was Brooks Kepka 2018 and 19. The US Open it was Curtis Strange in
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88 and 89. >> And in the Open Championship, I could give you guys a million guesses and you
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wouldn't get this one. That means it predates >> Patrick Harington in 2007 and 2008.
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>> Oh, look at that. Yeah. Yeah. >> I probably wouldn't have guessed that,
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but I had some that that that would have been a candidate. Yeah. Interesting. Um,
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>> so I think Shane's really good with the US Open explanation. I mean, look, these
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are small samples. >> 40 years almost. >> I like that. I mean, that's right. Yeah.
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No, I I Right. I guess and I would you guys agree? I mean, the British Open does move course to course, but I think
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stylistically doesn't >> it's tighter than it does change, but it doesn't change as much as the US Open.
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That's fair. That's fair. I want to make one other Oh, Audi's trying to get it.
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>> Yeah. I mean, I just have one thing to contribute on this discussion um about
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backtoback. One of the facts that I do know about golf because I did the research on it. We've talked about it
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here before is that putting is the most most uh significant component of the game and to predicting your win in a
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tournament, but it's the least important when predicting future tournaments. It's
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I love this fact. It's just a great >> So be careful. I think you misused the
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term predicting the first time you used it. So when I if I want to know who won the tournament, the single most
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important factor is who put it better than than they're expected to. >> Fact. So descriptive. I would say
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describe who won the tournament. >> Describe who won. You want to know how
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how did this tournament play out? When they say putt for for dough, they mean it, right? It it really means it's a
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it's it's >> it's a driver of the result, but it's not consistent,
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>> but it doesn't predict the future. meaning the actual skill variation.
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There's a little bit of variation, but it's absolutely minuscule compared to
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the skill variation and the standard deviation on a on a on a on a on a stroke level for the other components
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for the approach shots and and T- shots. >> Let's just name the analoges to that
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across sports. The most obvious one is goalending and hockey. It seems to me it's almost exactly analogous.
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>> No, that is a great analogy. I feel like in both those properties cons lack of
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consistency as well as kind of driving driving the route but only kind of retrospectively
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>> turnovers in football, >> right? >> I would I agree, Eric, but that one
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doesn't seem like it should be skill-based. That's the one that we Yeah, some coaches act like it is and
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and somebody probably tell us it it can be trained, but mostly people recognize the way the ball bounces is kind of
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chance event. Let me just I want I want just to comment about the the we just finished our our high school um data
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science competition which was on hockey which Shane and I judged yesterday. The final um presentations were terrific,
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the top five. Um but the the interesting kind of twist that we did was we made goalending a very big and
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significant factor and they had to discover that. um we didn't actually just we didn't show them um we gave them
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goals we gave them expected goals and they had to create some metric metric on their own and the winners did that um
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but so many of the submissions didn't but then the question that came and then
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we had some we had some judges who were were with uh professional hockey teams and of course Shane and I haven't done
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the research on this so it's clear that goalending is similar to putting in in
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so far as it um it really describes what happened um but it's not nearly as useful as predicting what will But I
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think it's a little stickier than than putting. But then this is a question I
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don't know the answer. In other words, within a season goalies I think they get
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hot and they kind of stay hot, but then they don't really it doesn't go to the
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future. But I'm that's a hypothesis. So I'm not going to stand by that as say
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that's truth. Um but uh but but and that's a question I really like to get
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an answer to. Uh Shane, do you know an answer to that? >> Well, I mean I think it's my my not not
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an empirical answer. My intuition is it's sticky in the kind of shortterm game to game sense that Eric would be
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very tempted to call it momentum at any like instantaneous point in time. Right.
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>> But but I think like you know once you start expanding out to like oh this
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goaliey's hot this season that's not a guarantee they're hot in the playoffs
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you know type of like like I don't think it's kind of like you know they're they
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are kind of I I wouldn't want I wouldn't necessarily predict for example goalie
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performance in the playoffs based on their regular season performance even or very strongly. I mean, you're sort
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you've already selected out maybe there's a >> actually something that I want to
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research um because it's something that I think could really be similar exactly
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the same as the putting uh which you've really thoroughly investigated or it
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could be something similar to the pubbing maybe a little little stronger um individual variation. It'd be fun to
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put next to your research on putting Audi. That'd be great. Um, >> yeah, I can just tell you what. I mean,
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this is the kind of thing, like it or not, this kind of thing you can type in the chat GPT. So, I'll just tell you
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what it says. It says that golf putting has higher serial correlation across rounds than hockey goalending has
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across. Now, it's looking at across seasons. I If you give me 10 seconds, I can I
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>> So, hold on. I'm Hold on. Let's let's stop let's stop it there because I've
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been working enough just in the last week with these kinds of analyses to not trust it until we go much deeper and
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let's not go hold on let's not go much deeper at this moment. >> It's but this is an immediate response
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and this is relative to to golf. Cut it measure how many strokes as opposed to strokes gained very correlated because
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players have a huge important impact on where they land on the green. um right effects. And so if you just look at like
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putting it that's correlated, but it's it's broken that matters. >> Okay. And we're going to stop that one
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right there and we'll we can take that up offline if we want to. I do want to
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say one more thing about Rory because when you look at that list of uh all-time major leaders in golf, he is at
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six. when you move into which is a great place to be phenomenal obviously but you
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move into seven you move into legend legend territory that's the Arnold Palmer Sam Sneed um
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uh Bobby Jones you mentioned Bobby Jones somebody else is in there it's like
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>> Palmer >> yeah Palmer's in there and you know so he one more and he's in solid legend
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territory but guys he's young and playing pretty good I want to ask a question we always ask on this show
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which is what's your forecast for lifetime majors for Rory. If you if I set it at if I set it at Well, I if I
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set it at seven and a half, what are you going to do? Over under. >> Can you remind me of Rory's age?
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>> He's 36. >> 36. 36. Wow. Okay. >> But remember, like guys are winning
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majors. Let's just say I don't call it his prime. Maybe this is his prime.
