Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome. Cause you are now listening to from the CART Pass with your host Trent Roberts, bringing you tips, support and player recognition and education with the experts for parents and junior golfers in Indiana.
This is from the CART Path with your host, Trent Roberts.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Foreign welcome back to another episode of from the CART Path. Today. I'm excited for a couple of reasons. We've got Lauren Smith back from Path for Success and we have a special guest with us. Many of you know I've been talking about the Universal Golf rankings for quite some time. Otherwise Lauren likes to call it Tugger. So that's what I've adopted of calling it Tugger. It's easier than saying Tugr constantly. And we've got Jeff Bullock from Tugger with us. And I want everybody to know he's changing the game of golf. He's changing the way we look at rankings and he's changing the way coaches are approaching recruiting. And I'm excited to have him on here. Jeff brings some game with him in his background. And Jeff actually is a former Colorado State Junior Stroke Play champion his senior year in high school and played in a couple of big events at the Junior Worlds and the Western Juniors, so. And he's got, currently lives in Colorado and he's got three kids. So welcome aboard, Jeff. Thanks for joining us.
[00:01:30] Speaker C: Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: So how did this all start?
[00:01:36] Speaker C: It all started about three years ago. I mean, the quick version is when the pro game rankings was in a little bit of disruption because of live peeling off some players. We thought, hey, there's an opportunity to do pro rankings in an unbiased way.
And so we released, you know, it was kind of one of those times, those few times in life where you talked about doing something and then you actually did something right.
And so there's, there's six of us that run this operation. And we all looked around the table and we said, hey, we got, we got the whole skill set to do this.
So we released kind of our version of Pro rankings in 2023 and it took off pretty quick. People really like the methodology and we can dive into that later, but it's, it's completely unbiased. It's a performance based approach. It's not points based. So it really measures the true skill and talent of players and stacks them up. And we got just a lot of, a lot of momentum in the pro space. A lot of really cool, cool things happened there and that sort of snowballed into getting into the junior space. I was out of the US SAM in 2023, it was at Cherry Hills. I'm from Colorado, so I went out there to kind of watch it. And a bunch of parents, when they kind of found out what I was doing, came up to me and basically begged that we do this. Our system in the junior space. We didn't know much about the junior space at the time as far as rankings go. We looked into it, thought it'd be a good opportunity. It took us nine months to build out the database, and we released it a year ago. So it was March of 24th that we released it, and it's been pretty awesome. It's been just the reception and kind of the opportunities we've gotten in less than 12 months in the space has been really cool.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: Awesome. What do you think the future looks like so far? Now that you've started this?
What have you liked, and where is the future going?
[00:03:34] Speaker C: What I've loved is. It's funny.
People warned us, you're getting into junior golf. Watch out.
Parents, coaches. Like, everyone's pretty passionate, and we've had just a. We've had a really great experience, honestly, because. And I think it's because, like, truly, it's an unbiased way to rank players. And so there's no. No one's asking us why we adjusted this or why we adjusted that. And then when they kind of. When they see the technology platform that we've built, you know, big picture, we've got three pillars to our platform. We've got rankings, we've got player analytics, and then we've got a recruiting platform for college coaches. And when they kind of see it all come together, it's pretty impressive. And the one thing I'd say is we're the only platform that has both rankings and analytics. Most. Most platforms are either one or the other. And so because of that, we can draw insights.
Hopefully this isn't too much of a hyperbole statement. We can draw insights that have really never been drawn before in junior golf because we have both pillars.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: One of the things I read a while ago is you can pretty much predict how a tournament can go based upon the rankings. And at first I questioned it, and then I went back and looked at it, and I'm like, holy cow, he's right. And I wish there was a way when we walk into a tournament, we kind of know what everybody was already ranked. Is that something in the future with some of the tours?
[00:05:07] Speaker C: Yeah. So coaches actually can do that right now. We probably should release that functionality to the general population. But within our recruiting platform, on the coaches, they can go in, they can input the field, and for the big tournaments, we do it for them and they can print out a field rank for that event. And that's one of the ways we measure kind of our predictability and accuracy is, you know, where did a player finish relative to their pre tournament field rank? And we published a lot of data, but we average about 10 places from where someone's pre tournament field rank is of where they actually finish. So if someone walks into a hundred person field and they're ranked 20th, we are pretty confident that they're going to finish between 10th and 30th and more. You know, that is the average kind of deviation that our system predicts. And coaches love it because now all of a sudden they can trust the fact that pre tournament field rank is actually pretty indicative of maybe where things are going to shake out.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: When I went back and tested your theory for the girls state championships, it was spot on. Your theory was even proven correct regarding who our high school team's top five were. And I think for those schools in the states where high school is important, they're going to want to start looking at that data as well because it's going to help those coaches understand how their kids are playing over the summer. Not just in the one day events, but the two day events as well.
