Volume Three Hundred Fifty-Eight

Cool weather and hot play… Isn’t autumn a great season for golf?

Hittin' the LinksThe calendar says that it is now officially fall; and though the weather is beginning to cool down, the golf is as hot as ever.

Though the 2013 PGA TOUR concluded this past weekend, the 2013-14 season is just a few weeks away. The Web.com Tour Championship this coming weekend will help determine who will be fulltime participants on the PGA TOUR next year and who will be seeking their 2014-15 cards on the Web.com Tour. The LPGA is on sabbatical, but will return Oct. 3 at the Reignwood LPGA Classic in Beijing. And a little thing called the Presidents Cup also tees off Oct. 3.

It’s just a great time of the year for a little golf. Let’s get started.

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Volume Three Hundred Fifty-Seven

Some saucy fare from France, a deep dish or two from Chicago, and some home cooking (for me) from Columbus.

Hittin' the LinksIt was a big weekend in golf: an LPGA major and the third legs of the playoffs on both the PGA Tour and the Web.com Tour.

Weather played a major role at both the BMW Championship in Chicago and at the Evian Championship in Evian, France. The LPGA’s fifth major was shortened to 54 holes, the last 18 of which were played under lift, clean, and place rules. Rain pushed the final round to Monday at the BMW Championship, where Tiger’s final round woes of 2013 continued as he shot even par 71 and finished T11. Meanwhile, another past Masters winner raced up the leaderboard and toward a possible date with destiny in Atlanta.

In this edition of HtL, we have some saucy fare from France, a deep dish or two from Chicago, and some home cooking (for me) from Columbus.

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Graphing the World Rankings

Now with 100% more graphs!

xxxxA few months ago, back when Tiger was chasing down the number one ranking, I got an idea: Why not graph out the trajectories of the world’s top players over their careers, using the official data available on the Official Golf World Rankings website? At the time, the OWGR site only provided downloadable player data back until about 2003, which is fine for the careers of Rory McIlroy and Brand Snedeker, but, as you’ll see below, the Phil Mickelson graph from 2003 on is relatively boring.

Thankfully, when I looked at the data again this month, they had expanded the data all the way back to their career beginnings. Ernie Els, for instance, the oldest player I tracked, has data going back to 1989.

So this is what I decided to do: I got the points tally and OWGR ranking data for the top 15 players in the world as of July 7th (a while ago, I know, but it takes a while to compile and graph all of the data), and graphed both sets. The OWGR points and rankings are through that same day, so they do not include Phil Mickelson’s Scottish Open win or his British Open title. Tiger’s Bridgestone win is similarly unrepresented.

I decided to normalize the y-axes with a maximum of 25 points and a 500 ranking for comparison’s sake, though with some of the more consistent golfers (Tiger, Phil, Ernie for much of the mid-2000s) that is a bit to their detriment (in that you can’t see the more slight variations). The x-axes are different for each player, going back to the very beginnings of their pro careers. The OWGR data can get a bit wonky at the very beginnings of the data, which you can see pretty easily in the Tiger and Rory graphs. The y-axes cutoffs do minimize that a bit.

At the beginning I’ve also created two graphs, which superimpose data for all 15 players dating back to 2003.

If graphs aren’t your thing, well, read the captions and enjoy the colors. And if you have to use Excel all day at your job, fear not, for I used the Apple app, Numbers.

OWGR Graphs July 2013 Top 15 Points

OWGR Graphs July 2013 Top 15 Ranking

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Volume Three Hundred Fifty-Six

Sir Isaac Newton should have been a golfer, and Tim Tebow should enter a long drive contest.

Hittin' the LinksJust like the NFL, Hittin’ the Links is back! Even though the PGA Tour and LPGA took the week off, there was still plenty of action on and off the links.

If you haven’t been paying attention to the inaugural Web.com Tour Finals, maybe you should take a look. While it lacks the star power of the FedExCup Playoffs, you will recognize a lot of names (Trevor Immelman, Ricky Barnes, Will MacKenzie, Ryo Ishikawa, Vaughn Taylor, et al.), and the drama doesn’t end when the tournament leader has a three-stroke lead on the 18th tee. While the top 25 money winners from the Web.com Tour’s regular season have already earned PGA Tour cards for 2014, the four week Finals will determine who gets the remaining 25 cards and the final pecking order of those cards. Next week, the Web.com Tour Finals visit my town — Columbus, OH — for the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship at The Ohio State University Scarlet Course, before wrapping up the playoffs and season Sept. 26-29 at Dye’s Valley Course in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL, for the Web.com Tour Championship.

In this edition of HtL, we ask the following: Who is the best PGA Tour player with only one win? Is Tim Tebow’s swing speed really 141 mph? And why you should probably consider Newton’s Third Law of Motion when deciding whether to cut a shot around that tree or just chip back into the fairway.