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probably not, but let's say it was. He certainly has six to eight more years of
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being heavily competitive in majors just based on age curves in golf. And that doesn't mean, by the way, Phil Mickelson
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won one at 50. And let's remember Tom Watson was a six-footer away from winning one at age 59.
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>> Yeah. But but I I but I do think those age curves have changed how we view like
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back back in time. Like Nick, when Nicholas won at like 45, that was like a legendary moment. Now a 45 year old
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would still be I think over the you know would be still unusual but not that kind
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of crazy moment like I think players are playing longer at at higher levels >> for for sure. I mean we don't have to
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look past this past weekend Justin Rose could have won the tournament. >> Absolutely.
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>> He's 40 45 years old. >> Strokes to go. Seven holes to go. >> Okay. So I'm giving you seven and a half
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>> over. >> I think I'd have to take over given his age as well. Yeah.
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>> Yeah. >> I mean, I'm just thinking let's say >> only two more. I'm two more.
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>> I'll just say he's got I'm making the number up. Set conservatively 30 more
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majors. >> Well, no. No. He's going to play more than that. But let's say
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>> competitively >> competitively 30 more. Can he win, you know, 7% of those one every two and a
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half years? I mean, let's say he plays Major for another seven, eight years.
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Eight, let's say eight years, round it and say eight years competitively. Can
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he win one major every four years? I think he can. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> By the way, just so you know, he, you
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know, he's the second favorite for the next probably I'm making it up five
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years, but I'm going to say this. Over the next five years, he's probably the
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second favorite in every major after Scotty Sheffler. I mean, they've already
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done four casts for the next four. And Sheffller's won, and Maro is very close
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at number two. >> Sure. I'd love to get the denominator on the number of times we could have had
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this conversation though like that somebody's gotten to this level like like
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>> I mean it's >> Brooks Kepka Kepka's most recent if we if we after he got his fifth if we got
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his fifth what would we have said we have said oh >> seven seven eight >> he's got five
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I'm sticking with my over don't get me wrong I just you know I feel like
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there's some cautionary tales somewhere in the background there >> by the way just you know kept of
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comparable age. I might let's assume for the moment that maybe one of them's a
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year older. I don't know. Let's assume they're of comparable age. So Kepka's
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got five and Maroyy's got six. We have no trouble potentially saying Maroy is
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going over seven and a half. What if I said six and a half for Kepka? I don't
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think anybody here's taking the over. >> No, but they're playing at a very
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different level and have been for a while. >> Yeah. So, so I mean Roy is number two in
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the world according to I think anybody's my kind of my belief for them to win
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compared like win win win majors like goes up like super linearly with the number they win win win or something
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like that >> M I'll give it to you Mr. Texas. Our boy Scotty's got four.
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>> Yeah. >> Over seven and a half right now. >> Yeah. So, what do you do with that? Just
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let help me think think it through. Definitely. He's he's a little >> 29.
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>> I want to say he's off his heater, but he was still right there, man. He was
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just right there. And he's he hasn't been playing as well lately. So, despite
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not having his played as well lately, he was one stroke away. Um, let's just go
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walk through the same logic. Let's give him 15 years. So that's 60 more.
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>> I'm going to give him a few outs for injury. Let's call it in the low 50s or
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so. Uh Tiger at his best hit 25%, but that wasn't for very many years. Let's
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give him I mean 10% still a very high number. 8%. >> We're talking about four more over.
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>> Um if so, so if you had to pick a number for Scotty with four already in the bank
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at 29. >> Well, who would you rather be? How about this one comparison? Would you rather be
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Sheffler at 29 with four or Macroy with six at 36? >> There you go. There. Now we have an
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interesting horse race. That's like the thing they do at baseball games where
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they put they let the kid run the the outfield wall and they start they start him out and they they have a fast guy
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wait for him to get halfway there and then the fast guy catches him. Um, who do you want, Scotty or Rory?
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>> I think I would take Scotty. >> I think he got to seven years to get
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two. Seven years to get two. though Rory is really playing well. So he Scotty might not arrive at 36 playing as well
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as Rory's playing right now. But Rory went through a 10-year drought, you know. So I think he I think he takes
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Scotty, but now we're talking about Scotty at like now we're going to put
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him up in the he's going to pass Palmer. We all think he's going to pass Palmer.
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That's pretty strong. >> Wait, so Rory went through 10 years without without
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>> That's unbelievable. Went from age 24, Audi, to 35 without winning a major. And
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>> now he's won two. >> Correct. The Masters two years in a row.
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>> Yeah. Okay, guys. We should stop golf. Got to throw out anything. What do I chop liver
00:19:58
here? >> Well, you went I didn't know I thought you kind of timed out on the golf thing.
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>> I did. I want I'm going with Sheffler. There you go. No, no. Uh, no. No
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questions asked. >> No questions asked. >> Hey, can I ask my other question about
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who's changed their arc of their career as much in a one-year period as Mroy now
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has? Cuz remember like two years ago or sorry 370 days ago Rory Maroy was the great prodigy who
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burned out at age 24 and now we're talking about him potentially passing Arnold Palmer and Ben Hogan or Sneed or
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whoever these you know all these guys was seven. Well, you know I put some names down there but I don't know you
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know I remember the time when Jordan couldn't win the title. you know, he came into the league in ' 84, 85, didn't
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win a title till 91,92. So, I mean, you know, I remember that. I remember when Yvon Lendle couldn't win a
00:20:52
major. He ended up with eight, but he lost his first four. >> I remember when Chamberlain couldn't win
00:20:58
the title. Seven straight losses to start. No, I'm just saying I don't remember Chamberlain. Okay. Looking at
00:21:04
this, I remember when the Red Sox and Big Poppy, I mean, he won. He won, but he won his seventh year. Okay. I got I
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got I got one. I got one. >> Titles change the arc of their the way they're perceived.
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>> I got one. I think that's better than all those. >> Okay. >> Elway.