[00:06:35] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I mean, one of my favorite movies is Moneyball. Right. I love blending sports with data analytics. I'm also a big believer in, you know, the feel and the eye test. I think there's a good blend of both. Right. And I'm not swayed on one side or the other. But, but the data can definitely lead you down the right path. Right. It's all about we got to get the ship going in the right direction. And then if it's going in the right direction, then that's where the touch and the feel of a coach or a player comes in to really make the difference.
And so, you know, you could say we're trying to moneyball, golf and, and bring that experience to the masses. We want everyone to have the tools to be able to use it or not use it, but at least it's available to you.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Lauren, what stood out to you when you first looked at it?
[00:07:19] Speaker D: Well, I think, you know, from my time as a college coach, having the ability to look at multiple systems was really impressive. And then I still have friends on the college, you know, coaching trail and they're the ones that said, hey, have you heard about this? And so as soon as I started doing a deep dive, I thought, oh my gosh, all, all of the things that we search for as a college coach about these athletes is right here at our fingertips. And yeah, it's like you just said, Jeff, you want to do the eye test, you want to go see them, but you almost show up to a tournament and know what to expect.
And I think that's what impressed me the most most recently, the glide path that you've all released, it's been a game changer for us and the clients that we work with. And I think, you know, the ability for a student to see where they're currently are on their path and whether that's good, bad or ugly, and then, you know, to see where they can get to and where the players ahead of them in their state are or in the country or in the world or whatever it might be.
But, but, Jeff, to that point, I think you all might have attended the, the coaches convention back in December. What was the feedback from, you know, the college coaches and what are they liking about the, the Tugger ranking system compared to some of the others out there?
[00:08:40] Speaker C: Yeah, we attended the college coaches National Convention in December. It was awesome. It was two days of just non stop talking with coaches at every level.
The great thing is I would say the majority of coaches had already heard of us or they were already using our platform. And so it was great to touch base with people who we'd been talking with, those who hadn't. We had our booth set up with our computer and it's, you know, it kind of felt like it only took five minutes of showing them the platform and they said, okay, I'm convinced you got me. Right.
So that was really cool and validating.
You know, again, kind of the three aspects of the platform from. We were first and foremost, we kind of, we always feel like we're a ranking system. Yes, we built a really cool analytics and recruiting platform, but rankings, you got to get that part right for anything else to really matter. And, you know, when, when people, when they understand the different approach that we take relative to other systems that are out there, it just clicks in their mind. They're like, yeah, that totally makes sense.
And, and that was the feedback. You know, probably the biggest ask we got is to do international rankings. Right. Because there's so much recruiting going on internationally and it's in the pipeline. I can't tell you when. It's probably not a 2025 thing, but it is definitely in the pipeline.
[00:10:01] Speaker D: Yeah, that's a lot of Players you would have to add to the database for that. So. Yeah, but, yeah, I've just. I've been impressed, and I'm. I think, like Trent said, I'm the one that kind of introduced him. And I think anytime that you can sit down and see where you are as a student athlete, as a golfer, we. We try to tell our clients, you know, try not to compare where you are to, you know, your fellow competitors, but, you know, you have to compare. Golf is all about the numbers. And what the Tugger system does is really, really impressive. So everyone that we work with, we advise them to make an account through Tugger, and then just the ability for them to understand more about their golf game is something where, you know, we see progress as well, because once they do, you know, we can see that, obviously, because we have an account, but once they can see the information on their golf game that a lot of these kids didn't even know existed, that's. We talk about bridging the gap between junior golf and college golf, and that that's a gap that, if we can continue to bridge, really helps the juniors become better college players quicker.
