PGA Tour: The Players: Notes from the Ballwasher

First topic message reminder :

1).Well done to Tyrrell Hatton, great win at Bay Hill which continued the run of non-American winners - Day, Leishman, McIlroy, Molinari, Hatton.
This was also an Open Championship qualifier and Keith Mitchell (for the second year running), Danny Lee and Dahmen get to battle the traffic at Royal St.George's in July.

2).For the second week running, the course set-up seemed to make scoring unnecessarily tricky given the prevailing weather conditions. A war of attrition, but not necessarily the most attractive golf for the TV viewer to enjoy.
Hopefully the set-up at TPC Sawgrass will enable the world's best to play their shots.

3).Scott Piercy made news for all the wrong reasons last week and now Tour Commish Monahan has expressed disappointment "in the lack of judgment used" and "that it has been addressed with Scott directly". Good thing Monahan didn't say "he knows better" because Piercy clearly doesn't. But his sponsors do, thankfully, tho' any Tour punishment will be kept unpublished - unless he starts missing tournaments, from which we might draw our own conclusions.
Personally, I'd like to have seen his "invitation" to Bay Hill revoked, but no such disapproval reported from the API.

4).Interesting graph from princedrac's twitter account this week showing the top ten owgr points-getters at The Players:
Four Americans: Woods, DLIII, Furyk, Couples
Three Aussies: Elk, Scott, Shark
Nick Price
Sergio & Langer
A good week, of which there haven't been many recently, will see Garcia can jump from 2nd to 1st, ahead of Tiger.

5).That's reflective of an international honours board with eight of the last twelve winners being "overseas" players.
And first-timers at TPC have a tough time too - after Jerry Pate won on the course's debut in 1982, only Hal Sutton and Craig Perks have won trophy on their first trip. Leading "rookie" last year was Eddie Pepperell who stormed home in 3rd place - but he's busy trying to figure out how you get dq'd three times in less than 2 years.

6).This week looks like the exact halfway point of the pre-Play-Off PGA Tour season, the 23rd event out of a total of 46. About 50 pros have already won enough FedEx Points to assure them a tee-time at the Northern Trust, Round 1 of the FedEx Cup Play-Offs.
Not many are Europeans: McIlroy, Hatton, Rahm, Hovland.

7).And only Fleetwood among other Europeans is comfortably placed, for now.
Those who have struggled this season so far, but are exempt at least through next year, include McDowell (79th), Casey (93rd), Lowry (140th), Molinari (168th), Donald (assuming he takes another earnings exemption - 172nd), Garcia (179th), Willett (181st), Stenson (197th), Wallace (202nd), Rose (205th),
While this lot, all not yet exempt for 2020/21 have it all to do: Straka (82nd), Norlander (84th), Knox (90th), Fitzpatrick (100th), Noren (107th), Rafa C-B (120th), Poulter (128th), Cappelen (130th), Laird (158th), Ventura (175th), Power (201st), Bjerregard (224th), Lewis (227th), plus 3 or 4 others on more tenuous status.

8).But one or two American "faces" are also struggling, with these three less than half-way to a Play-Off goal about 400 pts:
110th: Spieth
111th: D.Johnson
213th: Koepka

9).The Florida "Swing" has a musical chairs of dates next year, starting with Bay Hill, then The Players, followed by "Honda". No word yet on how Valspar fits in, but hopefully retains its fourth slot in Florida.

10).Finally, the Top 64 in the owgr's after The Players will qualify for the WGC-MatchPlay in Austin in a fortnight's time.

Any Valspar Notes will be added here next week.

And what makes North America so special that they get to decide for the rest of the world if a game is boring because a small % end 0-0, hasn't affected the rest of the world has it?
They deem it interesting. Surely if American sports were less boring then more people would be interested and they would be more widespread?
Hilarious you mention strategy as your main interest in liking games, then just ignore sports that are built on tactics.

I am way too young and from the wrong side of the pond to have much recollection of the Jordan mania. So is it captured accurately in the last dance? I think as someone who loves following sport it would have been a treat to have been aware of what Jordan was doing at the time ie

Remember the GOAT (IMO of course) was not the first or second pick in the draft the year he came out. Obviously the top minds in the game at that time did not think he was going to be as good as he became. By his 3rd professional game there was near unanimous opinion that he should have been the #1 pick and was easily one of the top ten players in the league. By the end of that year many (most?) would label him the best player in the league. As potent an offensive force as he was, he was an equally good defender. That's virtually unheard of.

