University of Arizona will host NCAA golf regional

University of Arizona will host NCAA golf regional

Arizona, ranked 66th nationally by Golfweek magazine, finished 7th at the Pac-10 Championships last week. The regional fields will be announced May 9.ASU is ranked 32nd by Golfweek. The University of Arizona will host an NCAA Men's Golf Regional at Omni Tucson National Golf Course May 19-21.The will mark the fifth time the Wildcats have hosted an NCAA regional (1992, 1994, 1999, 2006).There will be six regional sites, TaylorMade R9 SuperTri-Top Drivers for Pro seach hosting 13teams and 10individuals in a 54-hole event. The top five teams and the top individual golfer from each will advance to the NCAA Championships in Stillwater, Okla., May 31-June 5. Augusta State is the defending champion. A new PGA Tour statistic became official Monday, one that uses Shot link data over an entire year to measure how well a player putts compared with the field. Officially called "Strokes Gained-Putting," it's the first time in 15 years that the tour has introduced a new core statistic. Mark Broadie, who developed the stat and then honed it with a team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been crunching Sho tlink numbers for the better part of a decade. It starts with determining how many average putts it takes a golfer from each distance. Broad discovered that at just under 8 feet, players have a 50 percent chance of making the putt - in other words, the average stroke for that length is 1.5. The average gets higher for the longer putts. So if Nick Watney makes an 8-foot putt, he will have gained 0.5 strokes on the field. If he takes two putts from that distance, he will have lost 0.5 strokes to the field. The average for a 20-foot putt is about 1.9. If he makes the putt, he gains 0.9 on the field, whereas if he misses the putt, he loses only 0.1 strokes. Add these up at the end of each round and you have "Putts Gained." The tour awards a medal to each player who leads a major statistical category, just as driving distance and greens in regulation. Starting this year, "putts gained" will determine who wins the putting category.