2014 Ryder Cup Discussion Thread

[Shorty]

On Saturday afternoon on the back 9 of foursomes, I made note of where things stood:

6 1/2 - 5 1/2 Euro lead

EUR had commanding lead in one match (easy win)

EUR led two matches 1UP

USA led one match 1UP

If USA just split those 3 up for grabs matches, it's 9-7 going into Sunday. Hell, we might've gotten breaks and snuck away with all 3 to go up 8 1/2 - 7 1/2.

Of course, EUR won two of the three, split the third to be 10-6 up.

USA looked flat for that back 9. We all sensed it. Over that hour though, anything coulda happened. It was close, but EUR had the passion.

It was not close.

You can't say that anything could have happened if "X" happened.

What about the matches that the European Team could have/should have won or halved?

[Shorty]

It is not all about the captain BUT we did get crushed in fourball alt shot. That to me falls on the captain for poor pairings. The Ryder cup was lost in the afternoons.

That is called foursomes.

[ChrisP]

Odds are out as to who will captain the 2016 Ryder Cup.

On the US side, David Toms is the 7/2 favorite, followed by Stricker at 9/2, Azinger at 4/1 and Couples at 5/1.

For Europe, Darren Clarke is a very heavy favorite at 1/4. Miguel Angel Jiminez is next at 5/1 followed by Thomas Bjorn at 10/1.

[FarawayFairways]

No price on Amy Mickelson then?

Clarke was inked for this along time ago (2016)

Thomas Bjorn is inked in for (2018)

The latest thinking is that Jiminez is likely to miss out now despite having done the VC's job on quite few occasions. Harrington was being prepared for 2020 but is understood to have been chastened by his first exposure to the task. I wouldn't touch him with a barge pole if Gleneagles spooked him. One suspects Lee Westwood is likely to be in the frame by 2020. His name has come up a few times in the forward planning

[Shorty]

One suspects Lee Westwood is likely to be in the frame by 2020. His name has come up a few times in the forward planning

Not backward planning?

I would think that it would be pretty easy to name future Ryder Cup captains.

Azinger would be crazy to take it on.

Westwood, Jiminez, Rose and Garcia are obviously future captains. etc. etc.

[RandallT]

It was not close. You can't say that anything could have happened if "X" happened.

My point was that with one hour left to go in Saturday, it was close. Not the final result, if course. The final score was not close. EUR up 2 points. Three matches within 1 hole of AS, each of those matches with 5-8 holes left. At that moment it was close even if it oddly felt like USA was without spirit. Objectively it was close right then. Feel free to debate that but it seems close to me! We didn't know the future , of course, so anything could've happened. EUR widened the lead from there in that final hour, and I wasn't surprised. You could sense it was going to happen somehow. But that hour could've played out differently. Anyway, I thought that one hour Saturday afternoon was fascinating, even if it was nail in USA coffin.

[Shorty]

My point was that with one hour left to go in Saturday, it was close. Not the final result, if course.

And my point is that with an hour to go it wasn't close to being close.

[iacas]

The ranking system is flawed? It over-plays the OWGR points to the U.S. Tour events? Or maybe the differentials between the points for the places moving down the finishing positions is flawed? Or, as you imply, the rankings are far too simplistic here.

There have been several articles with well backed data that demonstrates that if anything, the Asian (or perhaps Australian-Asian) followed by the European Tours offer too many OWGR points, and the U.S. (PGA Tour) is lowest on that list.

[Silent]

What's 'too much'. It's not like the top 50 is flooded with Europeans compared to Americans, ánd that high placed Europeans playing on ET get their asses kicked all the time once they face a lower placed American. The highest ranking European who places solely (more or less) on ET is Dubuisson at 23 followed by Donaldson at 25.

[boogielicious]

http://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/nbcs-ryder-cup-ratings-hit-lowest-mark-1991?sct=hp2

For this reason alone, the PGA has to do something to get the rating up.  Ratings = $$

Quote:

Ryder Cup TV Broadcast Gets Lowest Sunday Ratings Since 1991

Brendan Mohler | Published: Thursday, October 02, 2014 | 10:06:35 AM | Comments (114)

in Share 0

ROBERT BECK/SI

Rory McIlroy led Europe to a blowout on Sunday at the Ryder Cup, which garnered the lowest U.S. TV ratings since 1991.

If you think Team USA hit rock bottom in the 2014 Ryder Cup, wait until you see NBC's television ratings.

According to a Sports Business Daily report , the Ryder Cup's Sunday overnight rating of 1.8 (measured from 7 a.m.-1 p.m. Eastern) is the lowest Sunday rating since 1991, when NBC first began televising the event. That's a 54 percent decline from the Sunday rating at the 2012 Ryder Cup in suburban Chicago, and a 25 percent decline from the Sunday rating at the 2010 Ryder Cup in Wales.

