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JESII

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Luck
« Reply #50 on: October 03, 2007, 11:19:10 AM »
Lloyd,

That half-yard thing is something I've always wondered about.

I'd suggest that they simply asked for half yards because they were very detailed, confident minds. After all, what would it take for them to come to the realization that full yard increments were not accurate enough to work with? Did they hit a ball 18 inches past a hole one time and figure they needed more accurate yardages?

Not ranting against you, just calling bull on the notion that JM or GN could tell you, when the ball is in the air, how far it was going to go down to the full yard...let alone the half yard...

Tom_Doak

  • Karma: +2/-1
Re:Luck
« Reply #51 on: October 03, 2007, 11:27:00 AM »
I have told this story somewhere on the forum years ago but I don't know where, so excuse me for repeating myself.  It's about how good Tour pros are, and their attitudes about luck.

I followed Pete Dye around like a little puppy for the last two days of the first TPC event at Sawgrass in 1982.  After he'd got dunked in the water by Jerry Pate, we went to the locker room so he could change, and Ed Sneed and Tom Weiskopf were still in there, waiting to talk to Pete for a minute about the course.

Sneed said what he didn't like about the course was how random some of the bounces were.  He explained that he had played with Hale Irwin, who hit the ball the exact same distance as Ed.  On the 13th hole, both of them were hitting 6-irons, trying to play for the slope in the middle of the green to feed their tee shots down to the hole.  Their balls landed a foot apart -- but Irwin's fed down to four feet from the hole, and Sneed's bounced through to the back of the green leaving him a very difficult 40-foot putt.  To quote Ed, "Don't you think that's unfair?  Not even a Tour pro can land the ball within a foot of where he aims."  It seemed like a reasonably well-argued point to me.

To which Pete Dye, drying himself off and listening patiently, answered [paraphrasing, because it's been 25 years]:

"The only reason that happened is because you were aiming at too small of a target.  If you'd just aimed at the flag, you would have been five feet away.  But you didn't aim there, because if you pulled that shot you'd be in the water, and you're both too chicken to take that chance.  So you chose to aim at a tiny spot in the green which would take the water out of play and still allow you to get close to the hole, and you missed the spot.  And you want to blame that on me?"

Incidentally, as we were leaving, Pete asked Ed how that hole had turned out.  He reported that he'd managed to two-putt for par, and Irwin had missed his four-footer for birdie, so they'd both made 3 anyway!  I can still remember the look on Pete's face as we walked out the door.

Tom_Doak

  • Karma: +2/-1
Re:Luck
« Reply #52 on: October 03, 2007, 11:31:09 AM »
JES:

I've watched Tour pros working with Dave Pelz hit wedge shots with someone on the other end measuring, and Pelz has them call out how far their shot has carried with the ball still in the air.  They  can, in fact, get a feel for that and it wouldn't surprise me if Miller could do so.  (Norman, on the other hand, never could control the distance of his iron shots under pressure, so that's crap from him.)

You are totally right that it's all about confidence but many Tour pros have built extreme confidence into landing the ball within a yard or two of their intended distance through practice.

JESII

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Luck
« Reply #53 on: October 03, 2007, 11:52:21 AM »
Tom,

I can tell you how far the ball is going to carry when I'm just picthing 50 yard shots (like the Pelz experiment) one after another...it's a whole different ball game in the course of a round of golf to stumble up to a 163 yard shot and truly be able to tell if it's 162 or 163...and have it matter.

Like you said, it's a confidence thing...

Then again, I never really saw Miller play at his...

Lloyd_Cole

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Luck
« Reply #54 on: October 03, 2007, 11:52:25 AM »
Lloyd,

That half-yard thing is something I've always wondered about.

I'd suggest that they simply asked for half yards because they were very detailed, confident minds. After all, what would it take for them to come to the realization that full yard increments were not accurate enough to work with? Did they hit a ball 18 inches past a hole one time and figure they needed more accurate yardages?

Not ranting against you, just calling bull on the notion that JM or GN could tell you, when the ball is in the air, how far it was going to go down to the full yard...let alone the half yard...

Sully

I'm absolutely with you. I'm arguing counter to Sean's position. I was simply citing JM amd GN in their prime as two of the most accurate players in history. And still they didn't claim to be any better than 18 inches. I'm concluding then - that no player, hitting a full shot can really be much more accurate than that. So, given that a ball on a particular trajectory landing 18 inches in any direction from the 'perfect spot' - which would result in the ball going in the hole - could result in vastly different outcomes depending upon the contouring of the landing area - no amount of skill can ever eliminate the element of luck from the game.
From this position I argue that all holes in one are somewhat lucky. Even a perfectly struck shot on a windless day. Better players will have more holes in one because the likelihood of their hitting the ball close to the hole, over time, will MOST PROBABLY result in more holes in one. Here's another argument for Luck - Walter Hagen - he had only one hole in one.

JESII

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Luck
« Reply #55 on: October 03, 2007, 12:03:11 PM »
Early on in this thread I stated, in a convoluted way, that luck does not happen on the golf course...A better way to support my theory (for you RFG) is that luck, good or bad...can only happen when there are expectations, and I believe no golf shot is entitled to anything...good or bad...






