Removing luck from the equation, whether good or bad, is the point.
The vast majority of the time, and I'm talking upper 90s percentile, I think a ball hit +/- five yards of the line he chose results in him winning the event. You're basing everything on hindsight after an absolute
freak occurrence.
Had he laid up, and had his next shot hit the edge of a sprinkler head or a divot repair tool that fell out of the pocket of a caddie in the previous group and bounced OB, in that alternate universe you'd be on here talking about how he should have just sent it right of the green into the bunker or grandstands, gotten his next shot on or near the green, and gotten down in three or fewer from
there to win outright.
You can't "remove luck from the equation," and your basis for saying that was a one-in-a-million type of unlucky occurrence.
He was 3 7 irons (assuming ~165 yard shots) from the middle of the green where he could have virtually eliminated any type of luck.
Not true. Hitting three 7-irons doesn't "virtually eliminate any type of luck."
Also: Check Google Earth again. I measured about 200 yards just to reach the fairway, so what guy - a guy playing well enough to be leading the British Open by three - is going to lay up with a 7-iron into the rough off the tee of the 72nd hole?
I just mapped it on Google Earth, all relatively safe shots, with a simple 2 putt for the Claret Jug.
When is the last time you saw anyone do this?
In addition to giving far, far too much weight to luck (good or bad), you're seemingly not understanding the mindset of a guy leading an event by three. He's playing well - that's why he's winning - and guys in that position don't think they're going to suddenly score like an 18 handicapper. They think - almost always rightly so - that if they get into a little trouble, they can still get down in bogey or double and win outright. But to play "prevent defense" is to change entirely your mindset, which sports psychologists are keen to tell you NOT to do.
As one who argues about playing percentages with leaving the flag stick in, for only a slight advantage, i don't understand why you think VdV shouldn't have done same, with percentages far more significant.
I disagree that laying up in the rough with a 7-iron isn't playing the odds.
Furthermore, I'm not saying that "he played the odds."
Odds probably say: hit a 3W off the tee - it's enough to carry into the fairway while probably staying short of the burn right. But that likely leaves him about 265, and the "layup" is about 23 yards wide. (
https://cl.ly/d309852ed393/Image%202019-02-10%20at%209.38.06%20PM.png). And heck, Kyle Stanley laid up and made an 8 at Torrey a few years ago: laying up doesn't guarantee anything. (The odds also probably favor hitting a driver over laying up with a 7-iron into the rough - even if the driver finds the burn, he's got FOUR shots to get down from there to win outright, and he's 220 yards away from the green and gets to drop in a lie he chooses, as opposed to being 330 yards away in the rough playing it as it lies.)
After he found himself in the crap for his second, odds would change depending on the lie and all sorts of things
that we cannot know. We weren't there. Maybe pitching out sideways was the smart play, maybe it wasn't. Maybe doing what he did works 99% of the time, and that was the 1% that it doesn't. That's not how odds work - you can't determine "odds" by one event.
I'm saying that it's convenient to look back on things and make some sort of determination when those things included a 1 in a million chance of the ball hitting that railing just so to end up how it ended up. I think that if he hits the same second shot 1000 more times, he gets a 6 or less the vast, vast, vast majority of the time.
I'm not familiar with poker odds enough to conjure up a situation, but it'd be like someone who is good at poker making the smart play, and then someone hitting on a one-in-a-million card on the river to take the pot, and then blaming the loser for choking when he simply had some freakish bad luck, and if he replays the hand a bunch of other times, he'd win the vast, vast, vast majority of the time.
Removing luck from the equation, whether good or bad, is the point.
In short, you're acting like if he hits the same tee shot and the same second shot, he makes 7 every time, when in reality he probably makes 7 very, very seldom, and makes 4, 5, or 6 almost every time, winning outright.
You're using hindsight to judge some freak luck as if he could have foreseen it. A guy walks to work the same way every day, and one day a piano falls on his head, completely without warning. "Why, he should have driven in a car that day, and removed luck from the equation."