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>> Elway is pretty good. >> He didn't have a Super Bowl until he was
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about 53 and then he got a couple there at the very end the last two seasons he played. So he came in number one draft
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pick in 1983. I don't think he won a Super Bowl until the mid 90s. And people
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he was always Yeah. I mean, man, Manning kind of had a similar sort of arc, but I
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guess Manning won like his first at least had success a little like more mid-career as opposed to like like
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you're Elway was really quite close to the end that he completely turned around
00:21:50
the narrative, right? >> Totally. Totally. Totally. But that's a great it's a great question and I mean
00:21:55
Eric Eric is kind of confessing as well because this he's been a poster boy to Rory has been a poster boy for Eric.
00:22:03
It's like I don't know. I think he can't do it. like the more he doesn't do it
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despite having the talent, the more I think he's choking to the pressure, which is a reasonable question to ask.
00:22:12
Um, but it's it's nice that he got it off. Got >> one last one on golf. Next year's
00:22:18
Masters, who do you favor, Mroy or Sheffller? >> I'll go I'll go Scotty. I'll go age. A
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year out, I'm going to go age now. But one thing that's true, guys, is that I
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don't know if you've seen the story or how much they talked about it when you
00:22:33
were watching, but Rory flew back and forth from home to Georgia for like the last three weeks and just didn't play
00:22:40
anywhere else. Three to four weeks, didn't play anywhere else, completely focused on Augusta prep. Played a
00:22:45
million times. He got this tip from Nicholas that Nicholas said, "Before majors, I used to play in my practice
00:22:51
rounds. I don't know how often he did this, but he said, "I used to play
00:22:53
practice rounds with one ball and kept score." Which is not the way guys play
00:22:57
practice rounds. But guys play practice rounds, play all kinds of balls, all kinds of places.
00:23:02
>> Nicholas said, "I wanted to try to feel like the major." And so Rory before this
00:23:05
played at least one round with one ball. Um, so I mean, if he's going to take it
00:23:10
that seriously and what he did and how he prepared for that tournament might have changed the way other guys think
00:23:16
about preparing, not only for that one, but for other majors. It's possible. You
00:23:20
know, we might get some insight into that from someone who knows a little bit more about golf than we do, someone who
00:23:25
just joined us. So, why don't we change gears? We tried fans, listeners, we tried to talk about something other than
00:23:32
golf. We did not succeed. And now we're going to talk more about golf because
00:23:36
our guest just joined us. Ji Lee just joined us. Ji, >> hi everybody. >> Is thanks for making time for us.
00:23:43
Appreciate it. >> Thanks for having me on. >> Ji is somewhere in transit from Augusta,
00:23:48
Georgia to her next destination. And we make we appreciate you making time for us. Ji has been down there for the
00:23:55
Masters. Let me give you just a quick rundown on Ji's background and let you
00:24:00
know a little bit about why we brought her on the show. She just announced in the last month um her startup, I want to
00:24:09
call it a startup even though it's been going for years. Her her company Sportbox was bought by Bryson D Shambo,
00:24:16
brought into his platform and he kept Gi. She will run the golf operation among other things as a part of that
00:24:23
platform. Ji is went to Yale originally, played golf on the LPGA for three years. She came to
00:24:30
Wharton for an NBA. She left Wharton to work for Topgolf, I think Topgolf in Dallas, which is not a very typical NBA
00:24:37
job coming out of Wharton. It was fun to see her do that. Was there for a few years, did some strategy work for them,
00:24:43
and then started her own company. And it's golf technology, and it's very
00:24:46
cutting edge golf technology. And so we thought we'd take a chance to find out
00:24:51
what is the frontier of technology in golf while we got caught up with Ji on this new venture with Bryson. So that's
00:24:59
where we're coming from. Ji, how are you feeling? How was the time? How was the
00:25:03
time in Augusta? And I'm sorry that it wasn't any happier for your business
00:25:07
partner. >> Yeah, it was uh a mix of highs and lows for sure. Uh it started off with a an
00:25:14
extreme high. We announced that the deal, you know, the acquisition deal on Tuesday morning. Uh there was, you know,
00:25:22
the deal literally got signed on Monday evening. So, >> oh my, >> you know, I signed I headed over to the
00:25:28
house where Bryson was staying. You know, we hugged it out. It was a lot of rah rah speech and uh a lot of uh a lot
00:25:35
of joy and celebration. Um, and honestly, he was hitting it so good and felt so prepared for the week. And um,
00:25:44
yeah, and I think he just had too high of a maybe had too too big of expectations going into the week to
00:25:51
actually perform, but um, but yeah, it was highs and lows as a typical week of golf.
00:25:58
>> Can you give us just real quick aside on what you just said? As a former
00:26:01
professional golfer, can you talk about the tension between expecting yourself to play well and having expectations
00:26:07
that are too high? You just said you thought Bryson might have had expectations too high, but what's how do
00:26:11
you strike the right balance in that >> and also whether hitting it well during
00:26:14
the week actually predicts whether you're going to hit it well during the tournament, but that would be helpful,
00:26:18
too. >> Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to unpack there. Obviously, you want to feel your
00:26:26
best going into your week. uh but at the same time if you get your uh expectations too high or get too excited
00:26:35
and you get kind of tripped up over those expectations. So a really good examp count counter example to that was
00:26:41
counter Colin Morawa who was injured pretty severely like he had really bad back pains going into it. He pulled out
00:26:49
of the players championship. We didn't know whether he was going to play last
00:26:53
week. And if you saw if you caught any of his um his action throughout the week, he was, you know, barely finishing
00:27:01
his swing. Um his average driving distance for the season is like 304. And on the range, his max driving distance
00:27:10
at the Masters range was 285 or something like that. >> So, he really was like just kind of like
00:27:17
>> flinging at it. Um, and yet he finished top 10 cuz he had probably very low
00:27:21
expectations about how he was going to perform and just probably played super conservative, fairways and greens,
00:27:28
nothing adventurous, never going forward in two >> and sometimes that kind of works out for
00:27:34
you. So >> interesting. Very interesting. >> Never uh yeah, you never control golf.