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The 2013 Player of the Year is…

With five wins Tiger looked like the runaway winner, but Adam Scott surprised us all winning the first playoff event, I debate the winner.

Thrash TalkSince 2008, the selection of player of the year has been debated very heavily. It was so easy from 1999 to 2006 to pick Tiger because he was winning at a pace we have never seen before. He would tee it up fifteen times a season, win six times and at least one would be a major. We got so comfortable picking Tiger as the player of the year we now hold each player’s season to those glory years of Tiger.

The 2013 Player of the Year will be quite a debate. At the time of writing this article Tiger has won five PGA Tour events and he may even pick up another one to two during the FedExCup playoffs. Wins at two WGC events in Doral and Akron, and a win at the unofficial fifth major The Players Championship, means at biggest events not designated as majors Tiger was unbelievably dominant. No debate right?

With his win at the Barclay’s last week, Adam Scott says “not so fast my friend.”

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Callaway X Hot Pro Iron Review

Callaway’s newest lineup of irons only feature four sets and the X Hot Pros look to fill the large gap between the standard X Hot irons meant for high handicappers and the X Forged aimed at better players. Read on to find out if these clubs really have something for everybody.

For a while, in my opinion, Callaway golf has been a company that has struggled from a bit of an identity crisis. It seemed that they were coming out with numerous offerings every season, trying to have something for everybody, and yet it wasn’t clear what clubs were aimed at what golfer. Between the RAZR, Edge, Diablo, Octane, X, etc. it became hard to track what was what or even what was the newest. This year, Callaway as trimmed it back a bit and has just three new sets of irons. For the better player looking for minimal forgiveness but maximum feedback and workability there are the new X Forged irons. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the company has the new X Hot irons which give higher handicappers a bit more distance and a lot more forgiveness. For the rest of us caught in the middle, there are the new X Hot Pro Irons.

In many ways, the new X Hot Pro irons look to fill a very large middle ground in between the standard X Hot irons and the X Forged. In addition to this, players on both ends of the ability spectrum should see some desirable qualities in the X Hot Pro as lower handicap players looking for a little more help will appreciate them as will a mid handicap player that is making strides to improve their game. They are a set that one could pick up as they start to make serious improvements in their game and continue to play long after they have become a better player.

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TaylorMade Introduces the SLDR Driver

TaylorMade seems to have abandoned the “science of white” with their newest driver, the SLDR.

Bag DropFor a while now, TaylorMade has been one of the top drivers on tour, and this month, the company is back at it again with their fourth driver release of 2013. Earlier this year we saw the much anticipated R1, the follow up to the R11s, and at the same time the RocketBallz (RBZ) Stage 2. Both of the drivers proved to be fairly popular choices among golfers and found their way into many bags. Those two clubs followed the trend that the company had started a few years ago by featuring white crowns, albeit with more agressive graphics than previous models. A few months ago, however, TaylorMade seemed to stray from the “science of white” and released a black version of the R1, giving the club a more traditional look.

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2013 Majors Recap

The crop of major championship winners in 2013 shows us that sometimes you need to lose a major before you can learn to win one.

Thrash TalkIn 1997, Tiger Woods first hit the scene he declared that he was planning to eclipse the eighteen majors won by Jack Nicklaus. This sent a message to everyone that the majors were now the most important tournaments and would get extra focus.

Of course, the concept of majors was decided long before Tiger hit the scene but it was Tiger to put the focus of every golfer on winning them and how important they would become. In 2013, we got three first-time winners of majors in Adam Scott, Justin Rose, and Jason Dufner. Each of them had to endure quite a road to reaching this tall mountain. The fourth winner, Phil Mickelson, won a major, certainly not his first, but one that most of us thought he would never win – the British Open.

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Is Rory McIlroy More like Tiger or Phil?

Rory McIlroy is proven as golf’s next hot young gun, but of what variety?

Thrash TalkIn a recent article of Golf Magazine Padraig Harrington made a comment that he felt Rory was more like Phil Mickelson than Tiger Woods. I find this a very interesting comment because Rory is so often compared to Tiger. For a while now many in the golf industry have coroneted him “the next Tiger.”

When Tiger first started having success many in the media were quick to dub Tiger the next Jack Nicklaus. Tiger invited this comparison especially when telling everyone that Jack’s major record of eighteen majors was his personal golfing goal. Sadly for Tiger this now means unless he hits the number of nineteen his career while wildly successful did not meet his own expectations. Tiger is of course very talented but has a work ethic and a mental toughness that may never be matched again. I can say that within my generation is many different sports Tiger has one of the toughest mental dexterities of any athlete in any sport. He made putts, but not just any putts, the toughest putts to make, all the time. He was incredible.

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