Beside the points

[revkev]

Nate Silver started out as a statistical analyst primarily in sports. He made a huge splash by nailing Obama's first election and again in ‘16 by saying that Trump had a much better change than other analysts were predicting (actually a better chance than the Broncos had of beating the Panthers in the Super Bowl a few years ago).

 

His group has a very interesting little sports blurb that comes out twice a week. It's called, “Besides the points”

 

It's where I got the factoid that only Jack and Tiger have ever effected golf TV ratings. They had the most awesome graphic of player size in the NFL from start to today. Insightful - 270 was a huge guy in 1930 - now that size is middling and there are very few players there - they cluster from 200-250 and 300-340.

 

Back to golf - according to today's segment it's 33 percent more likely that an average touring pro will win a major ( assuming he's in the field) than the Player's championship. This is because the fields at all of the majors are watered down in some way while the Players is assembled strictly by professional merit.

 

Why would the Players want to be a major? It's better.

 

 

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[Kor.A.Door]

No argument here, it is one of the best tourneys all year. Look at the leaderboard right now. There are 40 players within 4 strokes. This course can eat you up. Ask any number of players, if you want to win here, you have to play boring type golf, you can't force the issue and take chances. I really feel that is the only draw back to the course itself.

[bens197]

While we're on the topic of Majors, I've always felt that the PGA was “filler” just to serve as an additional revenue generator. The original match play format would have served it well had it continued. It made the event unique among three very well established events. The Masters needs no introduction, the US Open is the People's Tournament, the Open is the great European Major and the PGA, well, glory's last shot doesn't really sound that romantic. Adding to the lack of significance, it has been moved to May to give the FedEx cup a larger pedestal.

 

We definitely don't need another major just for the sake of calling it a major; the Players has its history and allure, we already know it's a big deal.

 

 

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