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Can an LPGA player win on PGA tour?


chspeed
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Could an LPGA player win on PGA tour?  

64 members have voted

  1. 1. Could an LPGA player win on PGA tour?

    • Yes, it's possible
    • Yes, sometime in the future
    • No, but they could come close
    • Never happen
  2. 2. Could a modern LPGA player win on the modern PGA Tour in the next 20 years? (Better Poll Questions)

    • No.
    • Yes.
    • I don't want to vote; this fence is mighty comfy.
  3. 3. If the best LPGA Tour player at any given point in time competed against a full field of PGA Tour players over 10,000 regular PGA Tour events, how many times would she win?



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Williams did play a 200th ranked male player in 1998, lost, took 3 games off him in 2 sets in an impromptu exhibition. The guy smoked and drank beer during changeovers. People suck. Please God, no repeat of Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King.

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Just now, chspeed said:

Agreed. Statistically, the odds of any man, except for the very top players, winning on the PGA tour are very small. So in order to have a chance to win, there would have to be many women who play regularly on the PGA tour, who are all as good as the best LPGA players. Clearly, that's not going to happen.

In the purely statistical sense, I guess I would change my vote to say "No, but they could come close", assuming "close" is a top-10 finish.

I don't even think they would come close.  From what I've seen the women just can't carry it far enough to have any sort of advantage over the men.

4 minutes ago, mcanadiens said:

I think that in a single match, a top LPGA player may occasionally win. Any given day, a female golfer could get hot and the male golfer could have a bad day.

A full field of men, like a PGA Tour event, is a different story altogether. 

Not even in a single match do I think that an LPGA player could occasionally win.  The LPGA tour plays courses  6200-6600 Yds, add another 500, 600 or even 1000 yds and they have no chance.  They likely wouldn't even make a cut.

For what it's worth, we have a +3.3 handicap lady at our club who is trying to make the LPGA tour, when she plays with us on the gold tees (6680 Yds), I beat her regularly and from the blues we score about the same and I'm no where near a scratch golfer.

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8 minutes ago, nevets88 said:

Williams did play a 200th ranked male player in 1998, lost, took 3 games off him in 2 sets in an impromptu exhibition. The guy smoked and drank beer during changeovers. People suck. Please God, no repeat of Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King.

In Serena's own words...

http://thebiglead.com/2017/06/27/serena-williams-to-david-letterman-in-2013-andy-murray-would-beat-me-6-0-6-0-in-five-to-six-minutes/

 

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21 minutes ago, Jeremie Boop said:

My question is this, even though there are a couple of women on the tour who are within 4-10 yards of some of the shorter hitting men who have won, how do the rest of their stats compare? Are they as good in short game as those men, are they as good on approach shots as those men? You can't take 1 stat and say "look, almost as good as these men who have won, they probably could win too"... Even then, the conditions the women play on are not typically as difficult as they are for the men. Green speeds, rough, pin placements etc.

Good point. For example:

Lexi Thomson stats:

Avg. putts per round: 29.60 (would be about 170th on PGA tour)

Brandt Snedeker's stats:

Avg. putts per round: 28.62 (46th on tour)

Big difference there.

13 minutes ago, jsgolfer said:

For what it's worth, we have a +3.3 handicap lady at our club who is trying to make the LPGA tour, when she plays with us on the gold tees (6680 Yds), I beat her regularly and from the blues we score about the same and I'm no where near a scratch golfer.

Alexandra Austin Springfield G&CC
Virginia State Golf Assoc
HDCP Index: +3.3
       Eff Date: 06/15/2017

No offense, but that's not the point here. First of all, she's not even on the tour, let alone a top LPGA tour player.

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54 minutes ago, Jeremie Boop said:

I think the example was Jeanette Lee, who was the best woman in the world at one point, who was unable to beat low ranked men? I could be wrong, it's be awhile since the thread was active.

It's certainly possible; pool's a funny game and people have off-days.  Without knowing any details it's hard to draw any conclusions. A one-off match (if it was a one-off match) isn't much to base an opinion on.  

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17 minutes ago, jsgolfer said:

Not even in a single match do I think that an LPGA player could occasionally win.

Not even once?