I've had too many unlucky bounces to believe anything else...
« Last Edit: October 03, 2007, 12:03:22 PM by JES II »

Lloyd_Cole

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Luck
« Reply #56 on: October 03, 2007, 02:12:52 PM »
Sean

You started here - "The bounces are all predictable once you know a course well enough.  Its fair enough that some places require more experience to learn the bounces, but it still boils down to a learning curve rather than luck."

"No matter the conditions they are still calculable."

"We say its luck, but in reality we aren't nearly precise enough most of the time with our shotmaking so these apparently odd bounces appear to be random." 

"You are probably the sort of chap that calls a bounce one way or another a matter of luck.  Consult your nearest dictionary."

Then you got here - "The information for a the vast majority of shots is available - thus the outcomes of shots are predictable and since we are hitting the ball we are in control."

Now you're here - "The large majority of circumstances that matter most of the large majority of shots are predictable and are in our control."

There's a big difference between Most of the Time and All of the Time. When you make an absolute statement that I am not in absoute agreement with - it is my duty, as Dylan once said referring to his relationship with his friends, to needle you..

Now you are saying, that from a pragmstic point of view, it makes sense to act on the knowledge one has, as if it were absolute truth. Well, I believe, where I come from, we call that 'living'.

Philosophical discussions of absolutes are a waste of our time if it's not actually absolutes we're discussing.

Absolutes are found in mathematics, geometry, not on the golf course. No golfer has ever been good enough and he never played in a vacuum.

Mark Pearce

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Luck
« Reply #57 on: October 03, 2007, 03:20:19 PM »
Sean,

Your repeated assertion that everything was calculable looks a lot like an absolute statement.  It now seems we're simply seperated by degrees.

I'd agree that the majority of shots described as "lucky" or "unlucky" are foreseeable.  The proportion where the result is genuinely difficult to predict is small at most courses but grows at courses like Kington and Alwoodley with small scale obstacles with major deviation in angles.

Would you, by the way, call a shot slammed deep into trees which rebounds onto the fairway lucky or predicatable?

Mark
« Last Edit: October 03, 2007, 03:20:47 PM by Mark Pearce »
In June I will be riding the first three stages of this year's Tour de France route for charity.  630km (394 miles) in three days, with 7800m (25,600 feet) of climbing for the William Wates Memorial Trust (https://rideleloop.org/the-charity/) which supports underprivileged young people.

Ken Moum

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Luck
« Reply #58 on: October 03, 2007, 03:54:53 PM »
Mark,

Re. luck and trees, I used to play with a guy who'd hit a tree and complain about his rotten luck.

I told him, "Unless that tree moved while your ball was in the air, luck had nothing to do with it."

Ken
Over time, the guy in the ideal position derives an advantage, and delivering him further  advantage is not worth making the rest of the players suffer at the expense of fun, variety, and ultimately cost -- Jeff Warne, 12-08-2010

Tom Yost

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Luck
« Reply #59 on: October 03, 2007, 05:51:40 PM »
I don't know how anyone could believe that luck shouldn't or couldn't be an element of a game played outdoors in varied weather conditions on playing grounds with natural terrain and features so diverse that in fact, share only one standardized element of design (size of the hole).

There is good luck and bad luck and both are part of the game IMHO.

Tom

Peter Pallotta

Re:Luck
« Reply #60 on: October 03, 2007, 09:57:24 PM »
"There was a poor farmer who used an old horse to till the fields and carry the wood. One day the horse escapes into the hills, and when the neighbours hear about it they sympathize with the old man over his bad luck. The farmer says, "Bad luck, good luck, who knows?" A week later, the horse comes back, followed by a whole herd of wild horses from the hills. So now the neighbours congratulate the farmer on his good luck, and he says, "Good luck, bad luck, who knows?" A week later, the farmer's only son is trying to tame one of the wild horses and he falls off and breaks his leg. Everyone comes by and complains about the bad luck, to which the farmer says "Bad luck, good luck, who knows?" A while later, the army marches into the village and conscripts every able-bodied youth they find there, but when the see the farmer's son with his broken leg, they let him off...."

Okay, I know: judging from his apparently limited vocabulary, the old man was a near idiot. And maybe the story might only work for, like, a super-good person or a Buddhist or something; no Italian-Catholic I know could've handled it without cursing-out somebody, maybe even a saint. But hey, maybe the guy was onto something...or at least someone on gca.com can find it. (Me, I think his long-term plan was getting access to some of the great classic courses, you know, the sympathy route. "Hey, you're getting to play Pine Valley, what good luck". "Good luck, bad luck, who knows")  

Peter

Edit: After all, in Tom D's story, Ed Sneed DID make par (and it must've driven Irwin crazy!!)
« Last Edit: October 03, 2007, 10:08:24 PM by Peter Pallotta »

Adam Clayman

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Luck
« Reply #61 on: October 03, 2007, 10:19:41 PM »
Peter, I'm with the old farmer. When I caddied at Spyglass I saw tow shots that illustarte what you said. One was a four man scramble on the 4th hole at Spyglass. This team couldn't find a drive anywhere but 50 yards left of the fwy in the sandy dunes. Naturally, the golfer named Adam holed it out for a two. The other was on the 17th hole. A guy was in the back bunker on the severe downslope at the back of the bunker. The pin was back middle in it's toughest spot possible. Naturally, the guy holed it out for his 3.