00:27:39
You just kind of have to go with what what you get for that week. >> Question. If a player wanted to, let's
00:27:48
say they weren't, now obviously they want to win the tournament, but I just want Jihei, I want to build on what you
00:27:53
just said. Suppose Bryson Dashambo, he would never do this, but suppose he said, "My goal is to make the top 10.
00:28:00
That's it. I'm just going to play conservative, play to the center, play
00:28:04
to the fairways, you know, throttle back my whatever 190 ball swing speed to 175,
00:28:10
and you know what? I'm probably not going to win, but I'm going to end up in
00:28:13
the top 10." Could a pro do that of his quality? >> I think that's reasonable. But I think
00:28:20
what how most of these guys and girls think is I have every every chance at winning this championship. I'm every bit
00:28:29
as skilled and talented and, you know, prepared as the other person. I have a chance at winning this, but at the end
00:28:35
of the day, it's one shot at a time and one day at a time. So, I'm just going to
00:28:40
focus on that and put myself into position to win. Like, you don't win the tournament on first day, right? You
00:28:47
don't win the tournament on the second day. As we saw, Leroy was winning by leading by six and lost all of that lead
00:28:53
as actually trailing going into the back of the final 18 and he still managed to
00:28:58
win, but he put himself in that position, right? So, that's all you can do. Um, but I can guarantee you every
00:29:05
single one of these guys at the Masters think they have a chance to win. >> So, let's do one more question from AD
00:29:13
and then I want to dive into the her technology. So, Audi. >> Yeah. So, my question is um yeah, it's
00:29:19
different to ask the question, does everyone want to win and and then you can sort of play for top 10? But the
00:29:25
real question is do you have to in order to win do you have to be aggressive and
00:29:30
and is that necessary and even at the highest level? So, we understand that if you're not in the top 10 ranked player
00:29:37
and you want to have a chance to win, you're going to have to take chances. And this is true across sports. To win,
00:29:42
you have to be aggressive, which means you're more likely to lose by a lot, but
00:29:45
it'll give you a chance to to to to be competitive. And so, um, that might be
00:29:50
something that that people think about. I mean, I don't know. I haven't actually
00:29:53
ever This is I'm going to admit this right here. I've never even played a
00:29:55
round of golf, but I've written lots of articles about it. Um and uh and and
00:29:59
Mark Brody's talked about this extensively that because in every sport aggression is basically valued and that
00:30:06
even in golf it's valued. You you hit it harder even if you is just is and further even if you think you're losing
00:30:13
um control it turns out that that's actually better and it may play into this that that that riskiness we the
00:30:19
winning a tournament is so even for the very best is still a long shot. Um even for Tiger Tiger Woods at his greatest
00:30:25
was you know three to one against um so which suggests that you have to take chances. Um which is not quite the
00:30:32
question that you were asking is which is can you scroll you know can stroll into the top you know 10th by not taking
00:30:38
chances which is sort of similar to the the poker tournament. I remember um if you if you're playing poker if you are
00:30:44
too often um making the cut you're not playing well that doesn't that's
00:30:49
strategy right. Yeah, I I think that really depends on the golf course. So, >> how you define aggressive or aggression
00:30:59
in your approach to the tournament, um it it can be defined a few different ways, but for example, at a US Open golf
00:31:09
course where it's super long, the rough is long, and the greens are playing, you
00:31:13
know, the surface is really hard. Um, I was talking to Chris Como, who is a very, you know, he's actually number
00:31:20
one or two golf coach in the world, was teaching Bryson at the time when he won his US Open, first US Open in back in
00:31:27
2020. They were playing a winged foot, which was playing very long, really tough with the rough out to here. If you
00:31:33
missed the fairway, you literally just had to hack it out of there, whether you had 200 yards to the green or 50 yards
00:31:39
to the green. And so he was like, you know, in an extreme case, if it was a oneyard fairway and out of off of that
00:31:47
one yard fairway was just rough, wouldn't you just want to hit it as far as possible, get it as close as possible
00:31:55
to the green versus like playing conservative to try to hit the hit the fairway, right? So the quoteunquote bomb
00:32:02
and gouge methodology like hit it as far as possible. If you're going to have to
00:32:07
hack it out anyway most of the time, why don't we just get it as close to the
00:32:12
green as possible? That strategy works for certain golf courses like a US Open golf course.
00:32:18
>> Augusta National is just not one of those golf courses. Absolutely. It helps you if you have a
00:32:24
shorter club and you can get the ball super high in the air and then land it soft,
00:32:29
but um there are just so many intricacies around the golf course. Um the bends and turns and the shape of the
00:32:37
fairway where you're standing versus the ball like all of it um makes it such
00:32:42
that just hitting it as far as possible is not the best strategy. So it's interesting that you asked a
00:32:50
question about to jihei because her partner is famously you know the bomber. So it there was some talk before the
00:32:57
tournament that he was that he had learned that he needed to ratchet it back some. So we this we don't need to
00:33:03
go too far into Bryson stuff and I don't how much you want to talk about it but
00:33:06
he's an example of is it true that he's learned that he had to ratchet it back
00:33:11
and he tried to ratchet it back more than he has in the past? >> I don't think so. I don't think I don't
00:33:17
think he's I mean every time he plays it, every time any player plays that golf course, they learn something,
00:33:23
right? I think Freddy Couples who's played it I don't even know how many
00:33:27
times, like 40 times. He's probably still learning every time he plays it, right? Um I don't think Bryson's
00:33:33
approach was let's try to be conservative. He still hit plenty of drivers. Um, but you know, it's learning
00:33:41
how the the shots land, how to, you know, distance control around the fairways and um, and I think this week
00:33:50
the difference was a little bit of kind of that distance control with his irons and then um, I mean, if you look at
00:33:57
Rory's stats, too, he didn't have a stellar driving week. >> No, he bet. Right. No.
00:34:04
Um, but his scrambling was exceptional right over the greens. And so you just kind of you learn each time and I think
00:34:14
Bryson learned something this week. So, >> all right. Well, let's let's dive into
00:34:19
the company that you built and have just sold and you're staying on to help run,
00:34:23
but you've built you built this company over a number of years around technology
00:34:27
and go golf was, you know, arguably maybe the first major sport into this kind of tracking technology.
