2011 U.S. Open

[deasy55]

I've seen a few more. But then again I also followed his amateur career.

Originally Posted by Kieran123

LOLZ at people saying 'the next Tiger'

I have only seen 2 performances of Rory's career that would possibly show any indication of that.

But hey, if he wins one major a year until he's 40, he has 19

[senorchipotle]

Originally Posted by Elvisliveson

Actually, it's harder to distance yourself from the field the easier the conditions are. I don't think it's as easy as saying 15 strokes is a greater margin than 8, therefore it's more impressive.

yes, it is that easy to say. when someone wins by 13 strokes under par when 2nd place was 2 shots over, i'm sorry but that is the most impressive, dominating u.s. open performance ever. there's no two ways about it. had rory won by as many strokes, then we could talk.

that said, i don't buy your premise. to separate yourself, you have to play near flawless golf regardless of conditions. but to say that it's easier to separate if the conditions are harder makes absolutely no sense, whatsoever.

[deasy55]

It makes perfect sense, if you think about it logically.

Originally Posted by senorchipotle

yes, it is that easy to say. when someone wins by 13 strokes under par when 2nd place was 2 shots over, i'm sorry but that is the most impressive, dominating u.s. open performance ever. there's no two ways about it. had rory won by as many strokes, then we could talk.

that said, i don't buy your premise. to separate yourself, you have to play near flawless golf regardless of conditions. but to say that it's easier to separate if the conditions are harder makes absolutely no sense, whatsoever.

[Elvisliveson]

Originally Posted by deasy55

It makes perfect sense, if you think about it logically.

Your're right, of course it does. And that's why they made a point of stating it several times both on NBC and TGC analysis.

[Yukari]

I don't know what Seniorchipotle is talking about.

Of course you are absolutely correct.  It just means the margin of error is much smaller on harder conditions so it is much easier to separate yourself from those making even small errors.

Originally Posted by deasy55

It makes perfect sense, if you think about it logically.

[bplewis24]

Originally Posted by deasy55

It makes perfect sense, if you think about it logically.

The "dominance relative to field" measure is only significant because it's an absolute measure.  Once you start trying to qualify it by saying "oh this guy distanced himself less but it was more impressive because of _____", you diminish the significance of it.

The only way you can make the argument that Player A winning by less strokes on an easier course is more impressive than Player B winning by more strokes on a tougher course is if you somehow assume that Player B is magically immune to the tough course conditions that his peers are playing under.  No, you can't do that.  He's playing on the same tough course, yet he is dominant.  He endured the same tough aspects of the course and still won by more strokes on a relative basis.  Logically, he exhibited more dominance.

Brandon

[bplewis24]

Originally Posted by Yukari

I don't know what Seniorchipotle is talking about.

Of course you are absolutely correct.  It just means the margin of error is much smaller on harder conditions so it is much easier to separate yourself from those making even small errors.

Not true at all.  What you are in effect doing is giving bonus points to the high scoring player on an easier course and subtracting points from the high scoring player on a tougher course.  Do you think there are perfect golfers in the world or anybody has ever played a perfect round of golf?  Did Tiger hit 100% of fairways and GIR during his dominant round?  If not, then he made the same errors in some spots and still managed to dominate on a higher relative basis.  Rory made some mistakes, still dominated, but on a lower relative basis.  You can make the case that Rory's is more impressive (I would disagree), but his case is definitely not "logically" more impressive.  It would be subjective.

Brandon

[deasy55]

If you notice, I didn't make the original statement...i merely agreed with it. But it does make perfect sense. The margin of error increases as the difficulty does. You could almost turn it into a Maths equation if you wanted to.

Off topic.....but why do you sign off all your posts with your name? I don't mind it personally but it just seems a bit of a pointless exercise. Just asking out of curiosity

Originally Posted by bplewis24

The "dominance relative to field" measure is only significant because it's an absolute measure.  Once you start trying to qualify it by saying "oh this guy distanced himself less but it was more impressive because of _____", you diminish the significance of it.

The only way you can make the argument that Player A winning by less strokes on an easier course is more impressive than Player B winning by more strokes on a tougher course is if you somehow assume that Player B is magically immune to the tough course conditions that his peers are playing under.  No, you can't do that.  He's playing on the same tough course, yet he is dominant.  He endured the same tough aspects of the course and still won by more strokes on a relative basis.  Logically, he exhibited more dominance.

Brandon

[bplewis24]

I've done it since I started on the interwebs.  Sorry if it annoys anybody, but it's something I've always done on forums, like with emails and such.

Brandon

[Kieran123]

Originally Posted by deasy55

Off topic.....but why do you sign off all your posts with your name? I don't mind it personally but it just seems a bit of a pointless exercise. Just asking out of curiosity

Probably so people know his name.