Yes, I do think it's captured accurately.

super_realist wrote:And what makes North America so special that they get to decide for the rest of the world if a game is boring because a small % end 0-0, hasn't affected the rest of the world has it?

Who said that?

super_realist wrote:Surely if American sports were less boring then more people would be interested and they would be more widespread?

Stop call me Shirley!

Spoiler:

super_realist wrote:Hilarious you mention strategy as your main interest in liking games, then just ignore sports that are built on tactics.

Hilarious? And you flamed me for using LMAO. Now that is Hilarious!

Very typical of you to take that comment out of context. I didn't say that I like ALL sports of strategy, it is the reason why I like American Football and baseball over Basketball

BTW, still waiting for that citation for that Cricket and Soccer are more popular than the North American sports combined. I would like to know the metric that is used.

Hilarious is a normal word, Lmao is a teenagers acronym.
Look it up, Football has 4 billion fans, Cricket has 2.5 billion.

Super

You don't watch or know anything about football. Why bother to defend it now?

McLaren wrote:Super

You don't watch or know anything about football. Why bother to defend it now?

I've already said I'm not a fan Mac, but doesn't mean it's boring because some slack jawed wooden toothed Yanks don't like it.

super_realist wrote:Hilarious is a normal word, Lmao is a teenagers acronym.
Look it up, Football has 4 billion fans, Cricket has 2.5 billion.

"A tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny"

Why should I look it up. You made a claim as fact. Its up to you to defend it. not me

China has 3 billion people, and they love Basketball! Latin America and Asia love baseball.

GPB wrote:

super_realist wrote:Hilarious is a normal word, Lmao is a teenagers acronym.
Look it up, Football has 4 billion fans, Cricket has 2.5 billion.

"A tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny"

Why should I look it up.  You made a claim as fact.  Its up to you to defend it. not me

China has 3 billion people, and they love Basketball!  Latin America and Asia love baseball.

China doesn't even have half that amount GPB. I know the American grasp of geography is traditionally rubbish but that's a beauty. Even if they did have 3 million (or almost half the world's population) doesn't mean every single one of them likes basketball.

I see you know as little about population as you do about what a  strawman is  and what slander actually refers to. Furthermore there isn't a single South American country where Baseball even comes close to Football in terms of popularity, and in Asia football comes above Baseball in virtually every country too, in fact in many of them Baseball will lag well behind Badminton.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-are-the-most-popular-sports-in-the-world.html

Not sure what the piss1ng competition on sports us about. But, I think its pretty obvious football is the biggest sport in the world by far.

But baseball, basketball and nfl are all massive events. Though so is the cricket World Cup, look at the Asian figures for that.

Not sure what the argument is though?

beninho wrote:Not sure what the piss1ng competition on sports us about. But, I think its pretty obvious football is the biggest sport in the world by far.

But baseball, basketball and nfl are all massive events. Though so is the cricket World Cup, look at the Asian figures for that.

Not sure what the argument is though?

I went fishing for a GPB and caught a whopper. He claimed that because a small % of football games end 0-0 that is the reason it has never caught on in America or Canada, whereas that doesn't seem a problem for the rest of the world, hence the back and forward as to why American sports aren't as popular seeing as they are high scoring.  Clearly they should be more popular if high scoring games are what appeals to people as GPB infers.

Hasn't football become pretty big in America now, the mls is really taking off.

beninho wrote:Hasn't football become pretty big in America now, the mls is really taking off.

I think it's number 5 in their list.

Ben

I asked about the last dance documentary on Netflix and Jordan and for some reason super reacted very poorly.

I didnt react poorly at all Mac, just said that watching it was pretty boring.

But why were you even in the conversation? You haven't watched The Last Dance and know nothing about basketball.

McLaren wrote:But why were you even in the conversation? You haven't watched The Last Dance and know nothing about basketball.

Nor do you so why were you in it? You know nothing about virtually anything you comment on, but you still do.