[00:11:09] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, one of our. I mean, our stated mission, the first point, is to help people make better decisions. Right? I mean, and that's what the. I mean, and the analytics platform is big. When I give coaches demos, I mean, it takes a solid 30 or 40 minutes walking through the entire platform because there's so much data. But we've tried to synthesize it in a way that it's easy to understand. It's just. It's a big platform, and once you kind of get a feel for it, you truly can make better decisions when you see where you need to go. And that's just one of the. That's that first and foremost, that's what we want you to do, is like, hey, golf's a hard game. Sometimes you can just get better. If you make better decisions on the course, that maybe it's not improving your swing, maybe it's just making a better decision. Two times the ground, and that gets two or three shots. And I can tell you two or three shots at different points in the ranking spectrum is the difference between thousands of ranking spots. Like, you can. You can jump up hundreds, if not thousands of ranking spots if you improve by two shots consistently over the course of a summer. Right. And, like, that's what it means.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: Lauren, you made one of the comments to me a few weeks ago when. When we were having one of our few discussions that we have we were looking at the IHSAA par fours, and you flat out said, who was the lowest score on par fours with the low average? And I guarantee you they won the tournament. And that's when I started looking at all the information. And sure enough, Taylor Snively, who won the state championship, had the low average on par fours. And I think those are the tools now that the coaches can see this. Do you think that's some of the stuff they're looking at, Lauren?
[00:12:49] Speaker D: Yeah, definitely. I mean, my, my time as a college coach and even, I mean, Jeff, when I was coaching, we used golf stat because that's what was available to us. And, you know, you could, you could take any team and for the most part, par 3 scoring, par 5 scoring was similar, but where the best teams and the mid, you know, tier teams were separated was on par four scoring. And that's something that I'm trying to, you know, tell the people that we work with, too. You know, a lot of times they worry about par five scoring. And, yeah, I mean, you're going to make birdies, you're going to make bogeys or whatever, but it's par four scoring in the gap that you see. And I don't know if personally you see that. I'm sure you do, but it's just one of the things that, you know, there's obviously more par fours on the golf course, so your stats there are going to be greater. But yeah, it's, it's definitely something on the college level, we worked out a ton. And then when we do practice rounds with our kids, we talk about course management, especially on par fours, because like you said, it's one or two shots that's making a huge difference when it comes to rankings.
[00:13:51] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I can validate everything you're saying. So par 4 scoring has a greater, it has a greater correlation to where you are ranked than par three or par five scoring. That's just the way the numbers pan out. And then the second stat I always preach is double bogey rate. So your double bogey rate has a higher correlation to where you are ranked than your bogey rate, your par rate, or your birdie rate. And, and, and I think it's because double bogeys are just also indicative of your course management, of your mental game, of your mental strength. And so just, you know, two quick stats. 99% of kids ranked in the top 500 average less than one double bogey per round.
Jump up to the top 100. 70% of top 100 range players average less than one double bogey every two rounds. So, so that's the gap between a top 100 player and a top 500 player is a double bogey every 18 to 20 holes and a double bogey every 36 to 40 holes. Right. And again we're talking one to one and a half shots per round. But you, you consistently do that. And, and that's just the way the numbers run out. Like it's the. One of the highest correlated stats to where you are ranked is double bogey rate.
[00:15:08] Speaker D: Yeah. And we always like to say numbers don't lie. Right. So I think the proof is in the pudding there.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: So Jeff, one of the things I've been asked a lot about is two things. One is 18 months versus 12 months of juniors golf scoreboard. And number two is why should we look at your system more so than junior golf scoreboard? I know the answers, but I'm going to let you answer it because that's only fair.
[00:15:35] Speaker C: Yeah, so 18 months. So we do 18, an 18 month look back. But we also have a linear fade from week one to week 76. So your most recent events are higher weighted than those from 15 months ago, 17 months ago, 14 months ago. So it fades down in weight, just in a linear fashion. The reason why we did that is we just ran all the back tests and numbers and 18 months with a linear fade is the most predictive way and the most accurate way to rank, to rank golfers on the pro level. On the junior level, we've got all the numbers to back it up. And so we ran the rankings when we were developing the system at 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months. No fades. Yes, fades. Weighting it differently. And that's where it showed, hey, this is the most accurate and predictive way to do it. So that's why we settled on that. The reality is is it feels very much like a 12 month ranking when you look at the weighting. Right. Because you're, when you're de weighting the later tournaments, it'll feel closer to a one year look back. Even though we look back that far.