00:34:34
Um, so where is it now? Like what what was the original impetus that you built the company around? And then how did it
00:34:40
advance to where it is now? and and so we we'd like to use you to kind of catch
00:34:44
up on what what is the cutting edge of technology and understanding golf performance.
00:34:50
>> Yeah. So I started the company with a co-founder Sam Menker who had spent 20
00:34:56
years a couple decades in AI and uh he when I met him he was working on this technology that can transform a video
00:35:04
just a simple video taken on your phone or wherever into pretty intricate detailed motion data 3D
00:35:12
motion data and when I say the motion data it's you know how your body parts
00:35:16
are moving so you know your head side to side um your torso round and round, you
00:35:22
know, up and down. How are your wrists moving throughout the swing? Um it was able to get all of that detail in uh 3D
00:35:31
accuracy that was on par with the markered system out there that required, you know, 45 minutes to get suited up
00:35:38
and like 12 cameras around you in a lab setting. So for me, >> how long ago? Hey, this was how long
00:35:46
ago? >> This is in 2020. So just uh over five and a half years ago and um I the aha
00:35:54
kind of the light bulb moment for me when I understood what the technology was capable of was you know I'd spent
00:36:02
years you know decades trying to perfect my golf swing hit quite literally a couple million golf shots in my life and
00:36:11
um still you go through stretches of time when you're hitting it great and then the next day you stand up on the
00:36:17
range you feel like you have no idea what you're doing or you hit some crazy
00:36:21
bad shots. You're like, "Well, I feel like I'm doing the exact same thing with
00:36:24
my swing, but clearly I'm doing something different because the shot was going straight yesterday. It's not going
00:36:31
straight today." And you know, you would agonize over what's different? Why do I
00:36:37
feel different today? What is it? What is it? What is the difference that is producing such different outcome? Um,
00:36:44
and I saw the ability to produce data quickly just using your phone was that was the holy grail. It could
00:36:52
tell you exactly in inches and degrees what the difference in your swing is when you hit it good versus you hit it
00:36:58
bad. Um, and so that was the goal. We wanted to create a product that allowed everybody who plays golf, who teaches
00:37:05
golf to be able to see that data and learn from it. >> Can I ask a question? Maybe this is my
00:37:11
question. Maybe because you were a professional golfer, you chose golf. But couldn't you call talk about this like
00:37:19
why not sell it for baseball use and why not for quarterbacks throwing the ball except for your if it hadn't been your
00:37:26
personal interest if you had been a professional women's basketball player or a tennis player? Would you have
00:37:30
applied it to one of those sports and maybe you'd be talking to I don't know
00:37:34
uh Yannik Sinner today and he'd be your business partner. >> Absolutely. Um, we actually started on
00:37:41
baseball a couple years ago and we do have a baseball product that the LA Dodgers have been using for their
00:37:49
international scouting. So, um, obviously, you know, when they're in LA in their training centers, they've got
00:37:56
millions of dollars worth of gear that allows you to do motion capture with their players, but when they're going
00:38:01
out to different markets where they're scouting for the next big talent, they
00:38:06
want to be able to base their million-doll bets on something real. And they're using Sports Box now to measure
00:38:14
these, you know, 15, 16 year old kids swings and pitching motion to see how they compared against one another. and
00:38:20
versus the player the to the professionals. >> Well, real real quickly does and I want
00:38:28
to come back to the technology, but on this topic, Bryson bought you as part of a broader
00:38:34
platform. What is the goal for this technology? I know there's goals within golf, but is there are there goals
00:38:39
outside of golf for the technology and what you're doing? >> Absolutely. Uh we want to first like
00:38:46
really really win in golf, right? We've created a great product, great technology that can
00:38:53
have a a position to play in not just instruction, but equipment fitting. For example, we we get data on matching you
00:39:02
your swing, the the the idiosyncrasies of your swing to certain shaft profiles with your with the equipment that you're
00:39:11
playing to produce the best outcome. Um, so much more there. We want to win in this market but uh we definitely intend
00:39:18
to go out and build systems and products and businesses and other sports as well.
00:39:23
I think baseball is a really obvious example like I mentioned, but um you know tennis and uh cricket is a very
00:39:32
common request. There are people in my DMs on LinkedIn asking about all sorts of sports including bowling and um
00:39:41
darts. I have gotten um there's there's a lot there. So >> that's hilarious. Gi, can you tell the
00:39:49
story of when Bryson got convinced about your technology? This was a US Open, was
00:39:54
it not? >> Yeah. So this takes us back to 2024 um when he was preparing for the US Open
00:40:02
and his coach Dana Dulquist has been a sports box user and ambassador for a while. um you know, a few years going
00:40:11
back and he and Bryson were trying to troubleshoot a swing as always. You know, he felt like he didn't quite have
00:40:19
it. Um he was he seeing more shots go to the right than he would like. Uh because
00:40:26
he's a draw player. He wants to shape the shot from right to left every single
00:40:30
time he hits the ball. And he just wasn't seeing that happen as often as he would like. and he came to us asking
00:40:38
look you know there are lots of great people Dana Dawquist and whoever else they have
00:40:46
uh a lot of experience and they can offer opinions but can you tell me in data right like I want to see data on
00:40:53
what makes me hit it to the right versus when I hit it great and so we went down
00:40:59
to Dallas to his home course and collected a bunch of data on his swing every club on the golf course on the
00:41:06
ring change and we paired it with um a launch monitor data. So he was using a foresight device that can capture the
00:41:14
data around how the ball was shaped. So we knew exactly where the ball was going, which direction it was going and
00:41:21
we paired that with corresponding swing data that we captured. And so based on that data set, we were able to do pretty
00:41:28
simple linear regression analysis on on getting the highest correlated motion data items.
00:41:38
What was highest correlated with that bad or good outcome that he was looking for, right?
