Viz Blog | 10th at Riv—Where to Miss

10th at Riviera—Where to Miss

CREATED — 2024-02-14 | DATA UPDATED — 2024-02-14

There aren’t many holes on the PGA Tour where angles are more important than the 10th at Riviera Country Club. To better understand this, we’ve plotted the average number of strokes to hole out for various locations and pin positions on the hole (see menu to the left), using data from 2006-2023.

Locations from which there were fewer than 5 shots hit are excluded; you can hover over a box to see its shot count. We also excluded shots from lies other than the rough, fairway, and bunkers. Layups were defined as any tee shot that traveled 240 yards or less, which would keep the ball short of the left fairway bunker.

Pin Location

All Pins

Front-Left

Middle

Back-Right

24%

75%

overall avg

3.93

layup avg

4.02

"go for it" avg

3.9

11%

88%

overall avg

3.7

layup avg

3.84

"go for it" avg

3.68

25%

74%

overall avg

3.94

layup avg

3.99

"go for it" avg

3.92

28%

71%

overall avg

4.01

layup avg

4.07

"go for it" avg

3.98

bunker

3.67

layup left rough

3.21

layup fairway

2.99

layup right rough

3.53

short-left rough

2.93

long-left rough

2.91

bunker

3.26

front bunker

2.93

back bunker

2.58

right bunker

2.66

bunker

3.56

long-left fw

2.68

short-left fw

2.46

short-right fw

2.72

short-right rough

3.18

long rough

2.61

layup left rough

2.6

layup fairway

2.82

short-left rough

2.86

long-left rough

2.62

bunker

3.15

front bunker

3.02

back bunker

2.46

right bunker

2.83

bunker

3.67

long-left fw

2.48

short-left fw

2.24

short-right fw

2.43

short-right rough

3.06

bunker

3.5

layup left rough

3.21

layup fairway

2.95

layup right rough

3.6

short-left rough

2.91

long-left rough

2.91

bunker

3.24

front bunker

3.05

back bunker

2.54

right bunker

2.63

bunker

3.65

long-left fw

2.71

short-left fw

2.46

short-right fw

2.78

short-right rough

3.33

long rough

2.71

bunker

4.17

layup left rough

3.26

layup fairway

3.03

layup right rough

3.44

short-left rough

3.0

long-left rough

3.04

bunker

3.3

front bunker

2.83

back bunker

2.61

right bunker

2.66

bunker

3.46

long-left fw

2.83

short-left fw

2.63

short-right fw

2.92

short-right rough

3.14

long rough

2.59

laid up

went for it

Here are a couple of our observations: from the rough short and right of the green, the hardest pin position is the middle one. The same is true for the front bunker, which is a surprisingly bad place to end up given its proximity to the pin. With the pin front-left, it’s much easier to be in the long-and-left rough versus short-and-left rough, but with a back-right pin, the opposite is true (barely).

Hole #10 Layup %—2006 to 2023

The fraction of players laying up bounced around an average of 30% from 2006-2015 but has steadily declined since. In each of 2021-2023, 10 or few players have laid up all week!

Comparing within rounds (to control for course difficulty), players that went for it have scored around 0.1 strokes better than those that laid up. The overall difference you see in the graphic above is slightly higher (0.12 strokes) because more players go for it with a left pin, and that pin plays much easier.

Interestingly, the average skill difference between players that laid up and those that went for it is about 0.3 strokes/round in favor of the go-for-it group. However, at the hole-level this difference is only 0.3/18=0.017 strokes, which doesn’t change the conclusions that much.

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