At Colonial in 2003, Sorenstam went 71-74 to miss the cut. She did, however, score better than one Kevin Sutherland (76-72). 

Stuff can happen.

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2 minutes ago, chspeed said:

No offense, but that's not the point here. First of all, she's not even on the tour, let alone a top LPGA tour player.

But your trying to say a top LPGA player would have a chance against an average male PGA tour player, and here we have a +3 female player (which is really good) and she can't beat me very often from the back tees and I'm a 6 handicap, I'm not even in the same ballpark as male scratch player.  The best women's player, playing the tips with the men, unfortunately, has no chance.

I think I read somewhere that the average distance the women hit a 7-iron is 142 yds, that's a SW/GW for most male pro's.  I'll take that advantage every day and twice on Sunday.

2 minutes ago, mcanadiens said:

Not even once?

At Colonial in 2003, Sorenstam went 71-74 to miss the cut. She did, however, score better than one Kevin Sutherland (76-72). 

Stuff can happen.

Maybe if playing one of the bottom tier pro's.  

When I asked her after she played Colonial if she would ever play another men's event, she told me: "No. I play golf for one reason, to have a chance to win on Sunday. I can't do that out here so why should I play? I proved I could handle it. That's all I wanted." - Annika

-Jerry

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Depends on the player. Make the cut? Depends on how well they are playing that week. Win? Not likely.

LPGA Tour courses aren't set up the same as PGA Tour courses. Men play longer courses with thicker rough, firmer and faster greens. If you look at the Trackman averages, the women are not just losing yardage compared to the men, but they also generate less spin, hit the ball lower, and have a more shallow descent angle. They're at a disadvantage just hitting greens.

https://blog.trackmangolf.com/2017-pga-lpga-tour-avg/

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1 hour ago, chspeed said:

A recent silly "controversy" started by John McEnroe when he said that Serena, while the best woman's player of all time, would be ranked about "700" on the men's tour got me thinking.

2. Is "strength and speed" in golf is less important than it is in other sports?

3. Has the most important results of strength and speed in golf, namely hitting the ball further, been narrowed over the years? Ostensibly by training and technology. For example, Lexi Thomson (average drive 277 yards) hits it almost as far as PGA tour winners like Brandt Snedeker (281 yards) or Steve Stricker (280 yards).

Do you think a top LPGA player could win on the PGA tour?

 

First off, Serena herself said that she would get smoked by any man because their game is much faster, and they serve much harder. So all the outrage is people pretended to care about it.

No, strength and speed are probably the biggest defining characteristics between a professional male and a professional female. Assuming you had a player with the same Fairways Hit %, GIR%, # of putts, etc. The man will still win because the only fair way for them to compete would be on the shorter tees where a man would only be hitting 3wood-wedge into par 4's when a woman would hit driver-7 iron, etc.

She smashes her driver, but the top 186 male drive distance leaders all outdrive her.

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9 minutes ago, freshmanUTA said:

Assuming you had a player with the same Fairways Hit %, GIR%, # of putts, etc. The man will still win because the only fair way for them to compete would be on the shorter tees where a man would only be hitting 3wood-wedge into par 4's when a woman would hit driver-7 iron, etc.

I dont understand this argument. The post is about would a female be able to win on the PGA tour, not about making the playing field fair and having males play from shorter tees? This would be women playing from the same back tees as men. 

While you are correct that some of the men would be able to hit 3 wood wedge on a par 4 when the female hits driver mid iron, that doesnt mean the female wouldnt still be able to get a birdie, and it doesnt guarantee the male would get a birdie.

Some people have also been pointing out how women average more putts per round than males do, that is just the average, and I believe a top LPGA golfer is capable of getting red hot with the putter and only putting 24 times in a round, well below the average, and is also capable of putting together 4 rounds of putting below her average putts per round as well. 

I think it is unlikely and would take nearly perfect play from a female and less than average play from the male field, but I do think it is possible.

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4 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

That was said here, and it's a totally different deal.  The hypothesis was that a scratch male golfer could survive on the LPGA tour.  He could not compete with the top LPGA players by any means, but the theory is that because the drop off is so steep from the top LPGA players to the "journeywoman" LPGA players that a scratch male golfer could make cuts here and there and basically look like he belonged.