00:41:43
>> And it was so clear to us once we did this analysis that it was like three
00:41:48
things at the top of his back swing. he was getting too stacked, you know, and he had no room, felt stuck, and then he
00:41:54
had to kind of like get his club face open. And so I delivered this information to him to
00:42:02
Bryson on Tuesday of US Open week at Piner. And imagine like me like being like,
00:42:10
"Hey Bryson, this is what we're going to do with your golf swing." um which is still to me the
00:42:18
most insane thing I've ever experienced and obviously we were working with his
00:42:23
coach to make sure that it was kind of filtered for through him his lens but because we are we were armed with
00:42:30
science right we had data I felt like I was in the right place like I had a right to say this to him
00:42:38
and he was very receptive and he worked on getting his his back swing data in the right range for him to draw it. And
00:42:47
of course, he wins the US Open that week. And it was the craziest week of my life,
00:42:57
going from um telling a guy, a world class athlete, what to do with his golf swing to having him win and mentioning
00:43:06
Sports Box on his winter, you know, press conference is the craziest week of our lives.
00:43:12
>> That's That's good. That's good work. That's good work. GA. Um, and good fun.
00:43:17
Um, Eric in the middle of that story came up with a question. Eric, >> well, I just want to know, do you have
00:43:22
now that let's assume that you guys are doing the state-of-the-art in data capture. I got a little nervous, maybe
00:43:28
my stat colleagues did too when you talked about using a linear regression to try to relate these things. Um, do
00:43:35
you have a team of data scientists now that work for you that are building more sophisticated models than linear
00:43:41
regression? And if not like I'm sure Wharton the company that a naughty run the Wharton Sports Analytics Business
00:43:49
Initiative would have many many extraordinarily well-trained students that would love to work with you.
00:43:55
>> I actually like the linear regression models. So if you're using those that's
00:43:58
actually completely fine by me. >> You MBA you learn your you learn your regression.
00:44:04
>> I I I was hoping this is where the conversation would go. Absolutely. I we
00:44:11
do have a data science team. Team is a is a bit of a stretch. We've got a few
00:44:17
data science um team members who are crunching the data, but would love would love to collaborate on some of these
00:44:25
projects. There's a lot of data really really cool data sets that we're working
00:44:29
with and we're trying to figure out like what makes somebody play their best
00:44:33
golf, right? Yeah, that's the open question. Let me let me uh jump in because I think it's kind of relevant.
00:44:40
So what you're doing is if I understand correctly is you have all these measurements and then you have a your X
00:44:46
side of the linear regression and then the Y side is some metric that you calculate which measures how good the
00:44:53
shot is. Um and then you build a a function that connects the two. That's a far cry from an interventionist model
00:45:01
which would say we're now going to tell you, you know, Ryson, you're going to do
00:45:07
this and what does that change? Um and and then you can see that in the X side and then and then on the Y side. Those
00:45:15
are very different um statistical kind of structures. One is purely correlational and the other is almost
00:45:23
cause causal. Right? We're going to see we're going to take you going to tell
00:45:26
you >> experiment and it's experiment and that's the and so I mean it's in some
00:45:31
level you were very fortunate because your first uh I guess you went to him and said we we're seeing this uh do this
00:45:38
and and then he won right >> first experiment worked >> yeah first experiment but uh and so now
00:45:43
you want to really see um uh how to turn that and that's kind of like um not it's
00:45:48
not going to be the the data analyst who can do that it's the it's the it's the
00:45:52
design of an experiment you're gonna have to go in with golfers, with the devices, and then
00:45:58
and with coaches, and then try to do control comparisons, which is really what an experiment is. And that would be
00:46:05
that would be mind-blowing. >> That would be very cool. And we've talked about almost creating a sim of
00:46:11
like when you change this in early part of the swing, what happens to the rest of the golf swing? Like multivaried
00:46:16
approach. And um I mean that's I I think that biomechanical sim is a possibility.
00:46:23
That's that's been done before. We we should we should explore that. But also
00:46:29
we've now we're now deploying our LLM layer on top of all the data sets. So um
00:46:37
we're using Gemini. We're a Google partner and we have created something
00:46:41
called Sammy Sportsbox AI motion intelligence uh chatbot that can understand our data.
00:46:49
So what what it means when we say hey the pelvis sway is too high in the back swing like what does that mean in the
00:46:55
context of a golf swing? But you know instead of our data scientist going and like crunching the data we can just ask
00:47:01
Sammy hey you know that last swing I hit it really bad. How does that compare to
00:47:07
my US Open swing? Oh okay that impact position was like this. Okay well why am I doing that? What happens earlier in my
00:47:15
swing that makes me do this at impact? So kind of that type of uh interaction is possible with AI.
00:47:22
>> Yeah. And and Audi, this is something you would know if you if you played more
00:47:26
golf. And that this is the >> I'm not playing more golf, Kate. >> Well, I and I and and and we can do
00:47:32
something about that. >> But this is the kind of conversation that happens on the golf course with
00:47:37
your buddies if you're a professional. Happens with your coach. But guys are
00:47:40
always like, "What am I doing? What am I doing?" And and some guys are really
00:47:43
good at saying, "Well, you're a little bit, you know, you're moving. you're
00:47:46
moving your head, you got your back swing off or your tempos off or whatever, you're you're forever losing
00:47:51
your swing and you're forever asking for outside perspective on what's happened
00:47:54
to your swing. And Gihei has gone out and created a way to tell very precisely and it doesn't mean you're going to
00:48:00
necessarily be able to fix it, but it does give you accurate information. Um, GA, talk a little bit about this mission
00:48:07
that you guys have in terms of identifying young golfers. And I think this is something that will be
00:48:13
intriguing to the whole crowd here. But, um, there's a premise, I suppose, that
00:48:20
you're you have the ability to identify natural talent in the swing or the potential the potential in a swing. You
00:48:25
can identify with your technology. That's a that's a premise. But if that's
00:48:30
true, there might be golfers out there off the radar, maybe socioeconomically disadvantaged folks who if they were
00:48:39
seen to have the potential they actually have would have a very different future.
00:48:43
Is do am I capturing that right? And and to and how are you all pursuing that idea?
