At its best, a golf shot offers more than one way to tackle the problem. Kevin Moore sees the whole game that way. Moore, a professor of mathematics at the University of Georgia and a former collegiate golfer, took several years off from the game after college. But Moore eventually returned to golf with two ways of looking at the game. Through his background in math, Moore developed Squares 2 Circles, a data analytics-based system for helping players build individualized strategies to navigate around golf courses — through which Moore now consults with both professionals and elite amateur players. But Moore also indulges an alternative way of looking at the game: a romantic view that shuns formulas for fun.
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LYING FOUR: Explain this to someone who is good at neither math nor golf — what is Squares 2 Circles?
KEVIN MOORE: Oh boy. Where to start? There are a couple of pieces to it, but I’ll try to keep it at a basic level. It’s trying to play your best golf in a very informed way — actually using data and information to improve your game and take a strategic approach to getting better, regardless of whether that’s just in preparation or actual execution on the golf course. There’s two primary ways to do that. You could break things down into on-course execution versus what you do off the course, right? On the course, the goal is to create a plan of you attacking that golf course that puts you in the best position to score low. And by “score low,” I don’t mean to shoot 60 or something like that; but rather, “score low” as in playing to your lowest expected value — that if you played 5,000 rounds on that golf course, you would have the lowest average score possible for your skillset. So on the course, that’s the goal: not only how to play holes, but also mentally how to approach the game — like how to position yourself mentally on the golf course so you can actually execute to your best ability, because that is something that so many of us struggle with. Now, off the course, the goal is how do you practice better? When you go to practice, whether you have an hour a week or eight hours a day, what should you be doing to get better? What should you be doing so you can execute better on the golf course, so you can get into a better mental spot on the golf course — what are those things that you should be doing? How should you be identifying weaknesses in your game, and then how do you attack those weaknesses so that they’re no longer weaknesses? And at the same time, not over-privileging those areas and seeing a reduction in your skillset in other areas. That’s actually an interesting one; I just got a business partner, Nico Darras, and we created our own new side business called Golf Blueprint, that really focuses on the practice aspect of the game and how to help people design their practice sessions better.
LYING FOUR: How did this idea come to you?
KEVIN MOORE: I did it at first for my own game. I’m an architecture nerd, and I wanted to start traveling more for golf — especially tournaments, especially since the USGA gives you some really good options to choose from. But with my work schedule, it’s not like I could fly up for a practice round two weeks ahead of time when a private club offers you a practice round, then fly back, home, then fly back for the tournament — so I really had no way to prep for a golf course. So I started doing as much prepping away from the golf course as possible, using Google Earth. And I got lucky and had a friend direct me toward Scott Fawcett, who I’ve become friends with; and getting to learn from him, and figuring out how I could attack a golf course for my own game, in terms of preparation, before I go play it. And I had several friends who play professionally who told me, “You’ve gotta do this for other people. You’ve been doing this for yourself, and it’s worked out pretty well, but you should look at trying to help other golfers out, regardless of whether they’re college players or professionals, or just your everyday weekend warrior. You need to go after that.” So after a couple of them pushed me several times, and after talking to some other friends, they finally gave me enough pushes that I said, “OK, let’s do this. Let’s create Squares 2 Circles and try to help other people out.”
Sweetens Cove Golf Club in South Pittsburg, Tenn.
LYING FOUR: Do you ever run into resistance on these ideas? I mean, are there still people who poopoo an analytical approach to golf? Or is golf wedded enough to data by now that most people accept this?