Only two other Ryder Cups since 1991 have record a Sunday overnight rating below 3: The 2006 matches, a European blowout (18.5 to 9.5) at The K Club in Ireland, recorded a Sunday overnight rating of 2.7; and the 2010 matches, which were not concluded until Monday due to weather delays, drew a 2.4, with Europe winning 14.5 to 13.5 at Celtic Manor in Wales. Tiger Woods, who played in the 2006, 2010 and 2012 Ryder Cups, missed this year's event due to a back injury.

Read more: http://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/nbcs-ryder-cup-ratings-hit-lowest-mark-1991#ixzz3F51b94sv

[Nosevi]

There have been several articles with well backed data that demonstrates that if anything, the Asian (or perhaps Australian-Asian) followed by the European Tours offer too many OWGR points, and the U.S. (PGA Tour) is lowest on that list.

Any written outside the US? :)

What's 'too much'. It's not like the top 50 is flooded with Europeans compared to Americans, ánd that high placed Europeans playing on ET get their asses kicked all the time once they face a lower placed American. The highest ranking European who places solely (more or less) on ET is Dubuisson at 23 followed by Donaldson at 25.

Sorry, Silent, I'm having another of those snags with inaccurate data on websites - just comparing Donaldson and Dubuisson's OWGR position (bearing in mind they're pretty much exclusively on the European Tour) and their performance in the Ryder Cup with that of the likes of Bubba, Furyk, Zach Johnson....... Must just be a glitch :)

[Silent]

I think that's exactly my point? Or my English is not good enough (in reading and/or writing) :)

[iacas]

Any written outside the US? :)

It's just math. Look them up.

Euros are not under-rated. If anything, they're over-rated… but not nearly as much as those on the Australian/Asian circuits.

[Nosevi]

I think that's exactly my point? Or my English is not good enough (in reading and/or writing) :)

No it's fine, I'm agreeing with you. I was just being a tad 'tongue in cheek' (or taking the mickey) to those who quite clearly think the PGA Tour is superior or should lead to more ranking points based wholely on the fact it's the PGA Tour. The PGA Tour is superior to the European Tour in one area and one area alone - money. Just my personal opinon of course :)

Both the PGA Tour and European Tour hold the same status as far as OWGR points are concerned. The points available in any given tournament is based on World Rating and Home Tour Rating but there's a minimum number of points allocated to the winner of a tournament and that minimum is the same for both the PGA Tour and European Tour events. If it were just based on the World Rating the PGA Tour would offer almost all the points based on the fact that the 'field strength' would be calculated using OWGR points alone. As more top players were 'lured' to the money of the PGA Tour so the smaller tours would offer fewer and fewer OWGR points which in itself would mean more players would go Stateside. In the end the OWGR system would just be an Order of Merit for the PGA Tour rendering it pointless. You could have a very good player on the Asian Tour who would be below players on the PGA Tour who were not as talented, based wholely on the fact that they play on the tour which now allocates all the points.

It's not a perfect system but the fact you can have players such as Donaldson and Dubuisson up there in the rankings who play outside the PGA Tour (but play tournaments with the world no 1, and 3 and 5 and 6......) shows it's not a bad system.

[Nosevi]

It's just math. Look them up.

Euros are not under-rated. If anything, they're over-rated… but not nearly as much as those on the Australian/Asian circuits.

No, I totally get the maths - if based wholely on who you are playing and where they are in the OWGR system it'd more and more heavily favour one tour - the PGA Tour.It offers the money, it gets the big names. But then you've got to ask yourself if the guy that finishes top 50 each week on the PGA Tour is THAT much better than the guy that smokes the field each week on the Sunshine Tour? Probably not - most of those guys go on to win several Majors.

I think the system is about right for what it's trying to do.

[iacas]

No it's fine, I'm agreeing with you. I was just being a tad 'tongue in cheek' (or taking the mickey) to those who quite clearly think the PGA Tour is superior or should lead to more ranking points based wholely on the fact it's the PGA Tour. The PGA Tour is superior to the European Tour in one area and one area alone - money. Just my personal opinon of course :)

Your opinion is subject to fault.

Both the PGA Tour and European Tour hold the same status as far as OWGR points are concerned.

No they don't. The link for these quotes is below, but for now, just the quotes will suffice:

"Asian Tour and European Tour players benefit from full field (especially co-sanctioned) tournaments that lure in world class players with appearance fees. Their world rankings are inflated drastically on a continual basis.”

“[The change] doesn’t address the self-perpetuating gaming of the system by European and Asian Tour events, or the preposterous notion of ‘home tour ranking points.’”

The points available in any given tournament is based on World Rating and Home Tour Rating but there's a minimum number of points allocated to the winner of a tournament and that minimum is the same for both the PGA Tour and European Tour events.