00:48:48
>> And then of course are you pursuing a either a private equity or hedge fund to
00:48:52
invest with you in that because of course there's an economic play there. I I have to say it's Sher Wharton MBA. I
00:48:58
you have to be thinking about the monetization. I you want I understand it's democratization. It's good for
00:49:03
society, but someone would want to create a couch or something for investing in young golfers.
00:49:09
>> Hey, Shane and I are communists and so if you don't want to skip the capitalist
00:49:12
side, you can go with just improving the world. That that's okay. >> Okay. Okay.
00:49:17
>> Um well, I mean going back to the premise, you know, I was I went through
00:49:23
the college recruiting process. I was very fortunate to have been recruited at Yale and played college golf. But um
00:49:30
that was all because I got to play a certain amount of tournaments on a tour called AJGA, American Junior Golf
00:49:37
Association, which is like the top level junior golf tournament series where college coaches know to recruit, right?
00:49:44
And if you play in those events, you get ranked, you know, internationally on like the junior golf rankings, which is
00:49:50
again a reference point for college recruit uh college recruiters, right? coaches looking at who should I, you
00:49:56
know, put place my bets on. But that leaves out a whole like entire world of golfers, junior golfers who may not be
00:50:05
able to travel to these events, may not have the funds to play, you know, 30, 40
00:50:10
tournaments a year, which is insane, right? It's like a full professional schedule.
00:50:16
>> It's incredible. >> Yeah. And if you're not on that rankings
00:50:20
list because you didn't play in these events, like you're just kind of so if
00:50:24
you will, right? Like you're just not visible, right? And so um so that that was one part of it. And
00:50:32
then I asked college coaches like, "Hey, when you are looking at talent, what are
00:50:36
you looking at?" And they're like, "Well, you know, obviously the rankings,
00:50:39
but I sometimes go and like do my eye test." And I'm like, "What's the eye
00:50:44
test?" They're like, "Oh, you know, some some of them just look like athletes."
00:50:47
I'm like, what? This in 2025, like this is what you're relying on. >> What are we selling? Jeans. That's the
00:50:57
great line for a money ball. >> Exactly. >> Exactly. And so we got curious about
00:51:02
like if you look at a golf swing and you're able to break it like almost tokenize it into data, like is there are
00:51:09
there telltale signs of what makes a great athlete, right? And so we went down the path of um creating a swing
00:51:18
score or set of scores that would define how skilled of a golfer they are based on their golf swing. Not looking at like
00:51:26
a short game or whatever. And we did come up with a a scoring mechanism that's really highly correlated with
00:51:34
somebody's handicap. So that was step number one. But I think if we are able
00:51:39
to look at junior golfers over a period of time and just keep measuring their data, right, and how they're progressing
00:51:46
in their careers, maybe through a college, you know, like a five-year longitudinal study, I have high
00:51:54
confidence that we can come up with even better metrics on what to look for for junior golfers to indicate their current
00:52:00
and future success. That's kind of the thesis. >> Can I jump in? Um, one of the advantages
00:52:06
you have with golf is that it's uh individual and um you measure strokes, strokes gained. Um, you can really get
00:52:15
accurate information on how you played. How do you think can you you think you can
00:52:22
basically recover performance metric with just looking at the swing? No, I don't think it's going to be an
00:52:31
exact uh overlap versus their overall performance because golf has a lot of components like short game, putting your
00:52:41
ability to handle stress, you know, that kind of stuff. But in terms of like we know for a fact that um through Mark
00:52:49
Brody his his work like being able to hit the ball especially with the driver really far really well consistently is
00:52:57
one of the most if not the most important aspect of what makes a golfer successful. And so if we're able to
00:53:03
measure the golf swing to say yes, this is a swing that can produce really high ball speed really consistently
00:53:11
that I believe is worth betting on. >> So on this this is exactly where I was
00:53:17
about to go and that is what are you adding beyond ball speed since that's actually the outcome that's kind of
00:53:24
>> measure that I mean we >> we can measure that other ways and it covers so much territory. What is added
00:53:31
by the biomechanics used to produce that ball speed? >> Yeah, so really good question. So we got
00:53:37
in our swing score, we have three components currently and we we'll get to the fourth. The first is speed. We we
00:53:44
have hand speed, we have club head speed, we have shaft speed. Um those speed metrics very very important to
00:53:51
producing a a speed score. Second is efficiency. So how efficiently are you producing that speed? Um and that's a
00:54:00
lot of the kinematic sequence data like you know um are you starting from the lower body to upper body to like you
00:54:06
know that whipping effect right >> um that is incredibly important to indicate somebody's skill level. Third
00:54:12
is consistency and you can think of that as you know if you guys have been on a a
00:54:18
launch monitor for golf you see the shot dispersion and that is almost like one to one correlation to how good of a
00:54:24
golfer it is like the tighter the dispersion the better the golfer they are. we have movement dispersion, but if
00:54:30
you're not hitting good shots, even if you're a good golfer, like you're
00:54:34
probably trying something different in every swing. And that's going to show up
00:54:37
in our data. And for different skill level golfers, if you're really highly skilled like Bryson, that standard
00:54:45
deviation for everything we measure is super tight versus not so skilled golfer, they're they don't know what
00:54:51
they're doing with their bodies essentially. Um, so those things are super highly correlated to somebody's
00:54:58
skill level as a golfer. And then the fourth that we're getting to um is impact quality. So while we can't get
00:55:06
like the club head data at the moment of impact, we have a lot of things that we've studied that would correlate to
00:55:15
centerness of contact, low point, and a um path, you know, neutral path, like what in the golf movement would highly
00:55:25
correlate to that impact condition with the club head delivery. >> That is going to be the fourth score
00:55:30
that we're going to add to our overall spin score. That's neat. So that's
00:55:34
that's the thing that determines along with the speed and and the path. There's
00:55:38
a lot of things that determine it, but the outcome of the shot. It sounds like you're basically reconstructing what you
00:55:43
don't observe. You're modeling what you don't observe so that you can then
00:55:47
basically simulate what happens with the with the ball. That's super interesting.