[rossvanwyk]

It's sad that the US Open topic has been derailed to another X vs Tiger debate. Can't we just view the Open for what it was.

Whatever the conditions were, Rory shot -16 and the next closest was way back. Period.

He played unbelievable golf and in my opinion, displayed exactly the kind of golf I expect him to play as I find him to be a marvelous talent.

Tiger has done what Tiger has done. Unbelievable player, no question. But Tiger wasn't at this Open I'm afraid. And truth be told, Rory very well might have cleaned his plate for him this week as well had he been.

[senorchipotle]

Originally Posted by deasy55

It makes perfect sense, if you think about it logically.

really, please "logically" describe this for my simple mind.

because in my reckoning, it doesn't make logical sense. in my simple mind, two players playing equally great against the field should have relatively equal results on courses of differing difficulties. a player playing great golf on a tough course will naturally have a lower score than the player playing equally great on the easier course, but they will still beat the field by the same margin. if the player on the tougher course beats the field by a bigger margin, then logically we can deduce that this player played better than the other player. but of course, i could be completely wrong.

[jamo]

It's sad that the US Open topic has been derailed to another X vs Tiger debate. Can't we just view the Open for what it was.

Whatever the conditions were, Rory shot -16 and the next closest was way back. Period.

He played unbelievable golf and in my opinion, displayed exactly the kind of golf I expect him to play as I find him to be a marvelous talent.

Tiger has done what Tiger has done. Unbelievable player, no question. But Tiger wasn't at this Open I'm afraid. And truth be told, Rory very well might have cleaned his plate for him this week as well had he been.

To be fair, you can only sing the praises of Rory for so long, especially when every news article today is comparing Rory to Tiger, and when Rory compares himself to Tiger in his own post-round interview (though I believe Costas brought it up). Rory played great, it was one of the best four rounds of all time. To be honest, saying how well Rory played only takes one sentence. This would be an awfully boring thread if that's all anyone said.

[clubchamp]

It didn't matter what the course conditions were like Rory was totally dialed in on every level. Whether or not he would have won by more if course conditions were harder I don't know someone hitting it that well might have been able to pull away. Everyone knows you can't compare Rory to Tiger since he has won a major but media has to do it to create headlines that draw attention. The real comparisons can start if he wins 2 or 3 more majors over the next few years.

[bplewis24]

I think there should be a distinction made:

Comparing Rory to Tiger the golfer = Premature.

Comparing Rory's performance at the US Open to Tiger's 2000 US Open performance = justifiable and debatable.

IMO, it's a compliment to Rory, because I recall a lot of people considered Tiger's 2000 performance as one of the best of all time.  I would be honored if one of my performances was paralleled against the best performance of all time, especially if some thought mine was better.  I don't think it's rude or disrespectful to Rory to compare it in that context.

Brandon

[zeg]

Logically, yes, on an easy course where birdies are cheap, distancing yourself from the field seems likely to have a stronger component of luck to it simply because, e.g., it's basically impossible to "skill" your way to an eagle on a par 4 that virtually everyone is making birdie on.  However, it's not any less logical that the field will have higher scores on the harder course.  Both are "logical," but they work in opposite directions.

I don't know any accurate way to evaluate the effective difficulty of the course between two events other than to look at a similarly-skilled field of players and how they performed.  Nominally objective measures like looking at yardages or the various factors that feed into course ratings are unlikely to be accurate enough given the variation in conditions, etc.  Maybe someone at the USGA has enough statistics on these things to model away the differences, but I doubt it.

Probably the best thing I can think of that fans could do to resolve this would be to look at the field and throw out the top and bottom couple percent as outliers and look at the score distribution.  You might be able to compare a few years' worth of winning scores versus, say, the mean score or some function of that and the width of the distribution and figure out whether there's a "typical" difference.  Going down that road you might be able to figure out which is objectively more impressive.

But really, I don't know that it's worth it---it's not likely to win any arguments, because I'm sure you can find complicated analyses that go either way.

[laxbballgolf]

This article lists the most dominant major performances ever based on comparing the winner's score to the mean score of the field - ranking Tiger at Pebble as the most dominant performance by a wide margin since 1960, and Rory's as the 17th most dominant.

http://espn.go.com/espn/grantland/story/_/id/6680477/relative-dominance

It seems like a decent method of analysis to me.  It could be even better if the strength of field were taken into consideration, since a Masters field for instance is typically weaker than other fields because of special exemptions and things like that.

[bplewis24]

Originally Posted by zeg

Probably the best thing I can think of that fans could do to resolve this would be to look at the field and throw out the top and bottom couple percent as outliers and look at the score distribution.  You might be able to compare a few years' worth of winning scores versus, say, the mean score or some function of that and the width of the distribution and figure out whether there's a "typical" difference.  Going down that road you might be able to figure out which is objectively more impressive.

Agreed.