This question is asking about an LPGA star catching fire for one week on the PGA tour.  I don't see any reason why that couldn't happen.  The main reason why people suggest it isn't possible is because of strength, and I would agree with that.  But there are always outliers.  D.A. Points won a tournament on the PGA Tour this year and he averages 273 off the tee.  Suzann Peterson hits it the same distance, and Brittany Lincicome and Lexi Thompson (as well as a handful of others) average further than him and they've also both won on tour this year.  It's not likely, but it's entirely possible.

Now, if the question was whether or not a woman could hang full-time on the PGA Tour, then that is a different story because that's where the outlier weeks and streaks are diminished.

Again, what are their other stats besides driving? Are their GiR and PPG comparable? Even if they are, can they be considered apples to apples comparison given the known differences in course set ups and greens between the tours?

I haven't voted yet, because I'm actually trying to decide if it's any of the bottom 3 options. At best, I'd say it's sometime in the future but not something I'd expect would be possible now. Realistically I think they may be able to come close if they had a really good week. We'd need to start seeing them play in as close to the same conditions as the men do before we could really make an informed guess at how they'd do. The only thing we can go by now is how the women who have tried to play events on the men's tour have done and it isn't exactly promising.

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Just for grins, I'll throw this out: In 2014, the US Opens for men and women were held at Pinehurst.

For the first round, men played a 7370yd course and averaged 73.23.  Women played a 6296yd course and averaged 75.83.

For the entire tourney, Kaymer won with -9 and Wie with -2. This is perhaps more relevant than the averages above, since the question is about winning.

So the outlier performances: the women shot 7 strokes worse than men- on a course that was in the neighborhood of 1000yd shorter. For a woman to win in the men's tourney, she'd have to shoot 2 strokes better per round, while playing a significantly longer course.

Disclaimers:

Not exactly apples to apples. I don't remember and I did no research on whether the USGA changed the course drastically between tournaments, nor do I remember if weather was vastly different.

But with that said, I think you can get a big picture feel of the magnitudes involved though. It's huge stretch to take the top player in the women's tournament and expect them to even compete with the top players in the men's tournament. Statistically, that one woman would have to have an absolutely miraculous outlier of a tournament to even be anywhere in the hunt. 

I went with "never happen."

(sources: http://www.golfchannel.com/news/golf-central-blog/round-1-numbers-how-women-and-men-compare/,

http://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/martin-kaymer-michelle-wie-who-won-2014-us-open-pinehurst)

 

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1 hour ago, David in FL said:

This is a good point to make.  Serena acknowledges the differences in the pros between genders for sure.  She simply asked JM to not use her in his tired old observation.  She didn't want to be part of the hoopla and inevitable outrage.

She didn't deny the statement.  She just didn't want to participate in the crappy discussion.  She's actually pretty classy.  I like her.

Edited by rehmwa

Bill - 

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7 minutes ago, rehmwa said:

This is a good point to make.  Serena acknowledges the differences in the pros between genders for sure.  She simply asked JM to not use her in his tired old observation.  She didn't want to be part of the hoopla and inevitable outrage.

She didn't deny the statement.  She just didn't want to participate in the crappy discussion.  She's actually pretty classy.  I like her.

Except, he didn't bring it up, he was specifically asked the question by the interviewer. So it is unfair of her to ask him not to bring her up since he didn't in the first place.

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1 hour ago, Jeremie Boop said:

Except, he didn't bring it up, he was specifically asked the question by the interviewer. So it is unfair of her to ask him not to bring her up since he didn't in the first place.

Nothing she did was 'unfair'.  She did not want to participate in another trite effort in an interview to make stupid waves with a stupid question.

Jack would have answered a similar question with simply "No, I don't care to talk about that".  JM could take a lesson.

Edited by rehmwa

Bill - 

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2 minutes ago, rehmwa said:

Nothing she did was 'unfair'.  She not want to participate in another trite effort in an interview to make stupid waves with a stupid question.

Jack would have answered a similar question with simply "No, I don't care to talk about that".  JM could take a lesson.

... Ok then. Guess we just have to agree to disagree here. To me, if anything, she should have specifically asked the interviewer not to bring her up in questions like that instead of going after him for answer it.

KICK THE FLIP!!

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