Golf media is really starting to bother me with their knee jerk responses

[majorchamp]

Specifically the problem I have is the stories about Tiger recently and his 3rd round 75 at the Australian open.

Cause and effect people...cause and effect. They all claim if he would have turned his 75 into a 70 or 69...he of course "would have won".

I guess they don't realize that if he would have played decent on Saturday, the necessity to pull out all stops and try to go super low on Sunday might not have been necessary, hence he would have been making different on course decisions.

Sure there are dozens of reasons for the score he fired on Sunday, and it was a great round of golf aside from a few hiccups, but he "had" to go that low in order to even have a chance. A good round on Saturday would have put him in the lead or near the lead and he probably would have made safer decisions to maintain or slightly improve his position. His game plan likely would have changed.

Sorry for the rant, it's just driving me nuts with every gdamn Tiger article I read they are stating this "3rd round...he would have won" nonsense.

Ok, rant over :)

[iacas]

I agree. I always wanna respond to those types of "if this, then that" type of articles with the age-old "and if your aunt had balls she'd be your uncle." :-)

[majorchamp]

LMAO never heard that one before, seriously. haha

Originally Posted by iacas

I agree. I always wanna respond to those types of "if this, then that" type of articles with the age-old "and if your aunt had balls she'd be your uncle." :-)

[gwlee7]

Originally Posted by iacas

I agree. I always wanna respond to those types of "if this, then that" type of articles with the age-old "and if your aunt had balls she'd be your uncle." :-)

If your aunt had balls your uncle would be ah, ........married to your other uncle.

[jamo]

Cause and effect people...cause and effect. They all claim if he would have turned his 75 into a 70 or 69...he of course "would have won".

Yeah, good post. Not only do rounds not happen in a bubble (if he started sunday in the lead, he probably wouldn't have been aggressive as he was, etc), but you could always say if Nick Watney putted better or hit it farther, he'd have won by 10.

[makaveli]

If Van De Velde would have used only a 7 iron on the 18th of Carnoustie he would have been Champion Golfer of the Year...

[beisenhauer]

This phenomenon isn't exclusive to golf. It happens with any sport. "If they hadn't muffed that punt in the third quarter..." "If so-and-so had hadn't dropped that fly ball..." etc. Same principle. You can't assume that the game would have played out the same under different circumstances.

[B-Con]

I always like speculation, but when you have compounding events like a multiple-day golf tournament, it's hard to be too sure. Sure the numbers are simple to add and subtract, but every shot influences every shot after it. Maybe scoring poorly on day 3 reminds you to play cautiously and thus you score better on day 4. It's more than just adding and subtracting numbers from the final score. So, yeah, speculating on day 3 of the tournament is really hard, and you can't really get anything concrete out of it. It's pretty much pointless, except to point out that an event seemed to influence a large effect. However, on the topic, I'm OK with speculation when there aren't many events that compound. Like if DJ hadn't driven his ball into the bunker at Whistling Straits on 18 then he probably would've either won or been in the playoff.

[majorchamp]

in 1997, my high school golf team was #1 in the state of Indiana. We got to our regional tournament. I got to the 18th hole and snap hooked my drive OB left. I ended up with an 8 on the par 5. We lost by 2 going to State. My fault? Partially yes, partially no. We could have made up 2 shots ANYWHERE and given I was the #4 guy on the team at the time, and our #1 guy also shot 80...can't feel like that loss rests on my shoulders.

Similar situation that happened in 1998. We were #3 in the state and again were at regionals, but different golf course. The guy in my group was playing for a team that was #2 in the state and he was sitting 120 yards on the last hole for his 2nd shot.  He SHANKS it dead right OB. Shanks it!

He gets triple and I kid you not, they lost by 1 or 2 going to State. I feel bad about my drive going OB, but I feel worse for someone who shanks it from 120 yards LOL.

Anyways, especially in a team event there are always plenty of finger pointing, but whether its 1 yard, 1 base, 1 stroke, etc... it can always be made up somewhere.