Golf Tips & Quips

Before the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship, I started to fill out a bracket sheet and then I stopped. It is an impossible task. There is no rhyme or reason to picking who could win on any particular day. We have all heard that golf is a game of inches, but it is also a game that separates players by decimal points. 

When it comes to the NCAA Basketball Tournament, there are clear underdogs. The team that is the number 16 team in each bracket is not expected to beat the number 1 seed in that same bracket. That is a true upset. I don't think it works the same in golf.

The announcers and analyst keep talking about all the upsets that have taken place. Some are saying that the brackets are busted, but I'm not buying it. I would say it is more of a disappointment that the higher seed has lost. In golf the separation between number 1 and number 64 is marginal. 

I am not a numbers guy like some of my fellow golf bloggers are but I have talked to teaching pros and they will tell you for instance, and I'm just throwing out a number, that Lee Westwood averages 68.2 per round while the 64th ranked player averages 69.8 strokes per round. All you statistics purest can tell me the real numbers but the point I'm trying to make is that it is not a true upset. Maybe just a disappointment.

And who's disappointed. The Golf Channel and their analyst. They know that when a number one seed goes down early in the tournament, ratings may fall with them as well. It is a well known fact that when Tiger is in contention going into the last day, viewership spikes. Whenever a top seed is sent home, they have to scramble for another story, or in most cases they just stretch the story as to why Tiger and Phil lost.

An upset maybe. But more of a disappointment that your favorite player is no longer in the running. I love golf now and I can watch anybody play, but if this were three years ago when I first started playing and Tiger was all that I knew, I would have been very disappointed. I would not have watched the rest of the tournament, because for me, it would have lost its main draw. 

Now that I understand the game, I can appreciate a low seed taking out the higher seed. These guys are good. They are all good. Anyone of these players can win on any given day, especially under the match play format. So we may be disappointed that Tiger, Phil, Ian, and Lee are no longer in the tournament, but I certainly wouldn't consider it an upset. What do you think?

Have a great round and always hit your target.

Photo found here.