The biggest difference between us and really any other system, whether it's Junior Golf Scoreboard or AJGA or any other system is we are, what we like to say a performance based system. And other systems are either multi factor or points based. And so what do I mean by that? All the points based systems, which is what OWGR is on the pro level, is they have a multi step process which I won't bore you with the process to create a points system based on where you finish in the, in the, in the tournament. And then there's other systems that are multifactor, which is maybe they've got a stroke differential, maybe they've got a strength of field, maybe they've got some sort of adjustment here, some sort of adjustment there. It goes into, you know, a big black box and then outputs a. A. It's a ranking. What we do is we rank golfers relative to each other. And that's like the biggest difference, if I can emphasize not relative to a course rating or to par. And we were talking before the show, you know, that's where a huge difference comes in with difficult course setups or bad weather events, is we're ranking golfers relative to each other. So if the winner shoots 80 and you shoot 83, you're three shots off the winner. You're not 12 shots off par, right?
Which is the same thing as if you shoot 73 against a 70, you're three shots off the winner. So by ranking everyone relative to each other, it's like a satellite system. And this is the best metaphor that I can give is it only takes four satellites for. To pinpoint your exact position on earth. That's all you need to have a GPS system because they just triangulate where you are and they pinpoint right where you are. Our system is akin to that, except for the fact that Every golfer has 500 satellites being in their relative position relative to every other golfer they play and where they rank relative to everyone else. And our scatter plot, if you, if you log in and go to an overview page of any golfer, we have this scatter plot that shows where you play relative to everyone else. It's a visual representation of our rankings and it's sort of our proof in the pudding. And we've just found it's just a more accurate way to do it. And we can kind of back that up.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: You're right. And everybody I look at and see when we see those kids playing at a tournament, you're right, that's where they're at, and they belong right where they are supposed to be.
[00:19:17] Speaker D: Jeff, one of the questions I would ask, and usually when we have people log onto your site, the first thing they see is the relative strokes. And I think, you know, most of the kids we work with aren't ranked in the top hundred.
So they see that number and it's usually above, you know, a seven or an eight. Can you just explain or kind of dumb it down? What. And I know Your website does a great job of it. But when they're seeing that number, what does relative strokes basically mean to that player specifically?
[00:19:47] Speaker C: Yep. No, that's a great question.
So when we were creating this, one of the things we really wanted, one of our pillars was to make sure that the ranking system was understandable, right? So kind of our pillars are, it's unbiased, it's accurate, it's understandable. So I mean, our system is a strokes gained type system. If you boil out and strip out that, that's essentially what it is. It's our version of that. So you have to have a benchmark and you have to figure out what your benchmark is. Do you, is your benchmark the average? Is your benchmark? A single person and we, we benchmark everyone off the number one player in the rankings. So if you look at the number one player, their relative strokes are zero. And then everyone is a number off of that. And what it means is the number represents how many shots per round you would shoot higher than the number one ranked player if you were to play in the same event, if you were to play in the same conditions on the same day in the same type of event. So, you know, if we look at the 100th ranked player in the rankings has just under a 5, it's 4.72 relative strokes. So if the top player and the 100th ranked player were to play in the same event, we would expect the best player to beat the hundredth ranked player by about five shots in that one round or 10 shots over to a two round event. And so what you can do if you're, if you're comparing two players, you can just take the difference between their relative strokes and that's how we would kind of compare their talent. So like a quick story, I was talking with a, a dad of a top 20 player in our rankings just the other week and he was asking questions about another player in the rankings and he was trying to figure out, you know, you know, why are they here? Why are they ranked here? And I just said, hey, ballpark, how many shots per round do you think your kid is better than this kid? Just tell me. And he's like, ah, he's like, probably two shots. And like, sure enough, almost down to the decimal, the difference between his kid's relative strokes and the kid we were talking about, it was like 2.1. And I just, and I just said, look like that's what the system is, right? Is it, is, it shows you what the difference is. And, and so that's how you can read it.
[00:22:03] Speaker D: I think that's important. And I. A lot, a lot of the people that we work with don't understand any of these numbers.
So I think when they log in and see that first number, that's why I wanted to ask you that, because that's kind of besides the year that they graduate, that's the first thing they see besides their ranking.
And we try to tell them that that's a number that we hope to decrease, you know, as graduation gets closer. You know, it's. It's one of those things where it's an ever changing number too. And I think, you know, obviously you know that more than us. So besides double bogey and par four success, what's, you know, maybe one or two other things that everyone listening, if they're really trying to hone in on their golf game, what would you tell them to focus on?