KEVIN MOORE: People poopoo it for different reasons — some of which is authentic and viable. There’s the old guard — and you see this in baseball, right? The anti-“Moneyball,” anti-analytics approach. There’s no viable critique of it; they’re just averse to it because it’s new and different. So there’s a little bit of that, but I don’t think much of that exists out there — not these days, at least. I think what you see out there is that there’s a lot of reasons we play golf. And it’s not always to shoot the lowest scores. It’s not always to play tournament golf, or to try to improve. That’s not what we all play golf. A game is defined in the dictionary as something we play, and play is something we go out and do for fun. So you have that tension that a lot of people bring up. I think you see this on Twitter all the time — the back-and-forths there. Some people just want to go out with some friends and connect with their friends, connect to the grounds of the game, really analyze the golf course in terms of its design and its architect’s intentions. And all of that can be distinct from trying to shoot the lowest score. You don’t need to be doing that to enjoy and participate in the game. That can be interpreted as poopooing an analytics approach, but at least with the people I interact with, it’s never that — it’s just that we play golf for different reasons. I do that when I go to Sweetens Cove. I’m typically not trying to shoot the lowest score and play analytically on that golf course. I’m just out there to have fun and check out what Rob’s built. Funny enough, my lowest scores on that golf course have come from playing with half sets or playing routings that I wouldn’t play if I were trying to play to my lowest expected value. Then the other version of poopoo is more like skepticism; you get this from scratch golfers, and you get this from 15-handicappers. From the 15-handicap level, it’d be something like, “Well, I’m not good enough to benefit from an analytic approach. My game’s not there; what does dispersion mean to me if I can control the golf ball?” At the top level, it’s the same thing; it’s like, “Oh I’m so good, this isn’t gonna help me. I already do this without getting analytical.”
LYING FOUR: As a 15-handicap, that resonates. I can remember that a few years ago, the idea persisted among high-handicappers that they weren’t good enough to need clubfitting. And the counterpoint finally arose that they needed clubfitting worse than anyone. This is the first moment that I’ve considered that the same thing might be true of analytics-based strategy: that maybe someone with my skillset needs an analytical approach worse than a scratch golfer, who can probably get around on a course he’s never seen in no more than 75.
KEVIN MOORE: Well, tell me — when you have an approach shot into the green, what do you think about?
LYING FOUR: Oh God.
KEVIN MOORE: Let’s say you have a 135-yard approach shot with a green guarded by a couple of bunkers and a pin tucked on the right side. Can you put yourself in that position? What do you think about?
LYING FOUR: So, 135 — that’s a little in between clubs for me. That’s either a really good 9-iron or taking a little bit off an 8-iron. I come through a lot with a shut club face, and I’m real bad to pull the ball, so I generally set up aimed as far to the right as I could live with the ball finishing, in case I accidentally hit a straight shot — but playing for the pull.
KEVIN MOORE: You’re already going through a lot of thinking, right? You’re already doing a lot of analytic thought-processing. And everybody else does that too, right? If they have a 135-yard shot to a right pin, they’re gonna be thinking about a lot of different things, too. So my response to anybody who says, “I’m a whatever player, and I don’t need this,” is that you’re already doing something. You’re already thinking. So why not try to figure out the best form of thinking possible for you? It’s not like you’re going to be doing something that you haven’t been doing. You’re just going to try to change your thinking a little bit. So why not give it a try?
LYING FOUR: When you start working with players and showing them a better way to do things, do you see common trends between what players are doing versus what they should be doing?
KEVIN MOORE: Yeah, you see common trends across different levels of players. At the high level — like your top-level amateurs, professionals, and even U.S. Am players — what you see is that most guys know how to play golf. They’re really good. And most of their thinking is typically really solid, in the way they approach the golf course. So a lot of times, in that case, I look at my role very much as a teacher who’s trying to get them to be aware of things that they’re doing. So that way, they’re just a little bit finer in their approach, just a little bit more detailed. I always use an analogy — for example, I know you did a Q&A with Davis Thompson, who plays for UGA and is a top-five player in the world right now — it’s not like his scoring average is gonna go from a 69 to a 68. That’s just not what’s gonna happen. But when everything’s at the margins, you just have to get 0.1 better; so 0.1 shots per round better, that’s your goal with a player like that. The whole idea there is just to bring things to their conscience awareness — like, “OK, this is somewhere that I can be just a little bit more precise in terms of how I approach the game either in improving or, when I’m on a golf course, my lines.” That way, you’re not riding on emotion or living on a heater. If you move out of that group — although I’d say this is true of that group too — the biggest generalization among most golfers is that they’re actually really terrible at identifying what they’re bad and good at.