00:55:51
I'm now I want to ask you the question of if you had to bet because I love this
00:55:56
premise of we we think we can identify talent with our technology. If you had to bet these different four
00:56:04
components uh speed, uh efficiency, um consistency, and then quality of the impact. If you if you if you if you had
00:56:14
those ratings on a bunch of kids, you know, in in in downtown Los Angeles from the range and some were strong on one
00:56:22
and some were strong on the other, which and you had to bet which is going to be
00:56:25
the better college golf coffer three years from now >> just on that alone.
00:56:28
>> I think and this is completely not based on science. I understand. >> My theory is that the younger they are,
00:56:37
the speed is going to be more important. >> Okay. if at a younger age if you're able
00:56:43
to produce a lot of speed, >> that is going to be like that's talent. Um, and the older they get, you know,
00:56:50
they've grown into their bodies and whatever, the the consistency is going to matter the most.
00:56:56
>> Okay. Gi, do you know this thing that Nicholas said? This is like a Golf
00:56:59
Digest thing from the 80s or something. I've always remembered it from as a kid,
00:57:02
probably because I wasn't enough of a long knock, but Nicholas said something
00:57:05
like, "People ask me, should I teach my kid, should I teach my kid to hit it
00:57:09
long or hit it straight?" and he said, "No question. Teach them to hit it long.
00:57:12
They can learn to hit it straight later." And um that's basically what you're asking.
00:57:17
>> That's exactly what's happened in baseball. They they've said, "Should I
00:57:19
should I teach them to throw strikes or throw hard?" And for years it was throw
00:57:23
strikes. And now it's throw hard. >> Right. Right. >> That's where I went wrong.
00:57:29
>> Nobody Nobody told me it was important to swing hard. They told me to swing
00:57:33
pretty. >> This is why I'm I'm doing what I'm doing and not playing on the LPJ tour. So GA
00:57:40
when that's that raises is it when when people what what would you say correlates best with what people
00:57:46
perceive to be a pretty swing I assume that's tempo and efficiency do you do
00:57:50
you have some sense of what that would be >> really good question I think it is a lot
00:57:56
to do with tempo um because you know universally we Rory's golf swing is is known as like
00:58:08
the most stunn stunning golf swing. Rory and Nelly, right? Whenever sports box account we post anything about Rory and
00:58:14
Nelly swing, like it just blows up because people just love looking at those swings.
00:58:19
>> Well, they're both beautiful people, too. So, that's that's part of it, I
00:58:23
suspect. And Rory's is just so powerful. >> Um, we're another another indulgent
00:58:28
question real quick. Cameron Young pauses at the top of his backspring. It makes me It makes me anxious when he
00:58:33
pauses. What is y'all's What is y'all's take? I literally like to watch him
00:58:38
watch play golf less because of that pause. What is y'all's take on whether
00:58:43
it's okay to pause or not? >> I mean, clearly for him. Yeah. >> Yeah. Clear. It's like Jim Furick had a
00:58:49
bad swing, so whatever. It doesn't matter. You don't have a >> I guess an empirical version of that
00:58:53
question is is is like a pause at the top of your swing. Is that a particular aspect that's hardest to keep
00:58:59
consistent? I I would think that that would be I I I also it doesn't look right to me just because I I would
00:59:06
struggle with that type of if I had something like that in my golf swing, I would struggle with being very
00:59:11
consistent about it. So, I don't know if that I agree. Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, it's truly every swing is
00:59:19
so unique. It's hard for me to sit here and say like, "Yeah, that's a um that's
00:59:24
a bad move or whatever because >> you're saying we don't put everybody in
00:59:29
a model and say your swing is wrong because we have the universal good swing. We're going to look at your swing
00:59:33
relative to your other swings essentially and we can tighten it up, but mostly we're talk about how you're
00:59:38
you're deviating, especially these professional golfers, how they're deviating from something that has worked
00:59:41
for them." >> Yeah, absolutely. And that's where the data becomes more and more important.
00:59:47
>> Okay. Okay. So, tell us one last like what are you most excited about now?
00:59:49
You've signed the deal. It's public. You're off and running. What do you turn
00:59:54
your attention to next? Like what's in the next couple weeks something that's
00:59:57
going to be a priority for you? >> Honestly, it's the business building. You know, we've got
01:00:05
this great megaphone, if you will, through Black Bryson as our ambassador and business partner. and we've got the
01:00:13
benefit of his platform to go out and talk about the great work we're doing um
01:00:19
with Bryson and otherwise just have to go and capitalize on it from a business standpoint and with the additional
01:00:26
resources we will look at you know some of the research that I've talked about
01:00:31
because I do think that you know what we have to offer is the opportunity to democratize access to great technology
01:00:39
for everybody um and access to opportunities to play at a higher level. So, and and Bryson is kind of the
01:00:48
accelerant that we wanted to go out and do that effectively. So, that's what
01:00:53
we're really excited about. >> Terrific. Well, Ji, we wish you the best
01:00:58
with it. Thank you again for pausing with us and your travels and right on the heels of this announcement, we're
01:01:02
excited for you and uh now we're a little bit more up to date on the cutting edge of Goth technology as well.
01:01:09
But, G Lee, thanks for making time for us. Thank you everybody. It was really, really nice talking to you.
01:01:14
>> Gi Haley, co-founder of Sportsbox, new business partner to Bryson Dshambo in a
01:01:20
deal that was just announced last week, fresh off of a trip down to Augusta. That has been the full show, guys. It's
01:01:26
been the full hour here of Sports Analytics on Wharton Podcast Network for the team, all of whom have been here for
01:01:32
the whole ride. Shane Jensen, Audi Winer, Eric Bradlo. Thank you guys for listening. Big thanks to Dion Simpkins
01:01:38
for making this show happen. from Marissa Raina, our producer, and Deep Patel, the boss lady, keeping us all in
01:01:44
line. Appreciate it. Thank you guys for listening. Come back and join us next time between now and then. Enjoy your
01:01:49
sports.