Welcome to The Numbers Game. Over the following weeks I will try to extract some sense from all of the numbers in golf. There is more to golf than just +1, -1 or for the less fortunate, quad, triple, snowman… well, you get what I’m talking about. No need to bring those things up. I’m going to look at statistics such as Greens in Regulation (GIR), Driving Accuracy, Putts per GIR, etc. and others in future articles to dig deeper into the players on tour and how they are performing. I may extrapolate some data to make predictions or I may look into the history and leave the conclusions to you. Hopefully we’ll all have some fun doing it.
The Most Important Stats: Yours
Numbers are everywhere in golf, but can they be used to help our game?
The Western Open is the oldest non-major golf tournament on the PGA Tour. That being said, it’s always a special tournament when the top two players in the world are in the field, and that is the case this week at 
The first regular-season women’s match-play event on U.S. soil since 1954 will take place this week at Hamilton Farm Golf Club in Gladstone, New Jersey. 64 of the top women’s golfers will tee it up in an attempt to grab the first-place check of $500,000, the second largest payday on tour. Only the U.S. Women’s Open has a larger first prize.
According to 
I’ll admit that I have never been a big fan of the LPGA. I know a lot of people who aren’t, but they shy away from the question. I have enjoyed watching the PGA Tour since I started playing golf around 1996. The PGA Tour is the home of the best golfers in the world. I always believed the LPGA was just a sideshow like the WNBA is to the NBA. Don’t get me wrong, I have always respected the women that play the LPGA Tour, as many of them are just as athletic as their male counterparts. The LPGA Tour just didn’t have anything that set it apart from other sports. It was too easy for me to watch something else on television when the LPGA was on.
A few eagle-eyed Bag Drop operatives have pointed out something that’s an open secret in the equipment business: sometimes pro tour players don’t use the gear they endorse. Now, if you’re the type that still believes in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, stop reading right now. But if you’re ready to face up to the fact that paid spokesmen (and women) sometimes don’t actually use the products they’re paid to gush about, read on.
Balls were going into the hole all over the place at the 18th green today. First, Birdie Kim holes out from a bunker on the 4.7-stroke average 18th hole at Cherry Hills. Then Padraig Harrington holes an 65-foot eagle putt for a one-stroke win over Jim Furyk. Harrington, who began each of his nines by going +3 on holes 1-3 and +2 on holes 10-12, finished the nines with a birdie (7, 14) and an eagle (9, 18) to finish at -10.