[00:22:47] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, those are always my two go to ones. Right. There is a par four and double bogey. The other one that I would say is, I'm just bringing up and looking at one. The, the bounce back rate is, is one that also has a very high correlation. And it's actually its bounce back rate of point, par or better. That's why we post both. I think the PGA Tour only posts birdie or better, but, you know, you get a bogey or worse, what do you do on the very next hole? How do you bounce back from a bad hole? And we measure it from birdie or better or par or better. Hey, you just bounce back with a par, you stop the bleeding, right? And that has, that's almost on par with double bogey rate, which again, we kind of loop under our mental game section is, hey, everyone gets bogeys. Everyone gets bogeys. Like it's okay to get a bogey, right? But the question is, what do you do after you get that bogey? And so bounce back rate is probably the third one that I would completely point to.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:49] Speaker C: And what I would say is, do you notice that nothing that I'm saying is go get a birdie, go get an eagle, right? Go launch the ball 300 yards down the fairway. Like, truly, if you dig into the numbers, golf is about limiting mistakes more than it is having birds.
[00:24:07] Speaker D: And it goes back to the course management that you were talking about.
[00:24:10] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: I had a couple parents send me some questions because I put out there. What questions do you have to a few of the parents that I've walked through the system. And one of the Parents that Lauren actually works with. We were at dinner down in Pinehurst at a tournament and at first he was. Lauren saw him go through the, the process. And Jeff, you've seen this many times where. Well, no, no.
Oh wow. It's almost like a quick switch. And he sent me a couple of questions. First one is how do they factor in strength of field now that you've added in that metric?
[00:24:44] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:24:45] Speaker D: So.
[00:24:46] Speaker C: So we don't have a strength of fit, we have a strength of schedule that we post. And that's. And that's just more backward looking. So that. Yeah, for any player, you can look under your tournaments tab and you can see how strong of a schedule am I playing. And that just basically bakes in the. The number of ranked opponents you play and where they are ranked. As far as the rankings go, you need to view it as. Since it's a strokes gained, relative strokes type system, everything is implied in the system, right. Because everyone's playing the same course on the same day against the field they're playing against. And then no two players are playing against the same field every single week. And so the way I try to visualize it is we have this massive web or matrix in the cloud of 70,000 junior golfers. Right. And all the interconnections of them playing against each other, not playing against each other, and we create this massive web. And so from a strength of field standpoint or a strength of schedule standpoint, it's all implied because we are the only input going into the system. As if you're playing a head to head against the same person in the same field. And so it's all factored into it perfect. The beauty is we don't have to. We don't have to make an adjustment. We don't have to. We don't have to predict or we don't have to guess is the best way. We don't have to guess what a strength of field is based on an arbitrary number or bias towards a certain tour or not biased towards another tour. Right.
I mean, I probably, probably shouldn't say this, but I've said it publicly enough. I can mathematically prove that certain tours in Asia are biased towards in owgr, you know, and against other tours. Like just the way the formula works or whatever. I can just, I can mathematically prove it, right. That certain tours have a bias towards them.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: 100% agree with you. The other question he had was wanted to learn more about off the tee driving efficiency.
He wanted to know how did you come up with that? And how does that work? And to be honest, when I first saw that, I'm like, how do they know that?
[00:26:51] Speaker C: Yeah, I should have my data guy on here explaining this.
I've heard it enough that I need to do it. Basically we can triangulate it because we have par 5, par 4 and par 3 scoring data. And then we have the yardages for every poll that everyone plays. We can triangulate, which is what the, what it says. We can basically triangulate how many shots does it take for you to get the ball? 270 yards.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:27:23] Speaker C: And so, so that's, that's what it says under driving efficiency. The little subtitle says average strokes to cover 270 yards. And so obviously the lower the better. And so for the average person, it's 1.1, 1.3. Right. Because you're factoring in par threes, you're factoring in everything. And so on average, it takes someone 1.1 shots to hit at 270 yards, or maybe it takes someone 1.3 shots. And so what is your efficiency to get it past that number? We can triangulate that with the yardage data and then splicing par 5, par 4 and par 3 data.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: Now, Jeff, two weeks ago or two months ago, could you have explained it that well?
[00:28:02] Speaker C: Probably not. Probably not. I really need to have my data guy. And I like to joke, I mean, there's a, I like to joke that, you know, we've got our website guy, our data guy, like we got the people who do all the smart stuff. I can talk through all of it, but there's no way I could code it. Right.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: You're the talking guy.
[00:28:16] Speaker C: I'm the talking guy.
[00:28:17] Speaker B: Which is, which is the best part. Right. You get to brag about what you guys are putting together. Now one of the other questions I've gotten from a parent that I've had some pretty great strong conversations on is obviously the JGS, they get rid of 25% of your worst scores.
[00:28:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: Why did you choose not to go that route?