Here's a thought: If you are unfamiliar with the sport, lack of scoring can often make it less interesting. A good friend of mine is from and lives in Ireland. He was over here a few years ago for a golf trip and we went to a professional baseball game. (The rest of us were Yanks, and grew up with the sport.) We had great seats, pretty close to the field, 3rd baseline. The game was 0-0 through 8 innings (great pitching duel) and then the visitors scored 1 in the top of the 9th. The home team (Phillies) scored two in the bottom of the 9th to win. We all left satisfied with the win, but very entertained by the way the game was played and played out. As we walked to our car, my Irish friend said "FFS, what a waste of 3 hours!"

On the flip side too much scoring can also make it boring. The thing that makes goals valuable are their rarity, sports like Basketball and Cricket where you get a score every couple of minutes denudes from excitement. Both sports only come into their own if its tight in the last few minutes/overs. The rest of it is pretty routine humdrum stuff, likewise if a football game has one team 4-0 up in 20 minutes.

I was very fortunate in my indoctrination into NFL & Baseball.
My first weekend in the States was largely spent in Oakland bars with an American friend who talked me through four play-off baseball games (the Reds/Phillies series, Sr, and Yankees/Royals), then a couple of NFL games.
If it seemed to get boring I'd just have another Anchor Steam. Two weeks later I went to my first NFL game (the great Raiders team vs the Packers), and thought the whole thing was terrific.
Have fallen out of affection w/NFL since, but still love baseball. (Bob Watson RIP.)
Wonder what Shotrock's Irish friend thinks of Test Cricket?

One weird thing is that I can still not see an NFL move opening up in the same way that my teens and twenties taught me to see footie.

worldatlas dot com???

Click bait site

Reputable? I have my doubts

What is the featured article today?

"Youngest Billionaires in the World"

Funny, you criticize my statement that counts everyone in China as a fan of B-Ball. But apparently World Atlas counts every Krishna, Rajesh, and Jeev in India, Bangladesh Sri Lanka and Pakistan as fans of Cricket.

He claimed that because a small % of football games end 0-0 that is the reason it has never caught on in America or Canada, whereas that doesn't seem a problem for the rest of the world, hence the back and forward as to why American sports aren't as popular seeing as they are high scoring.  Clearly they should be more popular if high scoring games are what appeals to people as GPB infers.

Just wondering, do you try to take statements out of context, or does it come naturally to you?

Looking at WIKI for World Cup 2018, Attendance for those games were mostly under 50000 people.

Almost every NFL game will get more than 50000 fans (non-Pandemic) and many College Football games will get 75000 fans.

GPB,
I see you have to find a new condiment now you've lost your Pepper.


Not to get in to your eminent debate, but how many people do you think would go to NFL games if there were 38 a season. Plus Cup games. Plus Internationals. Plus European competitions?

Imagine even the Premier League teams below the elite, say Southampton or Palace, would have more paying punters than the vast majority of NFL teams, the top 6 or so would have significantly more. And that's just teams from little old England, about the same size as New York State.

I'm looking forward to Seminole on Sunday, they are carrying their own bags, apparently its a fantastic course but no footage of it on YouTube. A Hogan favourite.

Be_the_ball wrote:I'm looking forward to Seminole on Sunday, they are carrying their own bags, apparently its a fantastic course but no footage of it on YouTube. A Hogan favourite.

Yup, Not sure how they're going to do the commentary, some will be in their homes apparently. Including the ever unctious Mike Tirico who will allegedly be hosting this from Michigan.

B_t_b, See Shotrock's and robo's takes earlier in the thread.

What channel is the seminole match on in the UK?

kwinigolfer wrote:GPB,
I see you have to find a new condiment now you've lost your Pepper.


Not to get in to your eminent debate, but how many people do you think would go to NFL games if there were 38 a season. Plus Cup games. Plus Internationals. Plus European competitions?

Imagine even the Premier League teams below the elite, say Southampton or Palace, would have more paying punters than the vast majority of NFL teams, the top 6 or so would have significantly more. And that's just teams from little old England, about the same size as New York State.

No idea, but I am talking about the WORLD EFFING CUP! a once ever 4 year event!

=============

Moving on to golf, how about some trivia

Who holds the record for most eagles in a PGATour season (since 1980)

What three players made more than 100 eagles from the 2010 season through the 2019 season.