Moral of the story, great things can happen from the worst possible places. Just as horrible things can happen from the dead center of the fairway.

"It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game you've been playing your whole life." - Mickey Mantle

Peter Pallotta

Re:Luck
« Reply #62 on: October 03, 2007, 10:34:48 PM »
I was hoping for a story like that, Adam - thanks.

Yeah, it seems to me that if you play enough golf (and I haven't yet, but have followed those who have) the good luck and the bad luck evens out in the end; it's a wash. So all there is left is how we reacted moment by moment to whatever kind of luck came our way. That's obviously one of the beauties of golf. And time and time again the great champions have proven to be great champions partly because of how they tended to react to that luck, moment by moment/shot by shot.

Peter

William King

Re:Luck
« Reply #63 on: October 03, 2007, 10:34:53 PM »
There is no luck in golf...every wierd bounce would repeat itself exactly the same if you were able to hit exactly the same shot and land it in exactly the same spot...I guarantee it.

People just don't know their courses as well as they think.

That is a mighty big if there JES! In any case randomness is a central feature of our world and I don't believe that you are correct even IF.

Tom Yost

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Luck
« Reply #64 on: October 03, 2007, 11:51:21 PM »
If luck is an essential element, how does the architect design it?

Luck can't be designed in, but it possibly can be designed out.

Rich Goodale

Re:Luck
« Reply #65 on: October 04, 2007, 02:03:58 AM »
Tom,

I can tell you how far the ball is going to carry when I'm just picthing 50 yard shots (like the Pelz experiment) one after another...it's a whole different ball game in the course of a round of golf to stumble up to a 163 yard shot and truly be able to tell if it's 162 or 163...and have it matter.

Like you said, it's a confidence thing...

Then again, I never really saw Miller play at his...

Jim

I was told the following story about Ben Hogan last month by an occasional GCA poster:

Hogan's out on the range at Shady Oaks or wherever, and a lady watching him finally gets the courage to ask him a question or two.  The following "conversation" ensues:

L.  Mr. Hogan, what club is that you are hitting?

H.  6-iron (hits two more shots)

L.  How far do you hit that club, Mr. Hogan.

H.  160-161.

L.  Wow!  Can you really tell how far you hit each shot within a yard?

H.  That's not what I meant.  The first one went 160 and the second one 161.

End of conversation.


BCrosby

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Luck
« Reply #66 on: October 04, 2007, 10:16:40 AM »
Johnny Miller has said several times that when he was on his game in the mid-70's, he wanted very precise yardages because his distance control was so good that he could dial up a 161 yard shot vs. a 162 yard shot at will.


Bob

Rich Goodale

Re:Luck
« Reply #67 on: October 04, 2007, 10:22:09 AM »
Bob

I can't beleive that Miller was so much longer than Hogan!  Must have been the technology.......

Rich

Richard Boult

Re:Luck
« Reply #68 on: October 04, 2007, 08:36:09 PM »
There's not a lot of luck involved when a course is set up and maintained like Royal Montreal (or Royal Melbourne, as Johnny managed to call it once) for the President's Cup.  Soft fairways, soft greens, target golf at the highest level.  Luck is not a factor, skill is everything.

Contrast this with a hard, fast links with rumpled fairways and fairway bunkers that are actually part of the fairway.  Steep, irregular slopes in those fairways that can funnel one tee ball into a fairway bunker and another into the garden spot.  Luck is a factor at all times.  The greens are hard.  Sometimes you get a lucky bounce, sometimes you don't.

Which would you prefer to play?  ???

I just finished reading "A Love Affair with the Game" by Sandy Tatum. When comparing America's target brand of golf to Britian's links style golf, he shares that, "My bias is for their game, and I wish there were more of it available to play in this country. Whichever game you prefer, however, I submit that it would be more interesting and more exciting if some element of chance were either left in or built into it by design."

I tend to agree. And it seems that how we react to and recover from those bad bounces often determines the type of luck upcoming ;)

Tuesday night I played 9 holes and seemed to get unduly punished for some poor shots, finding more than my share of bad lies. I shot my worst score for 9 in 2 years with a 51. The next day I played 18 and tied my career best 71, shooting 34 on the exact same nine. Needless to say, I got a few lucky bounces.

On one hole, I was in a stand of trees left of the green, lying 2 on a par 4. I chose a conservative path through a wide opening that would leave me left of the green, requiring a good chip and putt for par. Instead my ball shot off just right of that direction, through a narrower opening, and landed 3 feet from the pin for an easy birdie!
« Last Edit: October 04, 2007, 08:41:58 PM by R.Boult »

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