[00:28:36] Speaker C: Yeah. So we actually, we can't if we want to keep, if we want to keep it a pure ranking. And the reason why is it's a head to head ranking system. So we're matching up scores of players against each other. So if I get rid of 25% of my worst scores, that might match up against 25% of some other kids best scores. Right. And so then I would be stripping out that connection of one of his best scores to, to somebody who he played against. And just because it's somebody else's, one of their worst scores, it would, it would strip out so many rounds that it would almost, it almost render that the ranking system, you know, obsolete because everyone's round is either a good bad one or a bad one when they're playing against each other. So yeah, so it's a, it's a pure tournament, you know, competitive round. I mean you could say no mercy, but it's a, it's a, it's a competitive round ranking system. And, and we just, we actually can't strip it out.
[00:29:39] Speaker B: That's a great answer and that's what I wanted to hear. And I think I understood that before. I think it's just tough for some of them to understand that. And I actually don't like that they take scores out because so what you're going to have a bad tournament, let us let it count and count everything. And that's leads me to why I, before I ask the question, I'd love that you count one day, two day, 50 day events. Why did you make the decision that one day was okay, not just two days or more?
[00:30:09] Speaker C: I mean, because our system just needs data. Like the strong, the more rounds in the system, we're just trying to create, create connections. Like visualize a massive matrix of every golfer in our system and their connections with every other golfer.
So the more rounds we get in there, the better. And there's a lot of really great one day events. I mean if you, if you strip out one day events, you miss all USGA qualifiers, you miss a lot of PGA section events. So all the PGA section groups around the country hold one day events all the time. Right. And, and so you just miss a lot of really great tournaments. That should be part of your body of work. Right? And I mean in our opinion, it should be part of your body of work. If a USGA qualifier is not worthy enough to be part of your body of work, like, then I don't know what else is.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I 100% agree with you. And what's crazy is I've always heard the term high school golf doesn't matter. And I 100% disagree with that statement. I've heard from people and I've appreciated that you've allowed us to send in some data from our high school events because I think it does matter. And I think you guys are making high school golf matter more so than anybody else has done before and especially in a state like ours. So I will say Indiana does a great job with their high school golf But I think my next goal is obviously is we have gotten some of the one days in the system. Now I'm trying to work with some of the coaches on you need to move forward. This would be a great way for you to get a lot more players ranked number one. As a side note, as before, I move on is 120 some. I think 127 girls in Indiana are ranked on your system and only 81 on junior golf scoreboard. So kudos to you guys for allowing one days because the more kids who are ranked, the more opportunities some of these kids will look at playing at the next level. Not every kid can afford to go to a two day tournament somewhere. And I think that's why I'm thankful you guys are doing the one day. So I wanted to talk about that.
[00:32:20] Speaker C: And just to add to that, what we're trying to do is we're trying to make, because it's an unbiased system, we're trying to make every tournament matter. Right. And, and every tournament should matter that you're playing. Yes, there are tournaments that have more competitive field. That's, that's just a fact. Right. But because it's a relative strokes system, you're just going to be matched up against who you play against and you need to beat them if you want to move up in your rankings. Even if it's a local tournament, you just need to beat them to a greater degree than what you were going into the tournament. Right. Because then your spread will get wider.
[00:32:53] Speaker D: Yeah. And Jeff, I hear this from more so parents that, you know, little, little Susie or little Johnny had a rough day and maybe we should take those scores off. And I, I try to politely let them know that regardless if you want to take it off of their little sheet or not, the college coach is going to find that. So I think, you know, you all having every score in the database is helpful to college coaches because they can see the entire body of work and a coach is going to know that they're going to come across, you know, a not so great score. But it's like you said, it's how, how you bounce back from that bad hole, it's how you bounce back from that bad round that, that they want to see. So yeah, kudos.
[00:33:35] Speaker C: Anything I can emphasize. And this was a conversation with again the dad of this top 20 golfer and he stressed this to me and that is a, like, you know, this golf is not a linear progression. Like, like even with this kid who's a top 20 golfer going to a high division one school. He had, he had stretches, three months, six month stretches where stroke averages went up and you know, tough stretches where things happen and it's, how do you bounce back and get it back down? So it's not a perfect. I'm in 8th grade to my senior year. We're just going, you know, score. They're going straight down.
[00:34:08] Speaker D: The glide path is so.
[00:34:10] Speaker C: And that's what the glide path was supposed to do.