LYING FOUR: That sounds familiar.
KEVIN MOORE: You’ll hear someone say, “Oh, my driver is frustrating me, so I’m gonna switch out this driver,” when they’ve been hitting it 315 and bombing it down there, but it won’t shape a certain direction, so they think they need to make a change. And that’s where the strokes-gained data has been immensely powerful, in actually showing where a player has been performing well against the field versus where they’re not. But at a level without strokes-gained data, like with a 15-handicapper, you might say, “Oh, my irons are really bad.” Well, a lot of times in that case — and Jon Sherman with Practical Golf is really good at identifying these trends — a lot of players play terrible clubs into greens. They choose a club based on its maximum distance, and 50 percent of their clubs wind up short. So it’s actually not that they’re a bad iron player; it’s just that they’re making a decision that’s not putting them in the best place to score. And so the big generalization is that we’re really poor assessors of what we’re good and bad at because of the decisions we make and how we go about the game.
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LYING FOUR: Let me ask you a personal question. I was really interested to learn that, after college, you took a lot of time off from golf and later fell back in love with it. How did that happen?
KEVIN MOORE: A confluence of events, for sure. I stayed embedded in the game a little bit, because some of my best friends played professionally, and I’d caddie for them. That was the relationship that I still held onto: caddying, especially for Blake Sattler when I could and when he was around, and especially when he was in the Southeast. But then, honestly, tenure was really big. When I got tenure at UGA, I could look at my life and see what makes me happy, and tried to figure out the things that I could have that could help me relax a little bit. And golf was one of those things that people were pushing me toward. A couple of my buddies were with Srixon, and they said, “If we get you some clubs, will you start playing golf again?” And I said, “Alright, let’s do it.” At the same time, Matt Considine was starting up the New Club Golf Society, and he got me involved in that. I’m helping him and Mark [Colwell] get that off the ground, which gave me a really good, authentic version of the game — a really romantic version of the game. And then I just started reading about the game of golf. I think it was Matt who gave me Dream Golf, and then I heard about a guy named Tom Doak and read a couple of his books. Then I got turned onto Andy and The Fried Egg, and once that started, it was welcome to the rabbit hole.
LYING FOUR: You mentioned the word “romantic.” When you were on the Fried Egg podcast, Garrett had an interesting way of describing you: as a romantic engaged in a rationalist enterprise. When you’re playing, do you ever find yourself resisting the rational part of your brain? Do you ever see a tucked pin and think, “I know the safe play here is to aim for the fat part of the green, but going at the pin would be fun, so I’m gonna go at the pin?”
KEVIN MOORE: Yeah, my natural mode of operating is definitely the romantic side, the creative side — just having fun with it. I think that’s just my natural way that I look at the game. I don't want to say that I have more fun with it, but without being intentional, that’s the way that I’m going to see the game. That’s why I’m such an advocate and lover of Sweetens Cove. Because going there, with the contours and everything, it’s a bigger analytic question — especially when the place is firm and fast because you have 25 different ways of playing into a green, all of which can have different consequences. So at a place like that, I’m able to reject the rational part a lot easier because of the questions that it presents — and hence why I’m very willing to drive three hours at 5 in the morning to go play out there when I have a wonderful golf course next door.
An example of Moore’s Squares 2 Circles illustrated approach toward navigating a golf hole — this one the short par-4 14th at Aiken Golf Club in South Carolina.
LYING FOUR: What are some of your other favorite courses?