So? A common minimum is one way to skew results.

Consider an event that attracts no top players but offers a minimum the same as a PGA Tour event (not a top PGA Tour event like Memorial or something which has a higher OWGR winner point share). Both players earn the same OWGR points for winning, despite one playing a stiffer field?

One of many ways the OWGR is inflated for the European Tour.

I'll save myself some typing. Just go read this: http://www.columbia.edu/~mnb2/broadie/Assets/owgr_20120507_broadie_rendleman.pdf

Using 18-hole scoring data of all golfers participating in tournaments from 2002 to 2010 on the major tours (PGA, Europe, Japan, Asia, Sunshine and Australasia) and from the developmental tours (Nationwide and Challenge), we test for bias in OWGR rankings by comparing the OWGR rankings with two methods, score-based skill estimation (SBSE) and Sagarin, which do not use tour information in their computations. We find a persistent, large and statistically significant bias in the OWGR rankings against PGA Tour golfers; a golfer of a given estimated SBSE skill level, or a given Sagarin rank, is likely to be penalized in the OWGR rankings for playing events on the PGA tour and rewarded for playing elsewhere. These findings are important, because OWGR rankings determine, in part, eligibility to play in major tournaments, World Golf Championships and other events.

Edit:

No, I totally get the maths - if based wholely on who you are playing and where they are in the OWGR system it'd more and more heavily favour one tour - the PGA Tour. It offers the money, it gets the big names.

I don't think you do. The European Tour is over-rated in terms of OWGR.

But then you've got to ask yourself if the guy that finishes top 50 each week on the PGA Tour is THAT much better than the guy that smokes the field each week on the Sunshine Tour? Probably not - most of those guys go on to win several Majors.

Huh? Of course the guy that finishes top 50 each week on the PGA Tour is WAY better than the guy who plays on the Sunshine Tour. WAY better.

Read the PDF.

[BENtSwing]

Quote:

Originally Posted by boogielicious

http://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/nbcs-ryder-cup-ratings-hit-lowest-mark-1991?sct=hp2

For this reason alone, the PGA has to do something to get the rating up.  Ratings = $$

Quote:

Ryder Cup TV Broadcast Gets Lowest Sunday Ratings Since 1991

Brendan Mohler | Published: Thursday, October 02, 2014 | 10:06:35 AM | Comments (114)

in Share 0

ROBERT BECK/SI

Rory McIlroy led Europe to a blowout on Sunday at the Ryder Cup, which garnered the lowest U.S. TV ratings since 1991.

If you think Team USA hit rock bottom in the 2014 Ryder Cup, wait until you see NBC's television ratings.

According to a Sports Business Daily report , the Ryder Cup's Sunday overnight rating of 1.8 (measured from 7 a.m.-1 p.m. Eastern) is the lowest Sunday rating since 1991, when NBC first began televising the event. That's a 54 percent decline from the Sunday rating at the 2012 Ryder Cup in suburban Chicago, and a 25 percent decline from the Sunday rating at the 2010 Ryder Cup in Wales.

Only two other Ryder Cups since 1991 have record a Sunday overnight rating below 3: The 2006 matches, a European blowout (18.5 to 9.5) at The K Club in Ireland, recorded a Sunday overnight rating of 2.7; and the 2010 matches, which were not concluded until Monday due to weather delays, drew a 2.4, with Europe winning 14.5 to 13.5 at Celtic Manor in Wales. Tiger Woods, who played in the 2006, 2010 and 2012 Ryder Cups, missed this year's event due to a back injury.

Read more: http://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/nbcs-ryder-cup-ratings-hit-lowest-mark-1991#ixzz3F51b94sv

That's really not too surprising. I'm fairly new to golf, this is the first Ryder Cup I've watched, and it was pretty boring, to be honest. I love watching these guys play, but the celebrating and all that seems super fake to me. The whole vibe just seemed "put-on." Can't really explain why, that's just how I took it.

Do they get paid for Ryder Cup appearances? Or any sort of monetary benefit?

[Silent]

The minimum points are the same, but the strenght of the field is taking in considiration of how many points players will get exactly. Take a look for example at the points Sergio Garcia got in his career, ranked by most points per event: http://www.owgr.com/en/Ranking/PlayerProfile.aspx?playerID=5689 The first ET event is placed 10th, and in his top 15 only two European Tour events. So, besides from majors, people who are winning or high on the leaderboard at the PGA do get more points compared to winning a ET event. The perfect balance won't excist as long as you have seperate tours, but I definitely don't believe the ET is much (or at all) overrated compared to PGA Tour. That would mean the best players on ET (Dubuisson and Donaldson) are placed too high now around 25th. I think they are right where they deserve to be.