How many golf balls are in flight?

[bunkerputt]

With as many people that play golf around the globe, do you think there is ever a point in time when no golf ball is in flight? My guess is no, but I wonder when it started... 1950? 1960?

[iWALK18]

I love it...

No chance that there is no golf ball in flight at any given moment. I mean there is one flying at almost any given time at the range when I'm there.

As for when this happened... i don't know. Seems hard to imagine that this was the case during WWII. I would think the 50s would be a decent guess, but i don't know much about the game's popularity over history.

[enduro]

With how many players can't get the ball even in the air, I'd wager that yes, there are many times when a ball isn't in flight.

Actually, it is an interesting question.

Likely better off calculating a probability since it is certainly possible that there has been a moment or more when no ball was in flight. And the probability likely moves due to conditional variance. When the sun isn't over the USA or Europe, when it is winter in the northern hemisphere and there is rain/cold in large portions of the densely populated areas of the East, that likley lowers the probability that a ball is in the air.

[Big_M]

what about at night during the winter

















just kidding... obviously the earth is round... so

[Careyst]

Very interesting theory!!! Never thought about it that way.

[Mr. M]

Certainly since the early 50's, maybe even before then, there has never been one second with no golf balls in flight around the world.

[is2linda]

Yes on the day February 19, 1978. It was a sad... sad day...

[Drifterland]

Yes on the day February 19, 1978. It was a sad... sad day...

Feb 19 1978 – Egyptian forces raid Larnaca International Airport, in an attempt to intervene in a hijacking situation, without authorisation from the Republic of Cyprus authorities. The Cypriot National Guard and Police forces kill 15 Egyptian commandos and destroy the Egyptian C-130 transport plane in open combat.

What does it have to do with golf?.... I don't know.

[Zeph]

Like people having sex, playing football, jumping up and down, drinking, eating, writing, sleeping, talking, dying, being born there is always someone doing it. To speculate how many balls are in flight would be no more than a wild guess.

[Grndslmhttr3]

what about at night during the winter

The earth is flat

[right handed phil mickelson]

the earth is flat

i knew it

[right handed phil mickelson]

I'd have to also say some time between 1929-1930's (great depression). I don't think a lot of people would be playing golf during those hard times. Of course there's still a lot of people golfing today........

But golf, by far, wasn't as popular back then as it is now.

[enduro]

To speculate how many balls are in flight would be no more than a wild guess.

Actually, with some data you could get a decent probability going. You'd want to start how many golf courses exist, how many rounds they do on every day of the year and sort them by time zones, climates, etc. You would begin to get a decent picture of how many people are golfing at one time in the world, at different times of the day at different times of the year. Lets keep driving ranges out of the equation.

Now you can begin to build a model or simulation of every golf round around the world being played and every permutation of these potential rounds on every day of every year. A staggering number to be sure! But with modern computation methods, this is an algorithm that could run in some kind of reasonable time if you put gaps between certain permutations since only a fraction of them are needed since it would be more or less a smooth curve you'd be creating here. So you'd create tests that have a fairly average dispersion across the entire set. Plus with this limited set of random data you can begin to see the probabilities. Someone could spend more time on this and design a much better model than I pulled from my ass here as well. Of course, the computer scientists and mathematicians at the university that spent this much time and resources designing, developing, testing and analyzing this model would be fired for a waste of resources. I'd hope anyways. At the very least, someone doing some research could build a simple model and start to get an idea.

[unabowler]

Actually, with some data you could get a decent probability going. You'd want to start how many golf courses exist, how many rounds they do on every day of the year and sort them by time zones, climates, etc. You would begin to get a decent picture of how many people are golfing at one time in the world, at different times of the day at different times of the year. Lets keep driving ranges out of the equation.

I'm a statistician and I've done some probability simulations, so to me this sounds like an interesting question. Once a student of mine simulated an estimate to the number of foursomes that could be pushed through a course in a day.

I can't guess what the answer to this question would be. The one hunch I have off the bat is that your ball is in flight only a small fraction of the time you are on the course. Next, it may be possible to identify a time of day and year where the places on the globe where courses are concentrated are not condusive to it. You'd need a lot of data to set up a sim that would give you an accurate answer.

[Jay-Bird]

Q:

How many golf balls are in flight?

A:

Fore!

[enduro]

Q:

hehehe

[bunkerputt]

Q:

You win the prize. As a reward, you can wear the Burger King crown for an entire day.

[T.J.K.]

Lets keep driving ranges out of the equation.

That's kind of an important part of the equation is it not?