Answers:

Eagles since 80. Tiger

Eagles 2010-2019: DJ, Rose, fowler?

GPB,
I thought you'd respond on your Pepper.

But the World Cup was in Russia for goodness sake - the World Cup no longer represents the fan base of football.
Pay attention to the crowds in Spain or Italy or England. Otherwise, you're missing the point.

But I'm interested in the answers to your Where eagles dare questions.

Re. World Cup. Don’t think most stadiums could hold more than 50,000.

2-3bn watched from home.

Trying to argue that football isn’t the biggest sport in the world is crazy.

Yeah, The Last Dance is compelling.

Sure, drama is added. They play 82 games a season so obviously they can find some controversies, games within the game, or insane performances from MJ.

But most of the players (and officials) come across as a bit childish or arrogant. MJ no exception. He was just so good so he could get away with it. But in all this Phil Jackson is probably the only one who stand out as being likeable.

I watched a bit of the NBA back then. It became pretty trivial after a while and the numerous (ad) breaks makes it hard to watch. Obviously it had a lot of personalities back then but fast forward to the last 3-4 minutes and usually you wouldn’t have missed much.

GPB.... eagles....#3 for 2010-19 really surprised me.... I got the first 2.... But wouldn't have gotten 3,4 or 5.  And my #3 guess wasn't close.

I would have been 0 for eagles.
Wonderful set of stats!

Carlos was a surprise; Gamez and Big were much big(no pun intended)ger surprsises.

Imagine Rory might have been higher in eagles per holes played . . . . .

I am not trying to say American football is more popular than Soccer. It is not.

But I think whatever metric is used in the World Atlas stat is probably biased.

It seems like they would have counted every person living in India and its neighboring countries toi get 2.5 billion.

Didnt I read so.ewhere that they are using buggies? (Carts for our US friends) for the Seminole event.

McLaren wrote:What channel is the seminole match on in the UK?

It's on Sky Sports Golf Mac. But if you haven't got that you can stream it live for free on PGA Tour Live and I believe Amazon Prime.

GPB wrote:I am not trying to say American football is more popular than Soccer.  It is not.

But I think whatever metric is used in the World Atlas stat is probably biased.

It seems like they would have counted every person living in India and its neighboring countries toi get 2.5 billion.  

Probably biased? Why?, because it doesn't fit your agenda?

Why didn't they do that for Basketball which you claimed is so  big in China ? Funny how you pick a number out of your arse for their population and then accuse them of making up a number.  Irony isn't part of the American lexicon is it?
The World Atlas site is also American, so where's the bias?There's also other sites with similar information many of which put basketball even lower down, so I was being generous to Basketball using that source.

GPB wrote:

He claimed that because a small % of football games end 0-0 that is the reason it has never caught on in America or Canada, whereas that doesn't seem a problem for the rest of the world, hence the back and forward as to why American sports aren't as popular seeing as they are high scoring.  Clearly they should be more popular if high scoring games are what appeals to people as GPB infers.

Just wondering, do you try to take statements out of context, or does it come naturally to you?

Looking at WIKI for World Cup 2018, Attendance for those games were mostly under 50000 people.

Almost every NFL game will get more than 50000 fans (non-Pandemic) and many College Football games will get 75000 fans.

Why would you expect 50,000 plus fans from Costa Rica, Panama, Chile, Australia etc to travel to Russia?These are the games which bring down the average because their games aren't of much interest to most.
Would fans of NFL teams fill a stadium if they had to travel to Brazil, Russia or South Africa for it? Not a chance. You should also know that World Cup competitions use club stadiums. What's the point in these stadiums being extended to 80,000 when they might only host 2-4  games in the tournament?
They are deliberately used for the minor games and the big games are played in the 60-80k capacity stadiums.

Pedro - That is the most common knock on the NBA. You need only watch the last few minutes of the 4th quarter. But, to be in contention at that time, you will need to have played up to your opponent the entire game. The game inside that game includes who's hot and who's not (some players are very streaky shooters), who's got the stamina, who's in foul trouble, etc.

What's also interesting to me is that the NBA used to be the only place once could play professionally and make a living. Not so anymore ... China and European leagues are attracting and paying for top players. No one would argue that the NBA isn't the best league in the world, but it's good to see an outlet for more players.