KEVIN MOORE: That’s always a hard question, because I just love golf courses. I think Jason Way has a really good way of framing this: I forget what the number is, but basically a place that you’d play all day. It may be so many over 48 hours, like the number of holes that you’d play — do you walk off the 18th hole wanting to go back to the first? If I’m using that as my criteria, a place like Essex County Club always comes to mind, up in Boston, Massachusetts. That place is just phenomenal. Pasatiempo; I love Pacific Grove; I feel bad because I’m leaving courses out, and as soon as this call is done, I’m going to remember and think, “I can’t believe I didn’t say that one!” Aiken Golf Club, for so many reasons — not only the golf course architecturally, but the vibe there, and what they’ve done with the place and how it’s come up. I love my home course, Athens Country Club; a place like Canal Shores, too. What a place like Canal Shores stands for, as a community golf course in which you have sort of an artisan approach to the golf course — Jason Way and some of those guys working on the golf course, digging bunkers, removing trees, fighting with the city over land easements and that sort of stuff — that’s definitely sort of a spiritual place for me. What do you put for your courses, if you had to put a list down?
LYING FOUR: It’s funny you ask that. I have a running Google Doc that I use to try to keep a rough ordering — not a ranking. Sweetens and Pebble Beach are at the top of that list. I’ve felt different playing those golf courses than I’ve ever felt playing any other golf courses. There’s just something intangible about those places. And I’ve tried to distill it to words, but it’s elusive. I just know that I felt it at Pebble, and I felt it at Sweetens, and I’ve never felt it anywhere else.
KEVIN MOORE: Yeah, it’s something that can’t be quantified, right? I can’t explain why, when I pull into that driveway at Sweetens and see the golf course — every single time I do it, the presence of mind that it puts me in — you can’t explain it. It’s a feeling that you can’t enact anywhere else. You can’t force it anywhere else. You need that place to spur it.
LYING FOUR: When you’re using your analytics-based approach toward strategizing your way around a golf course, does your approach work the same everywhere? Or are there some courses that are harder to crack the code on?
KEVIN MOORE: There are definitely places that are harder to crack the code on, for a number of reasons. I look at everything as if you’re using a decision tree: what are the variables and dimensions that go into making a decision, and how many different options are there? So if you take a soft golf course that doesn’t have a lot of contours to it, where the hazards are pretty self-explanatory, the decision tree is pretty simple there: there’s just gonna be some minor changes based on where the pin is, where the hazards are; it’s a straightforward puzzle. There’s not much to think about, because when the ball gets on the ground, it’s not going to do much — it’s not gonna roll in different directions based on where it lands, yadda yadda yadda. Now, switch to a place where — and let’s just add everything in: add firmness, add aggressive contouring, add wind. We add those into the equation, and all of a sudden, those have to be added into the decision tree, which makes the question more complex. It gives you a lot more options to think about. With contours and firmness, all of a sudden the shape of your ball and its trajectory matter. You will have a different dispersion pattern based on what trajectory and shape you choose; where if the green is soft and without a lot of contours, that’s pretty straightforward — where the ball lands is where it’s going to be, and the shape and trajectory don’t matter as much. I think the Presidents Cup was a good illustration of that: the first green was just brilliant in its contouring and firmness. So one day, everybody’s pushing up; the next day, everybody’s laying back. On the day everybody was laying back, you had the landing point 60 feet short and left of the pin; and if you didn’t make clean contact, you had the false front on the right; if you caught it a little thin, it was rolling through the green off the back. All those things had be factored into the decision that you’re ultimately going to make there.
LYING FOUR: I wonder if that’s the connection between the two ways you look at the game — the romantic and the rational. I wonder if the added complexity of a course that throws those extra factors into your decision making — if that’s what fun is.
KEVIN MOORE: For me, it’s very much the definition of fun. You give me a golf course that fits those criteria — firm, fast, contours, maybe a little bit of wind — and strategizing around that golf course is just a harder question to answer. And that’s what I enjoy, versus maybe the majority of PGA Tour courses. I shouldn’t say “majority;” they get slammed a little more than they should, but they definitely have a not-insignificant number of courses on their rota that, when you combine the course design with the conditioning of the golf course — every hole is a pretty simple answer: “Here’s what you do, let’s go. It doesn’t really matter day to day; the pins don’t matter that much; here’s how you’re gonna play this golf hole.” And I do it; that’s the way I help players. But in terms of intrinsic fun, it’s not that enjoyable. It doesn’t wake me up in the morning and make me want to run out there with pure excitement, versus a place that’s going to ask me more questions.
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