[00:34:12] Speaker D: Yeah, exactly, Lauren.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: That's what we talked about before we came down to Pinehurst because you know, our number one concern was our last golf tournament was end of October.
That's two months later. Here we are in Pinehurst, couple days after Christmas playing in a tournament and we were concerned and you know that and you said play and I think it was the right decision. Did round one go perfect? No, but what did we see happen in round two?
[00:34:39] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, it gets better and you learn. And I think especially in states where, you know, we just, we talked about earlier that you're not able to play golf all the time just because of weather conditions, being able to be out on the golf course. I think you're going to learn something from it. And a college coach is going to see that you're putting in effort, you know, whether it's good, bad or ugly, that you're competing. And then yeah, you can talk to a college coach and say, hey, I know you're seeing this on my rankings. We, you know, made the time and the effort to come down and they're going to understand that. And I think that's when communication is a big key of the recruiting process.
But yeah, I mean anytime you can play in, in a competitive tournament, I think it's really good.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: What else you got, Lauren?
[00:35:24] Speaker D: I could talk, I could talk for a while about this.
How, how many coaches or how many coaches do you have subscribed to your coaches recruiting system?
Do you, do you feel like most of them are using your system as opposed to some of the others that are out there?
[00:35:43] Speaker C: We do, we kind of measure it now by conferences. So we have coaches in 21 different conferences who are using our system now, which is basically always all of them, all of the conferences. Right. And I mean the, the SEC and the Big Ten coaches are our biggest users.
I talk with coaches every week, right. They're either emailing me, we hop on a zoom. They want me to compare two players. They just want my insights on, you know, this or that. And so, and you know, the coaches convention very much like confirmed that I would say it's it's definitely been adopted more by men's coaches than women's coaches, at least out of the gate. But we're, I think, like there's more women's coaches that are getting on board every month.
[00:36:35] Speaker B: Jeff. It is happening. I had a parent, the same parent that had me ask a couple of questions. His daughter was visiting a campus and the female coach of that program flat out said they won't be looking at the other systems in a year. They will only be looking at your system because of all the information they can pull from it. So outside the double bogeys, outside of some of the others, what are some of the other things you see coaches are actually looking at?
[00:37:03] Speaker C: Well, I mean, the first of all, the tools that we provide are tools that they've never had the ability to do. So it seems simple to us, but then you realize that it hasn't been available. We have a search function under the coaches portal where they can filter players by not just geography and grad class, but by double bogey rate, by scoring average, by. Or scoring average. You can name, name 25 different stats and you can filter. So I was working with a coach the other month in Texas and he's like, all right, show me all the juniors in Texas who've ever shot in the 60s in a tournament round, have a stroke average under 75. Boom. In 2 nanoseconds, the 15 players who fit that criteria pop up. And. And so now they've got their, their target list. So it's no. So it's no longer just, hey, show me the kids in North Carolina who are juniors. It's show me the kids in North Carolina who are juniors who have done X, Y and Z, right? And so that's probably our most used tool.
And then, and then we just released last week, we'll probably release some version of it to the public, but we just released our entire tournament's database to the coaches. So you can go in and click on any event that's basically happened anywhere in the country, bring up the leaderboard, bring up tournament stats, hole by hole stats. So which, which holes, you know, were over par, which were under par. We're going to release some version of that to. So like a little preview coming, right?
We're going to release what we're calling a tournament prep section for all of our users so they can go in and basically, if they know they're going to play on a certain course, and if we have data from that course from previous years, you can go in and say, hey, which are the hardest holes, which are the easiest holes. And you can create a game plan as you go in so you know, you know where to attack and where not to attack.
[00:39:00] Speaker B: A few more questions. What's next?
[00:39:03] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, that's probably the biggest one is the tournament prep. The tournament prep section that we're doing profiles. We've gotten a lot of feedback that people want to input their personal information so that coaches can get, you know, contact them and then kind of create like a little mini resume.
So we'll probably be releasing some version of a. Create your own profile tournament prep. I mean, my vision. Right. If you talk about two, three years down the road, I would love to create. I mean, it's in our name, but I'd love to create a true universal golf rankings where you strip out pros, juniors and AM titles and you just have golfers that are ranked. Right. And so, I mean, we know that there are high school golfers that are probably better than some mini tour players, and we know there are college golfers that probably are top 200 golfers in the world, but we don't really know because they're not. The ranking systems are all fat. You know, they're all like a Luke.
[00:40:04] Speaker D: Clinton, who has been so successful from Florida State playing.