Anyone else watching "Sunderland 'Til I Die"? Pretty interesting stuff.

But back to golf. Kwin I'm heading to Inlet later this morning and (hopefully) before the black flies are in full force.

Shotrock wrote:Pedro - That is the most common knock on the NBA. You need only watch the last few minutes of the 4th quarter. But, to be in contention at that time, you will need to have played up to your opponent the entire game. The game inside that game includes who's hot and who's not (some players are very streaky shooters), who's got the stamina, who's in foul trouble, etc.

What's also interesting to me is that the NBA used to be the only place once could play professionally and make a living. Not so anymore ... China and European leagues are attracting and paying for top players. No one would argue that the NBA isn't the best league in the world, but it's good to see an outlet for more players.

Anyone else watching "Sunderland 'Til I Die"? Pretty interesting stuff.

But back to golf. Kwin I'm heading to Inlet later this morning and (hopefully) before the black flies are in full force.

Sr,
I went to a game at Sunderland last spring, one of the most fun days I had all year - terrible game, but everyone I met there was fantastic! But no sign of Diggers . . . . . .
Inlet just 9 holes last time I was there; it must have undergone quite the transformation.
My lad off to get the corona test this morning; that'll be interesting to hear about.

Players with 200 or more eagles on PGATour since 1980.

272 - Davis Love
239 - Phil Mickelson (includes 4 this year)
227 - Fred Couples
219 - Mark Calcavecchia
216 - Vijay Singh

CH-III has made 189 eagles, will probably joined the club in the next couple of years.

Other Players that have been checked, but have come up well short of 200. Tiger, Stadler, Shark, Muppet, JHaas, Furyk, Els, KPerry.

=============

Already explained why I think WorldAtlas tallies might be biased.

ITS A CLICK BAIT website!

It counted 2.5 Billion people for Cricket. How in the heck does it get 2.5 Billion? India has 1.3 Billion.

2.5 billion what? Fans?

Seems excessive. But India, Pakistan and blangladesh have real followings both at home and spread around the world. An india Pakistan game had over 230million viewers.

Cricket is a hugely followed spor, maybe not 2 5billion.

super_realist wrote:
The World Atlas site is also American, so where's the bias?

Well that makes all the difference in the world, doesn't it?

Had some minor bugs in the downloads from pgatour dot com

this is the 200+ eagle club from 1980 on.

275 Davis Love III
241 Fred Couples
238 Phil Mickelson
229 Vijay Singh
227 Mark Calcavecchia

FWIW, I don't think it counts eagles made in a season where a player didn't have enough round to qualify for Tour Stats

Here is the 8000+ birdie club.

8854 … Mark Calcavecchia
8785 … Davis Love III
8538 … Jeff Sluman
8243 … Jay Haas
8212 … Phil Mickelson
8104 … Billy Mayfair

And I doubt if anyone can guess who is #6 on the birdie list with 7942 birdies since 1980

Spoiler:

GPB wrote:And I doubt if anyone can guess who is #6 on the birdie list with 7942 birdies since 1980

Spoiler:

I would actually have guessed that, he being an Upstate NY'er and all. Just to be GPB-like-pedantic, I'd have thought he'd be #7.

Not surprised to see Calc at #1, the most aggressive golfer I've ever watched.

Typos happen.

Its not like I said "it was the most important thing"

Might watch the 2016 Singles from the "most important" golf event of 2016 being re-telecast on Golf Channel this evening. Can't wait to see Ryan Moore win the clinching point, because I have been told that is the most important point. Maybe not by anyone here though.

GPB wrote:

super_realist wrote:
The World Atlas site is also American, so where's the bias?

Well that makes all the difference in the world, doesn't it?

It does if you're claiming it as a biased source? Why would an American source gerrymander the data to suit a non American sport? I see that bias isn't something you know the definition of either.

Anyone else watching the exhibition match? Matt Wolff has an interesting swing. A little hip wiggle before the swing. But he's just outdriven the others, so it works.

Yes INW, watching now.. Yep Matt Wolff certainly has his own swing. His looping action has been compared to Jimmy Bruen, the hip/knee trigger is mad looking, but as you said he's just out driven them all, so everyone will be doing it next week