Un-forced Errors?

[Rick_Noyes]

Would someone please explain to me what an un-forced error is in the game of golf and why the term has made its way into every announcers vocabulary?  I could always understand the use when it comes to tennis, but golf?  Wouldn't all errors in golf be "un-forced"?

[noonan]

A good example is Charles Howell III hitting driver on # 10 in the playoff at Rivera......even though he had a makeable putt for birdie.....he had to hit a miraculous shot to get there......

An unforced error would be the same as not exercising good course management or CM.

Jerry

[TEPaul]

Not really--it's just a term that describes a golfer who shouldn't have made a mistake but did.

A good example would be a player who hit a ball into a bunker from a tee, for instance, when there was plenty of opportunity to avoid it as opposed to a player who put a ball in a bunker from the heavy rough, for instance, which was basically forcing that error.

Hence from the tee it could be considered an "unforced error" but not so from the heavy rough.

[Rick_Noyes]

TEPaul,

I can accept that if a player does not reach the green on his second on a par-4 due to being in the rough termed an "un-forced" error as it applies to his greens in regulation statistics.
But the player should not have been in the rough to begin with.  So the end result was a forced error.

As for being in a bunker, whether from the tee or anywhere else, the player knows the bunker is there and it is their obligation to avoid it.

I understand the use of the term.  I question it's validity.

[TEPaul]

Rick Noyes:

Whatever. As C.B. Macdonald said to Max Behr; "My Good man you think to damn much!"

The idea for those players whether they're on the tees or in the rough is to weigh the various situations and avoid trouble and errors as best they can regardless of "forced" or "unforced" or whatever Curtis Strange has to say about their shots. Do you notice how calm most of them are and regardless of what happens they seem to be able to go on to the next shot with a large degree of calmness?

I realize he shouldn't have been in the rough in the first place although it might have forced his shot into the bunker to some extent but the real reason he was forced to hit the ball into the rough in the first place was because his little baby boy threw up on his golf shirt that morning and he couldn't concentrate that well because his undershirt still smelled like vomit. It's amazing all the things these tour pros have to deal with.

[Rick_Noyes]

TEPAul,
  God, If I can't laugh at myself who can I laugh at?

[Robert_Walker]

Steve Melnick first used the term in golf when he was with C B S.
The term originated in tennis, and belongs in tennis. When a tennis player has a very easy return, and instead slams it into the net is a good example of an unforced error.

Another term that originated in another sport, and now resides in golf is "bump and run".

[Gary Smith (Guest)]

Melnyk used to drive me up the wall with the constant usage of "good play" and "quite frankly."

[TEPaul]

"God, If I can't laugh at myself who can I laugh at?"

Rick:

Good question. I don't know. What do you think the answer is? Whoever it is, laughing is good though.

[Dan Kelly]

The announcers should follow Nick Price's lead and use the term he used, post-round yesterday, for his own "unforced errors." That term, in case you missed it, was "disgusting shots."

We couldn't expect a nice man like Nick to be so blunt about other players' failings, should we ever be lucky enough to get him up in the booth and Curtis Strange out of it (along with Steve Melnyk -- please!) -- but, then again, Price did manage to communicate his sharp-edged analysis of Howell's mental blunders yesterday, without seeming harsh about it.

It helps to have that wonderful southern-African accent, I suppose.

[Mike Benham]

How about when the announcer says "Good golf shot" ...

If the golfer hits a high lob to a tight hole location, do you think he should say that it was a "good tennis shot" ...

Or if he banks it off a tree, should the announcer say that "he learned that one in the backroom of a pool hall" ... actually, I'm sure McCord or Flaherty would say that ...

Of course, sports announcers aren't the only ones to think about what they are saying.  On this mornings newscast, the newslady made a particularly bad pun by stating that memorial services were held for the RI night club fire victims were held yesterday and "hundreds of people crowded into the tiny church ..."

[Rick Shefchik]

Maybe I'm getting soft, but I've always understood what the announcers meant when they referred to an unforced error, and it has never bothered me.

In fact, I think it fits golf just as well as it does tennis, if not more. In tennis -- except for the serve -- you're always doing something dictated by the other player. In golf, what you do is dictated by the course (leaving match play strategy out of the discussion for now.) If your opponent in tennis presents you with an easy shot, why is it any more of an unforced error to jab it into the net that it would be to yank a 7-iron into a greenside pond from the middle of the fairway?

Some of the TV announcers are way better than others, but I think a golfer's second-favorite pastime -- after playing golf -- is bashing whatever comes out of a golf announcer's mouth.

[Doug Siebert]

Error:  hitting it into the deep rough on a straightaway 470 yard par 4 hole that requires a 250 yard carry to reach the fairway, plays into the wind, and has deep rough short and on either side of its narrow fairway.

Unforced error:  hitting it into the deep rough on a straightaway 370 yard par 4 that requires a 50 yard carry to reach the fairway, plays with no wind, and has deep rough on only one side of an overly generous extra-wide fairway with sparse burned out first-cut length rough on the other.

Unforced errors happen between the ears.

[Jeremy_Glenn.]

If your reaction is to shamefully roll your eyes to the heavens shaking you head and weeping at your own ineptitude, it's an unforced error.
____

Seriously, I think unforced errors cost us hackers more shots than anything else, and is perhaps one of the biggest difference between us at the pros:  We make more of them, and we can't recuperate from them.

[Dan Kelly]

Rick --

You're getting soft.  (Obligatory smiley.)

Most of these guys are worthless, and you know it!

Give us more regular doses of Feherty, Renton Laidlaw, Peter Oosterhuis, and possibly a few others I'm forgetting, and you'll hear no complaints.

But keep giving us Melnyk and Strange and Kostis and McCord -- and what's a self-respecting viewer to do? We can't just take it lying down!