[00:40:07] Speaker C: Yeah. And so we, we've got. Once we fill out amateur rankings, we've got pros and we've got juniors, and we're halfway home on amateur rankings. Once we fill out amateur rankings, which hopefully is a 2025 release, we can track someone from seventh grade until their pro career is over. And then we'll be able. And then, and then just think of all that data because it's not just data for them personally, but then we can actually create, like, ridiculous predictive analytics of, hey, is there a trend of what pros look like when they're in seventh and eighth grade? Maybe there isn't, but we're going to be able to see if there is.
So that's kind of. That's sort of like the long term. It's really cool. Like, we're super excited about it. We just wish that, you know, we had a bigger staff and that we could do more things, but it's. It's coming incrementally. There's a lot of great stuff. So expect two or three big releases in the next two or three months to the platform that we think will be really big enhancements on how you can look at players.
[00:41:07] Speaker B: Well, Jeff, I'm going to keep promoting what you guys are doing. I'm going to keep sharing that information and I'm going to keep showing the rankings because these kids love it. They're always asking, how can I move up? How do I get better? And the cool part is, like, I'm helping the Mizuno Tour on some things here locally in Indianapolis. It's a developmental tour. It's going to help some of these kids who are starting off playing in tournaments get to that point where they can get ranked and see where they need to improve, how they can get better. And then we can help assist them as they move along in their process and their journey. So I thank you for your time and all this great information. Lauren is always. I thank you for showing up and hanging out with me, Lauren, because without you, I wouldn't remember some of these collegiate questions because I just. I'm not there yet. I'm still trying to figure my way out around all of this and help my kid get to that next step.
[00:42:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:42:01] Speaker B: Thanks, Jeff.
[00:42:02] Speaker C: Team effort.
[00:42:03] Speaker D: Thank you, Jeff, so much.
[00:42:05] Speaker C: Yeah, anytime you can email us. Right? I mean, anyone can email us. Our. Our email is teamugger.org or. Right. I man the email, so I will respond to you. I try to respond within 48 hours.
[00:42:18] Speaker B: You do a great job of that.
[00:42:19] Speaker D: Yeah, I've emailed you a couple times, too, and you're spot on it, so we appreciate it.
[00:42:24] Speaker C: Yeah. And then we're on Instagram at Tugger Golf. We're on Twitter at Tugger Golf.
We try and post just interesting stat stuff every now and then. I throw a jab at owgr. So, you know, just, you know, trying to. Trying to poke the bear a little bit.
[00:42:40] Speaker B: But I throw jabs at your competitor on our side, so I'll keep doing that too for you.
[00:42:45] Speaker C: Yeah. So it's fun.
[00:42:46] Speaker D: And, and.
[00:42:47] Speaker C: And all I would say is if we miss an event, just email us. We'll get it loaded in the system. Right. Like, there. We know we don't capture everything, but we capture a lot. We Capture, on average, 30% more tournaments per player than any other system out there. Right.
[00:43:02] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:43:03] Speaker C: And so we're. We. We already know we're capturing more events, but if we miss one, like, we're not perfect, just email us and say, hey, you missed this event. We'll get it loaded in. And on the high school side, high school is a different animal. We'd love to get more events in there.
So if. If you really want to talk to me about how we can get high school stories in there, email me. And I'd love to have a conversation. It's just. It's a. It's a little tricky because of a few nuances that we won't get into on this podcast.
[00:43:30] Speaker B: I know what they are.
[00:43:31] Speaker C: We'd love to figure out how to get out, how to do that. So, like, we want to be as transparent as possible. Email us. I'll respond, give us a follow on social media, and, yeah, we're here to help.
[00:43:43] Speaker B: Yeah. And a real quick note on that. You're talking about high schools. I've had the boys reach out to me on that, and I'm like, well, I got to build a database of your hometown and your high school before I can even send anything in. Because you may go to Gibson Southern High School, but you live in another town, and those two don't connect, and they have to have that information to be able to do that. So, like you said, email conversation on. That's a totally different topic. But I do know that I've appreciated what you've done for that on the high school side for the girls so far in Indiana. And I know we thank you for everything you've done in Indiana.
[00:44:14] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:44:15] Speaker B: Thanks again, Jeff.
[00:44:16] Speaker C: Yep, thanks.
[00:44:17] Speaker D: Thanks, Jeff.
[00:44:19] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, thanks, Lauren.
[00:44:24] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to this episode of from the Card Path with your host, Trent Roberts. Please be sure to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so that you never miss an episode.
